Weekly Round Up: A Week at Home!

A weekly roundup: eats, workouts, watches, and reads.  The big news for the weekly round up is that I actually spent an entire week at home!  And I have things to tell you about it!

Eats

Before Kyria and I went on our epic road trip, we met up with Nance.  She gave us a jar of homemade pesto, which I accepted only after checking that it would still be good after sitting unopened in my fridge for the two weeks that we were gone.

The jar proved to be the gift that kept on giving.  First of all, I had completely forgotten about it so it was a delight to see it when I opened the fridge when we got back from our trip.  Second of all, it was a key ingredient in my favorite meal ever, the entree that you've seen many times in this space.  It's called "I Want to Cook Something but I Don't Want to Go to The Grocery Store".

On the night before Kyria flew back home, we assessed our food situation.  We had the pesto, we had some cherry tomatoes left over from Kyria's road food stash, we had Costco meatballs in the freezer and pasta in the pantry.

Kyria roasted the tomatoes in the air fryer while I boiled up some pasta and nuked the meatballs.  I dropped in a generous spoonful of pesto and out of nowhere we had a gourmet meal.

I did a rinse and repeat until the pesto and tomatoes were gone.

But wait, there's more!  Grace posted a link to Food and Wine's 26 Cosy Recipes for September, and on that list I found a recipe for Korean BBQ meatball bowls, which looked like something that I could dumb down into an easy-ish meal.

My version does so not look like the picture in the source post!  But it was good.  The dumbed down parts were that I skipped making meatballs from scratch (why would anyone make meatballs from scratch?  That's what Costco is for!) and I had leftover rice in the freezer.  Basically the only effort was quick pickling a cucumber, making the sauce, and frying an egg.  I had this meal three times in between the day I saw the recipe and when I left on the trip.  I alternated chicken and beef meatballs and rice and noodles.  Verdict: there is no wrong way to make this.

Workouts/Wellness

🚨🚨🚨Breaking Pushup News🚨🚨🚨Breaking Pushup News🚨🚨🚨Breaking Pushup News🚨🚨🚨

OK, I know this isn't exciting to anyone but me, but I have been consistently doing pushups for a long time and I'm in one of those rare phases of the Pushup Journey where things are starting to feel easy-ish.  As with all things fitness related, complacency is the kiss of death and I've been looking for ways to spice things up.  Part of that was attempting to add diamond pushups into the mix, but I knew that I needed something more.

I base the number of sets/reps that I do based on how I feel when I start doing my first set of pushups.  If my body isn't feeling it, then I do six sets of six pushups.  If I'm feeling feisty, I do a descending ladder of 10-6 reps (inspired by a workout that Julie posted a long time ago...14 years ago if we're counting...what can I say, some blog posts really leave an impression).  One day this week I was in the middle of the first set of 10 and things were going swimmingly well, and it dawned on me that I could do a longer set than 10 reps.

So boo-yah for the first time ever I did a ladder of 12-10-8-10-12 pushups!  And I've done it one time since then!  Stuff is happening!

Also I wouldn't say that I can "do" diamond pushups but my baby attempts are getting a lot closer.  So there!

On the wellness front, I still struggle with sleep but I feel like things are getting better.  Since earlier this year I had been taking a magnesium supplement right before bed and popping in a melatonin as soon as I turned out the light.  Every once in a while I would "raw dog" and not take the supplements if I was super tired, but Raw Dog nights were few and far between.  While of course there is conflicting research on the pros and cons of magnesium and melatonin for sleep, it seemed very low risk and the supplements were definitely effective in getting me to sleep, less so with keeping me asleep but at least they solved one of my two sleep problems.

Well, something has changed because I'm on a roll of Raw Dog nights where I haven't needed the supplements to get to sleep.  Stay tuned.

Watching

All Traitors All the Time! Specifically the UK edition.  I'm getting close to the end of season two.

This was a show that Kyria and I picked to watch together because she had seen a few episodes, I had heard the buzz, and we saw the host on another TV show that we watched.  It's silly but it holds my attention and it's fun.

Reading

I've got three books to tell you about.  Two of them are incredible and one (IMO) is not.

Let's get the stinker out of the way.  Kyria and I listened to the first half of You With the Sad Eyes by Christina Applegate on our road trip, and for some reason I finished it.  In fairness to Christina, she's had a super depressing, very traumatic life, all of which was capped off by a diagnosis of MS when she was 49.  She's had way more of her share of bad things than the normal person, so it would be really inappropriate if the tone of her memoir was sunshine and roses.  

Unfortunately the tone was...really dark and depressing but it also felt like a surface skim and I came away without knowing much about Christina as a person or with much of an idea of her life events.  I found her tone on the audiobook to be grating.  Granted she's reading her words about her trauma, but the inflection felt very off.  At first I thought it was because we were listening at 1.25x speed, but when I slowed it down to 1x I found that was not the case.  

[Quick aside: it never occurred to me to listen to podcasts or audiobooks at anything but 1x speed but I gave it a try because Kyria is a 2x listener and maybe I was missing out.  Flat out: increasing the listening speed is not for me.  I would only do it if there was something that I *had* to listen to, such as a textbook or something like that.  But I'm very glad that we listened to You With the Sad Eyes on warp speed because I didn't want to spend any longer with that book than I had to.]

On to better reads!  Nicole and Elisabeth both raved about Good People, and when I heard the dual raves I dropped everything to put my Libby hold in.  The story is about a family of immigrants who work their way from nothing to wealth, and then Something Bad happens.  The story is told in short chapters from the POVs of many people who knew the family.  We don't find out what the Bad Thing is until well into the story, and then everyone has an opinion about what happened, and the reader gets to suss it out.

Generally I like a straightforward story told from one viewpoint, and don't do well with multiple narrators and timelines that jump around, but Good People is a shinning exception to the rule.  I got into it right away and rode the waves as they came in.  Good People is a Good Book.

Next up: another Elisabeth rec from an author who has been one hit and two misses for me.  That would be Heft by Liz Moore.  My history with Moore is that I loved Long Bright River, DNF'd another of her books but I can't remember the title, and had a big fat DNF fail with God of the Woods.

Heft is about a 550 pound man who has not left his house in 10 years and what happens when someone from his past reconnects with him.  I am All In on this one.  I love a protagonist with a harmful coping mechanism who gets his act together (clarification: where I am at 80% of the book it's not clear if Arthur is going to get his act together but he is sure making progress).

Spanish Learning Update!

Last but not least, I've been pondering where to go next with Spanish (as discussed here and here).  At this point I'm doing Duolingo, watching Dreaming Spanish videos, and reading short passages, which are all good things but they're not going to make me fluent.  The question is do I want to keep studying as a hobby or do I want to Do Something with it?

The next step of course is to either take lessons or to find Spanish speaking people to hang out with, and I had been dragging my feet.  I tried a Spanish Meetup group, but the meeting time wasn't convenient and I didn't click with the other folks in the group.  I didn't particularly want to go through the process of finding a teacher....

Fast forward to our time in South Dakota.  Kyria's friend stopped by to chat, and then said he had to leave for his Spanish lesson!!!  I pounced and asked for more deets and liked what I heard.  Her friend has been studying with the same teacher for a few years, and at first they did structured lessons and now the sessions are just talking with the teacher in Spanish.  You better believe that I got the teacher's info!

When I contacted the teacher, he asked to do a free intro call so that he could assess my level and go over the curriculum.  The best part of the messaging/conversation is that he wrote/spoke in Spanish and I was able to understand all of the writing and 90% of the speaking.  I communicate in Spanish when I can, but switch to English when I'm not sure how to say something, which is most of the time;-)

Anyhoo, we have our first real lesson next week and I am looking forward to it.  There is no contract, so I can take lessons willy nilly and come and go as I please, but I'm going to shoot for two lessons a week.  For nosiness purposes, the lessons are 400 pesos each, so what I pay will fluctuate with the exchange rate but right now it's about $24.  If it turns out that I don't like the lessons, then it won't be a lot of money, and if I do like the lessons, it's easy enough to work the cost into my budget.

I will keep you posted.

What Else is Happening?

I'm on another trip and I'll drop the deets soon!  Two state capitals/capitols, one FLW, and time in a fun city with friends.  Both two legged and four legged.  But that's a story for another day.

Peace out!  What are your go to pantry meals?  Do you have friends that give you pesto?  Any successes on the fitness front to report?  What is your preferred audio listening speed?