At Home - Days 19 & 20 (The Garmin and Great Hike-spectations)

Still no change in my weight, but I know why and I just have to change it. Given my current state of mind and lack of rigorous exercise, I am OK with that for today. Tomorrow is a different day. My Garmin arrived, so I will be able to know exactly the amount of calories I'm burning again. I've been without a monitor of any sort since my Bodybugg pooped out during Week 2 at BLR! Obviously, this is not conducive to weight loss, so I'm excited to be able to track my burn once again!

Which one should I wear today? :-)

Bad news? My planned activity for today (a hike) turned out to be far more inactive than I anticipated. I barely registered a half mile on my distance counter, plus I was in a car for more than three hours. I didn't even bother putting in the half mile from today. That's almost embarrassing. Being sedentary and bored was exhausting. When I got home, I did laundry, dishes and little else.

Good news? I made multiple plans for varied workouts tomorrow AND I got my Garmin Heart Rate Monitor to work today! I can't say it was easy... not a very intuitive device. However, I think it will do the job nicely for appropriately tracking my heart rate, calories, and distance. Oh...I also created this collage from inspirational quotes, in order to get motivated to workout tomorrow morning and every morning thereafter. It's a compilation of many quotes I've already used in my blog, and a few new ones:

I posted one on the front door, the fridge door, and between the two mirrors in the bathroom. If this doesn't work (at least in the short run), then someone needs to physically beat me over the head and drag my arse out of my apartment!

  

I got a new application on my iPhone, called NetDiary (suggested by Marisa). I like it so far!

I'll be posting screen shots here instead of listing out the food in text, unless it's too difficult to read. Please let me know in the comments section whether you prefer the text.

Approximately 1406 Calories

Approximately 800 calories on Friday (Yoga and Running)

• 60 minutes of Power Vinyasa
• 1 mile on treadmill 

Approximately 200 calories on Saturday- Not really worth mentioning (plus 2000 laughing calories) 

• Museum and Historic Site Hike
• Laughing my booty off with Meg for most of the night! Bwaahahaha! She accidentally called me a "HOE" on FaceBook, but meant to say, "How?"... and it was allllll downhill from there!

  Personal Score:  D
(I don't think I need to explain this one)

I woke up at 6am to meet up with my hiking group at REI. We left at around 8am to head to Oakland and Martinez for a hike around John Muir's estate and to venture through an exhibit/museum... What I pictured in my head and what actually occurred were two very different things. I should have known something was amiss when I was the only person who showed up to REI in workout clothes instead of street clothes.

After almost two hours on the road, we had 45 minutes to rush through John Muir's estate in Martinez before heading to Oakland to see the exhibit. The original plan stated there was a one mile loop we would take around the estate in order to get some exercise. This was supposed to be the main portion of the hike. I had pictured myself running this loop, preferably at a 6.0 pace, in 10 minutes or so.

Ummm...no. Not so much. We were given brochures by rangers, to take a very slow tour of John Muir's house. If I were at all interested in history, I'm sure I would have found this somewhat fascinating. But, I'm not. Not even a little. Nope. All I could think of was how I'd skipped 62 days of class my sophomore year of high school so that I could eat doughnuts instead of attending class... especially History class (although the teacher was super cool. He called himself "Mr. MOT," which stood for Mean Old Teacher). With 62 missed days, that was a lot of doughnuts. Hey! It's all making sense now! My aversion to history is the root of my weight issue! Problem solved! Ha! <I wish it were that simple>

!!!BAAH!...OMGWTF?!? ...I'll NEVER get used to a sudden loud voice coming from my ceiling in the midst of dead silence at some ungawdly hour!

The fire alarm is going off in my building and the front desk sounds panicked over the intercom. ("sounds" is in bold because I know the person announcing and I also know he's irritated and not panicked, but it's probably freaking a few people out in the building right now. <uncontrollable evil snicker>) The sirens blaring in the background are adding to the ambiance of what paranoid people would construe as a grave situation... This should be fun!

Usually, when one hears an alarm, he or she would attempt to vacate the area of potential danger. However, the alarm in this building is like the little boy who cried "wolf!" It seems to activate almost every Saturday when some moron decides to smoke pot in his/her room, right under a smoke detector, then vehemently denies it when a security guard arrives and encounters the shirtless wonder, speaking in dialect like "Bill and Ted" with slits for eyes, a bong on the table and Visine on the counter. I digress...

Surprise. Surprise. Same irritated voice now sounds exhausted and frustrated while announcing it was a false alarm... I am now texting him and saying, "You really don't want me to sleep, do you?" to which he replied "Sorry. LOL" ...Wait... he's announcing it again.... and again... and... one more time. I fired off another text, "Three times? Really? Does that make the 'false alarm' a False Alarm?" No response. I'm sure he's making cat noises <reaaeewwrrr!> while reading his text message.

I will undoubtedly die a fiery death one night because I've slept through the umpteenth alarm and have become so desensitized to the tone that it actually sounds more like a whispered lullaby. At least I know the Fire Dept's response time is less than two minutes! It makes me feel safe to know that within two minutes, I can summon a bunch of men with big hoses. <bad joke, I know> Although I'm pretty sure my only way down from this floor would be a helicopter or a "Geronimo!" Maybe I should go buy myself a base-jumping parachute?

Back to the non-hike tour... Michelle and I had fun taking silly pictures :-) This was the best part of my day before my uncontrollable laugh-fest and Twitter Blast with Meg. Here are some pics of the John Muir mansion, Michelle and I kissing John Muir's statue and each of us pretending to fall into a glacier:

Thanks, Michelle, for driving and for turning an otherwise boring day something fun! Hope to see you on the Riverwalk!

That's all I have for tonight. Hopefully tomorrow's blog will be much more fitness-oriented!

See you on the fit side!

-Heather