Friday, September 15, 2006

Blogger's Block

I'm having difficulty coming up with content for my blog so I am stealing ideas from forums and threads I read.

1. Do you work hard or do you take the easy way out? With respect to working out, I work pretty hard. I think I could work harder. I am scared to think of how a trainer would push me. Regarding work these days, I am bored and unchallenged. I have become complacent in my work. I like what I do but the pleasure just isn't there because of my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde boss. I never know who I'm dealing with. My boss if female so that only adds to the complication and misery. As to 'taking the easy way out' I'm all for streamlining and efficiency without sacrifice for the finished product.


2. How's your day going? Boring. But I did clean my desk up at work. I have 3 IN trays and I had shit in there from 2003. I hold on to things because 'you just never know' and then there comes a point in time that the shit is meaningless now, don't know what its for or it doesn't apply any more and it can just be turfed. That is a great feeling and it is great looking over at my in tray and it is tidy and it's contents current.

3. How many pairs of shoes do you own? 10 maybe. Only 3 in regular rotation.

4. Do you consider yourself cool? Sure I do. But its all relative. There are a lot of losers out there. (My 12 year old son thinks I’m cool because I used 'k' instead of typing Okay in MSN messenger the other day.)

5. What's the last song you listened to? "One Gun" by 54-40 on www.jackfm.com

More drivel:

First Name JENNIFER

Birth Year 1967

Where are you from - originally & now? RICHMOND BC, CANADA

Kids? ONE

Married? How long? COMMON-LAW 3 YEARS

Occupation? What would you do if you werent doing this job?
ADMIN ASSISTANT, WORKSAFE BC; RETIRED TRAVELING/GOLFING/PHILANTHOPIST


Hobbies?
COOKING/GOLF/WORKING OUT/ BLOGGING/ READING


Habits?
TEA EVERY MORNING, PIZZA ON FRIDAYS, Work Out Mon-Sat


What do you do well? (ie; sing, dance, sew, paint...stay out of the gutter y'all!)
I’M TOLD I COOK PRETTY GOOD. I CLEAN HOUSE GOOD. GIVE GOOD HUGS.


Use 3 adjectives to describe yourself.
LOYAL, INQUISITIVE, FUN-LOVING


ONE favorite of each of the following: Book, CD, Music group, tv show, Movie, dessert, & meal (yes it always get's back to food!!)
THE MISTS OF AVALON

CRAZY – SEAL
ABBA
WKRP IN CINNICATI
STAR WARS RETURN OF THE JEDI
CHOCOLATE CAKE
ROAST BEEF, PORK OR CHICKEN W/ ROASTED POTATOS AND ROATED CARROTS

Favorite vacation destination?
MEDITERRANEAN


What dream (besides a perfect & healthy body) would you like to see fulfilled in your life? GO WITH BILL AND TAKE AARON ON A TROPICAL OR MEDITERRANEAN VACATION

So ya, just a bunch of Blog fodder tonight but check out this link I just found. I thought to myself before I sat down to the laptop...I wonder if I just did a search on 'blog content' at Google, if it would help me with ideas to write about....

http://weblogs.about.com/od/writingandcontent/

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Enjoy your coffee

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups - porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal,
some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to
help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor
said: "If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up,
leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is but normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your
problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself, adds no quality
to the coffee in most cases, just more expense and in some cases iteven hides what we drink.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you
consciously went for the best cups... And then began eyeing each
other's cups. “Now consider this: Life is the coffee, and the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and
contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change
the quality of Life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the
cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us."


God brews the coffee, not the cups..........enjoy your coffee.

Monday, September 11, 2006

Definition of uncomfortable

I had a new laptop delivered to my desk today by the tech guy. Unfortunately my tummy was rumbling and gurling and I had gas from the cafeteria meatballs earlier. Luckily it wasn't the stinky kind but uncomfortable nonetheless. Making matters worse, he had to crawl under my desk. I rolled my eyes hoping for a brief respite from the gurgles.

In addition to my own personal discomfort this guy - Serbian I would guess from the heavy accent, had THE MOST disgusting cigarette breath.

Though he appeared to be in his mid-thirties he smelled like a 70 year old geezer who'd been smoking for 55 years. I could just imagine his black calsified lungs...I think I could tolerate fishy cat breath better.

Ugh! How can people DO that to themselves? No matter how good looking you are, if you smell like a wet ashtray you are UGLY. There are two youngish people at work. One is an Asian girl in her late 20's I would guess. And a guy who is in his late thirties. They are pretty okay looking until they smile and reveal their yellow teeth and receding gums.
It is shocking how OLD their mouths look.


Moral: DON'T SMOKE. And don't eat the meatballs in the WorksafeBC cafeteria unless you are going to be alone….

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Mango Chicken Caesar Salad

Serves 1

Calories: 354
Carbs: 35.5g
Protein: 35.8g
Fat: 9.3g

Ingredients
nonstick cooking spray
1 garlic clove, minced
4 oz bonless, skinless chicken breast
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt and gr. black pepper to taste
3 cups romaine lettuce
3 tablespooons low-fat Caesar dressing
2 tablespoons low-fat parmesan cheese
3/4 cup cubed mango (about 1 small mango)

1. Spray pan with non-stick spray and warm over medium heat - add minced carlic and cook for a minute. Season chicken with garlic powder and salt and pepper - add to pan. Cook about 6 minutes until no longer pink inside. Remove from pan and cut into cubes.

2. In a medium mixing bowl, toss the lettuce, dressing and parmesan cheese. Add the cooked chicken and toss. Sprinke the mango on top and enjoy..

Try this! It is VERY good!

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Weekend Food and Personal Best

I was doing so well with eating and working out the week of Aug. 21st to 25th - even though I was still recovering from a heavy duty sinus infection the week before. I was in the gym every day and my eating was pretty spot on. It wasn't perfect but pretty darn good for me. I lost a whole 1.2 pounds - the scale registered 132.4 for 5 whole days the week of Aug. 21st to 25th. I was so pleased with myself because I had been stalled at 133.6 for a long time. I really wanted to be just as good the following week in preparation for my boyfriend coming home for the Labour Day weekend. But some how, I just pooped out. I didn't get to the gym AT ALL that week. One reason is we had pizza/sushi day at work and I have to do all the leg work getting it organised. And now I can't remember the other reasons I jammed out of workouts that week. I felt bad about it. I really wanted Bill to see the definition in my arms and torso but it just wasn't there by then. Doesn't take long to lose it!



Oh, but we had a good weekend together. He surprised me by driving all night Thursday from Calgary and he slipped into bed at 4:10 in the morning. I wasn't expecting him until Friday evening - I took the day off work to clean the house for the weekend. But we had a whole extra day together. We had a great weekend full of FOOD INDULGENCES. We dropped my son and a friend off at the swimming pool and went to the only quasi-New York deli in Vancouver. It’s a kosher Jewish deli where they have smoked meat, pastrami, corned beef, turkey, tongue etc. piled high on rye bread. Bill gets the 'hungry' (lg) pastrami (because he says this smoked meat from Lester's in Montreal is inferior to Schwartz's in Montreal) and I have the 'not so hungry' (sm) corned beef. We start with chopped liver served scooped in a ball on lettuce leaf with a slice of tomato and cucumber. The chopped liver is spread on delicious rye bread. I've never had chopped liver before to compare but this stuff is really really good! It’s beefy and oniony. The sandwiches come piled high with a toothpick holding them together and a most excellent dill pickle on the side. You have a choice of Dijon, spicy or regular mustard you put on at the table. We splurged and took home some Florentine rolls and Rugelach. Florentine rolls look like Canolis but are made with a sugar lace "cookie" rolled in a cone shape and piped with a wonderful chocolate whipped cream. Rugelach are a flaky butter pastry filled with jam or chocolate and sprinkled with ground almonds. Had these for the first time and they were awesome. The short large Jewish lady looked me up and down and said I could afford it! It was Friday so it was Pizza Night - we had our usual Flame pizza and Bill and Aaron has spaghetti with theirs.Saturday while doing errands we stopped in at Cobb’s Bread. I have been leery of buying their products feeling that their mass-market approach is muscling out the local baker and the artisan quality is just not there. But we got a loaf of multi-grain bread Bill was pretty pleased with and I quite liked the gooey cinnamon bun. Oh, well. For lunch we picked up a roasted chicken and had that with the huge pitas and feta cheese and olives he gets from a local Greek deli in Calgary. For dinner we bbq'd some buffalo burgers, chicken burgers and a homemade Mennonite sausage he brought back from friend. It was good. (Buffalo burgers were bought frozen locally and I make the chicken burgers)Sunday morning I made pancakes for my boys. The Top Secret Recipe for IHOP pancakes from www.topsecretrecipes.com. These are the best - Aaron loves them and they are easy to make. I didn't have any buttermilk so I just used 1 tbsp lemon juice to sour 1 cup of milk. Worked perfectly. I put blackberries in Bill's pancakes. I like mine with just butter and real maple syrup warmed up. Okay - LOTS of butter and syrup. Sunday night we went to the Keg for supper because Aaron wanted lobster. He got a tail and ate it all. I had a steak with blue cheese and roasted garlic and mashed potatoes. Bill had the Baseball steak. I think he is still digesting that today…Supper on Monday was roasted pork tenderloin with roasted onion, peppers and tomatoes. Bill loves that.



I was back at it in the gym today with some enthusiasm. Not a pumped up great deal of enthusiasm but I was eager. I did biceps today and 20 minutes of intervals on the elliptical trainer. After a week off from the gym I was really pleasantly surprised to reach a personal best in bicep curls. I did 2 x 5 reps at 15 lbs (for sets 3 and 4). Wahoo! Previously I maxed out at 4 times on the first set and maybe only was able to squeeze 3 out on the second set. (from there I do 10 reps at 10 lbs for the 5th set) So it goes to show, definition may be lost from an absence in the gym but muscle building (or memory!) can continue. I then changed to hammer curls and started with 8 lbs weighs instead of the usual 5 lbs and worked through the 10 lbs weights for 10 reps to and got out 3-4 reps at my 15 lbs max. I am pleased.