swingchickie | Recent Entries

i'm finding that, slowly but surely, i'm improving by little baby steps at the gym. last monday when i started, i was doing 30 minutes on the treadmill, intervals of 60 second run/90 second walk. now i can do 45 minutes, 90 second run/60 second walk. doesn't sound like much, but for a couch potato and non-runner like me it's a big deal. the 90-second run is far from comfortable for me, i count down every second of it and my heart rate goes up to 90% of max... i know that as i keep progressing and have less weight to carry as i run, those running intervals will get easier to do.

this morning it was tough to get myself to the gym... i didn't sleep well last night, and my back and legs are sore from yesterday's workout. part of me was going "you need to rest your body for one day, sleep in until 6". but if the contestants on "the biggest loser" can work out 6 hours a day while they're carrying around hundreds of extra pounds, my lazy butt can do 45 minutes every morning. i can only imagine how sore those guys must be when they're doing the show, i can handle a little stiffness myself. nothing a little advil can't cure.

Current Mood: accomplished

i'm finding that i really enjoy watering the new landscaping. i have to water all the plants every day for the first 2 weeks, and that 1/2 hour or so (it's a lot of plants) is a really peaceful time for me to enjoy the fresh air and get lost in my thoughts. only a few days in, i can already see changes in the plants -- the lilac has a few teeny blooms on it, a couple of the catmint plants are hesitently poking out some purple flowers, and some of the ornamental grasses are expanding by sending out these shoot-like things in wacky directions. it's fascinating. i can only imagine what the gardens will look like next year, once everything's had a year to take hold and spread out.

speaking of spreading out... i bought a small ice cream maker today. jack and i have been spending a small fortune on little weight watchers ice cream cups, it gives us a chance to have something sweet but portion controlled... i figure it'd be fun to try making some of my own, using splenda instead of sugar and using fresh fruits in season. then i can get some of those little reusable containers in the supermarket to split up the batch, so i still have the portion control. the challenge will be making it edible without the high amounts of fat and sugar that make regular ice cream as awesome as it is... and without all the chemical fillers the big food companies use in low-fat foods to mimic the taste and feel of the real thing. it'll be fun trying.

Current Mood: happy

a few weeks ago, i had posted about the passing of frankie manning, one of the pioneers of lindy hop. well, this weekend was a big event in NYC for what would have been his 95th birthday (every year a different city hosts frankie's birthday party, which is a long weekend filled with dancing around the clock at different venues). i couldn't afford the $600 for the ticket, but over 2,000 lindy hoppers did, and the videos that have already been coming out of the weekend have been awesome. the one below especially brought a tear to my eye, it's wonderful... it's people all over the world doing the "shim sham", a really fun swing line dance. some of the clips are laugh-out-loud funny. enjoy.

between this video, a jaunt to whole foods to get nummy gazpacho ingredients, and a couple of hours of weeding in the garden, i'm feeling much less cold-y now. perhaps healthy food, sunshine and exercise, and a good laugh was all i really needed.

Current Mood: happy

the landscapers finished overhauling my backyard today... wow is it an improvement! crazy to think that, after almost 3 years, i'm pretty much done with all the major repairs and redecorating i've been planning!

( clicky for hawt garden porn... )

Current Mood: excited

i'm guessing my building is going to be pretty quiet today... lots of people already taking vacation time to extend the weekend. today is an all-morning meeting and an all-afternoon training class, then tomorrow is a company volunteer day where i'm on a team that will be helping a local family fix up their house. it's going to be 85 degrees tomorrow and most of the work is outside... bring on the sunscreen. eek.

the rest of the weekend will be house stuff as well... i have to stay local because mom, although she's out of the hospital, is still in pain and may need to go back in... so jack and i are taking the weekend to do house fix-y stuff. i'm going to mulch my other flowerbeds now that my landscaping's almost finished, and jack needs help with a bunch of stuff at his place. so while it's not the relaxing, social-activity-filled weekend i'd hoped for, i know we'll feel pretty accomplished at the end of it.

speaking of my landscaping -- it's looking awesome. it looks like a totally different backyard now. i'll post pix once everything's completed today...

Current Mood: tired

this rocked so hard, i can't see straight. this is the best wedding video idea ever, i laughed out loud.

Brian & Eileen's Wedding Music Video. from LOCKDOWN projects on Vimeo.

*pondering the next party i will do this at*

Current Mood: giggly

it's so funny how expending energy can energize you. i had to drag myself out of bed this morning to get to the gym (i was in full-on deep sleep mode when the alarm went off), but it was worth it. took a good 5 minutes of warm-up walking on the treadmill before i was awake enough to jog (the gym is so close i can be on the treadmill 15 minutes after i wake up), but once i did i was able to alternate walking and jogging for 30 minutes. some crunches and stretches after that, and i left the gym red-faced, sweaty, and totally happy.

salsa class last night (exercise 2 days in a row? me? what?) was a lot of fun. i love my new teacher, he's fun and a total sweetie and pushes us forward with really long combinations. and when you "get it" he's really encouraging, last night he high-fived me after i practiced the combo with him. there's a salsa performance class starting up soon, and i'm thinking i might sign up for it. i'm feeling good.

with all the new exercise and eating healthier, i'm already feeling better. i'm not bursting with energy yet (i crash a couple of hours after exercising), but i just have this overall "good" feeling. it's like my body is saying "thank you" for stopping all the crap and letting it work the way it's supposed to.

Current Mood: excited

i'm working from home this afternoon, because my exterminator is scheduled to come by for my quarterly spraying. i pulled up to my house at 1pm to discover my landscaper here as well, digging away in the backyard. i knew he'd promised to be here this week (after i threatened last week to go with someone else), but i had no idea it'd be today. so my house and yard are a flurry of activity now. they may even be done tomorrow, which would be awesome... they've completed one flower bed and planted the tree in my front yard, so the only thing left is the back (albeit huge) flower bed. yippee!

Current Mood: excited

i feel good this morning, a bit sore after yesterday's gym jaunt but not dying, which is good. i have 3 hours of dance class tonight, and didn't want to overdo it and find myself hobbling around. :) i'm doing the cool running "couch to 5K" program, which i've heard is great and eases you in to being a runner (which i'm not at all). that's 3x/week, the other days i exercise it'll be dance class or swimming or an aerobics class or hooping.

yesterday afternoon's body reaction showed just how out-of-shape i am -- i was exhausted and STARVING. i needed a nap as soon as i got home from work, and 2 hours after dinner my stomach was grumbling. i'm assuming it was my body going "hey, if you're going to do something other than change the channel on the tv, you're going to need to care of me!".

Current Mood: accomplished

friday night, since our house concert was postponed, some of my peeps were generous enough to come over and eat and drink all this food and booze we had bought for the occasion. it was such a gorgeous night for hanging out on the deck and drinking wine... unfortunately at least 1 of the 4-5 bottles we consumed was downed by yours truly. my pounding head was not happy with me the next morning.

somehow i managed to shake off the hangover and head up to north jersey with jack for his cousin's wedding. actually, it was half of a wedding -- they had gotten married last weekend in CA with her friends and family, so this weekend was a reception his friends and family. we still filled a catering hall, and danced to a local band they'd hired called "drunk uncle bob" (best band name ever). they did a cute thing where the tables, instead of being numbered, were all named after favorite movies of theres... so you had to take your table name (we were "mary poppins") and find the DVD case to find your table. it was pretty funny once the band started announcing table names to go up to the food stations to eat -- "mary poppins, you can now head to the buffet..." "beer fest, you can now head to the buffet..." heh.

jack's dad got us all rooms at a local hotel (yay), and there was a wedding there we all wanted to crash. the patel/patel wedding (yes, that's right) was an extravaganza straight out of a bollywood movie... an all-day event with various meals and receptions, filled with some of the most beautiful, colorful clothes i've ever seen. the whole lobby was a swirl of saris in every color of the rainbow, trimmed in sequins and beads, with piles of gold jewelry dancing from ears and wrists. even the men were decked out, i saw one man in a tunic/pants combo made of baby blue and pale green iridescent dupioni silk, and i was like, WANT. we all agreed that someone needs to have a bollywood-themed wedding, just so we'd have an excuse to have such beautiful clothes made.

yesterday was more relaxing -- chores, a trip to the mall, sushi at my favorite place. started today off with a trip to the gym, and i'm hoping this awesome feeling motivates me to keep going at 5am instead of sleeping in. :)

Current Mood: happy

thanks

swingdoc for the reminder to post pix of the new bathroom! i just took the "afters" yesterday, because we had to install a new ceiling light (the first one jack installed had a really cool glass "shade" that cracked so bad within a week i was worried it was going to crash to the floor). so, here we go:

for anyone who might be newer to my LJ, this bathroom was the cause of much drama a few years ago. it's on the lower level of my house, and when i first moved in i just didn't use it... one month after i moved in, i opened the door to get in there and clean, and was HORRIFIED. turns out the previous owners had covered up the fact that this bathroom had a history of a lot of water seeping in through the walls... within 1 month of moving in, there was water all over the floor, mold and mildew caked on the baseboards, and tree roots growing up throgh the floor and out the walls (because they were after the moisture). tree roots were snaking up the toilet, crawling along the floor... it was like something out of a horror movie. a few weeks after that, the moisture continued to be so bad that the drywall was buckling and the paint was bubbling off the wall. it truly looked like this little bathroom was possessed.

i ended up having to spend a small fortune to fix the problem -- had to tear down the trees, had to have the damaged lower half of the walls cut out and sealed off, then had a sump pump installed so that any future moisture drains into a trough and gets carried into the sump to be pumped out of the house. it was a pain in the arse, but it's much drier down there now.

that was 2 years ago, and the bathroom has sat there, gutted, all that time while i saved the money to get it rebuilt and worked on paying off what it cost to tear everything down. so finally, last month i had enough in the bank to make it all better again.

( cut for lots o' pix! )

Current Mood: hopeful

so, that house concert tonight? not happening. meh. got a call from mark this morning, the poor guy sounds horrible... he got a cold the other day, and after 4 stright nights of shows, he has no voice left. so we're rescheduling.

it knocked me for a bit of a loop this morning, 10 minutes before a work teleconference i hung up the phone with him and had to scramble to send an urgent cancellation e-mail to all the concert attendees... now i'm a bit calmer and still looking forward to the evening. sure, there's no live music happening, but i have wine! and tasty snax! and a beautiful 70-degree evening that i can take advantage of out on the deck with friends!

so, yes i'm bummed that i don't get to hear mark tonight... and that i'm out some cash on the chair rentals and the food. but it forced me to clean my house (always a good thing) and i'll still get to have a nice time... and then i'll have another few months to look forward to the concert. :)

Current Mood: crazy

last night i took jack to see "unwigged and unplugged" -- it's christopher guest, michael mckean and harry shearer touring with unplugged versions of their songs from "spinal tap" and "a mighty wind". it was awesome. the music itself was great, and the guys are much better musicians than i'd realized (and you haven't lived until you've seen a bluegrass rendition of the rolling stones' "start me up")... but some of the best stuff came in between. they showed clips of tv gigs they'd all had when they were younger, the first appearance of spinal tap 5 years before the movie, and did a dramatic reading of the NBC censor's notes from the first time spinal tap was going to be shown on network TV (the notes were several pages long and said things like "40 minutes in - song 'sex farm woman' - remove entire song"). really, really fun show.

and now, tonight is OUR show! jack took a vacation day today to get the house ready for the mark erelli concert... eeeEEEeee!

in other great news -- i got an apologetic voicemail from my landscaper yesterday, promising that my work would be done next week. cross your fingers.

Current Mood: hopeful

how is this only 2 guys???

amazing, amazing performance. whoa.

Current Mood: frustrated

i haven't heard from my landscaper in weeks, and have no idea when he's coming out to do the work he promised. this is the guy that i chose because he was the most professional and on-the-ball... obviously he was available enough to come out within a day to get the business, but now that he has my signed contract he's nowhere to be found. the work was supposed to be completed a month ago, but things kept getting in the way, which i'd hear about from his assistant only if i called and left a message -- first it was still too cold (ok), then the plants in the nursery weren't quite ready (ok), then it was rainy (ok)... but we've had a beautiful sunny week this week, and i haven't heard a word, despite an e-mail i sent him last week asking for an update. i think i'm going to have to get bitchy with him and threaten to hire someone else... for gods sake, all i want is a freaking phone call telling me when he's coming out here.

then there's my neighbor... who i think may be getting ready to sell her house. (if anyone wants to live directly behind me, let me know. heh.) in the last 4-5 weeks, the only time she's been home is on saturdays, when a slew of people descend upon the house and there's a flurry of activity. this neighbor cuts my lawn every year, and i had to finally hire a service last week because she hadn't cut it and it was getting crazy (while hers was perfectly trimmed)... it just would have been nice to get a note saying "hey, won't be able to help you this summer". so i wrote her a note and left it in her door, asking her to call me... and nothing.

do i demand too much of people? sigh.

Current Mood: frustrated

it's so silly that i swell with pride and accomplishment just from running some errands after work. all winter i hibernated, vegging out in front of the couch from the moment i got home from work... now that it's spring and i have more energy, i'm awake enough to get some things done... and i act like i've done something big.

this evening after work, i drove all over the area returning things i'd bought for the bathroom renovation that i didn't use. then i took some of the money from those returns and raided DSW for a snazzy new pair of sneakers. why? because i'm going to join the gym near my house. i rarely went to the gym at my company when i was a member, because it was in a building that was a pain in the arse to get to and had really limited hours... this one is open long hours, so i don't have to rush there after work to get in a quick run on the treadmill before they close. plus, they don't hold aerobics classes in the afternoons on weekends, so i'd have a whole mirrored studio to use if i wanted to bring a hoop and practice new moves. i'm thinking it'll be especially good on the weekends -- jack usually sleeps in, and i'm up super early, so i spend a good 2 hours drinking coffee and surfing the 'net while i wait for him to get up... i think putting on my sneakers and hitting the gym would be a much better use of my time.

one question more the LJ-ers who are more active than me: is there really a huge difference between cross-trainer and running sneakers? in other words, i bought a pair of running sneaks because i thought they looked the coolest... but if i wear them during an aerobics class, am i going to get completely misaligned or something wacky like that?

Current Mood: accomplished

waking up with cool spring air blowing in through the open window is pretty awesome. i just wish my reason for waking wasn't a 14-pound cat sitting on my chest, begging to be fed.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to all the mommies out there!!!!

Current Mood: happy

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY AWESOME BOYFRIEND!!!!!

that is all.

Current Mood: excited

just got an e-mail from mark erelli, confirming all the details for our house concert next friday. it's finally starting to hit me that we're sponsoring a concert in my living room next week! ack! so excited...

Current Mood: excited

this is an elderly couple who saw a piano in the lobby of the mayo clinic and decided to take it for a spin. so cute.

Current Mood: giggly

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swingchickie

July 2014

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Li'l Momma's Rant-O-Rama

Delivering tasty journal goodness since 2003

Recent Entries

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other today stuff

awww, now i'm all weepy and schmoopy.

more before and afters!

holiday weekend is almost here!

once again, Offbeat Bride has given me party ideas.

boinggggggg!!!!

well, whaddaya know.

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fun weekend!

powder room - before and after pix

uh, little change of plans.

happy friday!

holy CRAP.

nobody wants to talk to me. :(

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eeeeEEEEEEeeeeee!!!!

hee! i want to be like this couple when i'm 90.

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July 2014

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