New Years Resolution 2010 - week 3

3 resolutions this week and doing fine. :D

1. Drinking water - never an issue. Getting in 10 cups or more most days. :)
   


2. 20 minutes exercise, 5 times - I started teaching my step classes again which took care of 2 sessions. Then one day I used an exercise DVD, one time I jumped on the treadmill, and one time I went with Vince to take the dogs for a walk. Last weekend I found a bunch of cheap exercise DVD's at Walmart (featuring people I recognized so I'm not worried about the quality of instruction). So I can't say I'm bored with my exercise routine now that I have 8 new 60 minute workouts to choose from :)
   


3. Training Claire 5 times - This was the most challenging resolution as it was a new activity in my routine but one I really needed to do. I worked with Claire in each of obedience, agility, and conformation for at least one session in the week. My lowest priority is agility as I imagine it'll be 6-12 months before she'll be ready to compete but Claire will be competing in conformation and obedience (rally, to be specific) in about 10 weeks so any extra training sessions have been and will continue to be devoted to those pursuits.

For my fourth resolution this year I've decided to correct a very bad habit I picked up before Christmas and have stuck to with great enthusiasm. I've been eating way way WAY too much chocolate. Really, it's all sweets but chocolate, something I didn't even like that much, is something I've gotten a taste for and have been eating far too much of.... sometimes daily and occasionally more than once a day. That's crazy when I used to rarely eat chocolate.

So, with that in mind, I've decided to limit my chocolate intake to one time a week. It can be a "chocolate trio" dessert at Moxie's, a bag of M&M's at the movie theater, or I could waste it on a chocolate chip cookie in the break room at work LOL. I expect this to be the first step for a later resolution that is more restrictive in my sugar consumption but I need baby steps :)

New Years Resolution 2010 - week 2

Week 2 had some challenges. The goal was to do 20 minutes of cardio activity 5 days of the week. I made a minor change from cardio to 20 minutes of any kind of exercise... cardio, weights, yoga, etc. Unfortunately I was sick for 2 of the days early in the week so those were automatically the 2 days off. I really didn't want to mess up the resolutions so early in the year so I had to be really vigilant in getting the required 20 minutes in all of the other days. But I did it :D

The week 1 challenge of drinking 8 cups or more of water wasn't a problem at all. So I get a green square for that too.

As you can see on the chart below, I'm keeping track of my weeks and resolutions. Each week, for every resolution, past and current, I will either get a green square (100% followed), yellow square (mostly followed), or red square (followed 50% or less of the time). Of course I would like to have a pure green chart at the end of the year but I'm sure as the resolutions pile up I will slip up here and there so in the end the chart will look less like a pure green triangle than a Christmas Tree LOL!!

Two resolutions down.... fifty to go. It sounds daunting but I'm looking forward to the next one.

The goal for Week 3 is to do some kind of training (obedience, agility, or conformation) with Claire at least 5 days a week. I'm hoping to enter her first obedience (rally novice) competition at the end of March and although I know she has the basic skills to qualify, she needs to work around more distractions to help with her confidence in the ring. She'll also be in her first conformation show that weekend so although she doesn't need a lot of conformation training, per se, she needs a bit of work with free stacking and practice moving out on the show lead.

Check back next week to see how I did with the new resolution plus the previous 2 weeks. :)

2010... A New Year's Resolution - week 1

My new year's resolutions in the past, like so many other people's, haven't had much staying power. So for 2010 I decided to do something a little bit different. I'm going to have a new resolution each week. They will be small things.... things that a perfect person would be doing anyways... but hopefully I'll be able to stick to them and by the end of the year I'll have 52 new good habits.

For this personal challenge I decided to make the week run from Monday - Sunday. I'll blog about each week's success or failure at the end of the week.

The first week of 2010 was an abbreviated week.... Friday January 1st - Sunday January 3rd. The goal was to drink at least 8 cups of water each day. Drinking enough water hasn't been much of an issue for me but over the Christmas break I noticed I wasn't drinking as much as usual so I used the first few days to get back on track.

I'm happy to report that week 1 was a success. I drank 8 or more cups of water each day and felt better for it :) I think part of the reason I felt better was because I was better hydrated but the other part is because I was getting control over an aspect of my health that I had let slide over the Christmas break. It felt good to have a goal/plan/schedule after some time without one.

The goal for week 2 is to do 20 minutes of cardio 5 times over the course of the week. It has to be done on 5 different days and has to be outside of my normal routine. I start teaching step classes again next week so this is partly to help me gear back up for them after taking a month off. Check back next week to see if I met that goal and was able to keep up with the week 1 goal.

Irony.... Louisa, don't read this one ;)

Take a look at this picture and take note of the gi-normous item in the middle of the living room:

Now take a look at the close up shot of the corner of the item in question:
Irony, anyone?

Well traveled eyewear

Today I wore sandals to work for the first time this year. At one point I slipped my feet out of my sandals at my desk and looked at the bottom of my foot. There was a strange light blue semi-circle on the bottom of my foot. I peeled it off and it took me a minute to realize what it was. Then I figured it out... it was a contact lens!

Last night I was in the shower and I decided that the next morning I would start a new pack of contact lenses. So I took my contacts out while I was in the shower to let them run down the drain. But it seems one got stuck to the bottom of my foot. It lasted through that shower, all night in bed, walking around the house and taking the dogs for a walk the next morning, a morning shower (where I obviously didn't wash the bottom of my foot LOL), and getting ready and driving to work. That is one sticky contact lens. :)

I'm all for appreciating other cultures but.....

This is going to sound racist but I think I have a valid point. Enough with the "Native Awareness Weeks" already!

In the last 2 months there have been:

• A Native Awareness Week put on by the University including pow-wows, speakers, etc.
• A Native Awareness Week put on by the city with more pow-wows, speakers, arts & crafts for the kiddies, etc.
• U of L convocation with native elements in the ceremonies (drumming and songs).
• A native symposium (lectures, dancing demonstrations, etc) held in the university atrium.

These are just off the top of my head... I'm sure there were more events. All this is just a 2 month period.

My question is, at what point is enough enough? I am "aware" of the natives. Having spent many of my school years in this area I've been to my share of drumming ceremonies, round dances, and the like. It gets to a point where it feels shoved down my throat.

When do I get to celebrate my own heritage? There are a lot of English immigrants in Canada.... when do we get to have "British Awareness Week"? Tea, scones, and yorkshire puddings all around. We can wear crowns like the royal family and play polo. Then we can go to a pub to drink Guiness and sing football anthems. I'd sign up for that!

Yoga Workshop

This past weekend I went to a yoga workshop. It was not the experience that I was expecting. I figured we'd do a total of 10 hours (in a 48 hour period) of yoga but instead it was broken down into some yoga, some meditation (also not at all as I pictured it), some chanting (ummmm, okay), and some qi-gong (kind of like tai-chi).

The yoga was challenging but at no point painful which was a surprise. My experiences in the past with yoga have often involved holding poses so long that I lose circulation and have excrutiating pain. But at the workshop I didn't have any pain like that so YAY! Poses weren't held very long and the instructor fostered a very permissive environment where any modifications needed (due to injuries or whatever) were encouraged.

The qi-gong I found to be very similar to yoga so they went well together. All movements were very slow and controlled and required a surprising amount of strength. I'd recommend it for some variety in a workout routine.

The chanting was a little bizarre. I tried to get into it but I never really was able to. I'd do it again and it was a nice break from the yoga but it's not something that came naturally to me.

The meditation was my favorite part. It was very relaxing. We would lie down or sit in a specific position with our eyes closed while the instructor read to us a story or asked us to picture something in our minds. After a few minutes we would finish and talk about what we saw or experienced. Some people got nothing and some had specific images come to their minds.

During one meditation I saw some salmon jumping/swimming upstream, then a shipwreck, then a fire. I was very calm and peaceful while seeing these images which, to me, was odd given that each image involved a lot of activity. So afterwards I mentioned what I saw to the instructor and she said I was probably seeing images from past lives. I had no idea what to say to that as I have never given much thought to reincarnation and it was a bit of a shock to have someone tell me that I had past lives when I hadn't decided if I even believed in them. It was a bizarre and unique experience for sure but one that I am happy to have had.