Is it Friday Yet?

...or a wee glimpse into my mundane life.

Last weekend was good, spent some quality time with the husband and cats, went out for Dim Sum and met up with Raquel and Chad, down from Oregon to run the Skirtchaser race :) Everything was going great til the car decided to go "click" instead of "vroom" upon insertion and turning of the key.

So I attempted some amateur troubleshooting - and learned how to swap out a car battery:

(yeah, I'm wearing gloves - it makes for less grease everywhere and also protects against acid burn if there are any crystals on the battery). Unfortunately, the battery didn't do it - so I've been carless the last couple days while the car was running up a rather unfortunate bill at the repair shop...the bad news is we're not done yet and I need to schedule a followup appointment *sigh*

Hasn't been a great week as far as food or exercise goes - I've "hired" a health coach to try to help keep me more accountable. After all, I do know what I need to do...it just falls apart in the execution is all. Tonight when trying to figure out what was for dinner, the husband submitted a request for "good pizza". Realizing that I need to try to get back into the swing of preparing food properly rather than resorting to takeout or convenience items, I churned pair of pies out with the help of Trader Joes ready made dough...

And they came out quite nicely if I do say so myself - this one is laden with spinach, mushrooms, onions, garlic and pineapple bits. Very tasty :) I baked it in stages to get the veggies to cook down and dry up some before I added the cheese. And with all those veggies on there, it was plenty filling - there's still plenty of pizza left over for tomorrow's breakfast...or lunch...or dinner even.

There has, of course, been knitting going on, but most of it is of the stealthy variety. I'll be back with more sock photos shortly, I'm sure...

Be Mine

Happy Valentine's Day ;) We're not huge on celebrating here - my only requirement really is that we spend time together. drat. Maybe I shouldn't post that where my husband can read it ;)

A little sparkle...

...to brighten your day?

Uh yeah, those would be gold flecks (actually a gold metallic filament plied) in the yarn - it's not one of mine, but a commercially available yarn that looks an awful lot like a handdyed one. Yes, I know - sparkle? And that colorway? Not really what you'd expect to find me playing with...but that's the whole idea :)

Several of us have decided to do a knitalong for these Uncertain Times...the idea is that in times of uncertainty, you sometimes have to do things a little differently. So here I find myself, knitting with sparkly yarn (to brighten the horizon) and in a colorway that is pushing my comfort zone.

And here's a preview of the socks in progress :)

Twisting and Turning...

Look! Progress on my New Year knitting :) These are socks from the Wollmeise sock club - the pattern is called I Mog Di and it features all kinds of twisted cable stitches. I think the fact that the sock is worked up on US1s (rather than 0's) has made it so I have been able to knit these up happily (unlike Bayerische, who I am still somewhat determined to revisit sometime down the road...maybe)

Unfortunately, the colorway has proven to be the devil to capture properly - like all Wollmeise, the colorway is dark and saturated. The dark regions are accurate, but that color that pops out is nowhere near that bright and startling in person. Because of the dark colors, capturing the detail on these socks has also proven to be a bit challenging.

Anyhow, I've just turned both heels (hello, twisted cables via the wrong side!) and have rejoined and am knitting away on the legs now. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before I have finished socks to show off!

Just a bite...

In my continued quest for a delicious cupcake, this weekend I stumbled across these at a small cafe in Phoenix - Bertha's Cafe - each one of these adorable mini Red Velvet cupcakes is a large bite - the papers remind me of the peanut butter cup papers for those pb cups you can get at Trader Joes. This trio is sitting on a small dessert sized styrofoam plate, in case you're having a hard time figuring out their size.

Delicious, the frosting was very rich (and there was a bit much of it - I'm one that prefers a more sparsely frosted cupcake), and the cake was tasty and moist. This one wee cupcake was just enough to satisfy. Thanks much to Mel's Chris who bought the lot for the table to share :)

I should say the food at Bertha's is also very tasty :) I had the Asparagus, Havarti, Pesto Chicken Panini and it was fantastic.

Motivation....

....by way of toys.

Yes, this would be my 2nd HRM. My other is a Polar RS200 (red!) - it works fine, the strap is comfortable enough - and I've even got a few special bras that accept the Polar transmitter - these eliminate the need for the strap!

Anyhow, for regular every day wear, I'm a timex girl - and I was forever having to remember how to flip thru the settings of my Polar. Seems Timex is upping their HRM line - this is a Race Trainer model (mens unfortunately, apparently they do have one that looks like a bigger Sleek) - it's obviously built on the Timex platform, and as such, seems a lot more intuitive to me. The extra fun part? it comes with a USB thingy, so I can download my workout stats to my computer and upload it to the timex trainer website...much easier to slice, dice and analyze my data :D course....now I just need to get out and start gathering workout data...

But before I even get to that part, I have to figure out the target zones....any advice? Way way way back when I first injured myself I figured I should try giving the Maffetone method a try, but the target zone is quite low...I did the suggested sub-max step and chair tests....and came up with a MHR of 179 BPM...of course, I can tell you right now that I know my heart beats faster than that...I pegged it out at 189 BPM during a portion of my half marathon last year....suggestions? I intend to start training in Zones 2 & 3 to build my fitness and strength, then I might re-attack C25k depending on what my knee tells me.

Information Overload.

Have any of you noticed a drop in "regular" blog entries? I know my blog has suffered a bit over the last year. I blame business and lack of content...and now I add social networking and micro blogging to the "blame" list. Between the 2 365 projects I have going, facebook and twitter, I find I leave my blog for when I have longer things to write about. Anyhow, just thought I'd let what few regular blog readers I have know that no, the blog is not dead, I just try to wait until I have real content to post about is all :)

Sunshine and Camoflage

While the winter has been doing some really crazy strange things across the country, it's been nice and sunny for the most part down here in the desert...

I spied my first lizard of the year on my hike today - he's a lot darker than most of the lizards I usually see - but his coloring is perfect for the rocks he's hiding out on.

Seeing as my knee appears to be plateaued in its improvement through physical therapy, I figure I'll be shifting my attention to my general fitness and health - with that in mind, I trundled myself off to the local park for a short walk this morning.

The trail I tackled sees a lot of traffic and unfortunately suffers from poor design that has resulted in significant erosion.


If you look carefully as you walk, you can spot some rock art. This one happens to be well signed, but I know there are other petroglyphs to be found at this park.

I'm suspecting this one isn't real - considering the location of the rock in question and the appearance of the other petrogylphs in the area, this one is simply too distinct and to clean in its appearance. And yes, I do happen to both run and hike in a skirt :) I find it just as modest, and much more comfortable than shorts!

Here's to hoping that a fitness improvement will also drive further healing of my knee :)

Knitting? Yes, but nothing really looks like its making much progress and I'm having a devil of a time capturing an accurate shot of one of the projects on the needles...stay tuned!