Chocolate Pretzels for Christmas Eve

In the spirit of getting things done, I was up and at the gym by 9:15 this morning. Not going to lie, I was feeling rather pleased with myself on my walk over - good for me, getting in some sweat-time on Christmas Eve! I was confident I'd have the place more or less to myself, like I did on Thanksgiving morning.

Not so much. Seems like everyone in my neighborhood had the same idea. Every single piece of cardio equipment was taken when I strolled in the door. Oh well - whatever. I lifted first, knocking out P90X shoulders, biceps and triceps in about 25-30 minutes before spending 20 minutes on the elliptical. It's amazing - that video takes about 55+ minutes to do, but when you cut out Tony Horton's blabbering, and the 8-10 minutes of "warm up" and "cool down" stretches (most of which I find useless, and I'm sorry, but I just don't need to march in place for 60 seconds before I can do shoulder presses, you know?), you can really shave off some time.

Anyway - more fun things. Last Sunday, I spent a lazy couple of hours making some gifts to hand out to my coworkers, hair stylist, dog walker, etc:

RhodeyGirl's Chocolate Covered Pretzel Rods!

I started with an economy-sized tub of pretzel rods from Costco.

Toppings:

I gave PhillyGuy the job of crushing the peppermints. Word to the wise: while a rolling pin does just fine for crushing oreos, it's not strong enough to kill the peppermints. When I started melting my chocolate, I heard a fierce banging in the other room. I ran in from the kitchen to find PhillyGuy bashing away at the peppermints WITH A HAMMER.

Oh well. Whatever works!

For something so simple to make, these look truly impressive.

They have definitely been added to my holiday repertoire!

On today's agenda: knock out a couple of last minute errands, pick up a new pair of running shoes, and make chocolate cupcakes. You see, I have a tub of homemade peppermint buttercream hanging out in my fridge at the moment. It's due to a little baking FAIL that I'll be discussing with you all later...but I figure there's no better way to salvage peppermint frosting than with chocolate cupcakes on Christmas Eve.

What are your plans today?

Life After P90X?

For a change, I thought I'd have yogurt and berries for breakfast this morning.



Man, blurry BlackBerry pics just look mouthwatering, don't they? :)

I hit the gym last night for 20 minutes on the bike, followed by a super-sweaty chest/shoulders/tris workout. I was definitely feelin' it last night -- I don't know if it was the 20 minutes of cardio beforehand, or if it was my less-than-diligent weekend of eats, but I was hurting for sure. Especially as I tried to knock out my pushups. It felt like a freaking elephant was sitting on my back.

Last night's workout marked the start of week 11 of P90X. Um, yes, it HAS been more than 11 weeks since we started the program. See, both PhillyGuy and I have been less than diligent about following the schedule to the letter. P90X prescribes six workouts a week, in rotating order. Every week involved three strength workouts, hitting the major muscle groups in varying splits (this week, for example, is chest/shoulders/tris, back/bis, and back/legs); 90 freakin' minutes of yoga; plyometrics; and Kenpo.

In any given week, I'd get to the gym 4 or 5 times, reliably. Usually, I'd do all three strength workouts, plus yoga, plus a run or two. I abandoned Kenpo after the first time I tried it -- it bugged my knee and gave me a lot of trouble, since I'm the least coordinated person ever. After Broad Street, I also more or less abandoned Plyo. I've replaced those two days with alternative cardio -- preferably running, but two past two weeks have been hot dates with the recumbent bike. And since my hip injury, I haven't done yoga, either, since most of the poses irritated my poor hip and left me walking around the house like Igor.

And as for the diet? Well, I've stuck to it...sort of. I've added in more servings of carbs. And veggies. Which likely means I've increased my calories. Which is fine. And I've also thrown it out the window when it comes to eating out, which we do at least once a week. Sometimes twice. Which is also fine. But I'm definitely not losing fat at the rate I was when I first started. Overall, I'm down about 7 or 8 pounds from when we started, which is great -- but I know I'd be down a lot more (in terms of both weight and inches) if I was more diligent about the nutrition plan.

So, the end is approaching and I'm not sure what I want to do next. My hip is feeling much, much better -- and I'm pretty confident I want to train and run the Distance Run/Rock & Roll half in the fall. I'm also REALLY missing my weekly yoga practice, so at a minimum I want to keep doing that -- whether it's the P90X quad-killing DVD, or maybe a membership at the local Bikram place.

And I've REALLY been enjoying the P90X lifting routines. In fact, I kind of want to master (or mistress, I guess) some of the moves a bit more fully. It'd be badass to be able to do unassisted pullups. And one-arm pushups. (I can do like 6 or 7 with about 1/3 range of motion, which may not sound like a lot, but seriously, YOU try it!)

So, I guess what I want to do is sort of what I've been doing. Which is half-assedly following this workout plan, while flirting with injury from running.

Sounds like a completely airtight plan, doesn't it?

Two More Days

until my week of freedom. Good god, I can't wait.

I've been plowing through my to-do list at a decent pace this week, which is always a good thing. But I'm not going to lie -- it's taken a pretty good amount of self control to keep myself focused. My distraction levels are way up.

Also way up is my tendency to get songs stuck in my head. Right now, it's a great little number from the classic Bloodhound Gang CD "Hooray for Boobies." Great. Let me just draft a bunch of important documents while the lyrics "Nowhere to go, I can't wake up late, just sit around and wait for my Old Spice to activate" bounce through my head. (Look, I never claimed to be cultured, OK?)

Last night PhillyGuy and I managed to hit the gym together for the first time in a good week or two. We motored through our buddy Tony's Chest, Shoulders and Triceps, which is one of my favorite workouts from P90X. I'm actually improving -- I can do a couple of one-arm pushups. On my knees, of course. And I can only go down a few inches before my chest and arm threaten to collapse on me. But it's definitely deeper than when I first tried it, and I bet within a couple of weeks I'll be able to do at least one full-depth pushup. (On my knees, of course. Let's not get crazy.)

We didn't lug the laptop to the gym with us, since the booklet of written exercises is perfectly fine for this workout. A lot of times, I actually prefer going with just the book -- I get the workout done much faster. At first, you don't realize how much time Tony kills between exercises with his incessant chattiness and "instruction" -- but add an extra 20-30 seconds between every set, and that starts adding up. I also find the initial "warmup" exercises excessively long. Do I really benefit that much from marching in place for 45 seconds before doing pushups? I'm not convinced. So, I skip most of that. I do a few stretches and get to it, and I end up shaving a good 15 minutes or so off the workout time, while still blowing up my arms and chest.

After we headed home, we set up our yoga mats in the living room to do Ab Ripper X. Which the dogs were not all that happy about. Sophie was convinced we were trying to have fun without her and didn't really understand why we were on the floor, if not to play with her. Trying to do roll up/v-ups with a twelve-pound dog running underneath your back and barking at your head is challenging...just not at all in the way it's supposed to be.

I'm really looking forward to my run tonight -- a five-mile tempo run. I haven't done a tempo run in forever. I'm debating whether to run on the treadmill or outside...it's humid as crap out, and they're also calling for thunderstorms later. BUT...knowing how bored I got the last time I did five miles on a treadmill? I'm just not at all sure I want to deal with that.

PLUS, if I run outside I can wear my new running skirt. I somehow don't think it's OK to wear a running skirt at the gym. Don't ask me why -- a lot of my "rules" are not necessarily based in logic.

No Creative Titles

This week at work continues to be pretty brutal. I stayed up late Monday night working on a document, stayed in the office late on Tuesday to draft a billion different documents, and came back in less than 12 hours later on Wednesday morning to attend a "speed networking" breakfast session that we hosted.

I'm off tomorrow, but am less than completely enthused about that as the only reason I'm off is that we need to drive eight hours south to my sister-in-law's graduation.

I'm not going to lie, I'm feeling pretty beat up this week. I finally, FINALLY got the chance to get to the gym last night after having to skip Monday and Tuesday, and I cannot even describe how good it felt to sweat.

Last night was chest, triceps and shoulders. It burns and it beats me up and I love it. Did you know that it's far easier than it looks to do pushups with a clap in between? I mean, I do them on my knees and all that, but I was pretty certain I'd never be able to do them at all, and I can do a good 12 or so without much issue.

Tony Horton, on the other hand, is absurd. He does "plyo pushups." What does that mean? Well, when the rest of his crew is doing these "simple" and "easy" pushups with a clap in the middle, Mr. Horton is actually getting his ENTIRE BODY OFF OF THE FLOOR. That's right. He starts in your normal, standard pushup position, and then some kind of crazy magic happens and he explodes off of the ground. Hands, feet, everything. Like it's nothing. It makes my on-my-knees-clapping action look kind of pathetic.

And then there is the truly pathetic: my attempts at one-arm pushups. Right now, I can sort of bend my elbow a little bit and straighten again. I get about an inch or two down towards the floor and that's the extent of it. IT. IS. HARD. And I kind of like it.

(That's what she said.)

Ab Ripper X was...well, Ab Ripper X. I have a really weak core. It's getting stronger. I can now do at least 15-20 of each exercise consistently. Except for the Mason twists at the end -- the issue there is not the actual oblique piece of it, but the fact that I get incredibly dizzy and am certain I'm going to vomit. I need to come up with an alternative oblique exercise to do there.

On the plus side, while I'm sore this morning, I can do things like "sit up in bed" and "laugh" and "sneeze" without being very concerned that my stomach is actually about to split in half.

My plan for the weekend is to bring Tony on the trip with us. We'll do biceps and back tomorrow morning before we leave, which will leave Yoga for Saturday (will be a challenge, but not impossible, in the hotel room) and legs and back for Sunday (shorter workout, lends itself decently to whatever gym the hotel might have). Hopefully, this won't be a repeat of the last time we went away -- but we'll see.

"You keep using...

that word...I do not think it means what you think it means."

What word is that? Oh, just all the variations of "ZOMG REALLY BUSY" I've been throwing around about work for the past eight months or so. I'm beginning to realize that it's not that I've been "really busy" this year. It's that, for the first two years, I was sort of slow. And that this is not really "busy" so much as it is "what it's like working at a big firm."

I mean, not for everyone. Some people bill a whole heck of a lot more hours than I do. And others have the seriously unfortunate fate of being stuck on massive non-billable projects, like "here spend 40 hours this morning writing this article for me, oh and also make sure you bill at least 160 regular hours too."

Anyway. I've been surviving -- and mostly without issue! But this week has worn me down. Mostly because it's been filled with dealing with shenanigans. Shenanigans from clients, shenanigans from opposing counsel, you name it. It's gotten to the point where, whenever my phone rings, I look at it and yell "OH MY GOD NOW WHAT??" (before I pick it up, of course).

I've also developed a Pavlovian response to the sound of a certain partner coming down the hall towards my office. When I hear that familiar throat-clearing, I immediately fill with a sense of annoyance and dread.

The point of writing this out is twofold. One, to explain why I can sometimes be a pretty flaky blogger. (Not like I haven't explained that before.) And two, to marvel at the fact that, despite all of this "insanity" (or "normal life" -- I'll make the official call in about 6 months), I've managed to stay on track with P90X, both with the workouts and the nutrition.

Pretty sure my diet has done a complete 180. I eat lots of fruit, plain yogurt, veggies and chicken. And it's making a difference. I sustained my initial 5-lb loss and we'll see, on Monday, whether I'm down any more. I certainly feel a difference, and I definitely saw it in my arms and shoulders when I was at the gym last night, doing shoulders/biceps/triceps. I can't believe we're almost through our third week, and I'm sort of looking forward to the first set of progress pictures we'll take in another 10 days.

In the meantime, though -- I'm really, REALLY looking forward to yoga tonight. But mostly, right now, I just want to take a nap. I think I'll settle for some coffee instead, and cross my fingers that I'm done with shenanigans for this week.

PhillyGirl Fails at Abs

...again.

On deck for yesterday was a shoulders/biceps/triceps DVD, followed by another round of "Ab Ripper X."

I really enjoyed the shoulders and arms workout. It was organized in about six rounds of "supersets" with 30-second stretch breaks in between. Each "superset" included six moves, with no rest or break in between -- one set of a shoulder move followed immediately by one set of a bicep move followed by one set of a tricep move, with the whole sequence immediately repeated.

As with most of the resistance DVDs, you have the option of using resistance bands or dumbbells. Since we've been working out in our guest room and don't own dumbbells, resistance bands it was. I was definitely feeling the shoulder and tricep moves, but the bands didn't provide enough resistance in the lower portion of the bicep moves. PhillyGuy and I decided that we'll be taking the (oh so helpful) workout booklet to the gym next time, and doing this workout there, where we have access to dumbbells.

But then. Oh, then. It was time for Round 2 with "Ab Ripper X." And god, that name is so, so dead on. Not because I'm going to "get ripped" in the sense that they want you to think -- in the rippling, rock-hard 6-pack sense -- but in the sense that, every time I tried to complete one of the abs moves, I was completely certain that my abs were, in fact, going to rip open. That's also the same feeling I get when I have to sneeze or cough or try to sit up in bed.

I'm really looking forward to improving. I didn't think I had a particularly weak core, but apparently I do. Blech.

Caitlin at Healthy Tipping Point had a really interesting post today on your "secret rebellious side." I loved reading the comments, and this is a topic that sort of hit home for me. I may have mentioned before that I'm a biglaw attorney -- which means that I keep a certain appearance. I like to think that I have a "classic" style -- I like nicely cut suits and handbags, I wear makeup and pearls. I'm pretty infamous around my office for my penchant for high-heeled shoes (I have 5 or 6 pair under my desk, with heels ranging from 4 to 5 inches), but that's about as "funky" as I get, at least outwardly.

You'd never know by looking at me that I am a punk rock fanatic. When I was in high school and college and law school, I had plenty of piercings. In addition to the 90s/early 2000s standard of two holes in each earlobe, I also had my left tragus, navel, and tongue pierced. (I may or may not have had piercings in less visible places, as well...) I retired the tragus ring when I started interning for a federal judge after my 1L year, but did not say goodbye to the tongue ring until the bar exam.

I'm now down to a more "normal" set of mods -- one earring in each each and my navel ring, which I don't plan to take out anytime soon. It's funny to think that, just a few years ago, I was much more heavily decorated -- and I certainly wasn't a different person! I still go ballistic when Green Day comes to town, and I still rock out to NOFX and Rancid in the car (when PhillyGuy lets me -- since he's not so much a fan). When I was 18, if you'd told me that one day I'd be voluntarily taking out my piercings to fit a more corporate image because I wanted to (NOT because "someone made me!") -- I would NEVER have believed you.

Crazy how things change, isn't it?