He wrote her name in the sand

Sometimes I wonder why I have so many CDs when I only listen to a few handfuls of them regularly. But today, I realized that having such a large CD collection (around 250, I think), leads to some magical happy moments.

A few weeks ago I was listening to our local radio station 103.7 The Mountain in my car. They occasionally get fixated on a couple of overrated artists (Los Lonely Boys, John Butler Trio, anyone?) but play a huge variety of music, from 70s classic rock to 80s classics to new folk and alternative stuff.

On this particular Saturday morning they played a song by Canadian superstars Blue Rodeo, called "5 Days in May". It was a gorgeous, haunting song. I filed it away in my brain as a song to look for later on iTunes, and of course promptly forgot about it.

Until yesterday, when I was filling my new iPod Shuffle with music. I came across a 1995 compilation CD from The Mountain in my collection, and found that song! That makes me so happy. I can't figure out why Blue Rodeo never got that popular in the US. I mean, for cryin' out loud, we have thoroughly embraced Bryan Adams, another Canadian, with far less talent. Of course, we are also the land of the Pussycat Dolls, so there you go.

Re: the season finale of Gray's Anatomy last week - how depressing. No one ended up happy, except the Chief and his wife. And it appears from the Internet, etc. that three of the characters won't be with us anymore: Burke, George and Addison. I guess Addison will still be on TV in her crappy new show, but I'm sure as heck not going to watch, even though it stars the yummy Taye Diggs. But I thought Sandra Oh did an *amazing* job in the last scene. I was riveted. My other favorite part? Burke practicing his wedding vows in the OR. And of course, like any other show, they had to have the mega-cliffhanger ending. So cliche. But since it's my current favorite show, I will forgive them.

In other TV news, Jordin and Blake are in the finale on American Idol, as I had predicted. I'm hoping Blake doesn't win at this point, since the AI machine will squelch any actual unique musical talent he has, if he's forced to take their recording contract. This year, they had a songwriting contest for the songs in the finale. I *really* hope someone wrote something that doesn't suck. They haven't managed to get it right in the first four seasons, so here's to hoping they do this time. In the meantime, go download Weird Al's "Do I Creep You Out?"

Today I had a yummy breakfast with our friend Dave at the Brown Bag Cafe in Redmond. They serve pancakes the size of dinner plates. I got strawberry cream cheese French toast, which I wouldn't get again, but it wasn't bad. I can't wait to go back and try the pancakes, the blueberry pancakes and the banana pecan ones.

And as a counterpoint to that breakfast, I went to the gym this morning and did another Week3 of the C25K workout. It was easy (yay) so I think I'm ready to move on to Week 4. Woo hoo!

You turn around before the lightning strikes

TJ has decided to join the world of blogging. Check it out! (But don't believe him when he says I "vanquished" his single-guy life! I'm not that evil.)

I've been in one of those "take to my bed" sort of moods on and off for the past few months, but it's intensified since we returned from vacation. I'm sure this is in no small part to the extra 20 lbs I'm carrying around (in reality 40 more than I need total). It also doesn't help that a lot of my clothes don't fit and I'm just not that excited about the stuff that does. Part of the problem is having these clothes in plain sight, and accidentally picking them out in the morning when I'm trying to get dressed for work.

I've read some cheesy magazine and Web articles that say there's a link between getting organized and losing weight. I definitely know that since I gained all this goo, it seems like everything is disorganized: house, work, life in general.

So I'm slowly trying to regain control. (When really, all I'd rather do is curl up in my bed with the nice fluffy down comforter and take a nap.) I've probably slept an average of 10-12 hours per day for the last several weeks, and I know that's not good for me (it's a bad work avoidance trick I picked up in college). I suppose it's better than stress eating or picking up some really bad drinking or smoking habit, but when I get to that point I know it's time for me to really make some changes.

Today I went through my spring/summer clothes and hung up the ones that I can wear, and put away the winter clothes. Sadly, I have a huge bag of stuff that don't quite fit. With some work, they'll fit in a few months when the really hot weather gets here. I guess when that time comes I can go "shopping" in my closet instead of buying a whole lot of new things. So now mostly everything in my closet is something I can wear, which just makes me a feel a little bit better.

I've also figured out this week that I really just can't eat healthy when I go out to eat (unless it's something inherently healthy like sushi). While we've made some great progress in eating out less, I think I need to work a little harder and *really* cut back to 1x/week for lunch and dinner and be strict about it. I have a horrible habit of thinking "just this one time won't hurt" and before you know it, I've eaten out 5 times in a week. Or it's poor planning - I'm at work, or out running errands and I didn't bring anything healthy to snack on, so I have to go buy something, which usually ends up being crap.

On the plus side of the bitch and whine balance sheet, I did the first 3 workouts of the Couch to 5k running program and even pushed myself to extend the 8 minutes of running to 10. So far I really like it. Next week's workouts are 1.5 min running/2 min walking for 20 min, so it shouldn't be too difficult. The upside to being so out of shape is that it's really easy to make progress. I've been wearing my heart rate monitor so I can really see that I'm working hard.

I bought a few new CDs today. Queensryche recently released Operation Mindcrime II" and while it would be ridiculous to think it could be anywhere near as good as the original, it's actually not as bad as I had feared. I'm up to Track 5 so far and it's decent. I think if I listened to it more, I think I will actively like it (which is saying a lot since I haven't really liked any of their albums since Empire in 1990). I can't believe that I was 13 when I first saw them (opening for Def Leppard in Wheeling West Virginia in 1989!) and I'm going to see them again in Seattle in October (with my *husband* for crying out loud!). I just don't feel that old.

Yesterday we went to the Everett Symphony with TJ's aunt and uncle (hi Aunt Susie!). Though I don't know much about classical music it was really neat to see it live. The theater is pretty small so we had a great view. It inspired me to pick up another Bond CD (that's as close to classical as I'll get.)

I'm never sure how to end my posts. But I need to get back to my closet cleaning project. Cheerio!

Fallin' apart at the seams

Well, the SD card experiment was a success. Thanks to the wonders of technology, all I had to do was pop the little card into the slot in Otto's dashboard, and suddenly I had 1GB of 80s heavy metal music at my fingertips. The only problem is that when I ripped the CDs, the title starts with the track number so all the "Track 01" songs are together, and so on. If I get really ambitious I need to figure out how to keep albums together. "Operation:Mindcrime" by Queensryche is really something that should be listened to from beginning to end.

I cooked today:


I cheated a bit since it was gorgeous out today, and I didn't want to spend the whole day in the kitchen learning how to make bread dough. I bought pre-made whole wheat pizza dough at Trader Joe's. I LOVE that store. For $1.19, I saved a bunch of time, but also changed the recipe pretty significantly. The recipe for Bierocks (p.33 in the Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2005 cookbook) calls for a sweet dough made out of regular flour. But the whole wheat pizza dough worked nicely - great texture! The taste of the filling is pretty bland though - just some turkey, onion and cabbage with salt and pepper. I added a little bit of parmesan cheese to the top of each one, which definitely helped. I think I'll try them tomorrow with a little tomato sauce. And now I know I can use this dough to make calzones pretty quickly. Woo hoo!

I did the 2nd workout of the Couch to 5K running plan today (see previous post). It was another amazing day - I only ran 10 min out of 30, but it just felt *so* good. I haven't had such a great workout in a long time. Which also explains why I was so wiped out after that.

TJ and I also did some more yardwork (boo!) but at least the front yard looks a little bit better now. It was nice to be outside and I didn't see too many bugs. I managed to convince him not to use Roundup to kill the weeds, and found a natural alternative on the Internet called "Burnout" that uses vinegar and some kind of citrus oil. Now I just have to figure out where to buy it. While I'm no granola girl, I really try to use non-toxic cleaners and household chemicals where I can, mostly so the puppies are safe. (And us, too.)

Well, off to enjoy the last bits of my weekend. I can't believe it's already the end of April!

All I'm ready to do is have some fun

I remembered how good running made me feel, even though I am really slow, so I started the Couch to 5k Training Program again. Here's to making it past week 3! With my trusty iPod filled with happy music, I should be ready to go. My first run was on Friday morning, and it felt really good. (Of course, that was only 8 minutes of running and 22 min of walking, but you gotta start somewhere.) I am comfortably sore today.

There's a 5k run on Jan 29 that's part of Seafair, so I think that'll be my target. I have about 14 weeks to prepare. (The program itself is only 12, so maybe I could spend those last 2 weeks working on hills, or increasing my speed.)My goal is still to run a 5k in under 30 minutes sometime this year.

This week wasn't so great for weight loss - I stayed the same, which I guess is better than gaining weight. This might be due to the fact that I ate lunch out almost every day the previous week. Oh, and eating at Claim Jumper the night before I usually weigh myself probably wasn't too wise either. And my workout schedule was sort of lax too. My laziness is really hard to overcome but I'm making progress.

I made some banana-oatmeal bread today since I had some overripe bananas. It turned out pretty well. Tomorrow I'm going to try to make bierocks, which are Russian-Mennonite savory pastries with cabbage, turkey and onions in them. Since I've never worked with yeast/dough recipes before, this should be a learning experience.

We took the dogs to the Downtown dog park today. Peanut has had an ear infection on and off for a couple of months, and I think it never really clears up because we take him swimming more often. So I guess there will be no swimming for him for a while. It'll be a good excuse for me to take him out for long walks, too. (Which both of us need!)

I *finally* filled my 1GB SD card with music so I'll see if the little card reader in my Audi works tomorrow. Since the Audi's CD changer only holds 6 CDs this will be a good way to have a larger variety of music. Not that I drive that much... I bought the card last November for this purpose and just got around to filling it up now.

It helps that TJ has been on a rampage to burn all our CDs to MP3 format. While I love Microsoft, their WMA format just doesn't work with a lot of devices (like my iPod and my car) so we had to re-burn everything to MP3, which is a lot more flexible. But unfortunately MP3 format takes up more space so we're pretty close to filling up the entire network storage drive that we bought a few years ago.

This weekend has been pretty mellow - no plans, just trying to get things in order around the house. I did some weeding today - I'm very proud of that. I hate yardwork. I need to research some kind of groundcover that's low-maintenance and crowds out weeds, otherwise our front yard is going to be a losing battle.

Ramble on, friends.