Mutual Weirdness

So I've been sick for the last few days. Nothing interesting, just a head cold, but because of that I've of course been taking over the counter medicine. I'm using Alka-Seltzer because it was the only thing that covered all of my symptoms. If you don't know what Alka-Seltzer is, they are tablets that you drop in water until they dissolve into bubbly wonderfulness that you then drink. In making my afternoon dose today, I realized that the bubbles are actually quite pretty and decided to take some pictures. Making the best of a yucky situation I suppose. Dispite the pink color, it is actually citrus flavored, which I found to be rather interesting.

A few weeks ago, my sister sent me a text letting me know that my niece really likes owls right now and that I should make her an owl picture for her birthday at the beginning of April. I agreed, but it took me some time to decide how I wanted to do it. Not keeping a ton of art supplies around the house I also needed to keep my costs down. I decided against painting as, well, I'm not that good at it. My second thought was to use either pastels or oil pastels, but that just seemed messy. So I decided on paper. Then I decided to use patterned paper to make it more interesting. I had to make this up as I went along as I couldn't find any projects similar that people had already done online. I started out by buying a large pack of scrap booking paper. I also bought a few single sheets so that I would have brown and white as there was none in the pack. I forgot to take pictures of the next step, but I took a piece of foam board and cut it to the size I wanted and wrappe...

This tree sits just in front of my apartment and always looks so pretty in bad weather.I took the picture with my cell phone and I'm very happy with how well it turned out.

Just before Christmas my Arwen passed away. In the past weeks I've been wanting to adopt a new kitten. Not just for us but to keep Eowyn company. On Monday we went to the Humane Society to pick out our new family member. We came home with Cirilla, a 7 month old Snowshoe. It is apparently a fairly rare breed. She was surrendered to the Humane Society by a family that had only had her for 3 weeks when they realized their grandson is allergic. She is so adorable and super friendly. She loves being rubbed and cuddled. Eowyn isn't all that happy yet, but I'm sure she'll come around.

Time for Part 2 of my Resolution Run! As you may remember, back in September my husband and I signed up to do a 5k run on December 31, 2014 call the Resolution Run. It is a beer run that is done every year on New Years Eve. The last 3 months of training for this race did NOT go as planned. Brian, in an attempt to start running, did too much and strained his knee. That put him out of even walking for a couple of weeks. And me being lazy wouldn't walk without him. I did start walking a bit more at work but that only lasted until it got cold out. After that I couldn't be bothered. Plus who likes losing half of their lunch break let alone to go out into the cold? That and the holiday's put my weight back up a bit but only a bit. Now, time for pictures! I am not a good selfie taker, I'm not one of those kids who grew up with a camera phone in hand and just never really got the hang of it. This is of course me in my bib. On the back side is a tracker that starts...

This past month has not been a good month. I've not posted any updates recently because there simply hasn't been any progress on my end. At the moment my weight is nearly exactly where it was a month ago. In fact some days it is up. I simply have not been able to get below 290lbs. But it is my own fault. The image above explains some of it. If I have a bad day I end up just going ahead and making it a "really" bad day. And I need to stop doing that. The other issue is that my walking has been sporadic at best. Several weeks ago the hubby got sick and we slacked off walking until he felt better. Then shortly after that he sprained his knee trying to start running. He was barely able to walk for about 2 weeks. And because I don't like to walk alone I of course wasn't walking either. His knee has been better for a couple of weeks now but we've not gotten back into walking regularly. We've been going to the zoo on the weekend still, we've even...

So I figured I'd take a few minutes to post an update about what has been going on. It seems like I've been busy yet when I think about I can't really thing of much. We've been going to the zoo most every weekend since I bought a membership. I have taken more lovely pictures of the animals but to be honest they are not much different than the ones I've already shared. This past weekend we went to the Mosley Street Melodrama and caught their uncensored show. Was very good and will have to do it again. No pictures from that, and even if I had some they wouldn't be appropriate to share! We'll probably wait until the Christmas show starts though. We also hit up the local Renaissance Fair the weekend before which was a lot of fun. The hubby bought a replica of the sword "Sting" from Lord of the Rings. And I got a sunburn! Here are a few pictures from it... And it seems you can't have a Renaissance Fair anymore wit...

For a while now I've wanted to buy an activity tracker, one that I can wear on my wrist. Pedometers require  you to remember to attach them to your clothing and I'm not good about remembering stuff like that. Problem is there are still a lot of choices when it comes to wearable activity trackers. Some of the most popular are Jawbone and Fitbit and I was looking seriously at the Runtastic Orbit since I use their apps but I kept waffling on which one I wanted. The Runtastic one is completely water proof and comes with 2 bands and the ability to put it into a clip if you want. But I had also been looking at the Samsung Gear Fit which is what I have decided to go with. It is part activity tracker, part smart phone assistant. It is a pedometer and workout tracker and has a built in heart rate monitor, but it also has a timer, a stop watch, and can control some of the apps and media on my phone. So, while I'll still need my phone with me for GPS and music while working out, ...

This is getting serious! Hubby and I decided since we will be running a 5k and in general trying to actually jog that we needed real shoes that are made to do the job!  These are what I got, Saucony Ride 7. The picture doesn't do them justice as the colors are a lot brighter. The yellow is very neon. Brian got a different brand and his are neon orange. They didn't have black ones in his size but he says he's ok with the orange. As for me, I'm just glad mine are not hot pink! They are going to take a bit for me to get used to as I've not worn shoes that actually have laces in a couple of years. Plus these go up around my ankle more (as they should) than what I am used to. It's new all around but I am determined! I actually jogged a very short distance in them last night and was happy that I was able to. It's been so long since I've tried to do any running that I wasn't sure my body would remember how! But it did. So soon we'll be starting a...

As my husband and I are working to lose weight I keep thinking about starting a Couch to 5k program. The problem is that unless I have an actual 5k to go run at the end I'm not going to stay motivated to keep it up. Knowing this about myself I started wondering how to go about finding a 5k event. Over the Labor Day weekend my sister and brother-in-law answered the question for me when they told me about the Resolution Run. It is a 5k event happening on December 31, 2014. It is part of a larger event encompassing 3 5k runs and a half marathon. My sister said that they will be running this 5k so we decided to join them. We will not be doing all of the events, that is just way to much all at once. They told us about another 5k happening in October, but we decided that isn't far enough down the road for us to properly get ready for it. The end of December is just under 4 months from now. We can currently walk for 3 miles fairly easy doing approximately a 3mph pace. Not bad for wh...

At the end of June my parents set the date for our family cruise next year. This event has been the catalyst I've needed to finally get off my butt and start getting healthy. I am at least 150lbs over weight and I want to be able to enjoy the vacation next year. Now I don't plan to lose it all before then as that would not be healthy, but I would like to lose at least 50lbs before then. That is 1lb a week over the course of a year. So far I have managed to lose about 20lbs. It's a good start and I hope to keep it up. Sharing helps keep me motivated. Before: June 28, 2014  307lbs                  Current: September 1, 2014  292lbs    My husband and I have been doing our best to walk at least 30 minutes 3 times a week. Some weeks we manage to do more others less. We are using myfitnesspal to log our food so that we make sure to not over eat, at least not often. And we ar...

Here in Wichita we have one of the top 25 Zoo's in the country. Not sure exactly where it ranks but it is a wonderful zoo. If you are ever in Kansas you should check it out. Last weekend and this weekend we were able to get into the zoo at a huge discount so we were able to actually go and have a nice walk around. Normally it is too expensive for us because well, we're poor, so I was really happy to get to go. I'm a bit like a kid in a candy shop and I love to take pictures of the animals. I took about 100 the first day and a few more the next week of a few animals that were in better positions or more active. Because I took so many I thought I'd share some of my favorites. I happen to be a big fan of the cats, so I have a ton of pictures of them. But I'll start with my Lion King pictures as I like to call them! Now for some others :) A Kookaburra I don't remember what this was called, but I thought it was really pretty. This looks li...