Damn you, Bob Harper!

Sunday morning I took on The Biggest Loser: Cardio Max DVD and now, 24 hours later, am still feeling the burn. I selected the easiest selection on the DVD too! Most of the workout consisted of lunge type maneuvers so my thighs and hamstrings are killing me! If I keep this up, I will, like Bob says, be able to bounce a quarter off my ass! It's hard not to want to scream at him on the screen, bouncing around, being all cheerful and encouraging. Damn you, Bob Harper and your lunges!

In non-painful news... the healthy eating has been going well. I've been eating lots of fruits, veggies, yogurt, and lean meat. Saturday night I went to Chucky Cheese with the family and didn't partake in the greasy pizza. It was salad bar for me, including spinach with salad! Go me! Last night I baked some chicken and made extra for today's lunch!

Also, I started my LHOTP adventure. I'm almost finished with Little House in the Big Woods. I'm enjoying it so far. I love how each of Pa's stories has a moral to it, more or less. I will say this, I don't remember all of the drawings from the first time I read this series. Garth Williams rocks!

OUCH!

My week of the "new me" has gone well. I alternated pilates and Tae Bo each morning this week. So now that it's Saturday my calves are so tight that I'm hobbling around. I know there is an adjustment period before things will feel good and not painful after working out. I've been trying to eat more protein to help my poor, unsuspecting muscles recover faster. I'm taking today off from the working out. But tomorrow I'm back at it! I bought three new DVDs last night for half price as Barnes and Noble. Billy Blanks kicks my butt, yes, but he's also kicked my butt many, many times over the last ten years and I thought I needed something new to look at and motivate me. With options, I'm more likely to get out of bed in the morning to do this!

And I skimped on the reading last night. My box set is buried in the garage and I ran out of daylight before I could go digging. I will dig it out after work tonight, before I go to Chucky Cheese with my mom and nephew!

Correction!

My LHOTP obsessed friend (she's the one that used the acronym) informed me that in my previous post I have the first book wrong. It's NOT Little House on the Prairie. The first book, which I will start tonight, will be Little House in the Big Woods. My apologies. :-P

Returning to the Little House on the Prairie

I'm not sure why my mother challenged me. Maybe she was disappointed in my school system or irritated that I hadn't used my Christmas present, but one summer she came to me with a challenge. If I could read my entire box set of Little House on the Prairie books, she would buy me a TV for my room. I was 12 or 13 and probably too obsessed with television for my own good. I accepted the challenge and slowly began my adventure with Laura and all the others. It took all summer, but on the last day of freedom, sunshine, and swimming pools, I spent almost the entire day finishing up the last book of the series. I got my TV and continued my television obsession. (As exciting as it was, that it came with the remote was the coolest part! It didn't take much to excite us in the early 1990s!)

Fast forward fifteen years...I'm cleaning out my garage and find one of many boxes from my childhood. Deep in the bottom is my neatly packaged and cared for Little House on the Prairie box set. After a nice flashback to that summer of reading, I tucked the box safely back in storage and continued on my way. I'm no longer as television obsessed, and after completing graduate school am shocked to find that I still have a passion for reading. So a couple of weeks ago I found myself perusing some bestseller lists a few days ago and thinking "What should I read next?"

Well, my mother would be proud of me. I'm going to dig that box set out of my garage and take that journey to the West one more time! I vaguely remember bits and pieces of the books but not many so it should be a fun and enjoyable experience. Do you care to join me? I'll be starting this evening, Book One - Little House on the Prairie. After each, I'll post a review!

A cloudy day in the neighbor.

It's a cloudy and chilled morning in the neighborhood. Brrr. Makes it obvious that fall is quickly approaching. I love fall. LOVE it!!! It's my favorite time of year. And it's going to fly right by. All of my weekends are booked already, and there's not too much fun mixed in. But it's all okay. Why? Because I don't have to go back to school and will squeeze in my fall fun the best that I can. I'm already looking forward to some fall time decorating, baking, and a trip to Harvest Farms for some corn mazing, kettle corn eating, and pumpkin launching!

I completed morning one ... well, half of morning one. I couldn't finish. I was completely sapped of energy about 25 minutes in and my legs felt like 200 pound blocks. I don't even want to know how much I didn't finish. If my recollection is correct, it's about 20 minutes worth. I definitely can't do that everyday so tomorrow morning I'll take Brink for a walk and do pilates. Baby steps.

Damn you, Denise Austin!

My original plan for this morning was to wake-up at 6:00 to do Tae Bo with my old friend Billy Blanks. But I'm still sore all over from, of all things, go-karting. Every muscle is stiff and sore from my attempt to will the go-kart to go faster than it was capable of. When the alarm went off and I moved enough to realize my muscles still hurt, I cursed Billy Blanks and continued to lounge in bed. Tiny nap, wake up, curse, tiny nap, wake up, curse... an hour later I finally crawled out of bed feeling completely guilty that I bailed on my first day of the "new me." I decided that something was better than nothing and proceeded to torture myself with my Denise Austin 1 1 minute pilates dvd. It was painful. And the sad thing is, it was a half-ass attempt. This "new me" is going to take more work than I hoped for. I knew that, of course. After all, I've been down this road before.

Anywho, tonight is walking. Then tomorrow I'll take on Blanks. (maybe)

Romance awaits??

About a year and half ago I was searching Estes Park lodging for a place for Radio Man and I to go and I found the Della Terra resort. At the time it was still under construction. They had just broken ground on it. I visited the site every couple months to see the progress - they posted photos and videos of the build. Well, it's finally open!! And I want to go! Each room has a fireplace that opens to the bedroom and the bathroom. Very interesting themes for each room too. Very different! And romantic!

Old Oatmeal

According to The Daily Green website, it's okay to eat old oatmeal. Scientists tested samples of 28 year old oatmeal and declared it acceptable to eat, but not fantastic. I'm not a fan of oatmeal unless it's mixed in a granola bar or a cookie so it's quite possible that someday I will actually have oatmeal in my cupboard that is 28 years old. I know for sure I will not eat it, no matter what scientists say. But I may try some of the other useful tips for oatmeal suggested by the website. I'll turn it into modeling clay, a soothing skin treatment for Brinkley, or a facial scrub for myself before I resort to eating the coarse substance

A is for Airplane Crash

In the first of 26 installments (one for each letter of the alphabet) that will surely stretch out over many months, this blog will feature an interesting topic that I found by searching through the "A" vertical files at work on an extremely slow Saturday in the archive.

A is for Airplane Crash

B-17

While the Rocky Mountains may draw tourists for their beauty and serenity, they've proved fatal to pilots and passengers on numerous occasions. One of the most well known crashes in northern Colorado was that of the B-17 bomber during World War II. As part of our yearly elk hunting trip my dad and I inevitably wind up at that end of a long dirt road tucked deep in the Rockies. The road dead ends at a large bronze marker that commemorates the crash that happened in late October 1943. Eight airmen died when the flying fortress was "forced down" onto the mountain side in the middle of the night during a routine training mission. The crash site is a top a large boulder field at the peak of a 12,148-foot mountain. The oldest person to die in the crash was 25-year-old Joseph R. Arnold.

While a road stretches to the base of the mountain today, in 1943, the search for the crash and the recovery of the bodies was not as easy as following the popular trail head that leads hikers up to the remains of the crash and the four massive engines that are still scattered across the mountainside. The rescue party used Army jeeps battled freezing winds and snow to reach the general area, pack mules to climb even closer, and then carried stretchers and poles up the steep mountainside to the boulder field. It's government policy not to retrieve planes or their pars from the crash sites. Unlike other plane crashes in the mountains of Colorado, this B-17 crash site is now easily accessible with three or four hours of determined physical effort.

In a more gruesome and deadly crash, a DC-6 United Airlines mainliner crashed into a mountainside in the middle of the night in late June 1951. En route from San Francisco, the passenger jet carrying 50 people attempted to cut its route from Salt Lake City to Denver short by cutting the corner, literally. Normally, passenger jets wait until they are approaching Cheyenne before turning south towards Denver. Running late out of San Francisco and then out of Salt Lake, the pilot decided to cut the corner on his route and started heading south towards Stapleton airport as he approached Laramie. When the plane crashed it was a mere 50 feet too low to clear the tourist-attracting rockies. It struck nose-first, implanting the pilot, co-pilot, and two or three of the passengers at the point of impact. One of the flight officers still had his hands clenched as if he were still gripping the controls. The tail section of the plane bounced high in the air, a quarter-mile past the nose section, and rested a steep hillside. Fifty yards beyond the tail section lay the rest of the bodies, scattered grotesquely among their possessions and the mail shipment of the day. It took more than 10 hours for the plane to be located in the dense forrest because it was not its assigned path.

The Denver Post reporter that visited the crash site during the recovery described the site with intense detail that is rarely seen in newspapers today. He wrote, "One man's corpse came to rest atop a boulder. His head was missing. Near the tail section were the remains of a woman, her arms hugged in front of her face where she clasped them in the split second before death." And "a pair of trousers, belt still in place, was draped neatly over a tree limb three feet from the ground, as if a careful owner has hung them there before going to sleep."

DC-6