Fun Fact Friday

FUN FACT FRIDAY

Yay!! Today is fun fact friday and that also means it's friday which is exciting! What can we learn today about Rwanda??? I am using TripAdvisor today to see what exactly i can do. Obviously, I'll be volunteering most of the time, so I doubt I'll get to do a lot, but just in case, I'd like to see what's out there. 

THINGS TO DO!!!!

Kigali Memorial Centre

This is a center to help remember the Genocide in the 90's. On the website, it's described as - 

"The Centre includes three permanent exhibitions, the largest of which documents the genocide in 1994. There is also a children's memorial, and an exhibition on the history of genocidal violence around the world. The Education Centre, Memorial Gardens and National Documentation Centre of the Genocide all contribute to a meaningful tribute to those who perished, and form a powerful educational tool for the next generation."

Wildlife Tours

It looks like there are lots of National Parks -

Bird Watching - 

Community Tours

and many other things - 

Gorilla Trekking

That one seems the most interesting, but I'm not sure how long you are gone. I can only be there the assigned 2 weeks because of work - so there's not way I could take an extra week to do that :(. I'm also eager to learn about every day life in Rwanda. I have been reading a couple of blogs about Rwanda and it's really neat to hear their perspectives. 

I still have lots of stuff to do, the first thing being booking the flights - the $2,000 flights :(

Morning Meditation

Every morning, I try my best to take between 5-15 minutes to have a quiet, morning meditation. There are so many books that I use and I also use this time to try my different breathing techniques and things like that. This morning's meditation was

THERE IS ANOTHER WAY OF LOOKING AT THE WORLD

Right now, I'm doing a series of meditations that build on each other and help me to learn how to have serenity in a crazy world. There have been so many things going on around me that this meditation struck me in a powerful way. There IS another way of looking at the world and that means that every notion and conception I've formed up to this point can be different. 

If you read my short, but true post yesterday, you know that, at times, I struggle with body image and food and blah blah. I've gotten so much better in the past 2-3 years than I was the previous 10, but it can hit me hard when lots of things happen in my life. Stress is a big trigger, so is my monthly visit, which is kind of my issue now. 

I texted a friend of mine from yoga, Peggy, and she responded back with this - 

"Snappy band is the start... the connection to setting our own intention and believe it verses what's coming in from extrinsic cues around us"

Snappy band is a reference to yoga teacher training. When we first started with the training, Karen (my teacher) passed out hairbands to put on our wrists. Every time we thought something negative about ourselves, every time we disrespected ourselves or had that quiet chatter that we have where we tell ourselves bad things about ourselves, we are supposed to snap the band. 

It's amazing to me when I really TRY to be nice to myself, how hard it really is. I catch myself saying, I'm crazy, or Why did I do that, or whatever ALL. THE. TIME. So how can I expect things to change around me, when I can't even change the way I see myself? I have to trust myself and KNOW that I can do anything. I am in control. If I want something to change, I have to start inside. 

I LOVE what Peggy said and I love that it totally connected to my meditation for today. So what is my intention - to stop the chatter in my head telling me I'm not worthy, to be clear about what I want from the world, and to put in the effort to get there. 

Cookie Bars from Pinterest

You all know about my Pinterest obsession and this weekend, I made two recipes that I found there. I'm going to post both recipes because they both turned out well, but I thought I would do the easy one first.

recipe link

On Pinterest, they're called Magic Cookie Bars, but I've also heard 7 layer cookies. 

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, melted
1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
1 (14 ounce) can Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chops
1 1/3 cups flaked coconut
1 cup chopped nuts

This was the easiest recipe ever - You basically just layer everything :)

Preheat over to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Coat a 9x13 baking pan with no-stick cooking spray.

Combine the graham cracker crumbs and butter. Press into bottom of prepared pan.  Pour sweetened condensed milk evenly over crumb mixture.  Layer evening with chocolate chips, coconut, and nuts.  Press firmly down with a fork.  Bake 25 minutes or until lightly browned.  Cur into bars or diamonds.  Store covered at room temperature.

Can you see the layers???

Voila!

Next time, I will use more graham crackers to get a little more stability in the cookie. When I cut it, it was a tad bit mushy. I also used shaved coconut vs shredded coconut because that's what I had. In the future, I will use the shaved because I think the consistency will work more nicely with the layers. I used Pecans and Walnuts for the nuts and they were delish. I took this to my grandfather's 80th birthday and everyone ate them!

Frustration

I am struggling right now because I am trying to get back into the habit of eating right after Christmas break. Yes, it's February and Christmas was a month ago, but I am still in the habit of eating too many sweets!! The thing is, I have absolutely no will power whatsoever - I am talking about, there is no kind of watching what I eat because this is what happens -

1 - I restrict and count calories
2 - inevitably, I will go off of the self imposed restriction
3 - feel guilty about it
4 - eat because I feel guilty

Then I get in this cycle of eat, eat, eat and do the opposite of what I want to do. That is where I am. I know that it will pass, as it always does, but it's frustrating for the time being.

So, that was my vent session - now I'm ready to get back to making more positive posts!!

What I'm Loving Wednesday

Thank you Jamie

Today is a sad day because my friend Amy B is leaving work :(. She is going to be staying at home with her little girl, which I think is totally awesome, but selfishly, I wish she were staying. Sitting my desk 10 hours a day is already difficult, then when your good friend leaves, it makes it even worse!!! So today's WILW is dedicated to Amy B!

1. The 80's!!!

Amy and I love everything 80's from movies to music to TV. 

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The best band of the 80's, Heart produced hits such as What About Love, Alone, These Dreams, and Barracuda. 

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The best movie evaaaaa..... with quotes such as "wove, twue wove is what bwings us togevaaaa"

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Need I say more

2. My Wedding 

Amy was the "director" for my wedding and she was like Jennifer Lopez from the Wedding Planner minus the insane men problems. She had it on point. It was hard to find a pic of her from the wedding because she was so behind the scenes but I found one that I know she'll love 

yes, I did have the clemson tiger at my wedding

3. And then this 

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Bye Amy!!!!! I will miss you at work - even though I will still be seeing you!

Yoga Playlist

We had to create a playlist for a yoga class and turn it in as an assignment. Here is what I came up with - 

1. Speak to Me/Breathe, Pink Floyd

2. Om Namo Bhagavate, Deva Premal

3. Heal Over, KT Tunstall

4. Maavan Te Tiyaa, Rajeshwari Sachdev

5. Bonito, Jarabe De Palo

6. Vo Kuch, Kiran Ahluwalia

7. Bailar, Jarabe de Palo

8. Azara Alhai, Rasha

9. Te Busque , Nelly Furtado & Juanes

10. Society, Eddie Vedder

11. Shiva Panchakshara Stotram / Shiva Shadakshara Stotram , Uma Mohan

12. Luna, Smashing Pumpkins

13. Ghir Enta, Souad Massi

14. Guaranteed, Eddie Vedder Into

15. Como Peces en el Agua, Jarabe de Palo

16. nNno Sey, Sanjay Divecha Feat. Kailash Kher

17. Change, Blind Melon

18. Easy Silence, Dixie Chicks

19. Gravity, Sara Bareilles

20. Homeward Journey, Satish Vyas

Tempo Tuesday

Ha - that is a funny name for Tuesday but it fits with my workout this morning. I will say that today, getting up at 5 am was REALLY REALLY REALLY tough. But I did it. I'm trying to be consistent and get to 5:30 am run workouts because they're with people which is fun, and I don't have to think, just do.


Warm up mile
200 m - 57 seconds 
200 m - 54 seconds 
400 m - 2:07 
400 m - 2:17 
400 m - 2:14 
400 m - 2:11 
200 m - 54 seconds
200 m - 47 seconds

Cool down mile 

Total Distance: 3.5 miles

It was cold this morning and I have this weird thing where my body gets hot and sweats, but my hands freeze the whole time. In Vegas, my hands got so cold that I couldn't move my fingers, so I had to put my long sleeve shirt back on so that I could cover my wrists, but my body was still hot. I had to borrow mom's gloves so I could wear a t shirt, but still have some protection for my hands. The temperature also drops as the sun rises, so the comfortable 40 degree temp went to mid 30's while we were still out there and my little handsy's got cold :(

But anywhos, it feels good to be back on track. 2 days in a row of working out - BAM

I feel like I also need to add something about the lingo here. I know that most people view a tempo run as running for a short distance at a faster pace, so I guess I should say these are most like intervals. But what happens is depending on your pace, the distance you're repeating varies. So Holly had a group of people doing "mile repeats" which essentially was more like a tempo run. If you want to learn more about it, go to The Stoix website. 

WOD

I went home for lunch and did my Workout of the Day - From the main site, today's workout was:

Clean and Jerk
1 x 1 x 1 x 1 x 1

What that means is to find my 1 Rep max - specifically in 5 tries. Because it's been a while since I've done Xfit, I actually don't know what my 1 rep max is and I'm easing back in so I just did 65- 95. I think I could've done more but was maxing out, so not much. The biggest challenge was not the clean but the jerk. These are FULL cleans which means you pick the bar up from the ground and land in a front squat.

When I do jerk, I do not split my feet like he does, BBBUUUUUTTTTT, as my weight gets heavier, I'll probably just do what I can. I don't have bumper plates (rubber) so that also makes it hard because I can't drop it from the jerk if I need to. That makes a big difference in the amount of weight you're willing to try, at least it does for me. 

So today, my workout looked like this - 

3 rounds Crossfit warm up - arm stretches, lunge right/left, 10 overhead squats with pvc pipe, 10 sit ups, 10 push ups, 10 pull ups (I did jumping since I can't kip and am building up my strength) and you're supposed to do 10 dips, but I don't have any bars. 

5 warm up clean and jerks with 45 lb bar

65 x 75 x 85 x 90 x 95

85 felt heavy and I started to get nervous which is why I only went up 5 lbs the last 2 tries. I absolutely think I could've done 105, just not sure about 110-115

It was a good workout and I am hoping to try to stay on the 3 on, 1 off schedule just because I know the programming for the main site is so good. We'll see. 

Again, this was from the main site - not the endurance site

Weekend Recap

I did lots of fun homemaking activities this weekend which was fun.

I baked a couple of recipes I found in pinterest

these were chocolate chip cookie bars and they were delish - I will post about the recipe later this week

 I didn't get a great picture, so this is what I've got but they're dark chocolate chip, toffee, hazelnut cookies - they were a hit!

We also did some stuff around the house - 

we painted the fireplace a gray color - so the room is so much lighter now

I also have been looking for some light frames but they're all like, $20 a piece, so I bought all 4 of these frames for $20 and painted them

I'm having so much fun decorating the house and I am so grateful for Pinterest. It has so many good ideas for people on a budget!!!

I was so busy this weekend, I didnt get in a yoga class or a good run. So I have that stuff to try to fit in this week. It's so hard trying to balance everything, but I'm still focusing on my goal of taking care of myself and not getting too busy. I am going to enjoy life!! Damnit!!!