Fresh Start

Fall is in the air, as evidenced by where my cat has been hanging out for the past few days:

There are a lot of great things about my job as a college lecturer, but I would say my absolute favorite thing is that I get a fresh start every few months.  Have a bad semester?  No problem, there's a new one coming!  Never fails.

The fall semester is just beginning this week and I am hoping to kick a few problems that I've had in the past.  I also had a bit of a health scare (well, it was scary to me!) this past week.  Everything is going to be okay but I have to keep a close eye on my health.  So, I have a number of goals for this fall semester.  It's always best to write this stuff down as it feels more official and it adds motivation when other people know about it.  Here we go!

1.  Make more GOOD food!  I've gotten into the habit of cooking very healthy food and processed foods are really losing their appeal for me.  This is a good thing, but it also means spending a lot more time shopping and cooking.  A few recent concoctions:

Touch crooked - sorry!   Combo of carrot juice and dad's apple cider.



Quinoa, tomatoes, white beans, and steamed kale.


Currently, since I JUST went shopping, my fridge looks like this:

In my defense of the crazy bottom shelf, I cannot put anything in the back 6-8" of my fridge or it will freeze and I will have wasted money on spinach and whatever else is back there!

My fridge is packed!  This means I had better get cooking!  I also am starting an autumn CSA this fall and the roster of veggies I will be getting for the week looks great!  I need to keep up with this.  Since Wisconsin will soon be entering what I call Root Veggie Season, I am taking advantage of getting varied produce at decent prices while I still can!  I am also becoming a huge fan of green smoothies.  Check out recipes here:  http://greenmonstermovement.com/.  I know they look gross, but you cannot taste the spinach or kale and they are so healthy and delicious!

2.  Keep up with my workouts.  I joined the gym at work a couple of weeks ago and have scheduled my workouts into my day, which means walking home at the end of the day, taking a quick nap, having a quick snack, and walking back to the gym.  I plan to workout at the gym at least 4 work week days a week and at least one weekend day for a total of 5-6 days a week.  This will depend, of course, on what else is going on in my life but seems fairly doable.  My workout shoes and weights at my house need to see the light of day more often than they have recently!

I also plan to keep a set of workout clothes in my office so that if works runs late, I can just go hit the gym instead of using the excuse that I can't go because I don't have my workout stuff.  I already keep a set of shoes and my pass there since I hate carrying them to and from campus.



3.  Read more often!  It is not unheard of for me to start a book at the beginning of the fall semester and not finish until May because I am so busy and too tired at night to read longer than 5 minutes.  I have this stack of books that I am going to get through before June!

4.  Computer is off by 7:30pm, TV is off by 9pm.  And, I say this, but it's 9:45pm and I'm blogging with the TV on for noise.  I will be working on this though!  I need to get away from these activities a little bit.  I, for some reason, feel the need to check my work e-mail before going to bed.  While this is somewhat a casualty of the job and I know my students appreciate it, I need to respect my personal time a bit more.  This leads to #5.

5.  Work during work time and play during play time.  I seriously have a problem setting work boundaries and, as a result, have worked 7 days a week every semester for the past 2 years.  Now that I'm entering my third year of this job, I am much, much more comfortable with what I teach, how my schedule runs, what I need to do for prep, and how often I need to contact my students.  No more work e-mail on Sundays!  No working Saturdays or Sundays unless it's midterms/finals, extreme circumstances, or working with the Circle K club on campus (my new service activity for the year!).

6.  Make more time for hobbies!  Since cool/cold/frigid/tundra-like weather is coming, I need to pick up my crocheting again.  I started this afghan a long time ago with my grandmother and is the first serious crocheting item that I have stuck with worked on occasionally for the last 10 years. 

6.  Get ready for work the night before!  This means packing workout clothes if I am not coming home after work, pack my lunch and 2 snacks in my new giant thermal bag (below), ironing my clothes if I'm not going to be outside romping with my students, and packing up my work bag.  I hate doing this stuff but it's necessary to do it the night before because it takes up so much time in the morning.

7.  Finally (but probably not finally because I'm sure I'll find more stuff that I can improve on), reduce caffeine intake asap!  I love coffee.  Love, love, love.  I also love tea.  A great deal of my precious counter space looks like this on a good day (and much more messy/cluttered on a bad day):

This does not account for the shelves in my pantry that are filled with coffee and tea.  I have a problem!  I've managed to wean myself down to one cup of coffee a day.  I plan to start replacing coffee with tea at least three days a week.  I'll work my way down from there.  I don't know that I'll ever be able to enter my classroom to teach without coffee in my system but I can try!

So, there you have it!  The 7 things that I need to work on this year!  It's going to be a battle but I think anything I can do to make a healthier choice is worthwhile. 

Labor Day Weekend is for Hiking!

Usually for me, Labor Day weekend is very boring and mundane because most years, the semester is in full swing and I have way too much to do.  This year, the fall semester doesn't start until after Labor Day (tomorrow...yikes!) so I was able to go out and play a little!  My mom came down to visit and we decided that yesterday would be a great day for hiking!  The weather has finally cooled off enough that you can go hiking without finding yourself in a pool of sweat or being completely enclosed by mosquitos.  For some reason, I carried my camera in my backpack the entire hike but did not take any pictures!  This is bizarre to me as I usually take too many pictures!  I'm not sure what happened!  To keep this post from being way too boring, I'll add some pictures from previous hikes.  The photo of me to the right (my profile) is from coring trees at Devil's Lake last spring.

Mom and I started the day a little late.  We noshed on coffee, eggs, pumpkin yogurt (plain Greek yogurt, pumpkin, spices, agave syrup; original recipe is here, my new favorite blog to follow!), and a banana to fuel up for our big hike.  Then, we packed up my hiking backpack, loaded up the car, and were off!  We headed to Devil's Lake State Park, which was expectantly packed as the weather was cool and it's Labor Day weekend.  If you are heading into the South entrance of Devil's Lake, you see the SkiHi apple orchard, which was open for the season!  Fresh caramel apples and cheese curds were the star for us before our hike!

If you've been to Devil's Lake, you know the trek up East Bluff is a good workout but we both climbed up the bluff with no issues.  I go on a field trip to Devil's Lake with my students every semester and the first time I went, I had such a hard time getting up the bluff!  This time, no problem!  I guess this working out stuff is paying off.

View of South Shore from the top of West Bluff.  This is where I typically start hiking.

View of East Bluff from the top of West Bluff.  This is what we climbed yesterday.

After completing the East Bluff Trail, we sat down for a snack of grapes, carrots, & peanut butter on the North Shore.  Then, rambled our way along Tumbled Rocks Trail to get back to our car.  Of course, about 1/4 mile from our car, it started pouring, go figure!

After some Subway salads and Culver's ice cream, we decided to end our day by running the stairs at the M in Platteville.   If you do not know anything about the area, here's a little background.  The Platte Mound is an area of resistant cap rock, part of the Niagara Escarpment, that has not eroded away yet, so it looks like a big, random hill in the middle of no where.  There is a giant "M" formed in white painted rocks on the hillside with a tall staircase on the right side where you can climb to the top of the mound.  The "M" stands for the School of Mine, which was the big deal in Platteville, WI back in the day and, as far as I know, is the largest "M" on a hillside in the US.  That area of the mound is owned by the local university so anyone can climb whenever they want for free.

Platteville M.  Stairs to get to the top are on the right of the M.

View of Platteville, WI (distant area) from the top of the Platte Mound.

My mom was hilarious there!  We pulled up and she immediately said, "oh!  That's it?"  Like all those stairs were nothing!  It looks benign, but I guarantee your heart will be racing by the time you reach the top!  We ran the stairs twice in hopes of working off the ice cream and caramel apples and let's just say that after climbing East Bluff at Devil's Lake and running the M twice, our legs were jelly!  It felt so good to workout outside though.  The weather was beautiful and my sinus infection is just starting to clear up.  It was a great day and a nice way to get back into working out after 2 full days off.

It took me a few minutes to work out the stiffness in my joints and muscles this morning but now I'm ready for a little Ripped in 30(gym is closed today!) before I start cooking meals for the week.  The semester starts tomorrow so I'll be starting weekly meal planning and cooking today!  Getting ready for the craziness!  I hope to post on my meal plans from here on out, as well as my ongoing saga on attempting to eat some sort of veggies with breakfast every morning.

Sweating it out

I'm currently battling a cold/sinus infection/thing, which got me thinking.  Is it better to workout when you're sick (sweat it out) or just to lay low.  I always battle with myself over this.  I mean, I may be sick, but am I so sick that I need to go lay in bed all day?  Today that answer was no.  I have been lucky this time around because I've had time to sleep and rest, work (though not super productively), and workout. 

My theory is this:  If whatever illness I happen to have does not involve my lungs, stomach (flu), or a fever, I usually will try to workout, even if it's just for a 1/2 hour and isn't very intense.  Activity during a cold or sinus infection (though it can be a huge issue to breathe through) seems to lessen the symptoms, even if only for a few hours.  I've also read that working out can boost your immune system, so it's a double whammy!

Whenever I accidently ingest something gluten-containing and I get symptoms, exercise is really the only thing that will help me feel better for a little while.  Trust me, if you know what it's like to have Celiac-like issues, you know that working out is the last thing you want to do!  But, if I can get my butt off the couch and go for a walk longer than 30 minutes (no matter how slow), it really seems to help.

So with cold and flu season on the horizon, I have been considering carrying a can of Lysol (or rather Method Antibac spray) with me where ever I go.  If this is a cold, I think I got it from the gym I recently joined.  If it's a sinus issue, then I blame the season.  Soon, however, I will be in close contact with 170 undergraduates.  If I don't get sick again, it will be a miracle!

On a different note, I had a kid (estimated age of 16) congratulate me for working out today at the gym.  When she asked when I started coming to the gym, I told her I joined last week.  She then proceeded to look all smug and say that she's been coming to the gym since she's been 12 and that some people just make a habit out of it.  I, of course, kept my mouth shut, as per my personaility, but I couldn't help but think that I've been a regular exerciser for longer than she's been alive!  Aparently since I hadn't joined that gym years ago, I have never worked out in my life, according to her mind.  Oh to be so naive again! 

Oh well, I'll go on with my life knowing that even if I had just joined a gym and started working out for the first time in my life, you have to start somewhere and whenever you make the decision to make your life healthier in any form, it's a good thing.

Stay healthy!