Workin' on it

I have recently (okay maybe over the course of the past few months) realized that any muscle I had from working out regularly through the end of grad school and a bit after I moved here has all gone away. I weigh the same I did two years ago, but my clothes do not fit quite so well. I think I have used up the extra space I had in the clothes.

First. I guess muscle really does weigh more than fat.

Second. I sorta try to exercise more.

My employer has a fitness incentive every year. If you fulfill certain requirements, you get $100. It always entails taking a health survey to get the first $50. In the past, the second $50 was yours if you exercised more than 30 minutes at least 3 times a week for something like 10 out of 12 weeks in a row. Easy $100, if you ask me.

This year, the second $50 was to do a wellness check with an outside company that came on campus for this purpose. I figured I should make an effort to still do the 10 out of 12 weeks of exercise.

Things I count as exercise:

• Walking to and from my car because I intentionally park where I do to get exercise because no shuttles go to that lot.
• Stretching when I am in the dark room at work (used for developing film from experiments).

I also intend to exercise if the weather cooperates. My rule is that if it is over 40 degrees (and I may put a maximum of 80 and sunny or 85 and not sunny or something like that), I have to walk and/or run when I get home from work.

All of this is leading up to the fact that on Thursday it was 44 degrees when I got home. I was not hungry. There was still more than an hour of daylight. I had to go outside. So I ran. Two miles. I was not pleased. I do not really want to be able to run. I do not really enjoy running. It is a quick way to exercise, and I almost ran 10 minute-miles (I did not say I was sprinting!) for two miles, so I suppose I should just keep squeezing in those 20 minute runs to turn that fat back into muscle.

{sigh}

In other news, that bacon, portobello mushroom, cheese panini I had for dinner probably does not help, but it was delicious.

Dreaming

Back in grad school, and when I was with-ish my ex, but I do not remember exactly when, I kept having related REALLY bad dreams. And I found the link so I do not have to try to recreate what I remember of the dreams and got to read about killing dreams I did not remember. Awesome.

Interpretation of previous dreams: I did not feel like people were listening to me.

Earlier this week (or maybe it was last week?), I woke up from a bad dream, thought that I really should try to remember it when my alarm went off a couple hours later, but also had a sense that this was a repeat.

What I remember of the dream: I was abducted by a man who did not seem familiar. I had another woman with me who I did know, but I did not remember who she was when I woke up in the morning. We were being held in my current apartment, and I was convinced that the grad student in the lab would realize I (or we? maybe the other post-doc was the other woman?) was not at work, and we would be found quickly. The other woman with me went after the guy essentially begging him to let us go as he was going into the bathroom. I was telling her no and that it would be okay, and then the a**hole holding us kicked a dog (where it came from, I have no idea) and the dog lost control of its back legs. I proceeded to tell the abductor we would behave and try to coax the dog to calm down and comfort it. I woke up as I dreamed about curling up with the dog to calm it down on my small rug by my door.

My interpretation of this dream, in addition to the feeling that I had a similar dream, is that I feel trapped. Now let's see if I have another similar dream, or if I have figured out why I was having similar dreams and it will not happen again. If you are into dreaming things to figure out your life, I do not recommend getting abducted and trying to comfort a partially paralyzed dog. Crappy way to start the day.

On an unrelated note, when I searched my blog to see if I could figure out the first series of dreams, I found this.

T-shirt quilt, Part 3

I am soooo close to finishing my quilt but have not made the time to do so. I have made plenty of time for TV shows I do not need to watch, however. Oh, well.

Here are the things I have done since the last post. To refresh your memory, this is where I left off:

I finished putting iron on interfacing on all the pieces in between and then sewed everything together to finish the top. This was a little tricky because somehow the top of my quilt was half an inch narrower than the bottom. This may not seem like a big deal, but I had to work in the difference up the edges sorta evenly. The material still has some stretch to it, even with the interfacing, so it did not lay as flat as I wanted it to. In the end, I had to undo one of the long sides. I really dislike taking out seams, especially big ones. Yuck. I made sure to iron all the seams open before continuing.

In the end, I really like the top though!

I planned to just use fleece for the back and not put any filling in. I got creative at the fabric store and decided on two colors. I was good and washed and dried the fleece, then I trimmed off the edges and sewed the two pieces of fleece together using a stretch stitch. I am really glad I used the stretch stitching on the machine - it is much sturdier!

Then I remembered seeing something about how to do an easy binding for a quilt. The one quilt I made in 4-H did not have binding, as it was put together differently than serious quilters often put together their quilts. I put the quilt top on the fleece at an angle, again, just to be creative I suppose.

And cut the fleece 2 1/2 inches bigger than quilt top to give a 1 inch fleece edge to the quilt in the end (that was the plan). This is essentially what the finished quilt should look like.

Then I moved the top of the quilt. I do not recommend doing this. My bad. When I finally tracked down the tutorial I had found on doing an easy binding, it was too late. I did not understand how people bind quilts because (not to repeat myself or anything) the quilt I had made in elementary school was not put together that way. I am not a fan of hand sewing either, which is how quilt binding is often done, so this tutorial is more my speed.

Anyway, I laid the quilt top as smoothly as I could back on the fleece and pinned everything. Then I used a straight stretch stitch to quilt the long lines of the quilt (i.e., just sew up the edges of the columns of blocks). Action shot!

In the end, I had to trim more of the fleece off because I had moved the quilt top back there a few steps and it was not even all the way around.

The only thing I have left to do is fold over those fleece edges and sew all around the quilt though!

If you do a t-shirt quilt and use fleece, I do recommend using a stretch stitch for these final steps. I can tell that the material is not getting pulled as much as it would with a regular stitch, so hopefully the quilt will last longer!

Previous steps:
Part 1
Part 2

Dangling shiny objects

I am making progress on my quilt, but have been taking other random pictures in the meantime that I feel like sharing because it does not require much thought to post them. Lazy? Sure, but what ever. :-)

CF visited two weekends ago and we spend several hours putting this puzzle together. I literally had to ask him to stop working on it and keep me company while I put some dinner together. I needed to coach him to work together. Funny thing is, every time we switched spots where we were working, we could get huge sections put together. Team work does work.

I picked up some stick-on nail polish. It works pretty well, actually. I do not think you can tell the extent to which this color is fluorescing pink. It is though. I guess the reason it was on clearance was the polish strip in front was extremely faded to make the unknowing purchaser think it was a nice pale pink. Tomorrow I am going to work at a Habitat for Humanity house, so it will get ruined anyway.

 

My mom special ordered soldier beans and shared them around. This particular type of bean is difficult to find (although maybe not in Maine), but it is the specific type of bean that is supposed to be used in the family's baked bean recipe. I used this one two pound bag to try the recipe in my crock pot, and it came out quite well.

A recent trip to Tar-jay revealed these candles to me. I highly recommend them. This one is citrus-y, and I suppose citrus equals happiness?

While some may not, I TOTALLY get Pinterest and love it. I have bookmarked stuff in the past and never think to go back to it. Or when I have a hankering for a recipe, I spend time searching various food sites for it. I have made a lot of things from my pins though. The most recent was this brownie recipe. Usually when I crave baked goods, it is brownies I want. This is a healthier alternative. Next time, I will probably skip the "caramel" topping and add some apple sauce/caramel flavor/chocolate chips/other to the brownie part. This time around, I also used ~ 1/4 c of honey instead of the fake sugar.

 

I have been buying myself flowers. CF does this a lot, but I just tossed our Christmas poinsettia and the rose plant he had given me when I moved into my current apartment. I saw these calla lilies and couldn't resist.

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful; they are sunshine, food, and medicine for the soul. ~ Luther Burbank, American Horticulturist

Then I started getting all creative and  put out what is probably my favorite song to play on my flute. (That is not me playing...)

 

Last, but not least, my tea is always inspirational...and apparently I have been drinking it since grad school.

I also wonder if this tea is why I was so tired all of a sudden yesterday evening. Maybe the relaxing of the tea works better than I realized?

One time, my grad advisor made some comment about undergrads being easy to work with because you just dangle something shiny in front of them to distract them. Then the undergrad in the lab actually batted at the keys said advisor dangled in front of him. No joke.