Friday, May 28, 2010

Random Bathing Suit Vent

P90X is over today! I can't believe we made it through the whole thing. Round 2 starts next week!

I went bathing suit shopping for our trip to Alabama because I needed a new basic black boyshort bottom to wear with my black top. My old one hasn't fit since pregnancy. It was a size small. What did I end up buying? A large. I know I shouldn't get hung up on the size, it's only an artificial label, but I did just complete P90X and I think I'm in decent shape, maybe the best shape I've ever been in, so that gets a big WTF from me. Damn pregnancy hips.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Dress

My friend is in the process of expanding his photography business, so he mentioned last week that he was looking for volunteers to do a "trash the dress" photo session. After our wedding I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with the dress. I think the fact that it's still sitting in the garment bag shoved in the back of the closet and hasn't seen a ray of sunshine in almost five years is a good sign that I haven't developed much of a sentimental attachment to it, so I told him I would do it. As soon as I agreed to it I realized that I didn't even know if the dress would even fit anymore, given the, um, transformation that it went through during pregnancy. My hips will never be the same, and I have concrete evidence of that fact after bathing suit shopping yesterday (but that's a post for another time).

So Saturday night, after my disastrous attempt at mowing the lawn for some cardio exercise, I got out of the shower, looked around, and decided to try it on. I'm rather pleased to report that it still fits. Something about zipping that thing up made me feel all princessy, so I pranced around the house in my wedding gown for a good half hour, posing in front of the mirror to take pictures with my awesome camera phone.



Husband was too busy giving me the "WTF?!" face while talking to his parents on the phone to take a proper picture.


The pigtails really complete the look, don't they?

I think I want to have a wedding dress party. Get all the girls together in fancy dresses and do some martini drinking. I think that would make a lovely photo op.

Oh, picture of my flipping sweet lawn mowing job.

Monday, May 24, 2010

P90X - in the home stretch!


We're finally in our last week of P90X! I can't believe we've made it all the way through. We'll take our 90 day pictures Friday morning. I don't know how much progress I'm going to see between my 60 day pictures and my 90 day pictures, since this last set of workouts was heavy on the pull-ups and I still can't do a single freaking one, but I'm still very happy with what I've seen so far.

We're going to take next week off while we visit family in Alabama and I get started with my new job, and then we're starting another round, P90X Classic this time, with the P90X Plus tapes mixed in to stave off the boredom. I'm also asking for Insanity for my birthday, which will be about a week after we finish Round 2. Whee!

Monday, May 17, 2010

P90X in Chicago

So, I'm back in the 'Nati. It never gets any easier to hear the pilot welcoming us to Cincinnati. Not that it's a bad city or a bad place to live, it's just not the greatest place in the world. Oh well, it is what it is.

The whole reason for going to Chicago was to give a fancy presentation at a fancy conference for public opinion research aficionados. The slogan for this year's conference was awesome: Freqs and Geeks.


I went with my co-worker/friend/P90X coach and we had planned on buying the conference t-shirt because the slogan was just so freaking fantastic. Unfortunately they only had them in large and extra-large, so we were forced to do without. We decided to commission an Etsy artist to make us our own custom shirts because we're geeks like that. I can't wait for them to get here.

The first night we were there we ate Chicago Pizza. So much for sticking to the P90X diet while I was there. I rationalized it by pretty much not eating anything for the entire day before pizza time, which I realized was probably a mistake after we met an old friend of mine for a drink and I was feeling pretty loopy halfway through my single Blue Moon.


Of course, it rained the entire freaking afternoon on Wednesday and pretty much most of the morning on Thursday.


In between the torrential downpours we wandered through part of Chicago.



We visited the American Girl store to see how badly Mattel ruined the brand.


Lynn was sad that all of the dolls had tiny yappy dogs and there were no Whippets or larger dogs to be found. I was sad that they discontinued the Kirsten collection. We were both sad that American Girl Place features a doll beauty salon, where you can get the doll's hair styled for the low, low price of $20.

We ate leftover pizza for lunch and then gave our super awesome presentation. It went pretty well, if I do say so myself. I think it was well-received, even though most of our audience leaned heavily toward the academic side of things and wouldn't know a web panel if it bit them on the ass.

After the presentation we did Core Synergistics. Yes, I did my P90X while I was out of town. Tony would be proud.


Of course when Friday morning came around it was bright and sunny, since that was the day we were leaving.

This was how sunny it was at 5:30 AM Chicago time. I love it!

Sure looks different in the sunlight.


This is quite possibly the cleanest city waterway I've ever seen in my life.


Yum!


All in all, it was a nice 48 hours. I wish we had more time to spend there, since we really didn't get to do or see anything fun. I told C that we'd definitely be making a weekend trip at some point. I'd drive up there just for the pizza.

Oh, and you know how sometimes you come back from a trip and you get to work and there's a list a mile freaking long of things that you need to do as soon as you get back? Yeah, that kind of sucks, doesn't it?

Monday, May 10, 2010

P90X - Week 10 Completed


17 days to go! And then we get to do it all over again!

Someone needs to do a Mystery Science Theater version of P90X. How could you not, with Tony quotes like "Hamburger bad, fries bad, coca-cola bad… There I said it. Drink your water people," "We're all auditioning for the cover of Downward Dog Magazine," "Like a pterodactyl backing out of trouble! Ka-kaw!," and possibly the best of all, "We don't do spray on, this is real. We do actual DNA removal." Um, ew. But I don't mind the pterodactyl comments because it reminds me of XKCD and the raptor invasion.

It's all worth it though, because I have actual abdominal muscles that you can see.

Still no pull-ups. Sigh.

Monday, May 3, 2010

P90X - Week 9 Completed


24 days to go!

I did another half pull-up yesterday. That was my big accomplishment. We rearranged our schedule last week and bumped our off day to Saturday. We have a few weekends this month packed with activities so it will be much easier to get things done if we don't have P90X looming over our heads. That and I'll be able to enjoy naptime again, rather than spending the 90 minutes working out and showering.

I've discovered that I very much prefer to exercise at night. Actually, I take that back. My first choice would be early morning, but I already get up at 5:30 and I'm not getting up any earlier to spend quality time with Tony Horton. Second to that is exercising at night. By the time 7:30 or 8:00 rolls around, I feel like I've gotten my second wind of the day. I think that I sleep better afterward, too, but that might be all in my head.

I've mentioned before that once we're done with this first round of P90X I'm going to bring running back into my repertoire. I always work better when I have a goal in mind, so my goal for next year is to run the Flying Pig Marathon in May 2011. I'd love to run all 26.2 miles, but I'm going to start training with the Half in mind and see where I get. C is worried that I'm going to hurt my knee again. I think that as long as I'm smart about my training and I take direction from people who actually know what they're doing then I should be fine. Good thing Tony doesn't do marathons. I don't know if I could stand that kind of torture.