Night Out

Last night I got all dolled up (dolled up = a little extra eyeliner, dangly earrings, and my fave headband/scarf that I work into every ensemble possible) and Hubs and I went to a Suns preseason game with my folks (thanks Mom & Dad!). It was against the Jazz and was a fun game. The Suns won, which is great but even better news is the fact that I wore my skinny-ish jeans! (Skinny-ish = not my most skinny jeans, but jeans I haven't worn since several months ago and which ordinarily require a good deal of effort to put on straight out of the dryer.) Yippee! I have lost 9.6 pounds so far and although I wish it was more like 15, considering my near-constant state of hunger these past 7 weeks, I am comforted by the fact that my faithful 5 times a week of running on the treadmill seems to be paying off. It is so helpful to have little boosts like this to be motivated to keep going with the diet and exercise, especially when losing less than a pound in a week seems like such a small reward for the hunger. I have several pairs of too-small pants to work into, so if I can manage to squeeze into more of them from time to time, I will feel like it's worth it.

Now, who knows a non-surgical miracle cure for a tummy that looks like it's carried four kids? Anyone? Anyone?

For anyone who wants to know the secret of my exercising success, I have learned a little trick this time around:

treadmill running + DVD watching = I will actually do it.

During other exercise spurts over the past few years (I got the treadmill in 2002) I have relied almost solely on listening to music while running. It's true that I have discovered several great running CDs amongst our vast collection, but even with lots of music to choose from the running can still get b o r i n g . Watching TV is a little better but still, there's not always something good on when I want to run (I like to call it running but it's actually jogging). So, I've ditched music and regular TV programming in favor of our portable DVD player that we bring in the car for road trips... it sits up nicely on the magazine/book holder of the treadmill, and I watch movies or TV shows on DVD with headphones while I run. That's the secret! I actually look forward to running the next morning, and that's why I've been doing it 5 days a week.

I started out watching some old episodes of the Office that I hadn't seen before. On DVD you can watch the deleted scenes and they are hilarious. Then I watched Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which is like a 4 hour movie and took me almost two weeks to watch completely. That was actually perfect running entertainment: it's a great, action-packed, multiple Academy Award-winning movie, which I have seen a couple times so I know what's going to happen (plus I've read the books), but I don't have it memorized so it's still exciting to see what happens next. It's so easy to get wrapped up in a film like that, that you don't even think about the fact that you're doing a steady jog the whole time... and 2 miles fly by like nothing. After that was over I started watching Prison Break (last season) on DVD. Again, action-packed, which seems to make the running easier. Maybe because the dudes on Prison Break are running the whole time too? I don't imagine I'd have the same motivation watching Fried Green Tomatoes.

In other news, last night in the car I had time to listen to the new Radiohead album some more and let me tell you, it is perfectly lovely and so very pleasant. Please tour again boys, and hit Phx this time around, okay?

In other news, my camera has been found! A little embarrassing; it was hiding in plain sight. I will take & post some pics of the kids soon.