Mission Accomplished.

Remember my last post? I set out a list of things I wanted to accomplish today. So far so good!

I did something like 7 loads of laundry! I organized our entire closet. Winner. I made a lovely healthy lunch. An awesome stirfry for dinner. Just finished the hardest workout ever.

I'll tell you about my workout. It only lasted 32 minutes, but that was enough.

2 sets of:
20 walking lunges
20 tricep dips
20 sumo squats
20 calf raises
20 standing rows
20 push ups from ball
20 deadlift lunge combos

2 sets of:
20 bicep curls
20 squats
20 pelvic lifts
20 chest press
20 hamstring curls
1 minute plank
50 bicycle curls

It took around 7 minutes a set. Then I finishes with a 4 minute cool down of stretches.

Why was this so hard? I haven't worked out in AGES. Well no weights/strength in about 10 days. You lose fitness so quickly. I also had muscle cramps on my lunges which made it all the more painful!

But it's done, 300 calories burned! I always seem to forget to turn my HR monitor on until one set is finished! I am glad I did it, getting back on track one step at a time.

And more good news, it's 8:30pm and I have no sign of a sugar headache. Awesome!

I'm still loading with Vitamin C, I haven't kicked the flu yet. Hopefully this light workout doesn't do me in.

Until next time my friends!

Love you all!

The 17 day diet. Womp. Womp.

So I have been in a slump since Christmas. Basically eating everything in sight that is white, floury, chocolatey, fried, sugary, or says "this product is made of crap to make you fat."

I had my whirlwind trip to America last week. You can't really control your diet on an airplane. Especially with international travel, your healthy food gets confiscated, you have to fight to get enough water on the plane. All in all. It's not easy.

Combine the travel, the jet lag, the working all day, the office meeting lunches, sales team dinners, and office parties, plus eating BBQ and Mexican food. I gained 7 pounds because I was eating to stay awake and healthy choices were not a priority.

So I landed with the flu. Not cool. Haven't worked out since. Not cool. But! I started the 17 day diet! I'm looking at it as more of a cleanse. I want to stop my dependence on crappy food. I want to increase my intake of whole foods. I want to eat less sugar and carbs. I want to stop abusing my body. I want to have fun without drinking. I want to lose more weight!

The diet has some principles that I think are complete crap. Like they don't say no to diet drinks- ha. They also are okay with caffeine- really? I don't know. I've adapted it to be a basic guideline for my current diet. I've cut out carbs, except for 2 pieces of fruit before lunch. There is a list of the "best" vegetables and meats, I'm trying to stick with those.

The 7 pounds was gone in a matter of 2 days. I am guessing travel and water weight had a lot to do with it. Now I'm fighting to lose another 10 before I go back to the states, when I will probably regain a bit.

So that's where I am at. Today's game plan: Drink lots of water and herbal tea. Hopefully no sugar withdrawal headaches. Complete my first workout since returning from Texas. Clean my house. Cook a healthy and delicious stirfry. Plan my week of exercise. Cook/Prep my week of food. And then maybe go on a fox hunt with my redneck boyfriend!

What are your plans for a productive Sunday?

Love y'all!

Summer, Recovery, Garden

Hiiiiii!

I am sick. Like USA flu sick. I am currently huddling under a blanket FREEZING. It's probably 77 degrees around me. We have had a lovely cool night after the scorching 110 degree days we've been having.

There were two inches of rain at the beginning of the week. So you'd think it's almost winter! No. Seasons are just screwed up. I'm feeling guilty for being sick and not exercising. I really miss it!!

I am sure y'all want an update on my garden I posted about ever so long ago?! Well I have jalepenos cranking, probably get two a week. My Thai chilies have just started producing. My tomatoes have SO many green tomatoes... But they sort of got zapped by the heat and the plants dying. I took maybe 20 green tomatoes and made a ton of yummy chutney. If the plant doesn't make a recovery, I'm going to make even more chutney!! I feel very country when making chutney :) and the strawberries are dead. Really dead.

I have my little herb garden as well. The basil, thyme, and rosemary are going really well! My mint died. I don't know why :( maybe it just got sick of being made into mojitos.

Spaghetti squash! Drumroll please........ I have one fruit! Yay!!!!! However, after the rain it got cracked through the rind. I am really hoping it will recover. There are more flowers, but they all look like male flowers so won't produce :( I am no expert, but that's what I am thinking.

I do have one zuchinni, which they apparently turn into a little factory! Our spinach is still going crazy. I need to blanch and freeze it for winter. I have been throwing spinach in everything. Eggs, meatloaf, pasta sauce, hamburger patties, casseroles, soups... You name it!

I am still loving the summer. I really don't want it to end. I really hope Texas has an abnormally summery February! Because I don't want to miss a minute of sunshine... It's Texas so anything is possible!

Stay tuned. I'm going to write about my 17 day diet, and losing 5 pounds in one day. Ridiculous.

Love y'all!!

Tori

Travel Woes and Ettiquite

Hello humanity!

As you may have guessed, I have been busy. I spent 5 of the last 8 days crossing the globe twice, just for fun! Kidding. Worst experience of my life. Work was alright, but I am not sure it was worth the time lost, and my health. I caught the dreaded American Flu!!

Don't tell border patrol and customs, they may come find me and quarantine me. So I'm THAT person, responsibly for the global transfer of a deadly virus. Awesome.

I have general etiquette and rules of travel that may not be know to the common man. Kidding! 90% of this is common sense, there are jut a lot of idiots in the world.

1. Duty Free. Okay this is probably the MOST important thing to know. Buy your booze at your final layover. If you buy it before your first flight, it will most likely be confiscated at the next security checkpoint. This is guaranteed when flying to the US and Australia. I watched a couple pour out 4 liters of vodka... Rookies.

2. Claim your shiz. Look it may not be fun completing the import/export card. Just do it, saves the trouble of thousands of dollars in fines and being hassled for smuggling velveeta cheese. 99% of the time they let you pass through without any bother.

3. Water. We may not all have the luxury of first class, so we don't get endless amounts of water and people to fan us and feed us grapes. Australia and the US allow you to purchase water after security. Other countries, you can purchase it but not take it on the plane due to a checkpoint right before boarding. Getting around this is sneaky. Go to duty free, buy water. They will deliver it to your gate and you can have it on the plane. I've done this in Dubai and Qatar. Yeah, I'm a genius!

4. Seat Pros/Cons

Window- Pros: you see the plane take off, no one hits you as they walk to the bathroom, you control the outdoor lighting. Cons: you don't get to tell the flight attendant you want snacks and water everytime they pass, you're reliant upon someone else for bathroom breaks,

Middle- this seat sucks.

Aisle- Pros: you get unlimited bathroom breaks, you can stop the flight attendant for anything and everything Cons: you get hit by the food cart

My choice? Aisle. I pee ALL the time. The dude in 20A that didn't move for 17 ENTIRE hours, obviously window works for him.

5. What not to do.

Middle seat- there are 4 arm rests, unfortunately your life sucks and your stuck in the middle. You are still only entitle to 1 1/3 arm rest. I get the freaking 1/3 and I will FIGHT you for it.

Staring- look miss seat neighbor 20B I'm going to try to watch all of the lord of the rings, I have 12 free hours on my hands. Stop looking at me and turn on your own tv. Literally, she stared the entire flight, no tv, no book, no iPod. Just watched me watch TV and sleep. Creep.

Airport Noise- if you see a person quietly trying to sleep with no one around them. Don't go hold a party right next to them. That makes you and your friends a bunch of wankers, even if your are women and I can't understand your jibber jabber language. (sorry very angry about this one)


Obviously the 70+ hours I was actually in flight were miserable. My legs swelled, my nose bled, I didn't sleep. Do what works for you. I know I need lots of water and compression socks. I don't care about the looks I get. I've circled the globe enough times to not really give a crap about the other business people that sit in first class and wake up refreshed. Other than extreme jealousy, I ignore them.

Thank you for listening to my rants and "advice" I almost had a bridesmaids moment and flipped on a few people.

Til next time! Love y'all!

Tori

Holidaze Part 3

So Christmas and Boxing day were successful, I worked the days leading up to New Years.

We decided to go up the coast to our friends house an hour north of Perth, just a sleepy little fishing town. We had a quiet new years eve in anticipation of fishing the next day.

Our friends house sleeps so many people, there were about 12 and 6 kids. We saw midnight and went to bed about 10 minutes later.

Jono and I woke up to get an early start to our fishing trip. We were taking his boat out and one of our friends was going out with a neighbors boat.

They have the sweetest neighbors, but the man has just gotten too old to put his boat in and out without help. He also doesn't like being on the water alone. So he only goes fishing when Jono is there to take his boat out.

It's quite an operation, and the beach launch does not always go smoothly. If you remember last year a wave crashed over the boat as I was getting out, resulting in a split eyebrow!

This time I got swamped by a wave as the boat was going in, but I managed to jump in the boat. In deeper water I took a swim to shake the sand off.

We headed out maybe 12 kms to start fishing. It took about an hour and Jono caught a massive Western Australia dhufish, these are protected and have a limit of 2 per boar. His fish was 15.5kg and covered the entire bottom of the ice chest.

We kept fishing and I had resigned myself to not catching anything. It was slow fishing. Finally I pulled up a blue chin grouper. Still I had pretty much given up all hope of ever catching a fish as large as Jono's.

We were talking about pulling up and going farther out when WAMMMOOOO! Line was being taken like I'd never seen except on TV. I kept tension on the rod, but was pretty certain I had a shark on. After the first run, I had gained ground on it, until it saw the boat and took off again! Total this mystery of the deep made 4 runs on me.

I was fishing with pretty light gear for out that far (10-15kg). So we thought it would probably be a fish or shark around 15kg, because the rod was handling it so well!

As I kept reeling using an up and down motion to gain ground. We finally saw color. It was a fish! What kind! A Western Australia dhufish! And a massive one.

Average dhufish come around 6-10kg, a big one is 15-18kg, and the record is 25kg. Before the species was protected it was dramatically overfished. So the ancient 18kg+ monsters are very few and far between. But damn my lucky stars if I didn't catch a 20.5kg beast!! That is 45lbs!!

Jono has been fishing WA his entire life, and has only seen one bigger than mine. Hot diggity dog! As soon as I saw that baby surface I was doing a happy dance, screaming, frolicking, mocking Jono "mines bigger than yours, mines bigger than yours!". I was having a party. We didn't weigh it until shore, but when it didn't fit in the ice chest that is a meter long, and it was taking up a majority of the floor space in the boat... I knew I had a monster.

It was and probably will be the biggest fish I ever caught. I'm thrilled with it! Plus to buy this fish in stores it is $80/kg my fish was worth over a thousand bucks!! When you put all the filets from both of our duh together, it was an absolute mountain of filets!

So take that 2013! This year is my year!!

Love you all!

Xx
Tori

Holidaze Part 1

Hi Y'all!

I am back! I haven't really been missing, just in the Internet space. I got super busy juggling work as it wrapped up the year.

So I'll begin at the beginning. There I was intending so spend a lovely day frolicking around my sprinklers. After all, with temperatures over 100 and cabin fever, that is what you do. Then Jono requested some help on the farm, haul a trailed from point A to point B and act as an escort- use the CB radio (40 channel) to notify oncoming traffic of an oversized load.

This is fairly standard on the weekends during harvest, they move machinery faster with 3 people. Then I realized... Hey I'm not driving to our farm, we're pretty much done with harvest... Hmmm how am I gonna get home... There's not enough cars for me to take one.

We arrived at our destination. And WAAA BAM. Jono says I'm driving the harvester. WHAT? ALONE? My life insurance won't even cover the value of that machine if I break something and then Jono decides to kill me. (he never would).

And so began me breaking the ranks and playing with the big boys. I drove that mo fo green John Deere for hours and hours. Not auto steer guided by GPS, but really steering the 36 foot wide monstrosity.

I felt like a BOSS. Still do. And holy awesomeness, I managed not to break anything.

I ended up driving before and after work, made for some long hours. So the night of Christmas Eve was on this beast. However, it was all in the spirit of Christmas. My loving boyfriend graciously offered to deliver the grain and help harvest the crops of our neighbors, so they would finish before Christmas. Isn't he amazing?

I also decided to run a trifecta of 5ks leading up to Christmas. Two at a hundred degrees, and one in the dark. Fighting the Christmas food baby.

How was your Christmas Eve?

Stay tuned for part 2 and 3 tomorrow! (I am in a hurry it's 2013, we've got new shiz to talk about)

Love you all!
Tori

Holidaze Part 2

Due to my total incompetency, I wrote a post (amazing) and it was deleted. So here is my Christmas recap in a jiffy!

Jono and I had a sleep in on Christmas morning. I had been driving the header ALL BY MYSELF, so I was pretty tired! Jono went straight to the tree and said we had to open presents before breakfast. I got a soda stream from Jono, cause he's a doll and wanted me to have something to open. Santa (ahem myself) brought me candles and soaps!

Our stockings were a riot! I had them stuffed with socks, booze, candy, lottery tickets and best of all... Reindeer antlers! We immediately put them on and cooked a bacon and egg breakfast with Christmas carols blasting!

Before our festivities continued, we had to move some sheep. Antlers on, carols blasting, windows down, 90 degrees and rising... We had so much fun!

After farm work we got dressed to go to our neighbors for lunch. I was supposed to make rolls and a pie, but I was driving the header the night before so wasn't able to make rolls. I did whip up a pie, banana blue berry, yum! It's the easiest pie ever and takes 5 minutes start to finish!

Now I must say, we were in the Christmas spirit of giving, this was the reason we were not with Jonos family. Our neighbors needed a hand to finish harvest. Jono the kind man he is, shifted all his equipment to their farm and got straight into it.

We had our Christmas lunch and it was heavenly! Hot ham and cold salads! Yum!

After lunch we went to the dam for a swim. It was well over 110, so we needed some refreshing cold mud! Ha! It was nice, but swimming trough mud and crawfish is not exactly desirable. I managed, but not happily!

The next day was boxing day, and we did a repeat of the dam swim! I was much happier because Jono got me floaties!

All in all it was the most Australian, most relaxing couple of days. I really enjoyed it.

Love you all! New Year recap tomorrow!

Xxx
Tori