12 weeks

Wish me luck!

I'm starting participation in a weight management study through UPMC today. It's 12 weeks long. The study basically involves cal & fat gram counting plus brisk walking each day. I'll keep a journal and talk to a health coach once each week. Posting about it here will also make me accountable. Although I'm already seriously motivated by the pictures of my arms from this weekend. Yipes! Holy bingo wings!

Today has been pretty good, but man does peanut butter have a boatload of fat grams. Sigh.

Anyone have any motivating tips?

Someone get this guy a latte, STAT!

As most people can attest, public transportation is a constant source of amusement and annoyance. This guy brought a little of both to the game yesterday. He started off just sort of dozing and nodding a little bit. Not a big deal. I've sat next to and elbowed dozers back to the land of the living many times . But this guy... he started to do the slump forward and jerk backwards over and over again and I started to wonder if he was gonna nose-dive forward. Yup... Within two minutes, he was falling completely forward and smacking the back of the woman's head who was sitting in front of him with his lanky forehead. Duuuuude. Not cool. Pop some NoDoz, sit up, and stare zombie-like outside on your way home from work like the rest of us.
 

 (I love that in this shot you can see the woman in front of him turning her head like, "What is this fool doing?!")

Second Part of Random Acts

Lynnette loved her cookbook so much, but I'm betting Candice is still sitting there looking at her gift and scratching her head.

I was so excited to get each winner something personal and timely. Candice just moved in to a beautiful new house, so I though, "Hey. I bet she's doing a lot of gardening over there in that big ol' yard. I'll get her something to help that along."  Searched Amazon... found the perfect little gift. And I do apparently mean little. Here is a picture of my 'random' gift for Candice:

Looks like such a nice, cute gardening bag with useful tools, right? "Aww", I thought, "C will look so dang cute out there digging up weeds."   Advance time to me opening the box from Amazon and realizing .3 seconds after seeing it that it is obviously a product intended for any 6-7 year old nieces or Goddaughters that C may have. Oopsie. I am definitely hoping that the 'It's the thought that counts." theory applies here. And C, I expect you to plant some itty bitty flowers with your itty bitty tools, K? Mwah.

Random kindness fun

A couple of weeks ago, I drew two blog readers' names for the random act of kindness 'contest.'  I was able to surprise one of them last night with a wonderful cookbook. Lynnette just started her own business - the fabulous happyjack bakery - and I thought that the Sono Baking Company Cookbook would help her find some delicious treats to add to her offerings.



The recipes look scrumptious and the pictures make me drool just a little. I can't wait to taste some of them once Lynnette works her magic with the recipes. Enjoy, my friend!!

I have another fun, random gift waiting in the wings for a randomly chosen blog reader. I'll update on that next week after it is gifted.

I like to make others smile. Smiling is my favorite.

P.S. Shameless plug: Come and visit happyjack at the Whitehall Farmer's Market at Caste Village every Monday from 3:00 to 7:00 pm starting June 14, 2010!

House updates

We're still trying to get everything done at the house in order for it to feel oh so cozy, but the weekends are the only time we have since weeknights go so quickly. So, here is what we've been up to lately:

Mikey cut the grass. Yay! I love the lawn and our wonderful tree. I literally have gone out and patted the tree three or four times because I love owning our own tree.

I planted petunias and a couple of Gerber daisies in the planters out front. I hope they live. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I do it with love.

This is the area in our kitchen that was a broom closet. We (read: Mike) removed the doors from it so that we could put our great garbage can there. We can put brooms in the basement closet. No loss there. But we have some work to do in this little nook. I started off the renovation by painting the top shelf area a pretty lilac color. I went outside of my comfort zone and chose a fun color. I'm still not sure about it so if you like it, I'd love to hear it. I'm fighting the urge to paint over it with a nice, safe Barely Beige color.

What an overwhelming, awesome adventure to turn a house into a home. :)

I didn't forget...

.. the random act of kindness that I'm going to rain down upon two lucky blog readers. Well, maybe not a rain shower. More like a gift under $20. But that's sumpthin', right? A little sprinkling of kindness perhaps. I won't announce who the winners are until after I send out the gifts. Stay tuned...

Just a little bit o' lint

I wonder if the previous owners of the house ever cleaned or fixed anything. I feel like they ran the house close to the ground and then jumped off. We LOVE the house. Never think that we don't. No bad words will be spoken against the house of our dreams ever. We are in love, love, love. The previous owners though... Ugh.

The inspectors had no reason to open all of the closets and look behind paintings, etc. So when we moved in and tried to open closets and finally saw all of the walls, surprise! Half of the closet doors are broken and won't close. The owners nailed everything within eyesight to the walls and then didn't remove any of the nails when they left. If I fell backwards in the house anywhere, I'll pierce my melon on a nail head.

We are currently dealing with two doozies.

1) They must have let every single hair on their heads run down the drain in the upstairs shower. I'm pretty sure they washed the dog up there, too. It is totally clogged and smells like armpit. We tried drain opener, but no luck. We have to move on to the snake now. Scared of discovery once we do. *shudder* 

2) The dryer vent. Here is part of it now...

They must have never cleaned the dryer vent tube or the lint trap. Let those suckers just clog up with lint. The dryer vent tube goes in the drywall, into the garage, and outside through that wall. It is understandably a tough, icky job to get it cleaned out or do it yourself somehow, but ignoring the icky job just causes things like, oh, I don't know... dryer fires. We are pretty sure that tube is totally full of lint. At least the section that we saw when Mike sawed through the drywall is clogged.

Well, looky here...

I just wanna do laundry, people!


I finally got the dryer delivered (love, love, love!)...

and now can't use it until we fix their mess. We did buy an inside vent kit so we can vent in to the basement if we have to, but that will lead to us opening Sauna Petruska down there after a while due to the resultant moisture. We'll get it figured out, but when we someday build our dream house in the country and move out, we'll be making sure the buyers aren't shaking their fists in our general direction and cursing us. Karma... I'm a believer.