John is back and it’s nice to be back in the normal routine again!  Although, we ended up biking for bagels on a Thursday morning instead of bagel Wednesday.  I never did get out yesterday morning for breakfast, although I did ride a bit.

The happy breakfast!

Another 12 miles in the books.  Total for the month of August so far is 174 miles. I should be around 213.  Not too far off, actually, and I will be getting a lot of miles in this weekend.  We have cooler weather coming in and should make for some awesome biking, although John suggested a very hilly route on Saturday… ugh?

Lunch time and I am still on the poultry wagon.  I have been eating chicken and turkey all week to use it up.  By myself.  I should have had people over, but how do you invite someone for leftovers?

Turkey burger with hot sauce and laughing cow!

John was really busy catching up with his business with being gone, so I went out and helped him pack up orders since my work was slow after lunch.  Maybe things aren’t so routine after all.

Afternoon latte and some chocolate that John brought home with him.

Good stuff.  I had a few squares of it.

Chocolate and coffee make such a great combo, don’t you think?

Work has been really sporadic.  I do like things to be on a schedule and it is hard to force a transcription job into a set schedule – although most days I am able to do this.  For whatever reason, the last couple of weeks I have had to flex my hours all over the place, which is unsettling.

Someone who is hardly ever unsettled?

Maybe I should start taking some afternoon naps.

Since it was turkey for lunch, guess what dinner would be?  If you said chicken, you get a gold star.

Next week John and I are doing the pescetarian week – aka the no ‘land meat’ week.  I think I will be glad with my poultry overload this week.  Shrimp was on sale, so I stocked up our freezer in preparation 😀

I’ll leave you with a picture of some of my dwarf snapdragons.  These are different colors each year because they are the seed drops from last year’s flowers and are usually different than the ‘parent’ plant.  They come up wherever in the garden the seeds fell and I let them be most times.

I love the dual color.

I would have to check, but I think the snapdragons in this part of the garden last year were either bright yellow or white (or both).

Don’t forget the Healthy Heart Weekend is this weekend!!  Sign up if you want to participate!

Back to routine!  Well, I have been back to routine for a few days now, but the blog hasn’t been.  My voice has just about returned.  It was gone since Friday.  I had a horrible sore throat that developed in Disney, like it went through a meat grinder.  No congestion or fever or anything like that.  Thank goodness, or it would have been miserable for the last few days of the trip.

Wednesday is my normal weigh-in day, so I hopped on the scale and MaryLou told me I was down 2 pounds.  So – I guess I really did not gain anything during vacation!  Yippee!!  Now it is back to the 90/10 eating again.  We have a Mardi Gras party coming up in a couple weeks, so I have to keep it together 

Breakfast was back to Bagel Wednesday!  Have you missed it?  I did.

Ah routine, feels so good.

One other note about our trip. We stayed in a Disney resort.  Melisa asked if it was more cost effective to stay on the property versus a close by hotel.  There are a lot of factors that go into the cost, but there really aren’t any hotels super close by that aren’t at least on Disney property.  There are the Disney resorts, and then the hotels on property not owned by Disney (like Marriot, Hilton, etc).  Those are more expensive.  Of course, we stayed in a value resort, which makes the difference.  I suppose if you stayed off property that you could get a cheaper hotel room, but then you would have to pay for parking at $15 per day  at the parks.  You get free transportation to and from the airport and transportation around the parks and Downtown Disney when you stay on property.  That can be big savings without having to rent a car or pay for parking.  Not to mention the extra park hours.  So, you can stay on property on a value budget (as we did).  It’s also less expensive to go at this time of year.

Anyhoo – Wednesdays are my busy days.  I worked right up until I had to leave for literacy tutoring and didn’t have time for lunch.  I grabbed a coffee at McDonalds, which is where we do the tutoring.

You have to tutor in a public place and this is close for both of us.  It works out surprisingly well.  We just find a quiet corner and work.

After I got home, I had the lunch of champions! (x2)

These are sesame seed/honey cashews from Trader Joe’s from our trip a few weeks ago.  I forbade the opening of the bag until we got back from vacation.

John also made me a latte.  See how we are back to routine around here?

Pixie was not that happy with us when we first got back and was a little skittish for a couple days, but now she is Ms. Lappington again.

Quick dinner tonight as I was really hungry by the time that came around.  My sister had a roast turkey for the Super Bowl party and it was the biggest of all the turkeys raised.  I think this one was 38 pounds.  That meant leftover turkey for all and I have had turkey for dinner 3 nights this week!

Tonight was barbecue style.  I am now tired of turkey.

Poor John caught something on the plane home.  He is snuffly and congested now, but no sore throat.   The opposite of what I had. Poor guy.

Being the good wife that I am, I left him at home  while I went out to be social.

This is tea.  I had enough coffee for the day (I know, I know!), so I decided on Peach Ginger tea.

I did bring John a cookie home, though.  I have to pamper him a little  😉

I am so glad to be back into my routine again after traveling.  I have slept so poorly for the past 4 nights that I conked out really early last night after we got back from a day of driving.  We moved the TV back into the bedroom so I could watch football knowing I would fall asleep LOL!  Sure enough, I blinked out pretty quickly and woke up almost 9 hours later.  Yippee!!

I was ready for my bagel today.  Cranberry Walnut.

Then we hit up the grocery store for some fresh produce.  I ate my body weight in snacks the last few days.  Fatigue really just saps any kind of discipline I have.

I don’t feel bad about it, however.  I feel that there should be no guilt about eating.  Yes, I ate a lot of chocolate.  Yes, I had a lot of nuts.  But, if I feel guilt about that, then it takes the point away from eating the foods I like.  And it wastes the enjoyment I had eating it.   Then that is also wasting the food itself.

Funny how I seem to be able to just switch that eating off, even if it is a couple of days’ worth.  I guess that is what ‘normal’  people do?

I actually find it harder to get back into a work routine LOL!  I had to start working again today, although I was working on Friday, albeit in a different location.

Lunch time was some tuna on a pita.  Quick and easy.  I was totally craving berries, too.

Work has been slow today, so I looked at some of the snow we got over the weekend (which I did not have to shovel since I was gone!!).

It is already melting some because the sun came out, even though it is still pretty cold.

After more work I took a break while watching some football!  So sad the Saints are out of it.

I also cooked up some brown rice in bulk today ala Alton Brown.  You just put 1.5 cups of brown rice and 2.5 cups of boiling water into a 9×9 baking dish. Cover tight with foil and bake at 375 for an hour.  Perfect brown rice every time with absolutely no effort!

I used some of that brown rice for dinner.  Nice stir fry, which I  did with  teriyaki sauce.

Surprised to see beans, right?  I wanted to live on the edge!  These are pinto beans and don’t seem to have that grainy texture that other beans have.  Lots of fiber in this bowl, as John made sure to point out to me…

Gotta make sure I don’t get into too much of a food rut.  Although with the rice I made, you will be seeing that again this week 😀  Good thing it freezes well.

Finished up with work for the day and I have a truffle set aside to have for my snack.  It really feels good to be home and back in routine again.  Now I just need to catch up on some blog reading 😯

I am just finishing up with Women Food and God, so I will be talking about that this week.  I know you can’t wait for my opinion on that 😉