Gold Star to Me!

P90X3 - Complete!   Woohoo!!!   Day 90 is done.

I don't know whether to frame this or burn it.

On top of being done, the last week was a rest week and I just didn't like that idea so I did a few mix and match.  Instead of agility, I subbed in MMX.  For yoga I did Eccentric Upper (I know, no connection whatsoever), and for the first Dynamix I did CVX (flashback: cardio with weights) mostly to see if I could still do it after Eccentric Upper ;)

Today's workout I was not into at all, but I was hardly going to miss day 90.  Sheesh.

Tentative plan is to try the Classic program next.  I'm not as convinced on that one since I'm definitely taking a week off when Chris and I are in Dominican ;)    And it's plausible I'll have another surgery in that 90 days, which'll mean no exercise.  Again.  Ugh.   But at very least, it'll keep things going on the right track until we find ourselves on a beach *g*

As to results and overall view of the program.   I really liked the videos -- they are very well done and  have good timing for corrective comments as well as when to encourage and when to suggest it's okay if you can't quite do it.  The humour is also inoffensive enough that watching the same video several times isn't painful -- which is a real art.   The half-hour time frame is a real motivator -- it'd be very hard to honestly claim you couldn't find half an hour, and even on the worst days I could drag myself to commit to "just 30 minutes" -- which wouldn't happen if I had to go to the gym.   I am getting the results I'd like as far as strength training goes.  However, I found the cardio insufficient -- I do think I'd get better results with more traditional cardio.  It is still a massive step up from sitting on the couch though -- and I have to admit, CVX continues to leave me a sweaty mess in ways that an elliptical never has ;)

So for me who's life currently can't accommodate a gym membership, I'm glad I found it and will continue to use it.  Once the weather's nice though, I'll be back to outdoor cardio activities.   Have to admit though, given how hard it was at the start, I'm pretty proud of myself for getting through it :)  

If my commute time is going to triple, I'd really prefer it happen on the way to work...

You know your commute isn't going to go well when you come in and the entire schedule is red.   Fatality on the tracks at Port Credit.  Frig.   Updates say trains will go to Long Branch and then passengers will be bused to Clarkson, where they can get back on the train for the rest of the trip.  Announcement came in just before 3, saying 3-4 hours before normal service resumes.  Frig.  I was aiming for the 3:43 train.

So that meant one train had already been through since the tracks had been closed.  Okay...   Usually Mum and I sit in the farthest train to the west as that's where we park, but because of this we moved more to the middle of the train thinking it'd put us closer to the station.   We is smart.

Until they announce on the train that anybody getting off at Long Branch (like 99.999% of people, since very few get off in the few stations before that) will want to be at the west end of the train.  Fail.  We decided to stay put -- we had seats and the train was full.   Sure enough, within a few minutes the train was *packed*, standing room only, as everybody was trying to get to the west end of the train.  There was no passing our car.

So all good, away we go.  Then the train stops in the middle of nowhere and we get to just hang out.  About this time I reach out to those I was supposed to teach tonight to give them the heads up the odds aren't great.

Train eventually starts moving and we pull into Long Branch. Which is a *tiny* station.  Impressively said station was immediately next to our car.  For the win!  Out the window we could see the insane line for the buses -- oh yeah, ours wasn't the first train.  Frig.  And the people leaving our train are moving very slowly...   Why?  Because there appears to be only one set of stairs off the platform.

There are announcements that our train will be turning around and going back to Union and could we *please* all stay to one side of the tunnel so people trying to get ON the train could get through.  The announcer was not up to handling the situation at all, so there was a fair amount of confusion, but people were being remarkably patient.

This was about 1/3 of the line.  You can see the one lone bus in the distance...

More of the line...  It actually went all the way out of the parking lot.

So seeing this, I was *very* grateful my amazing dad offered to come pick us up (Mum and I were commuting together due to vehicle issues).   I can't even imagine how long it'd take to get through that line loading all those people onto one bus at a time -- esp as there wasn't a line up of buses.   Usually I'm a pretty patient traveler, but given the current temp and my lack of appropriate clothing, it would've been pretty brutal.  Some cabby's were getting smart and showing up.

They did eventually decide they were going to let some trains through -- but nobody seemed to know which ones or what track.  So the bus line dispersed as all the people who'd gotten off the train went back through the tunnel to get back on.   But Mum and I waited for the nice ride home :)

Had to go back to the GO station to pick up my car, but did eventually make it home, very cold and very late.  Turn on the fire and change into comfy clothes for the rest of the evening.  I sense nothing productive will be happening tonight ;)

If it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you.

Week 11 complete -- you'd think my body would be use to this game by now.  But no.  I'm actually more sore now than I have any recollection of being related to exercise.  Why?   Let's just say it can be summed up as Stupid Should Hurt.   You see, I bought new weights ;)   Which of course encouraged me to up the weights on leg day.  All good, in itself.  But then I bumped yoga day (recovery) to the weekend so that I wouldn't have to relocate exercise equipment.  Sadly this meant I had two leg days in a row.  And I'm back at work, so climbing stairs again.  Right.  It's now Saturday and my quads are *still* sore.

And I was so proud of myself for upping the arms too and not being terribly sore after.  Yeah, it was just delayed *sigh*  So officially every part of me hurts now.   On the plus side, I'm *almost* back to my pre-surgeries weight and I'm starting to be able to see actual muscles.  I have hope for that beach in Feb :)  Which is why, despite the sore, I keep going.

Back at work, which is actually awesome.  Going really well -- all of my projects are picking up momentum at the same time.  Which may mean carefully controlled chaos, but at least it means I won't be bored :)

Off to thoroughly enjoy a day of laziness.  Happy weekend!

Happy New Year

Holidays were good.  Relaxing and exhausting at the same time :)    Christmas Eve was at Barb and Carl's -- a really nice evening.  Then back to Paris for the night.  Both Chris and I were up early on Christmas morn so we did our Christmas first before going to my parents' for breakfast and family gift exchange.  We haven't done the family breakfast thing before -- quite enjoyed that :)   Then it was to Chris' family for dinner, with several people I haven't seen since the wedding so that was nice. Gifts were exchanged and people were happy.   The Elsa doll we got C's niece seemed to be the hit of the night, so that was fun :)  

Boxing Day we inherited Bailey -- Mum and Dad were off to Florida, so we got to puppy sit for the week.  Sasha was pretty thrilled with that whole idea :)   That evening was a 40th bday party for a friend of C's so we went there for the evening.

As to New Year's Eve -- we had an early dinner at Chris' parents before a relaxing evening of nothingness.  We finished it off by going to see Star Wars -- when we left the theater, it was a new year :)  

Overall vacation productiveness -- I managed to get some cleaning and organizing done :)   More importantly, I finally got my wedding photos printed!  Woohoo!!!  :)   hahaha it's the little things in life.

I also got my 2014 blog posts printed in book form.  Pretty stoked about that.  I had previously used Blog2Print, but something changed in either their software or in Bloggers that was making it so all the pictures were misaligned :(   Reaching out to them they informed me there was no way of fixing it.   Fail.  Such began a long search for options.   I found several that would print from the blog, but none that would include photos.   Then I found a few that would include photos, but the layout was all photos on the side of the page, disconnected from the text, and I was not happy with that at all.  One looked promising, but only had the option of printing the *whole* blog, whereas I really just the want the last year.  But then recently I found BlogBooker which will take the blog and publish it to either PDF or Word.  It allows setting the date range, and pictures are included as they are -- exactly what I was looking for.  For a donation, it'll include high res photos.   I could just replace them as I have all the originals, but tbh, I appreciated the software enough I deemed it worth the donation.   Anyways, the PDF was of no use to me, but the Word doc allowed me to fix the layout so I could then publish through any of the multiple self-publishing options.  In this case, I chose LuLu -- and the book I got, I'm very happy with.  It was also a super-reasonable price (esp compared to what I was used to paying for my earlier books).  So I'm downloading 2015 as I type this :)   It was a pretty incredible year; I'd like to have it in book form.  2014 was the shortest blog-book I've had yet.  A significant amount of it was dedicated to wedding planning :)   No surprise there!  2015 has more than twice the number of posts, and I'm hoping 2016 will get back up there too.

While any of you who've read this blog for any amount of time will know I'm not one for New Year's Resolutions -- let's be honest, when I want to change something, I do it.  I'm hardly one to wait around for a new year ;)   But the timing with printing blogs annually did make a pretty solid point about the writing -- I'm sad that I didn't write any flash last year :(   And I find that without the horses, I don't have a steady stream of writing inspiration for reality.  Combine that with a distinct lack of time and I'm left with much thinner blog books than I used to have.  Booo.  A quick scan of 2015 had posts in Feb: wedding and trip -- just the thought makes me smile.   Posts due to the eye surgeries (boo) and posts due to P90X3.   Curious to see what 2016's adventures will be.

As for said P90X3 - Decelerator.  Holy frig.  It contains the third exercise I simply don't have a hope of being able to do (the first being the crow, and the second the standing splits).  This is in push-up position, one knee comes up and balances on the upper arm, and the other leg randomly levitates out.  Yeah no.  Just no.   I can just barely do the modified version (in pushup position, bringing one knee to elbow without the other leg levitating...)  And the rest of it is questionable -- modified pull-ups, when I can barely do regular ones.  Sheesh.  Oh, and all in slow motion of course.

Happy New Year to all :)