Today is the last day of my own personal fitness challenge. The challenge was just to get 10,000 steps a day from Saturday March 23, 2013 through today. The timing was actually a combination of someone else's challenge start date and the day my husband comes home from China, which is tonight. Whenever my husband goes away for an extended amount of time I try to change up something in my day to day patterns, in a good way. To try and break or start a new habit.

I own a FitBit One which is a fancied up pedometer and it keeps track of my steps for me. I also sync my FitBit One data with my account on MyFitnessPal (TracyLMurray000) where I enter manually any exercising and food. I don't always enter all of my food. The food counting for me is more about checking to make sure I'm not creating any unintentional bad patterns and to make sure I'm getting enough protein. However, if you are entering your food you can't help but notice those days when you, say, eat three times the normal calories for an active 21 year old professional football player. Oh, and there were a couple of days when I forgot my FitBit or left it strapped to my tank top instead of my bottom half and so it didn't count steps.

So here's the data as of today. I figure not too much will change before tonight at Midnight. 

 This is what my FitBit Shows me:

A total number of 269,461 steps in the last four weeks. Let's just assume I'll have 10,000 today so 279,461. Divided by 28 days means I am at 9981 average steps per day. I am okay with this because of the days that forgot my FitBit. I would guess that's at least an additional 15,000 steps onto the total.

The rather unexpected results are that after 19 months being stuck at the exact same weight I have lost 7 pounds in four weeks.  Seven pounds may not seem like much, unless your a smaller person and have been stuck at the same weight for freaking ever! This means I need to keep this up for a little while longer. 

I feel fantastic.  I do not currently own any clothing that is too small for me. At least, not that I 've tried on. I feel fit, and I feel accomplished. 

BAM!

Last night I had a dream about a little girl with dark hair. Maybe four years old. I don't recognize her. She lived with her grandparents whom she called gammy & grandpa. I don't know them. There was a problem with an evil spirit/ghost in the house.

WTF? Where does stuff like that come from? I wasn't watching or reading anything scary in the last few days.

The brain is bizarre.

Woke up 30 minutes late and the day has just gotten more laughable since then.

You know when the instructions say steep for four minutes and then take out the teabag? You really should do that. Not for taste, but for safety.

I'm sitting in a conference with my entire office plus one more and as I took a drink of tea my teabag unstuck from the inside wall of the cup and a wave of warm tea hit me in the face and down my shirt.

Mili says no bueno.

It's so odd how subjects come up over and over again. Last week for the first time I heard about something called Leaky Bowel (there's a picture in your head for the day) and then over a couple of days I heard about it two more times.

Just like that, the subject of being happy for someone else has come up three or four times in the last few days. A few days ago I was talking to a co-worker in another state and he asked me if I ever got jealous about all of the places my husband traveled for work.

I explained to him that no, I actually was very happy for him. I truly can live vicariously through other people. I love to hear about peoples fantastic luck, or astounding successes. I am genuinely interested and I swear I almost feel as glad for them as I would if it was me. I think I have an overdose of empathy in my personality so it's like a drug to me when I get to hear about other peoples grand lives. I can totally picture it and I enjoy it.

It's come up again a few times since then in different context.  I have in the past felt a little twinge of envy when my life was very hard and someone else seemed to have it much easier. As all lasting things are, most of the good things in my life I've worked for. That's just the way it is, and I'm probably the better for it. In case you aren't the same way keep in mind that there is enough good stuff to go around. Just because someone else has something doesn't mean you can't work for it, and get it too.

So, just in case you also want to live a little vicariously, here are some pictures from my husband. After all the trips to Chinas, he was finally able to see the Great Wall.

If you were going to be envious, if I were you I would be envious of me right now because I have soup in the crockpot and if it's even half as tasty as it smells I'm in good shape for the week!

Oh, and maybe of my China souvenirs that will be enroute to me shortly so I can remember my vicarious trip to the wall.

I was thinking about people that are on my Xanga list. Okay, really I'm stalling before changing clothes and getting on the treadmill. So anywho, you..person who's on my list:

I adore you.

I think you write fantastically.

I think your life is just enough different from mine that I am very interested in hearing about it.

I am living vicariously through your youth!

I think you take the most wonderful pictures that always make me smile.

I think you have a unique perspective on life and it always expands my mind a little read what you say

I think you're a little crazy and I can't wait to hear about the next adventure you have!

I think you and I are very similar and I understand you.

People that you won't find on my list, at least, not for long, are people who spread hate. We don't like hate here. We embrace the joy of life as much as we possibly can in this part of town.

When I was hiring an engineer that spoke Spanish during the interviews I would call one of our Spanish speaking employees and they would conduct a five minute mini-interview just to verify their fluency. Turn-about is fair play and this week I was asked to interview a couple of potential new Swedish receptionists to find out their fluency. Since I didn't need to interview them about job skills I went looking online for conversation starting questions. Something to get them talking.

I ran into this blog:

http://www.deliberateblog.com/2012/01/29/screw-smalltalk-11-questions-that-help-you-truly-connect/#respond

I thought it was very interesting. Questions to ask people around you to get a better, deeper connection with them.  It's also just an interesting site. I'm not a big fan of posting questions just so you can talk about yourself. I'm just not that interesting. But I thought it might make a nice conversation starter for people in my life. 

I am going to pick two to answer. Maybe you could do the same? (maybe not). I am going to email Mr. Murray and ask him to answer two of them.

Ready to connect? Here we go:

 1. What is your dream job?

2. What fulfills you?

 3. What’s your greatest fear?

 4. What do you want more of in life?

 5. What is your greatest accomplishment?

 6. What are you ashamed of?

7. What makes you sad?

8. What’s the hardest thing you’ve experienced?

9. What’s great about you?

10.Who are you?

11.What inspires you?

8. What’s the hardest thing you’ve experienced?

There are things in my life that are long term hard, that stay with you for decades, but I don't really want to talk about those. So instead I'll give you a different kind of hard thing.

It was the pinched nerves in my neck and shoulder. I had just completely unrelenting mind boggling toe curling brain bubbling pain for so long without abatement with no idea when it would stop that I really was worried for myself. It's a good thing that I didn't have heavy narcotics in the house that week because I would have taken so many that I would have died, and when it was at it's worse it would have seemed like a perfectly acceptable solution. Other pain I've had may have been as bad but I always knew why I was in pain and that it would end. It was like having the worst tooth abscess ever (I've had a few) and having the pain cover your entire neck & head and never ever stop. No sleep, no food, no sitting, no laying down. Every physical pain now is measured by that, and it's the reason that internally I flip people off when they say an almost snide comment about getting a massage (which I'm doing tonight). Massages for me are not a feel good relaxing moment. It's painful and preventative, but oh the wonderful benefits.

 4. What do you want more of in life?

This is easy. TIME. I want to always be here and always be able to read all of the books I want, watch all of the television I want, cook all the food I want, giggle all I want, sleep all I want, exercise all I want, play with the dogs all I want, talk to my family all I want. I want the days to be 48 hours long and me to be wide awake for 40 of them so I can get everything done!

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Oh, I didn't ask the receptionist interviewee's and of these questions!

While waiting for my appointment with my orthopedist

(this must be old, he is so much better looking now!)

I saw a magazine I had never seen before.

http://www.naturalhealthmag.com

It was a nice little magazine. I like their advice section because it gives answers from three different kinds of experts:

http://www.naturalhealthmag.com/expert-advice/how-can-i-calm-restless-legs

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I have lost five (ish) pounds since my husband left for China.  I am EXHAUSTED! I think losing weight could be a full time job. I've been using my fitbit and hitting the 10,000 steps a day. It's really hard. It takes, 20 minutes of bycycling, 20 minutes on the gazelle, a normal day of walking and then another 20 minutes or so on the treadmill to get to the actual 10,000 mark. On top of that three yoga sessions a week which don't count at all towards your steps because you're too still in yoga even though it can be a great workout!

But seriously, I am tired! My legs are tired. Hopefully I'm building up lots of strength so by next week or month or year, I won't be so tired just doing an hour of exercise a day. I don't know how people who work in very physical jobs do it.

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Eating a new (for me) apple. Lady Anne. Very boring apple. No apple flavor.

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Didn't bring any lunch to work. I have tons of breakfasty type of food but nothing that sounds very good. I am hopelessly addicted to raw nuts. I have to portion them out so I don't get sick.  

This is what we looked like almost 27 years ago. 

Exactly 27 years ago, almost to the minute as I type this it was beautiful sunny warm weather and we just picked up and went downtown and got married.

Crazy.

My husband emailed me pictures from his current city in China so I thought I would share them with you. He can't always access US sites from his internet connection so he will send them to me.

The hotel room is the one they moved him to a couple of days ago after his traveling companion woke up to find a rat eating his head. 

I really need to break this habit before my husband gets home and starts expecting me to cook for him too!

Tonights random food thrown together was:

Baby Bella mushrooms, quartered and spritzed with a little Olive Oil and some random spices. Soaked in it while the over preheated to 450.

Tofu - sliced in medium size chunks, sprinkled with Olive Oil & the same random spices

Thrown together on a baking sheet and into the over until everything smelled burnt & beefy.

Quinoa cooked in vegetable bouillon

Throw it all together.

It was actually very very tasty! The tofu is a little chewy but still good.

Quinoa is a pain in the ass. It's so little and so high in calories. Is there a reason I'm eating it? Is there some magical health benefit? I wish I knew something to eat that was the texture of rice or quinoa but had a whole lot less calories.

. Any suggestions?