Last night DH and I spent nearly four hours scheming our London holiday with the family. We've got all our transport times. We've tried to figure out how to see the important bits without having to walk too much, on my dad's account. So here's the plan:
Check in hotel in Bloomsbury and Tube to Tower Hill, where we will tour the Tower of London.
Then we'll get Docklands Light Railway at Tower Gate to Greenwich. This will take us past Canary Warf and other important places.
After having a look at Greenwich (Prime Meridian and all that), we'll get a Thames River Catamaran Cruiser back up the Thames to Embankment. This is a guided cruise pointing out all the sights on the London skyline, viewed from the water obviously.
Then we'll stroll from Embankment up to Trafalgar Square and some point catch a Tube back to our hotel in Bloomsbury.
Day Two is a choice for Dad and DS to make between a day trip to Hampton Court Palace (which I opt for) for a second day of London sightseeing. Tonight I intend to make a Day Two Plan B itinerary to hit some other London hotspots that are covered on our London Pass. They can choose, but whichever one they choose, we are getting the 19.00 train to Bath out of Paddington Station, to arrive in Bath at 20.30 and check in to our hotel.
Day Three we will tour Bath, which will be much less frenetic as it is a compact city centre and can easily be looked around in a day. We must see the Roman Baths and Bath Abbey. Other than that, we can just have a wander, or catch the Bath Bus Tour. Whichever they want. Then in the afternoon, we're going to back London Paddington to make our connection to our return journey to Nuneaton.
That should have them knackered out!
134.6 this morning. Eating was better yesterday, I suppose. Distinct lack of veggies at dinner, but I ate a ton of courgettes at lunchtime.
135.0 this morning. Let's see. Over the weekend, DH and I went through an entire package of Fox's selection box biscuits. I nibbled all day on Sunday as I was on my own here. Then yesterday I ate chocolate cake...Yep. Consequences.
What I ate yesterday:
2 slices wholegrain toast with almond butter and strawberry jam, black coffee
a huge pear and a chocolate hob nob
leftover brown rice, half a roast sweet potato, some broccoli and green beans and two seitan ribz
a Cadbury chocolate roll
then someone came into the break room with a homemade chocolate cake, made by a lady who is about to retire. I have always resisted her famous cake, but as this was probably the last opportunity to try it, I ate a slice.
a handful of strawberries
half a slice of bread with almond butter when I got home
oven chips, a veggie pattie and courgettes with carrot and onion mixed in
a bowl of muesli with rice milk at about 9.30
See, I can pack it away, can't I! Not a good day. Some poor choices. Eating when I wasn't hungry. Harrumph.
Stupid consequences! (Said in Homer Simpson voice)
Oh well.
I took a rest day yesterday because I realised that I have actually done some sort of workout (even if 'just' yoga) every single day this month. I suppose I'm trying to cram in as much as possible because after the family get here on Friday, that's pretty much going to be it until the 1st of August. Ack!
I'm going to do some sort of cardio tonight, but only a short one, as I don't get off work until 6.00. Then DH and I have to sit (we have vowed to have the TV off this evening) and plan out taxis and trains and buy tickets tomorrow.
Oh! I got a letter from IPS yesterday saying they tried to deliver something to me, so I called an automated number to have the package redirected to my work address. I hope it's my new UK passport!!
Oh, man, my backside is sore this morning. Jen Carman's supersets really hit their target area! Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness is here today! In this workout, you superset the glutes and hamstrings through a series of hover squats, then dips and lunges on the right leg, then side lunges on the right leg, followed by a set of 16 leg press on the right leg, followed by a squats with abduction, then another set of leg press on the right leg. Then you do it all again on the left leg. Ouch. And I was using 7kg dumbells held on my shoulders for these moves. (That's 15.4 pounds, or a total of nearly 31 pounds). And there's a series of plie squats in there somewhere. It's all a blur now!
So anyway, my backside is sore--but if you want a butt you can bounce a quarter off of, you gotta work for it! LOL
DH is in London for Star Wars Celebration Europe. I decided not to go with him because I'm not fan-girl enough to really be interested and it will PACKED with sweaty Star Wars geeks pushing and shoving to buy a 1978 Boba Fett in original packaging or to get the autograph of the guy who did the sound. Not my thing, so might as well save trainfare and admission fee.
Instead, I did two workouts back to back--how good am I? Ha ha. The dreaded and feared terribly compact and muscular Jen Carman's Body Sculpt, and the angelically beautiful kooky hippy chick Ana Brett's Ultimate Stretch Kundalini Workout. I hate Jen Carman and really dislike that workout, but I like to vary my training styles and so I did it. I love Ana Brett and so thoroughly enjoyed that workout that I hit the internet looking for more.
Actually, I wanted an outfit like her colour-tastic hippy chick yoga togs in Kundalini Beginners and Beyond, but couldn't find any, so ended up shopping for more workouts. (Click here to see a clip from the introduction of this workout. Notice how her little yoga mat is the fuzzy pink middle of a big yellow daisy. Wonderful stuff!)
I ordered Ravi & Ana's Kundalini Yoga Warrior Workout and Sarah Powers's Insight Yoga. (Click here for the description at Sarah's website, and here for the a review in Yoga Journal.) I am so excited to have found Sarah Powers! She combines yoga and Buddhism and includes meditations in the workout--it's exactly what I was looking for to help me get meditation into my workout practice. I can't wait to receive it and will post a review as soon as I've tried it out.
My dad and my son are coming to England for a visit, and DH and I have been busily planning the things we're going to do, making bookings, figuring out train times and costing it all up. We've pretty much got it lined out, it only needs fine-tuning. Here's a preview:
Friday, 20th July--They arrive.
Saturday, 21st July--TBD
Sunday, 22nd July--In town, grocery shopping, etc, chilling out for the day.
Birmingham also has the Bullring, which was briefly the largest mall in Europe, but I think there's another somewhere on the Continent now that's bigger.
Tuesday 24th July--Kenilworth Castle or Leamington Spa. Both are relatively nearby and it might be fun to take a bus there, particularly if we can get the front seats at the top of a double decker. Good views.
Wednesday 25th July--London I bought London Passes for all of us, so we have unlimited transport and no-queuing entry into 55 London attractions. (Tomorrow I plan to get the map out and figure out the quickest way to see as many as possible). I've booked rooms in Bloomsbury Park Hotel in Bloomsbury.
Thursday 26th July--Bath In the morning, we will go out to Windsor Castle and have a look around the town, then go back into London to get a train to Bath. We will have a walk around the city in the afternoon and evening, then...
Friday 27th July--Bath We will visit the Roman Baths and Fashion Museum, Sally Lunn's House and Bath Abbey (which is my favourite church in England). Then we'll get the train back into London to get our connection back home.
Saturday Thursday 28th July--REST Stay at home and visit, go for walk in park, perhaps. Will invite my friend Gail and her son over to meet Dad and DS.
Sunday 29th July--TBD
Monday 30th July--Return flight to USA!
I'm tired of thinking about this now and will go do something else for a while.
Have you ever heard of bourbon creams? They're one of several ubiquitous tea biscuits seen in the UK. I have an inordinate fondness for them (akin to my unaccountable love of Doritos). From an objective point of view, they are not very good. They don't taste of chocolate or anything much really, other than a bourbon biscuit. They are very crisp and have some sort of chemical-based goo in the middle (the so-called 'cream'). They are not a health food. In fact, they barely make it into the food category at all. And yet. Oh...and yet.
Yesterday I stopped into the Co-op on the way home to get some broccoli and a loaf of bread, and found myself in the biscuit aisle actively searching for bourbon creams. I had to really hunt for them, but found them at last on the bottom shelf with all the other 'common and unspecial' biscuits. (Rich tea, garibaldi, Nice, custard creams, and the like). Then lwhen I got home, I ate something like 7 of them. (But I did do Rodney Yee's Total Body Power Yoga first--man, that workout is killer). What brought that on? Answer arrived this morning. You guessed it--the bourbon attack was this month's PMT. (Well, it's better than yelling about the injustice of dust bunnies then crying because the tomatoes are sliced in the wrong direction! )
Anyway, when I got home tonight I ate the last 4 or 5 bourbons in the packet (I lost count) and did the Cardio Blast premix of Cathe's Low Max. I'm now cooling down and waiting for hubby to get home. I have no idea what I'm fixing for dinner. No wonder, considering I just ate 5 bourbon creams!
I called the passport service today. They haven't sent me any acknowledgement of receipt of my documents, but the girl told me that my passport was approved for printing and should be sent to me in 5-8 days. I'll give it a few weeks then! At least I know they got my stuff. Now I just have to wait to get it back.
Where is everybody? My friends are getting slack--no one seems to be blogging lately!
133.8 this morning! Repeated three times. Wonder why that happened??
Isn't it silly how good this makes you feel?
Nine and a half stone--for the day at least. Woo hoo!
Tonight it's Rodney Yee's Total Body Power Yoga. (Last night was Cathe's Body Fusion. I know that's an intermediate workout, but she mopped the floor with me anyway!)
Hope everyone is having a good week. Where is everybody, anyway?
Yoga's becoming more important to me lately. I started with the Firm Power Yoga, which is a mere series of ashtanga/power yoga poses treated as athletic stretches. The yoga names are not even mentioned.
From there I moved on to Budokon Beginning Practice, which is a brief series of sun salutations with a couple of warrior poses, then some punches and kicks and a 'standing meditation' (which he talks through).
Then I got Rodney Yee's Total Body Power Yoga. It, too, is ashtanga but a more soothing and peaceful presentation. Next came Rodney Yee's Yoga Burn. This one started something in me. In this workout, you do vinyasas very slowly, three times each. I found myself more able to concentrate on the breath and become more meditative during this workout.
Seeking to increase my flexibility, I bought Ravi & Ana's Ultimate Stretch Workout. I just bought it because of the name and boy was I surprised when this workout involved chants, mantras and even singing! Kundalini yoga is very unlike power yoga, but I found I enjoyed it, so I bought Kundalini for Beginners and Beyond. DH and I did that workout with our mats side by side on Sunday afternoon. That was lovely.
So, I've been reading a book by Kathy Phillips called The Spirit of Yoga.It a beautiful book. I also checked out BKS Iyengar's classic The Illustrated Light on Yoga and will read it as soon as I've finished the Phillips book. Then I'm going to see if I can find Vanda Scaravelli's Awakening the Spine. There's a photo of Vanda Saravelli in Spirit of Yoga doing a standing back bend at age 83 and she looks absolutely fantastic. Her body looks like a wave of the ocean. Remarkable. (The link I provided is not the photo in the book, but that's an elderly Scaravelli in a backbend pose, so you get the idea. Imagine her standing up, bending back with her shoulder blades about a foot from the backs of her own knees. Lord!)
When I first started, I didn't like it at all. I tend to be fairly inflexible and I have tight hamstrings. All the poses were a strain and my problems with wanting to be a perfectionist/hating to feel like a failure would really kick in during my yoga attempts. I guess that's why I steadily kept buying more workouts and trying them. I'm still stiff as a board and find lots of poses a challenge, but I'm learning to deal with that. One good thing I'm seeing in yoga is that it certainly helps to teach patience and grounding in the moment. I am only beginning to break the surface on this personal revelation about yoga.
I'm still not ready for classes. I know some enthusiasts will say I need a teacher, but I am not ready. I will continue a careful solitary practice at home for now. It's enough, and I'm not going to hurt myself.
I intend to do some research into the best way to fit daily yoga practice into my cross training rotation. Any thoughts?
Is there a name for it when you know someone doesn't like you, when they go out of their way to turn everything into an oblique (or even a direct) insult of you, they talk about you, make fun of you and in general show nothing but disrespect for you...but you find yourself bending over backward to try to be nice to this person? Even though every time you try you just get kicked in the teeth again? And even though you know this person is never going to change, you just can't seem to help trying to be friendly to this person, to give her one more shot at being a decent human being, only to have your feelings hurt again.
Oh yeah, I remember, I discovered the name for it years ago during my divorce. It's called being codependent, isn't it.
I have this toxic co-worker and she seems to take great joy in belittling, mocking and hurting me in front of others, in front of customers and even just one-to-one. I can't tell you how many times I've coached myself, 'You can't control the behaviour of others,' I tell myself, 'you can only control how you respond to their behaviour. Let them own the problem.' Which all sounds good, but turns into the wah-wah sound of the voice of Charlie Brown's teacher when it counts.
It's just all so petty and stupid. I can't even say that she feels threatened or jealous of other people. I think her arrogance is real and all-consuming. I don't think for a minute that she feels insecure and just lashes out to hurt people in self-defense. I have no doubt that she enjoys hurting her co-workers and that she has completely bought in to her own mythology. 'Why man, she doth bestride that narrow library like a colossus', with apologies to Shakespeare. If only we could all be as all-knowing, all-mighty, as chesty and own as many pairs of stillettos as she...
Okay so I'm bitter. I'm fed up. I need techniques to disengage emotionally, and don't need to be told to take it to my line manager. This is petty and personal crap too subtle for line managers, I think. Please help me before one of us gets hurt. And it ain't gonna be me, sistahs!
Can you believe it? It's raining again today. The sun came out briefly yesterday, but fat lot of good that did me since I was at WORK. On a SUNDAY! But never mind.
Weigh-in this morning was 134.8.
DH is away in Nottingham overnight for a training course, so it's me on my own tonight. Maybe I'll get an extra yoga workout in. Ha! By the time I get home tonight at 7.30 I'll probably be too knackered to do anything at all!
