ning | Keeping up with Kate

My new magic number – 0.7

Posted on August 10, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

Back on May 6th, I posted my post called 20 – it was a milestone for me – but I think I was a bit premature – guess I had the original number in my head a bit higher. Anyway if you will recall from that post – my next number in my head that I wanted to hit was 6 – well now it is 0.7. What is the meaning of that number? I’ll tell you at the end.

This past Thursday was a busy appointment day – Nutritionist and Sports Medicine Doctor for an injury (turns out it is my IT band – lots of stretches and I go back in 2 weeks).

I went to see my nutritionist to see what progress I had made since the end of June (and prior to vacation). I’m a bit neurotic and weigh myself everyday (I know I shouldn’t – but it does keep me a little bit more accountable as my body seems to be super sensitive to foods and causing me to fluctuate) but the last time I was in my scale was off by 2 or 3 pounds so I wasn’t sure what to expect. On top of that I was on vacation for 2 weeks – where I did exercise – yoga and pilates at least 3 days a week but I also ate foods I wanted (including Blueberry pie and cobbler) and of course adult beverages – all within reason though (I actually didn’t gain weight on vacation – I checked!). It has been a bit more challenging since I’ve been back with work travel and other appointments – so it has been more like 2 times per week I’m getting to yoga primarily. Pilates just hasn’t been convenient – oh and I had a bit of work travel mixed in. If you notice – no Hardbody workouts – and this has been due to a nagging injury that started before vacation my knee and moved to my thigh while on vacation (see above – IT Band). So what happened at the appointment? I lost 3 pounds!!!! And here is the interesting thing – I completely changed up what I was doing exercise wise. I was speaking to my trainer about it yesterday and she reminded me that she reminds us all the time it is good to change things up as our muscles get used to the same routine. (I’m hoping this helps a blogger friend of mine who is thinking of changing her routine after her half marathon training ) 🙂

So what is the meaning of the 0.7 – that is how much I need to lose to get to that magic number in my head! It is one of the many milestones I have in my head before I reach my final goal! Stay tuned for updates – I won’t post on this until September when I go back for my nutritionist appointment – makes it more official!

Happy Saturday!!

Just got my UP

Posted on August 8, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

Just got my UP by Jawbone in the mail today. I’m so excited!! I can get an employee discount and the black medium has been on backorder forever. I was able to order a grey medium (close enough to go with everything) on Saturday – Wahoo!

What is the UP? It is gadget you wear on your wrist and it tracks your steps and sleep. You put in your vitals – sex, age, height and weight – and it monitors your steps and sleep. You can also add food and water intake. Over time it provides insight about you day to day activities.

I’ve already set my goal of 10,000 steps per day (a big challenge for me), 7.5 hours of sleep (I can’t wait to compare this to my sleep cycle app) per night and the notice every 30 minutes I’m not moving to get up and move around.

I’ll keep you posted. I’m off to bed so I can get my 7.5 hours of sleep in the first night! 🙂

My Week in Pictures

Posted on August 4, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

I ha a very busy week. Thought I’d share some photos of my adventures.

My week started with a flight to my company’s corporate headquarters in Overland Park, KS. One of the highlights of our meeting was a tour of our Executive Briefing Center. Thought I’d brag on a couple of our awards – 🙂

Emmy Award

JD Power & Associate’s Awards

Wednesday morning I headed into NYC for a meeting at The Empire State Building. I have a friend who I haven’t seen in ages who works in The Empire State Building – had a chance to catch up with her. Before we went out, I had a chance to take a look at her view – AWESOME!!! (and this picture just doesn’t do it justice)

View of Lower Manhattan from the 65th floor of The Empire State Building.

We headed off to CASK Bar and Kitchen to catch-up. It was a great place – very cool on the inside and great food offerings – small plates – great place to share. Oh and pretty darn good adult beverages!!

View of the Menu

Yummy Adult Beverages!

Love the inside of Cask!

No pictures on Thursday – it was a rainy day in NJ.

Friday brought a vacation day with beautiful weather! I was off to Sea Bright, NJ with some friends to celebrate a birthday. We had a great time on the beach, a fabulous lunch at Woody’s and some adult beverages at The Mad Hatter – where I took the picture of Sea Bright Rising!

Yummy Fish Tacos from Woody’s in Sea Bright!

Sea Bright Rising – this says it all!

Yesterday, I was off to see a dear college friend and her family in Sea Girt. The weather wasn’t great but we had a nice visit. Today we had a beautiful day at the beach!

Sea Girt, NJ – Beautiful!!

Have a great week!

Yoga – More than body, mind & soul…

Posted on July 27, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

Last night, I went out with the girls to New Brunswick – the home of the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers (note their bars don’t even compare to State College 🙂 ).

My adult beverage of choice is Stoli Orange Vodka and Club Soda (because of the low sugar content and you can make one last forever!) – and I also drink lots of water when I’m out. We had dinner and made one more stop. It was actually pretty cool bar – and I felt like a beer (and water of course). I’ve been staying away from beer due to the sugar in it. And of course I picked a brew that was a sweet wheat beer. It was delicious – sort of like a dessert.

Low and behold this morning, I have a screaming headache. I really didn’t want to take anything for it – was hoping a cold compress would help – it didn’t. I then tried coffee – no help either. Saturday is a Yoga day for me and I had pretty much decided I wasn’t going to go. But finally some common sense hit me and I decided to go to YOGA. Best decision all day! It helped energize me and get rid of the annoying beer – sugar headache! No more sweet, wheat beers for me! 🙂

An Old App becomes a FAV

Posted on July 22, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

I rediscovered an app I’ve had on my phone for quite awhile on vacation due to my Mom and Aunt having the app on their i-Phones. Can you guess what app it was???

It was PANDORA!! I have a great waterproof, wireless speaker that I wanted to use and my Aunt wanted to listen to her tunes from her iPhone. Although we think one of her granddaughter’s added some other favs onto her stations – so then we used my Mom’s phone for her stations. It was great listening to some oldies but goodies while on vacation. We had fun trying to figure out who was singing some of the songs. And I’m happy to report that I did pretty good with some of the oldies!

They didn’t completely show me up either – I was able to add new stations for them quickly and had to turn off the blue tooth so they could answer the phone – phew – thought I was going to have to retire as the family techno guru!

The only station I had on my Pandora was U2. Now I have a great mixture of music (some nice influences from my Mom and Aunt)- great for vacation and in the car. Here are the stations I have now:

Summer Hits of the 90s Radio
Summer Oldies Radio
Abba
O.A.R.
Justin Timberlake Radio (I really like the newly invented JT)
Michael Buble
Maroon 5
Madonna
Mumford and Sons
Bruce Springsteen
Bon Jovi
Tony Bennett
Frank Sinatra
U2

I’m sure I’ll add more when I get a chance. Are there any apps that you’ve re-discovered or new ones that you just love? Please share!

A gentle reminder…

Posted on July 21, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

It was a great weekend spending time with friends – hanging by the pool and grilling. However, when I got home I had a nice, gentle reminder that not only do I need to wear sunscreen but I need to use bug spray! I found a tick crawling on the underside of my arm!!

For those who don’t know (or recall), I was diagnosed (tested positive) with Lyme Disease back in November 2012. I completed my antibiotic treatment and finally felt back to normal this spring.

In the spring and June (before vacation), I was vigilant with my bug spray. I think I was spoiled down at the beach for two weeks – no trees – no high grass.

Today was a gentle reminder that Lyme Disease is all about prevention! I need to wear bug repellant (I’m trying to find a good combo sunscreen / repellent) when I’m out and about at any pool – friend’s, family or a complex. I’m sure I didn’t get bit as the tick was crawling around and it pretty darn flat – so I caught him or her before I became dinner. He is still crawling around in a zip locked baggie. 🙂 By the looks of it – it isn’t a deer tick, but still freaked me completely out. Now I’m off to Amazon to find a bug repellent / sunscreen I can use!

The creepy crawly tick – BAGGED!

I’m Back…

Posted on July 17, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

I’m back from my 2 week summer vacation. One of the perks of being with a company for 20 years – I have lots of vacation. I’m a big fan of the 2 week vacation. I highly recommend it!

A one week vacation you are just getting into the groove of everything and it is time to go home. My Mom and I both mentioned that on our Anna Maria Island over Spring Break – we were just figuring out where to go and what to do and it was time to go home.

I’ve done the two weeks in a row and the two weeks in the same month – both are good. But I’m partial to the 2 weeks in a row. For the past 3 summers my Mom and I have been renting a house in Ocean City, NJ (OCNJ) on the odd side of Asbury Avenue. If you don’t have beach from on Central – the odd side of Asbury is the next best thing – a quick walk back and forth from the beach!

We had a great time (as always) – weather could’ve been a little better and the ocean could’ve been a lot warmer. The water was 55 degrees due to what they call upwelling – current/wind from the SW moving the warm water out into the ocean replacing with colder water from the bottom (see you even learned something while reading this blog today). That current is gone now so it is much warmer now so those down this week can get in the ocean to get out of this crazy heatwave.

I have lots of things I plan on sharing about my vacation – just need to get my act together!

Stay cool!

Still a Kid at Heart

Posted on June 23, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

Since 2009 (I’m pretty sure that is when we started), my niece and I have been going to my church carnival. It is something we both look forward to every year. I don’t know which one of us gets more excited?!

We’ve had rain and storms (the first year we had to cut the rides short due to a T-storm – thank goodness we were in walking distance to a Friendly’s). This year the weather was perfect.

We have a set routine – face painting is our first stop. This year’s choice was a heart on one side and a whale on another. Then off to the rides. I love rides (I still remember when the SuperDooperLooper was the scariest ride out there!)! Our first ride this year was the Scrambler (when I was my niece’s age I found $5 at my grandparent’s church carnival – no such luck this year – I think we were the first ones on the ride). The next ride was the Tornado – it is a flying ride and you turn so your car spins. I will tell you it is the first time I’ve ever thought sick on a ride – ugh – a sign of getting old – hopefully maybe just a one time thing I hope. I hit a total of 5 rides (and luckily the Tornado was the only one with an issue – whew)!

Off to get some carnival food – we were pretty basic – burger and fries. While eating we got to watch the dunk tank – we even took some shots at it. I’ve completely lost my ability to throw a softball – quite embarassing since I played for probably 10 years (need to work on that)! Neither one of us knock him in. But it was fun.

It is interesting to see how my nieces interests have changed – she wanted to try out a game this year. She did really well – she didn’t win – but what annoyed me a bit is these were teen games and there were parents winning for their toddler kids (and there are games for the younger kids). My niece didn’t seem to mind – it was me who minded. She is a much better sport than me!

We both LOVE ice cream so we were off to get our annual softserve cone – we keep it simple – vanilla softserve – YUM!

We had time for one more ride – we usually ride the Pirate Ship or the Swings (and they have two swings) – to my surprise the pick was the bumper cars. It was fun – and I had an excellent driver – I was very impressed.

View of bumper cars – waiting in line.

I just love the fond memories this brings back to me growing up and going to my grandparent’s church carnival and the Holy Spirit Street Fair. I love that I’m creating great memories (I hope) for my niece! I cherish this time and hope we keep this annual tradition going for a very long time!

Love this shot – we never made it on the double swing.

A little something sweet…

Posted on June 18, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

I love dessert. There are times where I’d rather skip dinner and go right to dessert. I know I’ve had ice cream for dinner at least once or twice (especially Creamery Ice Cream) in my life. 🙂

I wanted something sweet after dinner tonight and I went for a South Beach (probably the only recipe from that diet I remember) staple, Ricotta Creme. I love chocolate so of course mine has chocolate in it.

Here is my version:

1/4 cup of ricotta cheese
5 drops of liquid stevia
capful of vanilla extract
Ghiradelli choc chips – to taste
Pecans – to taste

A bit of a ‘turtle’ type dessert minus the caramel. It really hit the spot!

“Elaine Salad”

Posted on June 16, 2013 by keepingupwithkate91

I had planned on grilling two filet mignons tonight – one for dinner and one for leftovers later this week. The filets weren’t quite thawed and honestly I just wasn’t feeling it tonight.

I knew I wanted an Elaine Salad – aka a big salad – ‘its a salad, only bigger – with lots of stuff’ (although I’m not sure mine would be considered it lots of stuff – but it had enough). I also had some fresh lettuce – picked from my neighbor’s garden yesterday. So off to the fridge to see what protein I had and low and behold I had some Halloumi Cheese (purchased from Wegman’s). This is cheese you can GRILL – yes I said GRILL.

Here is a view of it first on the grill:

Halloumi just placed on the grill (~300 degrees)

You want it to get grill marks and you want it to look a bit like chicken when your grill it. Something like this:

Halloumi Cheese with grill marks – looks a bit like chicken.

The rest of my salad included: fresh lettuce, organic cranberries, pistachios and roasted peppers. I also made homemade dressing – fig balsamic vinegar, EVOO, Dijon Mustard, Mediterranean oregano, fresh ground pepper and fresh ground himalyan pink salt. I shook it up in a cruet (it has a line for vinegar, water and oil – I ignored the water line and just filled the vinegar up to the water line). Making fresh, homemade dressing for you salad is so easy and good for you since you decide what goes in it.

Here is the final picture of the salad (note I did leave the cheese on a little longer – I burnt the one side – still very tasty). The salad my not look like an Elaine Salad – it was – that salad was in a big salad bowl!

Yummy Halloumi Salad