Fiber Fool

I’m popping in super quick here to update anyone who might still be checking in from time to time.

DH received his doctoral degree in December. Much of this last year has been spent getting him through that final push and prepping for moving 1700 miles and downsizing from a house to an apartment of just under half the size. The photo above should give you a clue of our new home - the D.C. metro!

He started his job in April and I followed in late June. We are getting settled and I’m getting a feel for the area (DH spent the last two summers here so had a head start in addition to his earlier arrival). To say life has been unsettled is a bit of an understatement, but things are starting to edge towards our new normal.

I am looking for a new job here while still working remotely for my Fort Collins job. I’ll continue to be mostly absent for the time being given all the time and energy those tasks require. I’m going to be moving my site/blog to a different web host so they may completely disappear for a bit as I make that transition. Don’t be alarmed it will return! E-mails to my domain name addresses may also get lost in the shuffle. If you have my gmail address, please use that to contact me (I’m more connected to that one anyway). The knitting patterns of course will continue to be available via Ravelry with no interruption.

Before leaving Colorado I started a cooperative blog chronicling my journey of learning about Zentangle along with my friend, Cate. We took a massive number of classes on the subject in a very short period of time to cram in as much as we could while I was still there. The blog is called Sans Erasers. We’ve kind of neglected that one as well in recent weeks, sadly. I’m using Zentangle for stress relief and creative outlet while many of my other tools are inaccessible so I’ll likely pop up over there sooner than I will here. So in the meantime if you’re wanting to connect/reconnect please pop on over there and say hi!

Well, DH is safely out east. Amazingly, despite a nearly hour delay on the Denver train departure, he arrived at his destination on time. I haven’t gotten to talk to him yet, just a lot of texts going back and forth, but I think the living situation is much better than last summer, even if the location wasn’t quite what he wanted. Being without co-workers and living alone I’m going to have to work that much harder to find the gratitude.

How are you greeting the week with gratitude this week? This week I’m grateful for:

• 24 hour car rental so we could get DH to the train station. While we could have timed that a bit better so I could have made more use of having a car, I still managed to squeeze in a mega grocery trip, got the propane tank for the grill refilled, and started the process of finding new running shoes (my last pair appear to be causing more problems than wearing the old pair) all before returning it.
• I’m making semi-regular use of the new MAX line of the Fort Collins mass transit system. It was invaluable to dealing with the car rental. The South Transit Center was just a couple blocks from the car rental. I’ve also taken it to Target a couple times, the DMV, and Saturday’s Farmer’s Market. I’m loving how much it is being used here while it is free and I hope many decide to pay the fare to use it come late August. I only wish there were a good way to educate people on proper etiquette when riding a bus such as pausing to allow people to disembark before boarding, not pulling the cord for a stop unless you actually plan to get off, and when traveling in groups to sit together, not with seats in between each of you so other people have to stand.
• Having fuel for the grill again! I’m all ready for the week now that I grilled a whole chicken last night for dinner. I have left overs for sandwiches and power bowls (along with extra quinoa I cooked up) for dinners this week. I’m looking forward to baking in it again too. I suspect I’ll need to bake bread come the weekend.
• My personal trainer/water aerobics instructor at the gym. I used my birthday session on Friday and we expanded my strength training routine now that my shoulders/neck are improving a bit. I’m back to some free weight work! Yay! We also added some stuff to address my feet issues that have cropped up recently. I’m excited to jump in this afternoon on the new routine.
• The LiveWell Colorado Get Movin’ Challenge in the month of May was very successful for me. I killed it and wracked up almost 93 foot miles (just deliberate walking, I don’t have a tracker to measure steps or that so this was just to/from bus stops etc.)! I need a different goal for June though and not sure what to aim for. 100 foot miles? 100 bike miles? 200 people-powered miles divvied up however? 13 strength workouts (every M,W,F in June)? May did prove to me though that goals are necessary, even if I don’t have a race or special even coming up.
• DH’s officemates are great because they put up with me :-) I’ve been semi-regularly working at an empty desk in their office. Now I’m using DH’s desk. Admittedly the office has been relatively empty the couple times I’ve been in since spring term ended.

I missed last week! It was a whirlwind with DH giving his prelim (he passed and I’m sure it was my baked goodies that sealed the deal - ahem) and a day trip thanks to Amanda to pop my Trader Joe’s cherry. Why oh why did I not buy 6-8 jars of fig butter rather than 2? Now I have all these baked goods I want to use a full jar in, but I can’t get myself to break the seal of one, let alone use an entire jar in one recipe. *sigh*

MAX, Fort Collins’ new rapid transit bus line that spans the city north to south in about 20 minutes premiered on the 10th. Despite our aversion to crowds, DH and I went to check it out because we have been waiting so long for this (DH even did some ground work trying to get it to pass over 20 years ago, although in a different sort of configuration). We caught the 2nd northbound bus and were going to take it to Old Town, but they let too many people on. When we got to the next stop and the bus knelt down it couldn’t get back up so we got out and walked the rest of the way. We did ride it this last weekend to go from the University to the first Larimer County Farmer’s Market because I’m a bit gimpy right now. It worked great!

The Larimer County Farmer’s Market opened on Saturday! Squee! This is by far my favorite and there were a surprising number of vendors for so early in the season. There were lots of starter plants, cheese, coffee beans, hot sauce, emu oil, meats, baked goods, hardy greens and more.

Ice packs and kinesiology tape! I have no idea what happened, but I must have stepped funny on my foot sometime in the first 15 minutes of getting up on Tuesday. Tuesday’s workout seemed to work it out until late afternoon, but then it bothered me from then on. Then, on Saturday morning I put on some kinesiology tape to see if that might help. I was kind of skeptical, but I didn’t want to loose my momentum on the gym going. The first step I took was nearly pain free! I haven’t mapped out Saturday’s walking yet, but I’m pretty sure it exceeded 4 miles and yesterday I mowed all but the west side of the yard. I’m still icing a few times a day and taking ginger, but things are looking much better than Wednesday-Friday! Hopefully I’ll get to shop for new running shoes with my birthday money as my current ones have never been a good fit and are likely at the root of the current issue.

Then of course there are these goofballs! Who, of course thought I was a goofball sending them out into snow on Mother’s Day of all things. They frequently crack me up with their antics.

What gratitude are you greeting your week with?

Challenging yourself to improve your fitness level often comes with a side of muscle soreness. Whenever your body takes on new types of movement, higher intensities or more weight in strength training it is not uncommon to experience delayed onset muscle soreness, or DOMS.

Having suffered with chronic pain for over a decade before embarking on my fitness journey I have found several ways to dampen and deal with the effects of DOMS.

Read how I deal with muscle soreness at the Get Movin’ Challenege blog.

I also have a Pinterest board dedicated to muscle soreness treatments if you’d like to follow along as I discover stretches, warm-ups and nutrition to soothe soreness.

Also, I have a page on Facebook, Sustainably Active and Natural, where I share motivation and we can converse about various topics of active living. Please join me there!

How are you doing on the moving front? Have you moved for 30 minutes everyday? Are you getting bored?

I’m sticking to more or less the same routine for the moment - strength (focused on back/arms/shoulders) three days a week and water aerobics two opposite days, then any walking (and eventually biking I’m hoping, but the bike isn’t easily removed from the garage right now) to get to/from the office and gym and anywhere else I wish to go. It’s working though.

My stats for the past 6 days (because I haven’t gone to the gym for today’s strength work yet) is as follows:
Distance - 20.2 miles
Duration - 12 hours and 7 minutes
Calories Burned - 5,692 (averaging 948 calories a day)

While at times I still miss readily being able to just hop in the car and go run an errand or being able to bop around and not plan out all my activities so I leave and return home just once a day, one thing I am loving about my mostly foot-powered and bus-aided transportation is the ability to slow down and notice things. Yesterday as I was headed to the bus stop in the rain I stumbled upon this pair of mallard ducks on a lawn in the middle of our sub-division. I’ve been seeing a lot of mallards in the city’s water ways this spring, but the nearest one is probably close to 1/2 mile away from this lawn. But there they were, waddling around this suburban lawn together. If I were in a car I likely wouldn’t have even seen them and I certainly wouldn’t have been able to pause and appreciate their presence.

Have you found any benefits or surprises to being more active?