Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!! I am thankful for so much, my family, my friends, my health, my car, my job, my dog, my religion.... I have a good life, and I am thankful for all the good things in my life!

Here We Go Again!

Okay, so as I reported before, I had finally gotten a handle on my desire to eat incessantly, and I was doing well... then the birthday hit, and it all went downhill from there. You know how it goes, you celebrate for a week, and you allow yourself to splurge, and it's bad but you don't care, because it's your birthday... ish. WELL, that is what I did, and I have not been under control since, so now I must begin again, now that all my previous hard work have been destroyed.

I actually started this week... kinda. I did it better, and I worked out 3 days in a row, but that's not gonna cut it with me, so I must continue to strive to do better. If you haven't noticed, my ticker changed at the top, I am once again counting down to another cruise, one that is a mere 4-ish months away. I MUST do better this time. I was SO uncomfortable in my own skin the last time I went, that I didn't enjoy the pool/hot tubs as I should have. I vow to be in control for the remaineder of the year, and into next year, despite the holidays. I must work out, I must eat well, and I must be prepared to enjoy my next cruise, better than I did the last.

So here goes nothing, I'm officially back on the wagon, cheer me on, I could use the support. :)

Okay, Okay, I'll Do It!

I'm a retched blogger, I have a hard time finding the time/desire to blog. BUT, here it is, many months later, and I STILL have not even finished telling me tales of the high seas! So, I will do so and try not to get to crazy with detail. :)

First Stop- Croatia

Standing by a cool alley & Pretending to eat a giant gelato cone.

We got off the ship and promptly got onto a boat that took us around the island to the "Old City". Once we got to the old city, we were given a quick tour and then head off on our own to see what there was. I saw a lovely orange tree, and some cool stuff to photograph... but all in all, Croatia was not that exciting. Don't get me wrong, it's very pretty, and I would visit again, but not during the cooler season, I'd go when it was warmer and hit their lovely beaches. :)

In front of one of many cool buildings in Croatia.

Second Stop- Turkey

In Turkey we went firt to the supposed final home of Mary, the mother of Christ. It was a very pretty area, surrounded by olive trees and it had a tiny little church in the middle of this area where Mary's home once stood. They used the remaining foundation of the former home to buy this church... kinda cool.

Cool Little church. The darker stone at the bottom is the original foundation.

All but one of us for a group photo.


Then we went over to Ephesus (the agent city you read about in the Bible). SO COOL! It was just so amazing to see all that was there and hear about the history. There was quite a large area that was saw and walked through, but our tour guid told us that it wasn't even half of the entire city, there was still a lot of excavating to do.

The group at Ephesus.

The picture at the top of the Turkey story was one I took of what was left of the outside of the library. There was also an are where the politicians met, it was a big stadium looking area, and of course, the theater, another, larger, stadium. The entire city is made of marble, and in the heat of the day, in order to keep cool, they would flood the street to cool things off. There were lots of large fountains all over that supplied the water. Our tour guid told us the story of one of Cleopatra's visits to Ephesus. That year there was a drought, and not enough water to keep the streets cool, but they had an over abundance of wine, so they filled the fountains with wine, and let it flood the streets. Cleopatra was in her room and could smell a sweet aroma coming through her window, so she went to look outside. When she looked out her window, Cleopatra saw the wine flowing down the street, turning the roads red and letting off the sweet smell. Cleopatra thought the wine was in honor of her, so she insisted that the same thing happen wherever she went... and that is where we get rolling out the red carpet. :)

After Ephesus we went to have lunch in an old train... thing... and then to a silk place, and a leather place... and then back to the ship.




Third Stop- Greece (Santorini)

First, we took a boat to shore... then go on another boat. :) We road the boat out to a volcano and hiked it, then went to some hot springs so people could take a swim... I chose not to get in, and I'm glad. We were only there a little while, and the wat er wasn't hot... it was luke warm, and smelled of rotten egs because of the volcano. :)

Then we went back to shore and headed up the mountain. There were two ways up, cable car, or donkey. We chose donkey. It was an interesting ride up. :) Then we grabbed some lunch as a Euro place, yummy, and took a bus to the other side of the island, where The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 was partially filmed.

I LOVED SANTORINI! I still dream I'm back there. It was goreous and the poeple were nice, and I could have stayed forever.

The blue roofs are churches, and they are EVERYWHERE! It's all blue and white there. If someone wants to use a different color, they have to pay a tax for it, because they are trying to keep with the original look.

Fourth Stop- Greece (Corfu)

Another GORGEOUS place. We went off on our own here, no tour groups. Well, us and Jenny's parents. They rented a car and we drove around. We took a boat tour round to some caves, and then we tried to find an olice press, and that was an experience. We asked the guy with the boat where to go, and he directed us, so we thought we were going the right way. We headed up a road that got more and more narrow as we went. Soon we were barely fitting between the buildings. Finally we got to a cross road and tried to turn around. This guy came up on his motorcycle and saw us doing a 1,000 point turn. This man parks his bike, takes off his helmet, lights a cigarette, and got comfortable for the silly American show he was about to watch. CLASSIC!

Finally we get turned around and ask our audiance where to go. He starts to tell us, then he stops and says "Follow me." in his Greek accent and he leads us out to the main road again and the tells us where to go from there. We go where he said to... we still weren't sure where to go, so we asked an old English lady walking her dog who told us to go back where we had just been... AGH! We gave up. So we went to the Archelian Palace, a huge mansion that a lady got as a gift... it was cool, I'd take that as a gift... why doesn' anyone gift me a massive house!?




And... I think I've now told you everything. :)

Funny Update

Last night I went to dinner with some friends, and the conversation led us to talk about the crazy Facebook guy... come to find out, 3 of the oer girls have had THE EXACT SAME THING HAPPEN! Same guy, same phrases verbatim. So funny. He's a crazy desperate fool. We however had a good laugh over it, so I wanted to share. :)

AGH!

I'm so bugged! Why is it a guy is okay with ANY reason you can give him for not being interested in him, unless it's religious differences. Really!! I could tell a guy I don't want to date him because he smells like rotten fish, and he'd bow out gracefully, but if I don't want to date him because we are on different religious pages, I'm a jerk and the scum of the earth! My goodness, even if he doesn't feel as strong as I do about marrying within my religion, he should want someone he thinks like, etc. You know!? GOSH! I really am bugged! I don't like guys liking me! It just ends up crappy. Guys, if you are smart, please stay away from me! I'm not interested in anyone, I never am, I never will be, make it easier on us both! I'm eternally single! Stupid, stupid boys!

An Exciting Update... Exciting To Me

First of all, this is my second blog today, so there is a new one below this as well.

Well, I haven't said much recently about my efforts to lose weight, so I'm doing so now.

Backing up a little, I gained a little on my cruise (reading the previous blog, you can see why), then I got sick the week after I got home, and threw up for about 24 hours, losing 5 lbs. After being sick, my apitite wasn't very big, but I soon messed that up, and went back to eating as I usually do. THAT, my friends, is my problem. I LOVE FOOD! I LOVE TO EAT! I do, I won't deny it, I won't. Despite working out, I don't change the way I eat THAT MUCH. I eat better when I'm on track, but I still eat a lot. Heathly or not, too much food is too much food.

I have really tried everything to get a handle on eating. I'm weak though. I've pondered not eating... but i love food... and bulemia is out, I hate throwing up, besides, I want to be healthy and have the weight stay off, and I want it to be someinthg that I can continue for life without having to greatly alter my life, cause then I'll fail, so eating disorderes and weird miracle pills and things were out.

SO, last Monday (June 29th), I decided I really need to get a handle on my food consumption or I was never going to lose weight and get back to 8 (or less). I had recently listened to a CD that was part of my ChaLean Extream workout package, and Chalene said something that stuck. She said that eating just 50 calories too many each day, will cause you to gain 10 lbs in a year. So I started to do some math, that means, 100 calories to many each day, and you'd gain 20 lbs in a year, and 150 calories too many each day, would cause you to gain 30 lbs in a year... 30 lbs, that's 2.5 lbs a month... if my body can't burn as many calories as I consume, I was going to put on weight.

Then I started to think about 150 calories... that's nothing! There are so many dinky little 100 cal snacks out there, and I personally could easily eat 2+ in a sitting. Even on the healthy end, one medium sized banana is 105 calories... and I can easily eat a banana. I started to realize what I'd been doing. I was eating relativly well, but I was not thinking about the quantity, just the quality. "I've had a healthy breakfast, a healthy luch, and 2 healthy snacks, I'm doing goo so far today." Than I'd go crazy with food at night when all my cravings would kick in, because I didn't think I was eating bad things.

So how much was I supposed to eat? I decided I would see what Chalene suggested I eat. She recommended to for a woman between 151-181 lbs (which I am), to eat no more than 1,400 calories a day to lose weight. Okay, I was going to do that. I had always poo-pooed calorie counting, thinking it was silly and a waste of time, but I was starting to FINALLY see the light, and it made sense.

Tuesday June 30th, today I would begin my efforts to eat less. First thing in the morning, use the bathroom, strip down, and weigh myself. 165 lbs :(

I was SO diligent! I made myself proud. I didn't eat more than I should, and I ate healthy. THAT was the ticket. I still had to eat healthy. If I wasted precious calories on nutritionless foods and crap that was high cal and not filling, I was going to suffer all day because I would have run out of calories, and I would still be hungry.

Wednesday July 1st. Wake, potty, strip, weight... 164. Cool! :) I kept this up pretty well all week, slipping up Thursday, I went over a little, but doing pretty good. The scale looked like this:

Tuesday June 30- 165
Wednesday July 1- 164
Thursday July 2- 163
Friday July 3- 162
Saturday July 4- 162
Sunday July 5- 160
Monday July 6- 160
Tuesday July 7- 158

Doing the math for you, that's 7 lbs, in 7 days. :) WAHOO!

And the great thing is, I'm not hungry. I'm not eating till I'm full, I'm eating till I'm satisfied, and if I'm really good and keep a good control on the number of calories I eat, I can reward myself with a little treat now and then (still keeping track of the calories) with out messing it all up. And it's easy! I just keep a running tally in my head, or if you are bad with that, write it down. Read labels, and both the internet and a lovely calorie counter book I got, help me know the calories in things without lables (produce, etc.).

I still get cravings, but I aware of how much I've eaten, so I know when it's okay to give in, and when it's not. Monday night I was sitting in my room. I had had most the calories that I could for the day, but I was having mad cravings. I wasn't hungry, I just had the munchies and wanted to eat things. So I thought about what little calories I had left for the day, and went and found a 60 calorie string cheese to eat, and then drank water to keep my mouth busy to bed time. As I was sitting there though, I thought about how before I made this goal to eat this way, I would have thought to myself, "I've eaten healthy today, I'll just go find something healthy to eat and I'll be fine." But not anymore. It's so great. One other thing too, I'm totally all about working out still, but I only worked out twice last week, and twice so far this week, due to time, but I'm still having success.

Oh, and I try to plan my meals a little bit beofre I eat, so that I don't eat all my calories before dinner and leave myself hungry, or with few options in the low, low range.

The scale read 158 still this morning, but as you see, I'm not worried, that's happened before. I'm going out to dinner tonight with friends from work, and I already know where we are going, so I kept my calories tight today, and I went online to look at the menu for the restaurant to see what was a good, healthy, low cal item I could order, and I was happy to find one I'm excited to order tonight, and only 320 calories (add that to what I've already had today, and I'm still 370 calories under my limit..

I tried an experiement while I was looking at the menu. I moved to the side of the menu with the names of the items, and didn't look at the calories. I went through the menu and looked to see what sounded good and what I would normally have picked. I found the item that I know I would have gone with in the past, and moved acorss the page to the calorie column... 1,340. YIKES!!! That's almost an entire days worth of calories for me, in one meal!

I never realized how much I used to eat, but now that I know, things are going well. I just wanted to update you, and give my recommendation to anyone looking for something that might work for them. Toodles!

The Journey Finally Continues

As I said, we all made it back to Venice in one piece. We made our way back to the hotel, and with shock and horror, watched as one after another other members of our "singles" cruise made their way into our hotel. Why the shock and horror? Well, we hadn't seen a person our age enter the hotel yet. People 20+ years older than us kept coming in. There was nothing to be done, we were there, they were old, but we could easily separate ourselves from them and still have a blast.

We once again decided to ventured out to find some dinner, and as we prepared to leave, we ran into one of the two people in charge of getting our cruise taken care of, and some other guy who was going on the cruise, one who was actually close to our age, so they accompanied us. We went to a little joint called Crazy Pizza, just around the corner from our hotel. Having tried the pizza in Rome, and not loving it, I went for a calzone. Sadly, the calzone was yet again, blah (as I was warned). I just have to say, while the Italians were for sure headed in the right direction on the food ideas, they fell short and missed the target a bit, so thank heaven the Americans had their way with it and made it what I've come to love today, yummy American Italian food. :)

Unfortunatly, there is a big problem in Italy whenever we ask to have the check split, so it all had to go on one card, and we each had to pay Kirsten back our part of the bill. In theory, this is fine, but things never work out that way. Somehow Kirsten was shorted a good deal of money, so we sat in the foyer of the hotel trying to figue out what happened. This lady in our group, who was considerably older than us, decides to come over and chat with us, which is fine, but we were all a little to preoccupied with what we were doing to really chat with her, and she got a bit offeneded, then when we got it worked out, we were ready for bed, so we started to leave, and one girl said she needed to go take a shower, so the lady was offended again, unintentionally... sorry lady, it was late, the kids needed to go to bed, go find some adults to play with.

The next monring, we went to eat breakfast in the restaurant, and the bus boy, Vincent, decided he would flirt with me. He was just silly, and when I was done I left, and he told my friend he thought I was pretty... silly boy. Then I returned later to the dining room to chat with some of my friends who ate after me, and our cruise pal from the night before came to chat, again, but by that point we were getting ready to leave and get ready to check out, and the same girl from the night before said she needed to go take a shower. "I thought you took one last night!?" Said this lady, a little put out. "I was going to, but I was too tired." Said my friend. A sour look crosses ladies face, as we bid her goodbye and leave the dining area. (Just a funny story I wanted to share, cause she was busy with the youngest kids on the cruise so far, and not people her own age.)




ANYWAY, so we get on the ship, and get settled, and then of course we have to go out and do our lovely muster drill before we can take off.





I decided, I'm going to tell you about life on the ship, and then I'll tell you about our ports. okay? okay! :)

First of all, we did end up having a large number of people our age in the group with us, so that was not so bad.

Well, We only had 2 days at sea, so we didn't sleep in much, because we usually had to be off the ship early for our excursions, and it was SO hard to wake up when your room is pitch black, prime for sleeping late.

Our first night on the ship, we all went and danced to night away... but we sure were tired in Croatia the next day. After that... pretty much, I went to bed soon after dinner (not that weird, dinner usually ended around 10:30 or later).

We ate a TON! We would wake up between 7 and 8 and eat breakfast, usually at the main buffet, then we would have lunch sometime, dinner at the buffet around 5, because we were STARVING, and then dinner again at 9 in the main dining room. :) Oh, and of course the main dinner was a three course meal, AND, there was a soft serve ice cream machine on the ship, and we had at least one cone a day... :) oink oink!


There was a mini golf course on the ship, and a rock wall, but we never did either, because they were on the top deck, at the back, and it was too windy to enjoy. I'm sad to report, I was in my swimming suit once the entire trip, for a short period of time, due to lack of swim time, and lack of desire to squeeze myself into a swimming suit that fit me 10 lbs earlier. But I still had fun. :)

9 pm dinner was probably the most fun on the ship. It may sound weird, but we were always laughing SO hard and just enjoying sitting at the table talking to each other and our waiters.





Viviana and her assistant george are in the picture with us above. LOVE THEM! Story time.

Viviana, so cute, so nice, loved her. The first night we went to dinner, we had all the wine glasses and such on out table, after that night, just water glasses. We found out the last night the Viviana was LDS too, and she was so excited to have us on the ship with her. Such a nice lady.

George, was super quiet! He spoke English pretty well, but he was self-conscious about it, and was embarrassed to talk too much in English. The, second night I believe it was, on the ship Heather asked for some hot cocoa at the end of our meal. We expected something like a cocoa mix poured into hot water, but no, it was warm milk and chocolate, made by hand by our dear George. The next night, Viviana asked Heather if she wanted cocoa again, and she said "yes please" and then she started to ask the rest of us, and we all kind of wanted to try it, so George just made a bunch and brought us all some. Well, after that, they never asked again... no, George would just disapear around the end of the meal, and return later with cocoa for us all. Super Awesome! We loved it. but then some people sarted to feel guilty that he was doing it, so one night Heather said we didn't need it, and his face just dropped. "Okay." he said, trying to hide his disappointment, but then we felt bad, and explained that we felt bad having him do it everynight. I turned to see the pitcher of cocoa sitting on the service cart, and passed the word that he had already made it. We told George we did want it, but we didn't want to put him out. George happily told us he didn't mind and poured us our cocoa with a smile. After that, we just got our cocoa like clock work every night, and never had to ask or be asked. Makes me smile. :)

When we left for our cruise the first day, I didn't have my camera up on the top deck with me, so I missed out on pictures, but swore I'd get them coming back into Venice when we returned. I almost forgot, but as I climbed out of bed that morning, I suddenly remembered, so I grabbed my camera and ran up to the pool deck. Much to my excitment, the sun was still rising, so I got some great shots. Here are a few, and I'll tell ya'll more later.