A Little Bit of That – Spring 2011

I told ya I’d be back! It’s been a good baseball Mother’s day so far. So far is because the Braves are still playing, but they are ahead by 2 in the 9th. Philly still gets their last at-bat! In the day games, the Reds, Red Sox and Tigers all won,


Still Losing

In the healthy diet world, I’m just a couple pounds away from another goal-gift. I have finally started to see the scale move in the right direction again. Stress is a nasty critter for causing plateaus and even weight gain! I tried a few new things, because weight-loss counselors will tell you to first, stick with your diet even when you’re under stress or on a plateau. Second, they’ll tell you to mix things up a little, swap lunch and breakfast foods or just try something new. SO I’ve tried some somethings new!


I tried Blue Diamond’s Almond Breeze, almond milk. Oh my, that stuff I SO GOOD It’s low in fat and only 60 calories for as one-cup serving. I also don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything so good on cereal. It adds a great nutty flavor. Now, almond milk isn’t as high in protein as regular fat free milk, but almond milk is very high in Vitamin E. My neurologist told me to double my daily vitamin E, double that if I can. So, I take my Vitamin E supplement twice a day and also add almond milk, especially at breakfast on Fiber Plus cinnamon or Special K Cinnamon Pecan cereal. I need to see how it tastes on Honey Nut Cheerios! I keep track of my protein and fiber intake every day and even with switching out some of my milk with almond milk, I’m still a decent amount over the recommended minimum. I want to try the dark chocolate almond milk for an occasional treat too. It’s double the calories of plain almond milk, but it’s still less than regular chocolate milk and chocolate and almond, yum!

I’ll be getting the opportunity to check out new things in the store again now. I’m sad to say Flying Grocery, the local grocery delivery service I’ve been using, has gone out of business. As a former small business owner in a rough economy myself, I totally understand. A delivery service with current gas prices has to be difficult to maintain. The weekend of Easter, David and I went to Meijer to get some groceries. I like going to Meijer because they have a wheelchair with a shopping basket. You know, if I can’t do the walking, I at least want to exercise my arms. Well, Easter weekend when we went someone else had the wheelchair and I used one of those scooters. While I really don’t like those things, they make me feel lazy, it’s still a viable way to get the groceries bought. Accepting this means that I can shop at Kroger and Giant Eagle too and I won’t hurt so bad I can barely get the groceries in the house. Still, I’m going to miss seeing Leslie, the owner at Flying Grocery, and I know for me, my business was my baby and I was sad to have to close my doors.



Qwirkle


Last weekend, David and I went to SEMMantics, the Mensa event in Farmington Hills, Michigan, that’s responsible for us meeting. If he hadn’t been giving a talk there, he wouldn’t have asked me to come see his multimedia show and give him some professional thoughts. That email inviting me to his program is how we found out we both like trains, baseball and cats.

This year, David placed fourth in the Texas Hold Em tournament. David’s wife finished third! I SO seldom ever finish better than him at poker, I was tickled pink! We also discovered a new game! We played Qwirkle, which is a matching colors and patterns game. It’s a fantastic and addicting game! We promised ourselves we’d buy it after we got home.

There was one problem with the idea of buying Qwirkle after we got home. Why would we want another one? We bought ourselves a new game before Christmas that looked like fun, but since it was Christmastime, we put it away with the other games and well, forgot it was there. I was looking up Qwirkle to get an idea of the cost after we’d gotten home and then glanced over at our games shelves and there it was, still in its shrink wrap, the game we’d fallen in love with during the weekend. We’ve played a game of Qwirkle almost every night since discovering we already had it! Generally the games are kinda close, but I’ve only won twice. So, I need to practice! :)


Okay, time to wrap up today’s this and that. The Braves won that game while I was writing, YAY! All of my teams won today. It truly was a good baseball day!