A Little Monday Catch-Up

One thing about being out of town for three weeks is that there’s always lots to do when you come home.  I’ve been moving nearly non-stop since getting in late Saturday night – laundry to do, a giant stack of mail to go through with lots of bills to pay… I made a to-do list yesterday and have been checking things off left and right.  It hasn’t all been hustle and bustle – yesterday I went out to the suburbs to have a lovely belated-Christmas dinner with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, and I’ve made time to exercise both yesterday and today.  What I really want to do, though, is to sit back and catch up with the three weeks of stuff on my TiVo.  Oh, don’t you worry – it will happen.  I will make it happen.

Anyway – there’s been a few things I wanted to blog about that I haven’t gotten around to yet, so here we go!

1) Farmer’s Market: Yesterday I went to the Beverly Hills Farmers’ Market for the first time in a few months.  It was cold and drizzly, but the market happens rain or shine, year-round.  Maybe it’s because it’s winter, or maybe because it was just after the holidays, but a lot of vendors weren’t there, including a couple of my favorites.  I still managed to clean up nicely:

Here’s what I bought:

• 1 bag arugula  – $3
• 1 bag mixed greens – $3
• 1 bag shittake mushrooms – $2
• 1 bunch Maui scallions – $1.50
• 1 bag sprouted mung beans and wheatberries; 1 bag pea greens  – together, they cost $4
• 3 Japanese pink tomatoes and 5 Persian cucumbers – together, they cost $4.50
• 2 heirloom tomatoes – $2
• 3 valencia oranges – $1
• 6 satsuma tangerines  – $1.75
• Grand Total: $22.75

 

Everything but the last three items got tossed in a big salad that I took to my aunt and uncle’s place, but in the aforementioned hustle and bustle, I didn’t take any pictures.  You’ll have to take my word for it: it was good, and got rave reviews from all around the table.

2) Satsuma Tangerines: I wanted to continue my tradition of trying new types of produce (recent examples: buddha’s hand and seckel pear), and while I was at the farmers’ market, I realized I had never tried a satsuma before, so I went ahead and bought 6 (they’re little).  I ate two later that day.  If you’ve never seen them before, take a look:

They’re easy to peel with your fingers, break apart easily into segments, and if I didn’t know differently, I’d just assume it was a clementine, because it looks and tastes just like one.  Delicious!  Clementines have long been a favorite citrus fruit of mine, and now I’ll add satsumas to the list.

3) Uh-Oh: Look what’s moving in right next door to my gym:

Literally right next door – they share the same parking lot.  I have mixed feelings about this.  On the plus side, it makes it really easy to swing by and grab a bottle of water before a workout, but on the con side, 7-11 and I haven’t traditionally had a healthy relationship, because I like junk food, and that’s pretty much all they sell.  In my last apartment, I was a few blocks from a 7-11, and I can remember lots and lots of late-night runs where I would pick up a pint of ice cream and a big bag of chips, and I’d go home and eat it all within minutes.  I’m a different person now, and have been managing temptations much, much better in the past year, but this is temptation setting up shop mere steps away from my gym, where I go multiple times a week.  And it’s not like there’s a shortages of 7-11s in the area: the gym is 3.5 miles from my home, and on the way, I pass two 7-11s.  If I take a slightly different route, I can pass two other 7-11s.  Please, 7-11, take your Cheetos and your Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and leave me be!

4) 2010 Exercise Report: On July 8, 2010, I decided I would start keeping track of which days I worked out.  It devised a simple system – every day that I exercised, I would mark a little circle on that day in my planner.  For days I took a class at Slimmons, I marked a slightly different circle, and days that I took a class somewhere besides Slimmons got a third slightly different mark.  Last night, now that the year is over, I went back and tallied up some statistics:

• In July, I worked out 20/24 days (83%), including 11 Slimmons classes.
• In August, I worked out 25/31 days (80%), including 4 Slimmons classes and 3 other classes.
• In September, I worked out 24/30 days (80%), including 4 Slimmons classes and 6 other classes.
• In October, I worked out 17/31 days (55% – low because of a time-consuming job), including 3 Slimmons classes and 2 other classes.
• In November, I worked out 25/30 days (83%), including 3 Slimmons classes and 3 other classes.
• In December, I worked out 24/31 days (77%), including 4 Slimmons classes and 2 other classes.

In total, I worked out 135 out of 177 DAYS – a 76% exercise success rate! This includes 29 classes at Slimmons and 16 other classes (mostly Latin Jam, with some spin, step, and a couple others thrown in there).

Keep it up, David!