Time Flies!

I pop on to the blog frequently to take a look at the blogs I follow, sometimes with the intention of dropping a few lines of my own.  It doesn't happen.  Since today is not the best day to be outdoors I'll take some time for an update with the hope that it will light a fire under my butt to be a bit more regular about it.

How's the diet going?  Quite well, thank you.  I have been spending a lot of time in the kitchen playing with recipes and eating like crazy.  I'm super happy with the results and am actually in the process of revamping things slightly to up my caloric intake to maintain my weight or add to it with lean muscle.  I have never been and will never be one of those big guys as I am a hard gainer.

Between running, indoor cycling and changing my diet last year, I dropped about 15 pounds fairly quickly and leveled out to right about where I wanted to be.  This may be TMI, but I still had some fairly unsightly fat hanging on in my sides - typical for a male I guess -  and was resigned to the fact that it was there to stay.   No biggie given my age, I guess.  After I completely cut animal proteins and fats, as well as a majority of added vegetable oils sometime late last year,  it melted away.  My plan is to get on a more regular schedule of using our home gym set up as well as continuing the running with the hope of adding a little more weight onto my frame without the globs of visceral fat slapped onto my sides.  I'll be 43 this year, and I think I am doing ok.  The grays are settling in, but at least they aren't falling out.

We've had fairly crappy weather this winter.  Not too much precipitation, but a lot of cold and gray, which is going to continue into April.  I will admit that it has kept me from running as frequently.  I had missed about a full month including running class during February, and when I finally got back to class I was hampered by a sore hip and knee.  Pissed off, I took a run later that week and ran a 5k route in what I would consider a good race time for me.  It's amazing how the body recovers!  No more excuses.

My coach took this photo at our running group class on December 30th last year.  I was the only one to show up, so she had me run quarters on the track that day.  I could just make out the edge of the track (which I am standing on in this photo).  It was an invigorating workout.  Again, no more excuses.

We have lots of winter clean up and repair work to do once the weather levels out a little bit.  There are tons of small branches and sticks that need to be picked up before mowing season, we lost two sections of stockade fence during the blizzard.  I have a couple spare posts and I was able to repair the stockade pickets that were damaged, so that should be fairly easy.  Mrs and I have been concentrating our efforts inside the house trying to reduce clutter and really made a dent in the useless junk hidden in the kitchen cupboards and pantry on March 17th & 18th.  We spent a couple days taking everything out of the cupboards and pantry, and trashed everything we haven't used in years (and forgot was in there in some cases!).  Stuff that wasn't even good for donating.  In the pantry we found things that were very outdated.  We ended up with a lot of trash that amazingly enough the trash guys picked up curbside.  We also had a massive amount that went to recycling, probably the most we have ever put out.

In the end we have a very well organized kitchen and pantry.  We even created a coffee bar in the pantry which allowed us to get the coffee maker out of the kitchen, freeing up counter space and reducing the cluttered look.

 Pantry (also laundry) after much of the stuff on the shelves was removed.

 Wasted space corner in the pantry.  Next to this little fridge is where we keep the dog food bin and recycling.  Things collect here, so Mrs came up with the brilliant plan to make it a coffee bar.

 Pantry cleaned, organized and backfilled.  We put most of our dry goods in Mason jars (we have tons of unused jars in the basement) and then labeled them with our handy label maker.

Here is the finished coffee bar.  We kept the little fridge and dog food container.  On top of the dog food container, we used an old wooden box I had to keep the paper recycling in.  The 'counter' is made from a repurposed cabinet door from our old bathroom.  It's working out very well and gives the pantry the feeling that it is a room rather than a catch-all storage area.

I think that's enough for now.  I have a couple more updates to follow to include two rare ducks that have visited the Cape recently that I was able to get out to see and photograph.