And then there was light...

So yeah. The snowstorm that swept across Ohio? (and most of the northeast for that matter) Left us with no power for most of the weekend. It sucked. I'm officially SICK of being cold.

There are still people in our area with no power and some may not have it restored until later this week. I feel bad for them.

We are fortunate, though, because my parents live right next door to us and my dad has this big ass generater that he hooked up to his house. So, while we weren't running on all cylinders, we at least had somewhere to go with heat and running water.

My dad has an older generator that he was planning on hooking up to our house but, while it would start and run, it wouldn't produce any power. We were starting to get worried that our pipes were going to freeze.

Fortunately, though, our power came on yesterday around 10:00 - almost exactely (haha oxymoron) 24 hours from when it went off. Talk about relief! I was jumping up and down cheering!

But by that point, the whole weekend was pretty much a waste...


In the workout department, I was a total slug last week. I did however, manage to do another HIIT workout Friday morning with my running buddy. We did the "Kelsa" workout that we did the previous Friday and it went really well. I was glad I drug myself into the gym.

I was going to run 5 miles on my treadmill on Saturday to prepare for my training that begins this week, but that got screwed up. I'm not even going to talk about how bad my eating was this weekend.

Nevertheless, I'm back on track today, went to the gym and did my Push workout. I'm not near as tired as I was last week. Yay!

2 sets of 12

Superset 1
a. Dumbbell Bench Press 20lbs/20lbs
b. Modified Push-ups 12 reps/12 reps

Superset 2
a. Dumbbell Shoulder Press 15/15
b. Tricep Extensions 20/20 (held single weight with both hands)

Superset 3
a. Max rep bench pushups 10
b. Max rep bench dips 32

This week begins my half marathon training. As a result, I will not be doing any cardio on my strength training days. Once I get done with my post, I will update my workout schedule.

By some miracle of God my push ups are slowly getting a little easier - although that second set of 12 is always rough. I am still doing them on my knees, too.

The shoulder presses are particularly difficult for me to do. I've been doing them sitting down, I'm wondering if I should be standing...

Also, last Monday I was only able to do 7 bench pushups and this week I did 10!! Yeah!!

I think next Monday I'm going to do my max rep tricep dips as real tricep dips - no assistance, no bench. I'm kinda excited to see my improvement as I get stronger. I SOOOO want tricep definition. I've never had it - I've always had flabby arms underneath. Yuck!

So I ventured into our local health food store. It's called "Nutrition Corner" and its conveniently located... you guessed it! On a corner!! I must say that I was completely wrong about that place. They had all of the crazy foods you can't find in the stores and even a few coolers with refrigerated and frozen stuff. I was pleasantly surprised! I'll definitely be hitting that place up in the future for my hard to find cooking/baking ingredients. The only down fall is that a lot of their stuff is pretty pricey but I kinda expected that.

I also went to the library on Friday. I gave back the psycho lady vegan book and got some new cook books that use normal and attainable ingredients. Things are looking much better.

I've got my vegetarian (and pretty darn close to vegan) meal plan all mapped out for this week. If I think of it tonight (and have time) I just might post it to see what you guys think. I made some vegan almond biscotti yesterday and it actually turned out!! I took some up to my mom last night when we went (back) to my parents' house to watch the super bowl. (I'm totally bummed the Colts didn't win. Peyton is my fav!! I'm not losing sleep over it though. Acually, I slept quite well last night. Like a log, even.) Anyhow, I brought two pieces in today to have with my rooibus (thanks Kristen!!) tea that I have planned for this afternoon.

Well, as you can tell, all of the bosses are out of the office at the moment which gave me a nice opportunity to get a pretty hefty post in for today. Had to make up for this weekend. Holy cow, I just looked back and I hadn't posted since Wednesday! I didn't realize I was slacking THAT bad! Geesh!!

Oh, and seeing as how there wasn't any power, we all had to find a way to entertain ourselves so I did some sled riding and snowboarding with my mom, bro and his friend. (Jason was a party pooper and slept on the couch the whole time). The sled riding was fun (we even got my parent's dog to hop on with us a few times) but I SUCK at snowboarding. I'm hurting from it. Not cool. Oh well, we had fun! :)

Hope everyone had a good weekend, with or without power!

Until next time...

-Lacey