working out for Disney

[HouCuseChickie]

I looked up virtual runDisney and all the races are sold out. I figured I could walk a race. I'm not fussed about my time. Ah, well, maybe next year. I love the ticket book medal, it's really cute.

That cork board is really fun. That's a nice touch for the office.

The challenge still had openings yesterday, but I now see everything is sold out. My legs and feet have not been happy lately, so I may be doing a lot of walking as well. Just trying to keep myself moving. I put in close to 5 miles of run/walk yesterday and my body was so mad at me.

I was amazed at how many Disney fans needed an explanation of the ticket booklet. I had a different vision in my mind for the challenge medal, but what they went with is still cute.

Thanks! I spend so much time in here that I really needed to add in happy personal touches.

 

[Songbird76]

Thanks. Her children are adults. I am friends with her daughter and became friends with her mom over time. My friend lived in AZ and her daughter lives in MN and won't get on a plane in the best of circumstances. As soon as she found out her mom was going into hospice, she got in her car and went, but she didn't make it to AZ in time. I don't think there will be a funeral. Losing a parent is awful, but this virus has made things 1000x worse. You can't even say good bye or have a service for your loved one.

Has anyone you've been training gotten ill? Is it possible you daughter had been incubating something she caught from a classmate? This is such a nasty virus. There was an article in The Washington Post that featured people who survived this, but have kidney failure and liver damage. I read a couple of weeks ago, a very small subset of people have cognitive impairment and dementia-like symptoms after recovering. I feel like this is not being addressed when politicians talk about easing up the quarantines and it concerns me.

Oh how sad that she didn't make it in time!

I have no idea if anyone has gotten sick. We have hundreds of people who work there, and some only come once or twice and then you never see them again, or if they are working different shifts, it could be months before you see them. There are people I haven't seen for so long, I wasn't sure they even still worked there. So I could have trained someone and then they get sick and I'd never know because I don't see them for 6 months.
I don't think my daughter could have caught it from anyone else...they've been doing remote learning for over a month now and she got sick when we were already isolating for a couple of weeks. If she didn't get it from me, it had to be from the one time she went to the grocery store with me in that 2 week period. She hasn't been out of the house since that one grocery store trip, which was about a week or so before she got sick. So I think it HAS to have been me.

I hadn't heard about all the residual effects! My BIL got Strep when he was around 10 and it damaged his kidneys. He had a transplant about 15 years ago, but his kidney function is low...like 35%. Just before all the Corona madness, he got pneumonia and his kidney function went down to 20%. If he gets to 15, he has to do dialysis again like before the transplant. He got out of the hospital in late February....his birthday was on Feb 16th and we couldn't celebrate with him because he was so sick. We planned to celebrate as soon as he was out of the hospital. Then Corona hit, and we didn't dare go visit in case we brought him more germs. Then they shut everything down and we aren't allowed to visit anyway. But his kidneys are already shot....I'd hate to see what happened if he caught Corona!

 

[Songbird76]

I was inspired by all of the people putting up Christmas lights, but I just could't convince myself to go that route. So, patriotic seemed like the best option. If we are still shut down by July (Gosh, I really hope we're not), I will probably throw in a Christmas in July theme. I'll keep the patriotic lights, but add in a couple of the Christmas inflatables...like Santa and the big tree.

We're doing the house pub crawl tonight. I tried to pick things that covered a lot of what we already have, but I treated my husband to a new bottle of single malt scotch for the dining room stop. I don't drink scotch, so I got a small bottle of wine for me. Not that I'm a wine drinker either, but I'll take sparkling rose over scotch any day.

The cakes should be interesting. The kids baked yesterday. The older one's turned out OK, but the younger one decided not to use her lifelines during the second half of the process and she wound up only putting in 1/3 of the flour called for in the recipe. This is what we've got so far...

Can you tell which one failed the baking stage? LOL It's all good. The older one failed the mixer speed/splatter shield portion, which is funny since she was afraid her cakes wouldn't bake up without all of this flour that she's now wearing.

I've also learned that we need to do some egg lessons. These kids are so clueless with cracking eggs. OK...maybe some logic lessons as well! The older one had a panic attack because she didn't know if she should do all of her mixing in the cake pans.

Well, they get an A for trying to do something nice anyway. I've enlisted my kids to help with baking since they were little little, and my MIL used to have them help with cooking, too, so they are both pretty good in the kitchen. My son is lacking motor skills, so cracking eggs is really really hard for him still, and he's a bit awkward with stirring. But my daughter's chore is helping me in the kitchen with the cooking. She's getting really good at it. A little practice and I'm sure your girls will be aces! They are around my kids' ages, right? My daughter turns 14 next month and my son turned 12 in December. I was thinking your girls are maybe a year younger than my kids?

Here's what DD and I did today:

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Well, they get an A for trying to do something nice anyway. I've enlisted my kids to help with baking since they were little little, and my MIL used to have them help with cooking, too, so they are both pretty good in the kitchen. My son is lacking motor skills, so cracking eggs is really really hard for him still, and he's a bit awkward with stirring. But my daughter's chore is helping me in the kitchen with the cooking. She's getting really good at it. A little practice and I'm sure your girls will be aces! They are around my kids' ages, right? My daughter turns 14 next month and my son turned 12 in December. I was thinking your girls are maybe a year younger than my kids?

Here's what DD and I did today:
View attachment 464502

That pie is beautiful!!! My older one will turn 14 in August and the younger one will be 12 in November, so they are right around the same ages. I'm pretty sure I could crack an egg by the time I was the older one's age, but not sure about the younger one. A lot of this is a symptom of me taking care of a bit too much. They at least now have an appreciation for the work that goes into their birthday cakes.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

I haven't done a ton today, aside from tidying up my office and doing some dishes, but I'm wiped out from yesterday. I had to log into work for a couple of hours to do some testing. We have a bunch of products merging and I needed to validate things for our group. After that, I went out for 5 miles. My legs and feet were still pretty uncomfortable, but after the first couple of miles, I decided to try something other than my usual intervals or straight walking. I ran point to point goals. For example, there is this wicked hill right near the lake that can make me out of breath even at a walking pace. I pushed myself to run the full hill yesterday without stopping. I did similar things along park areas, certain water features, etc. After that, I went into birthday mode for my husband.

The kids finished decorating the cakes. I haven't uploaded any of the videos yet, but here are a few from decorating and finished products (pardon the major mess on the counter). Side note...I've heard all of the issues with getting flour, but powdered sugar was my tough to find item.

The older one won. I have a feeling I would have liked the younger one's near flourless cake a bit better, but the older one had a better presentation and my husband said hers was more cake-like. And in case you were wondering...the one is dirt and a hail storm softball while the other is dirt and rain softball. That hail storm also broke one of her brackets for her braces, so now I have to see if the ortho needs to work her in this week. I wasn't planning on going in until next month. Ugh! She knows better than to eat the hard candies!

We had a nice take-out dinner from a local Italian place we've been meaning to try and watched Rise of Skywalker before the kids went to bed. The home bar crawl was a lot of fun.

We started out with vodka soaked gummi bears in that area where the kids were decorating cakes, since there's usually candy over there.

Next, we went into the game room. Most of the game inspired drinks involved me having to buy more than I wanted to buy, so I went with something covering things we already have. It's called a Super Mario 1Up. It's Midori and Malibu...and my husband's expression says it all!

Oh yea, he decided we needed to be in hats for this.

We then moved on to the formal dining room. He had single malt scotch, while I had some sparkling wine.

Then it was on to the diner for rum spiked Coke floats.

We hit up the tiki bar for the 5th leg of this crawl for some rum punch. It had pineapple juice, passion fruit juice, grenadine, and some cherries.

Had to pose with a tiki in the shot!

Finally, it was the last stop, which was our sports bar. Our family room area is where most of our sports watching takes place and game 7 of the 2019 World Series was on...so it felt about right. I have him the option of beer or a Bloody Mary. He made the better choice and went with a bloody!

We also found a good rock station on I Heart Radio...everything from the last 60s to mid 90s. All in all, he was very happy with his birthday festivities. Long story short on the funny glass...I got it for him for his last milestone bday. We had gotten a friend something similar and they became a silly tradition with us.

[

If I get some energy this evening, I may throw in a workout. I still need to clean up some more...but I really don't feel like adulting at the moment!

 

[StarWarsGirl]

I have admittedly been horrible about working out during this pandemic. Two weeks into it, I hadn't been feeling well. I had tried working out, but stopped Midway because I was too tired to continue. Anyway, I had a kidney infection. It took me a good two weeks to get over it. It's not the first one I've had, but I knew when I got the back pain that I had one. It was brutal. I could barely move for several days, and then of course I didn't want to do anything that might hurt one of my kidneys (you need to be careful not to twang your back or hit the kidney afterward). And because I get motion sick on the treadmill and I can't be outside without being a sniffling mess right now, that means I couldn't exercise. Unfortunately, that means my migraines have now come back with a vengeance. I was getting them once or twice a month. Now it's several times a week.

We don't have room for an elliptical (unless we'd get rid of some of the ancient equipment we have, though I think my mom would have a fit), and I wouldn't buy one without testing it first, although I did see some pretty good deals online. I found this for around $125.


Resistance straps if I want them, and similar motion. I think this will get me through until the gym reopens, and then it's something to use here on days I can't make it to the gym. I'll give it a try either tonight or tomorrow.

I've lost 10 pounds during this whole thing. I think between the kidney infection and just the fact that I don't think I've been eating normally. Not a bad thing, but I didn't want this to be the reason I lost weight.

 

[StarWarsGirl]

I have admittedly been horrible about working out during this pandemic. Two weeks into it, I hadn't been feeling well. I had tried working out, but stopped Midway because I was too tired to continue. Anyway, I had a kidney infection. It took me a good two weeks to get over it. It's not the first one I've had, but I knew when I got the back pain that I had one. It was brutal. I could barely move for several days, and then of course I didn't want to do anything that might hurt one of my kidneys (you need to be careful not to twang your back or hit the kidney afterward). And because I get motion sick on the treadmill and I can't be outside without being a sniffling mess right now, that means I couldn't exercise. Unfortunately, that means my migraines have now come back with a vengeance. I was getting them once or twice a month. Now it's several times a week.

We don't have room for an elliptical (unless we'd get rid of some of the ancient equipment we have, though I think my mom would have a fit), and I wouldn't buy one without testing it first, although I did see some pretty good deals online. I found this for around $125.
View attachment 464897

Resistance straps if I want them, and similar motion. I think this will get me through until the gym reopens, and then it's something to use here on days I can't make it to the gym. I'll give it a try either tonight or tomorrow.

I've lost 10 pounds during this whole thing. I think between the kidney infection and just the fact that I don't think I've been eating normally. Not a bad thing, but I didn't want this to be the reason I lost weight.

Update: Apparently I am way too used to ellipticals with handles and longer stride lengths because I immediately fell off. I got back on, holding onto a piece of furniture, and got my workout done. I'm currently drenched in sweat, but dang, did I miss the mindless cardio of an elliptical. Hopefully this will help with my migraines and fatigue.

 

[Songbird76]

That pie is beautiful!!! My older one will turn 14 in August and the younger one will be 12 in November, so they are right around the same ages. I'm pretty sure I could crack an egg by the time I was the older one's age, but not sure about the younger one. A lot of this is a symptom of me taking care of a bit too much. They at least now have an appreciation for the work that goes into their birthday cakes.

Good time for them to practice basic life skills like cooking. Everyone is stuck at home anyway. I think today's project is going to be mac n cheese. We can't get boxed mac n cheese here, and DD LOVES it, so we're trying to find a good recipe that we can get all the stuff for here. We've had issues in the past with recipes because we can't get velveta, for example. We found a recipe that only called for cheddar, which we can get here now, but it's really expensive, and we tried it and it was awful. Pasty, no flavor....so I found another one that calls for different kinds of cheese, and I got 4 different kinds, and this one is also baked rather than stove top. We'll hope it turns out better. But my daughter has a meningitis vaccine this afternoon, so I hope she'll be up to helping me. When my nephew had this vaccine, he was down for the count for a few days. Wish us luck!

We got out and took a walk yesterday...my son has vacation for 2 weeks, but my daughter has another week of school before she gets a week of vacation, so I don't know if she'll be able to go out with me today after the vaccination. She's been working ahead in school as much as she can when she doesn't have video call lessons, so she might be free by that time. We'll see. She actually doesn't want to go back to school. She's loving the home lessons because she can work ahead and get everything done and doesn't have to listen to the teacher explain things 3 times when she already understands it. She gets school done early and has free time. Plus, they can't really do PE lessons, so they were assigned a report of some sort...they had to design their own game they could play at home. She is very uncoordinated and had to have tutoring in PE last year....she got A's in everything except PE. So now they can't have PE class, and she had to write a report, so she finally got an A. She can write reports, she can write theoretical stuff, just don't ask her to perform those tasks!

 

[Songbird76]

I haven't done a ton today, aside from tidying up my office and doing some dishes, but I'm wiped out from yesterday. I had to log into work for a couple of hours to do some testing. We have a bunch of products merging and I needed to validate things for our group. After that, I went out for 5 miles. My legs and feet were still pretty uncomfortable, but after the first couple of miles, I decided to try something other than my usual intervals or straight walking. I ran point to point goals. For example, there is this wicked hill right near the lake that can make me out of breath even at a walking pace. I pushed myself to run the full hill yesterday without stopping. I did similar things along park areas, certain water features, etc. After that, I went into birthday mode for my husband.

The kids finished decorating the cakes. I haven't uploaded any of the videos yet, but here are a few from decorating and finished products (pardon the major mess on the counter). Side note...I've heard all of the issues with getting flour, but powdered sugar was my tough to find item.

The older one won. I have a feeling I would have liked the younger one's near flourless cake a bit better, but the older one had a better presentation and my husband said hers was more cake-like. And in case you were wondering...the one is dirt and a hail storm softball while the other is dirt and rain softball. That hail storm also broke one of her brackets for her braces, so now I have to see if the ortho needs to work her in this week. I wasn't planning on going in until next month. Ugh! She knows better than to eat the hard candies!

We had a nice take-out dinner from a local Italian place we've been meaning to try and watched Rise of Skywalker before the kids went to bed. The home bar crawl was a lot of fun.

We started out with vodka soaked gummi bears in that area where the kids were decorating cakes, since there's usually candy over there.

Next, we went into the game room. Most of the game inspired drinks involved me having to buy more than I wanted to buy, so I went with something covering things we already have. It's called a Super Mario 1Up. It's Midori and Malibu...and my husband's expression says it all!

Oh yea, he decided we needed to be in hats for this.

We then moved on to the formal dining room. He had single malt scotch, while I had some sparkling wine.

Then it was on to the diner for rum spiked Coke floats.

We hit up the tiki bar for the 5th leg of this crawl for some rum punch. It had pineapple juice, passion fruit juice, grenadine, and some cherries.

Had to pose with a tiki in the shot!

Finally, it was the last stop, which was our sports bar. Our family room area is where most of our sports watching takes place and game 7 of the 2019 World Series was on...so it felt about right. I have him the option of beer or a Bloody Mary. He made the better choice and went with a bloody!

We also found a good rock station on I Heart Radio...everything from the last 60s to mid 90s. All in all, he was very happy with his birthday festivities. Long story short on the funny glass...I got it for him for his last milestone bday. We had gotten a friend something similar and they became a silly tradition with us.

[

If I get some energy this evening, I may throw in a workout. I still need to clean up some more...but I really don't feel like adulting at the moment!

My goodness, how drunk were you??? That's more than I drink in a year!! I'd have been down way before the bloody mary phase.

I am in awe of the counter space you have in the kitchen!!! SOOOO jealous!

How did the cakes taste? That's more important than how they look!

 

[epcotisbest]

Hope everyone is doing well. I have not posted in this thread in more than a week because I have been way busy cleaning up tornado damage. We are very blessed that our house was not damaged in the tornado that came through more than a week ago, but we have lots of storm damage to trees and power lines. We were out of power for three days and lost all the food in the fridge and freezer, and there was no access to our neighborhood for a couple of days until the piles of trees were cut back and pushed out of the way for power trucks to get in.
I am going to post some photos from our property.
As I said, we are very blessed to not have house damage as a house behind us lost part of its roof and back deck and another had a tree come through the roof and lots of water damage to the inside.

OK, can't post photos right now. I get this message

• A server error occurred. Please try again later.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Good time for them to practice basic life skills like cooking. Everyone is stuck at home anyway. I think today's project is going to be mac n cheese. We can't get boxed mac n cheese here, and DD LOVES it, so we're trying to find a good recipe that we can get all the stuff for here. We've had issues in the past with recipes because we can't get velveta, for example. We found a recipe that only called for cheddar, which we can get here now, but it's really expensive, and we tried it and it was awful. Pasty, no flavor....so I found another one that calls for different kinds of cheese, and I got 4 different kinds, and this one is also baked rather than stove top. We'll hope it turns out better. But my daughter has a meningitis vaccine this afternoon, so I hope she'll be up to helping me. When my nephew had this vaccine, he was down for the count for a few days. Wish us luck!

We got out and took a walk yesterday...my son has vacation for 2 weeks, but my daughter has another week of school before she gets a week of vacation, so I don't know if she'll be able to go out with me today after the vaccination. She's been working ahead in school as much as she can when she doesn't have video call lessons, so she might be free by that time. We'll see. She actually doesn't want to go back to school. She's loving the home lessons because she can work ahead and get everything done and doesn't have to listen to the teacher explain things 3 times when she already understands it. She gets school done early and has free time. Plus, they can't really do PE lessons, so they were assigned a report of some sort...they had to design their own game they could play at home. She is very uncoordinated and had to have tutoring in PE last year....she got A's in everything except PE. So now they can't have PE class, and she had to write a report, so she finally got an A. She can write reports, she can write theoretical stuff, just don't ask her to perform those tasks!

If I had more time, I would be using this as a life skills teaching opportunity. Unfortunately, even in this work from home world, I think they're still missing out on all of this stuff because of work demands. Mac & Cheese is kind of my specialty. Some of my friends insist I must somehow have some old southern grandma in me because of my mac. I don't have a recipe, but I can tell you some of the things I do for mine that may help. My kids like the boxed stuff too, but me making it is always a real treat. I can't really eat it anymore, but like cake, I know what it's supposed to look and feel like.

I usually start out by making mine in a pot. I only do a few things differently if I want to bake it. In an ideal world, I like using bronze cut pasta since it really holds together better. Pasta is currently hard to come by, so I'll use whatever I can get. For cheese, I usually have a blend of cheddar, good American (either the Kraft deli style deluxe stuff (not the wrapped singles) in the foil pack or the Boars Head stuff out of the deli case), Monterrey Jack (or even a Colby/Jack mix), Havarti, and if I want some added tang...a little bit of Gouda. The cheese definitely adds some serious cost to the dish. American usually has the highest concentration since it blends the best and doesn't get oily, often equal parts of cheddar and jack, and less of the others noted. Heavy cream is a must to help it blend and it should be well salted. If I am going to bake it after I have gotten it all together in the pot, I make sure to make a cheese sauce from a roux to pour over it...which will help keep it from drying out in the bake process. Sometimes I also sprinkle shredded cheddar into it as I start loading it into the baking dish. I add a more generous layer of shredded cheese on the top before baking so it can form a nice crust. I am not a bread crumbs person with mine. Usually, we just stick with the stove top version, but it's good either way.

Good luck with the vaccine. I believe my older one had to have the first round of that before starting 7th grade. I don't remember her having any adverse effects, but everyone is different.

That's nice that they have some vacation weeks right now. We're done with all breaks until the end of the school year (which we now know will all be digital). I think mine have been working ahead as well. I think being home and not sitting through entire lessons gives them the chance to work at a much faster pace. I know my older one wishes they were giving even more (they are if asked, but she finishes that too), so she's been supplementing with other online resources. My older one is not a big fan of PE either. It didn't start until 7th grade, but our district started offering dance as a PE alternative. Unfortunately, she won't have that option in high school, so she's really hoping she makes one of the softball teams so she has that as her approved PE. I'm not sure how the kids in PE and Athletics are having lessons at the middle school level, but for dance, they're doing report/written assignments as well as Zoom dance lessons and video uploads of their physical dance homework. Either way, I'm sure your daughter is thrilled to be getting an A for that class!

 

[HouCuseChickie]

My goodness, how drunk were you??? That's more than I drink in a year!! I'd have been down way before the bloody mary phase.

I am in awe of the counter space you have in the kitchen!!! SOOOO jealous!

How did the cakes taste? That's more important than how they look!

I really wasn't too bad. We didn't have a lot of the gummi bears as they were super potent (saved for a future weekend), the drink in the game room was awful...so we both had a few sips before moving on, and the wine in the dining room was pretty light compared to other things. So really, only the last three drinks were the ones with an impact.

Thanks! I really like this kitchen. We have a good amount of counter space and can use the little peninsula table kind of like you would an island, but I wish there were a bit more space between the two main counters. It's really difficult when you've got two people in the kitchen at the same time.

I only tasted the frosting, but both were pretty good. One was more sugary while you could detect more of the butter and vanilla in the other. My husband said both cakes tasted decent and tasted very similar. He declared the older one the winner since what she made was cake consistency. The younger one's is supposedly a lot like fudge. I would have liked that more, but I get the technical aspect of it. i.e. it wasn't really a cake.

 

[HouCuseChickie]

Hope everyone is doing well. I have not posted in this thread in more than a week because I have been way busy cleaning up tornado damage. We are very blessed that our house was not damaged in the tornado that came through more than a week ago, but we have lots of storm damage to trees and power lines. We were out of power for three days and lost all the food in the fridge and freezer, and there was no access to our neighborhood for a couple of days until the piles of trees were cut back and pushed out of the way for power trucks to get in.
I am going to post some photos from our property.
As I said, we are very blessed to not have house damage as a house behind us lost part of its roof and back deck and another had a tree come through the roof and lots of water damage to the inside.

OK, can't post photos right now. I get this message

• A server error occurred. Please try again later.

My friend south of Atlanta said that the storms were really bad. I'm sure it was very scary! I'm so glad you guys are safe and lucked out with damage. Getting power and other services restored with downed trees/lines and debris in the mix is always difficult. It's one thing when it's a hurricane, since you can make up a plan in anticipation of being without power for a while, but tornadic activity comes out of nowhere. We try and keep a few gallons of water frozen in case we need to move things over to our big cooler, but that only lasts for so long. Hopefully, you were at least able to get a mini cookout or two out of what you had that was thawing. I remember doing that after Hurricane Ike. We had a little bit of time where things were still safe out of our freezer, so we did all kinds of grilling. Still, we lost a lot too. Not sure if the same applies to tornadoes, but for hurricanes, you can apply for reimbursement for lost food from the power outage.

Again, so glad to hear you guys are safe!

 

[epcotisbest]

So, since I can't post photos, I'll tell you about when the storm came through.
I was awakened by heavy rain and wind and knew it was bad. I woke my wife and we grabbed the dogs and went downstairs and got in the closet under the stairs. That is when it got bad. We did not hear the stereotypical sound of a "freight train" but more of a loud, low pitched whistling and howling sound from the violent wind and limbs smacking the side of the house.
Then trees started snapping and boy are they loud when they pop in two. That lasted for maybe a minute or two with all the noise and loud popping of trees snapping and limbs breaking and landing on the house, then it calmed down about as quickly as it started. Of course, it was pitch black as the power went out almost immediately.
Once the heaviest of rain eased up I got some blankets and quilts and pillows and instructed my wife to stay inside and her and the dogs made a pallet in the floor of the closet, where the spent the rest of the night.
I went outside to survey what I could and was astounded by the damage spotlighted by my flashlight. Leaves, limbs and trees everywhere, then right up the road (which was blocked in both directions) power lines and transformers were down.
I spent the rest of the night sitting on the porch swing waiting for daylight. Was astounded by the damage to trees, and lack of damage to the house at the same time.
Checked on the neighbors, found much more damage then got busy trying to start the long process of cleaning up the mess. Nowhere near finished, but we are making progress and counting our blessings.

 

[epcotisbest]

Ok, the internet went out and is back again, as they are running new lines down through here. See if pics work this time.
Here is where I used to park the camper before we sold it. Lots of limbs and leaves:

 

[epcotisbest]

Road leading up to the house:

 

[epcotisbest]

Our house, on the left behind the fallen trees:

 

[epcotisbest]

Our back driveway:

 

[epcotisbest]

Looking up toward the house from the back driveway:

 

[epcotisbest]

Random trees down, our land is on the right: