Monday Night Food and Fitness

FOOD

Reason #547 I love my wife: She makes me tacos. :-9 She even makes the taco meat seasoning from scratch in order to protect me from the evil, naughty, blunoz-kryptonite MSG in the pre-made taco meat seasonings from the store.

Reason #547 ½ I love my wife: She makes her own sort of pico de gallo by dicing up tomatoes and onions and putting some seasonings it. I need to go back to my 7 random things post and just add one:
I LOVE ONIONS. I have this bizarre obsession with onions, or... more particularly, the aftertaste left in my mouth after I've eaten fresh onions. Especially red onions. Call me crazy. Wait... why are red onions purple, anyway? Sorry, getting off topic.

Effective advertising. Having two family members who work(ed) in the advertising industry raised my sensitivity to things like product placement in movies, made me do a double-take when someone says a phrase or sings a tune from an advertisement, and taught me the phrase, "that was effective advertisement."

Tangent / Aside: The last time I remember hearing that phrase from GMJ was when I said, "Man, I wish I had an Easy button." She just about busted up laughing and immediately wrote an email to the Staples management and congratulated them on the success of their ad campaign.

Okay, so all that being said, and in keeping with the "food" topic of this blog, I had two "that was effective advertisement" moments this week:

Effective Advertisement of the Week Award #1:

Okay, to say that our children are picky eaters is like saying they are casually interested in Star Wars (mild understatment?). I have never been able to get either of our boys to so much as LOOK at a bowl of soup much less actually TRY a spoonful. LW made that awesome chicken tortilla soup again this week. As a force of habit, she offered some to ES - fully expecting him to turn up his nose and say, "yuck." Although we were not surprised by his refusal to try some, he floored us both with his statement, "There is a type of soup I would like to try." Oh yeah? He said he saw it on TV. We asked him what type of soup it was. He said, "It was called Campbell's soup." He didn't understand that Campbell's is a name brand, he thought it was a flavor.

Effective Advertisement of the Week Award #2:

Have you seen the Goldfish Cracker advertisements where they swim around in this little community under the bed in the kids' room? On the one hand, I think the concept is cool and the ads are cute and funny. On the other hand though, the thought of a bunch of goldfish crackers under the bed in my boys room with all the dust bunnies, toys, boogers, and dirty underwear just grosses me out and makes me absolutely NOT want to eat Goldfish Crackers. Apparently, I was not the target audience for the ad though. No sooner does the ad finish on the TV screen then YB chimes in with, "Mommy! I want some goldfish crackers!"

FITNESS

It was a pretty darn good week for me fitness-wise, especially considering how it started out last Monday. If you recall, I tried going running last Monday for the first time following a nasty head cold. I couldn't run more than a mile and a half and coughed the entire time walking back home.

There was some bizarre alignment of the planets that occurred on Tuesday though. I felt much better than I did Monday. I got home from work and tossed out my usual offer to take the boys for a bike ride, but for the first time in a long time, they said YES! So I put the boys on their bikes with their bike helmets and their camelbaks and we headed out. It was the first time I've taken YB out on the bike path on his new bike - a two-wheeler with training wheels. We made it out to Best Buy (1 mile out) and turned around. We got about half way back and YB refused to ride his bike anymore, got off and started walking. I would've broken my back if I tried pushing his bike back, so I ended up carrying it back the last half mile. Even so, it was a good workout for me. I ran some sprints to the next telephone pole and back to the boys again, so I think I probably did about 2.5 miles from the doubling back.

Wednesday, I was bummed I couldn't go to Command PT with the PT Nazi (we do interval training Wednesday mornings at Bloch Arena with a personal trainer who really kicks our butts). I had to be on the boat for a walkthrough with the shipyard commander. Talking to the guys who went to Command PT though - ouch! They were all absolutely drenched in sweat as they came back from PT. She had them do spinners on the exercise bikes, and whenever anyone stopped pedaling, they had to get down and do 40 pushups. I've heard spinners is pretty intense, but I've never actually done it before.

When I got home that afternoon though, the boys were all excited and wanted to go for another bike ride. So I got them geared up and we went and did the same route again. This time, YB stayed on his bike the entire ride. However (comma) I don't think he pedaled at all. I basically pushed him with my hand on his back the entire ride. As a result, it was by no means a FAST run for me, but I sure had my heart rate up.

Thursday I didn't ask the boys if they wanted to go because ES and I had to bake and decorate our cake for the Cub Scout Blue & Gold dinner on Friday night.

Friday at Command PT we did our usual warmup, stretches, and calesthenics in the gym. Then we went for a run from Bloch Arena down South Ave along the perimeter of the base next to Hickam. We ran all the way to the end of South Ave at the water's edge and then turned around and came back. It came out to 3 miles.

But alas... I was a lazy slug all weekend and didn't do any PT.