Went to NY last weekend with my twin sister to see my brother and nephew’s last play (the organization they are involved with is making some big changes in response to loss of funding from New York State, so there won’t be any more shows). 

It actually might have been their best ever – out with a bang, as another sister (I have a few) described it.

The pic above is about half the cast, the Whos. The rest of them are behind the curtain waiting to show their part in Suessical…. the show was great, the costumes were fun, and both the actors & audience members had a good time. Success all around!

As an aside, my twin sister stayed with me an extra day, before she headed back to NC. She has no reasonably-close IKEA, so we went and she picked up a Kallax 4×4 bookcase, to help organize at her house. I love these bookcases. Please don’t ask how many  Kallax/Expedit (predecessor) bookcases-that-are-pretty-much-used-for-everything-but-books exist in my & my husband’s house; I might be embarrassed to answer! I say might because I honestly haven’t counted… but they are dang useful. 

My twin also helped me finish installing some cleats in the closet-about-to-be-an-office, so painting that and actually getting the standing desk reinstalled is on the docket soon. Then, hey, wow, the office-that-became-a-gym will actually be able to be used as a gym! And since I’m down 8 needed pounds from my Whole 30 experiment, going for another slightly-modified round (starting next week) and being able to add in some gym work (time to swing the monkeys!) will hopefully help get me even closer to my fitness goals. 🙂

I don’t know what’s up with my dash happiness tonight. Maybe I can distract you from them with a pic of my finally-corralled monkeys? 

PS You know I purposely went back and added “finally-corralled” just so I could have another dash, right? 😉

PPS Those monkeys are in kilograms and poods, not pounds.

But I’m getting back into it. Might take me a bit but I plan to post more often! I’ll try to update on Tuesday evenings – I’ve already added a reminder to my calendar even.

Life has been a little crazy, commuting still takes too long, LOL, and we’ve had quite a bit of change at work, so I’m pretty much happy to be breathing at the moment. The change is for the good, but it still kicks up a learning curve.

Among the things taking up my time:

Maxtla needs lots of exercise so many weekends we spend time at the dog park visiting his dog buddies and throwing squeaky balls. His latest favorite is  a “Meteor Ball” by Outdoor Dog which has a nice tail – it stays generally clean(er) while the main part of the ball gets slobbery from him picking it up – that I can fling it with!

I’m also still working through converting the room that was my office to a gym, with my standing desk/office being moved into the closet. The gym part is pretty much done, but I’ve run into a few snafus getting the closet conversion completed (dang moving studs), so my office stuff is still taking up space on the gym floor. That should soon that will be usable though. Pictures later.

Today is my last day of a Whole30 experiment. I know, can you imagine? I’m not really much of a meat-eater, but having an obsession with sugar is bad… and since quitting cold turkey hasn’t been at all successful, so I decided doing something drastic was in order.

I have to say, it’s been wildly more successful than I expected. Today is 30 days without sugar… or beans, grains, dairy, or pretty much any packaged foods at all. The sugar was so overwhelmed by everything else I was choosing not to eat, that I didn’t really miss it much after the first week… but I really need some beans & rice, LOL!  I plan to take a week or so break, then adjust the rules to my own sensibilities, and try another round. (Obviously keep the no sugar rule as that’s my main goal.) I’ve already got ideas for making food prep easier, as that took up a huge amount of time and planning.

Tomorrow I weigh in to see if the change has effected any weight loss. By the pants method, I’m definitely down, which is good, as it was another of my goals. I also have some pretty big-for-me-fitness goals that I’ll share more about later. I’m also still running monthly fitness challenges at work (sorry colleagues, that this month has been so haphazard – better next month I promise!), that I plan to post more about.

Additionally, I’m continuing with my multi-year project to have most of the clothes in my closet be ones made by me. There’ll of course be a few pattern reviews coming, for my sewing friends and whoever else might interested in seeing the clothing pieces.

Later this week my twin sister comes up to Maryland and we’re off to see family for the weekend. I’ve also got an Excel Dashboards training session to watch, and I’m studying for CompTIA certification (nope, not busy enough, right?).

For those who remember my first focus –  bird photography has unfortunately fallen by the wayside and will need to stay on the wayside for a while… but I’ll always come back to it! To tide you over, here’s a Green Heron at Cape May, actively fishing last September (click the photo to see it bigger):