8/15/09 - with videos! :)

Sleep:
woke at 3am for temp., but didn't take it, up at ~7:45am
to sleep for night at 10:30pm again... good thing I can sleep in again on Sunday - gotta' get to sleep earlier Sunday though 'cause there's no sleeping in on Monday...

Food:
breakfast: 1 medium-large pineapple (no burn today, nice)
lunch: small bag lychee (~20?), 4 smallish-medium dragon fruit
before dinner/after run: 15 small-ish medium apple bananas
dinner (1 1/2 hrs after bananas): shredded cabbage & carrots with tahini-lemon/lime dressing & 1/2 avocado

Yeah, a bit too much overt fats for 10% today, but I've been doing the overt fats light to none lately so it's okay I think - will find out Sunday I suppose...

Here's a video of lunch remnants and about dragonfruit I took at the farm. It might take a bit to load 'cause it's the limit of what size Blogger will take. I'll look into other video uploading options another time:

Exercise:
Pedometer wasn't working quite right for part of the day - probably about 1/4-1/3 of the walking time I'd say... so I'm not quite sure how much regular walking I did. It says 5,548 steps, which is 2.189 miles, but I'd estimate it was more like 6,935-7,398 steps or 2.736-2.919 miles. Still, it's nowhere near as much as I walk when I work at the gym. I don't wear the pedometer when formally working out, so the other stuff is extra.

I was able to get back to my running schedule today, yay! :) My foot didn't hurt this time at all. Yay! Not exactly sure why it hurt the other day, but I'm not taking chances on getting hurt, listening to my body, and that day my foot didn't want me running. Good thing it was okay with me walking fast though. I held myself back to the scheduled increase, again, in order to take it easy. I've felt cardiovascularly like I could do 30 minutes or more straight through at the slower speed I'm running/jogging, but don't want to increase things too fast so my muscles, tendons, ligaments and such have time to adjust. But I couldn't help myself go a tad longer... I was supposed to do 25 minutes, but did 27 1/2 minutes instead. That way I can get to the 30 minute goal the next run, rather than taking two runs to get there.

I did a shorter warm-up walk too, but it felt right. Instead of the 3 miles I usually do in the process of warm-up, run & cool-down, I did a bit more: 3.36 miles instead, as I was almost to 3 miles when I was done with the run even though I'm still running slow in order to get to the 30-40 minutes solid running going solid. I walk at 3.5 - 4 mph for warm-up and cool-down, and run at 5.5 - 6.2 mph, mostly 5.5 right now. To run at an 8 minute mile pace I need to run at 7.4 mph-ish, so there's a bit to go in that department. All in due time, all in due time. ;) Oh, and I also do an extra cool-down of about 1/2 minute at 3mph, followed by ~ 1 min. @ 2mph & ~1 min. @ 1 mph, then off to ~ 1 min. easy bounch on the rebounder, just so that I don't get that trippy room rushing past me sensation when getting off the treadmill and walking. LOL I start rehydrating during the 3.5-4 mph walking cool-down and stick with it 'till after my shower or when I've taken in enough to weigh what I started. I follow the running sessions with some stretching, which lasts about 20-30 minutes. Then I'm off to the shower. Ahh... nice.

Hmm... I'm finishing this post on Sunday evening & I can't remember if I did other exercise or not... thought I'd remember for sure. Oh well. Gotta' write that stuff down.

Detox:
The sty thing's going away, so I suppose things are evening out. Still sweating buckets when running, however it's also been super humid and muggy here lately so it makes sense.

Female:
3am temp: ?? degrees Fahrenheit - didn't take it again but I know it was 96.something degrees 'cause of the time of month it is, day 4 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
I'm starting to add videos in here and there as I can. Let me know what ya' think. :)

Went to a guy's place to check out some fencing that we were going to remove and take for free - on both sides. It was on Craig's list. We thought it'd be no problem with the heavy duty jack we usually use as a post puller, but our jack had been jacked (pun intended - yeah, stolen in other words) from our farm a while back. We went to the place we got it from only to discover that not only did they not have 'em anymore, but the employees there didn't remember ever having them. LOL It was a year at most that we got it. How soon they forget... guess we're not gonna' get that free fencing. Don't wanna' use the tractor for it & don't have anywhere else to get a heavy duty jack like that here either. Oh well.

I wanted to go there anyway 'cause we're running low on the timothy hay I give to the guinea pig(s & rabbit now too!) as food and they use it for bedding too. Yes, we live with 4 guinea pigs and a bunny now. :) They're all so cute! The feed store apparently stopped carrying timothy hay recently as well, saying they didn't have enough sales to keep carrying it. Darn. Part of living on a small island and all I suppose. I don't know of anywhere else on island to get bales of timothy hay & the guinea pigs shouldn't have alfalfa. Guess that's another thing we'll hafta' grow ourselves - sooner than later it seems. I wanted to grow it eventually, but looks like we may have to push that up a bit. They eat all fresh food otherwise, but it seems they need a bit of dry stuff too, thus the timothy. I think we'll change the approach to the hutches and not use it for bedding so much anymore. We'll make hay dispenser dealies to go on the wall and let them use the fresh stuff for bedding if they want. We plan to move 'em out to the farm sometime in the nearish future too anyway and when we do we're going to have a compound for them to go out and eat the stuff growing directly.

We're thinking of setting up a worm composting system below their hutches so that the droppings and such go directly in there, and not having things in there for bedding. The bunny will have a shelf to hang out on to get away from the guinea pigs and mesh flooring if she wants and the guinea pigs have tubes they can go in for those purposes as well (but would be getting away from the bunny if they want instead of the guinea pigs). We can have the hay feeder on the side of the hutches and put their veggies and fruit in trays that clip there too. The compound would be fenced in and have 4 sections. There'd be a sort of entry hall of sorts at the base of their hutches where there'd be 4 doors, one to each section of the compound. We'd let them out into one section at a time, letting the other 3 grow back from all the grazing. I could plant carrots and other root crops in there too for the bunny to dig up and eat. She loves to dig. :) There'd be enough space for them to go in and run and munch around and visit with us if they like. I could go in there and knit, crochet and/or spin cotton while they explore and eat. :)

We'd open up the hutches and the door to the current section of the compound and let them decide when or if to come out. We'd shepherd them back in before the day's over. We were thinking that the compound wouldn't need a roof 'cause they'd only be out in the daytime when we're there too, but I might end up having a shade cloth or some other sort of moveable roof in order to let them hang out there when I'm not in there too (but still in the area). I'm fairly certain a bird wouldn't swoop down to get them when I'm sitting there with them, but it might if I leave the compound to do other farmwork... I planned to have some things for them to play in and on in the compound too, so they'll also have them to hide in if necessary. I'll be able to clean out the cages without having to grab 'em and take 'em out of there this way too. Less cleaning needed if we do it all this way too, so it'll be nicer for all of us. There are so many things to do for the farm though, I'm not sure when we'll get all of this done.

While we were at the feed store we got a hay fork, so nice to have an actual hay fork that works. Yay! We've been using our digging fork like one 'cause all we could find elsewhere were forks with way too many tines for hay. Nothing like having the right tool for the right job. Moving hay is sooo much easier now. Ahh... a pleasure actually.

We also found some clips they use for horse stuff which look like solid brass and are the right size for the homemade custom exercise resistance bands we want to make. So we got 'em. Now we have everything we need we think, except for the guava wood. We'll go hiking to an overgrown guava forest and get some sometime soon, possibly Wednesday. We would have gone this weekend, but my hubby's trying to finish a grant proposal so we'll do it another time. I think I'm really, really gonna' like these resistance bands when we finish 'em. So nifty and pretty too! :)

We're still setting up things at the farm in order to plant things. We've planted some bananas already and a mammey sapote in the rich soil in the rotted out center of an albezia tree stump, but that's all that's in the ground right now. Well, we do have some pineapples in the mud by the stream, but that's not their final place, it's just like a nursery for them 'till we can plant them along the fence. Here's a short video of our pineapple nursery area. My hubby made a nifty stepping stone path down to the stream with rocks that came out of the gardening area:

And here's the mammey sapote and bananas we have planted so far:

There were really tall albezia trees along the stream that the owners had cut down after they got the land. They're beautiful trees, but they're also quite dangerous since they grow so fast and are sort of leggy in that way, tending to break off in the wind and/or just fall down at times. One fell over on a neighbor's property when we were there a while back. It sounded like a bunch of firecrackers going off. Huge tree trunk and tree, just broke off in the middle and fell down - just beyond the property beyond the tilled area you see in the video. Didn't look dead or rotting on the outside and it wasn't even windy that day. We used the leaves in the compost and are using the logs for various things here and there - like how my hubby made the edges and steps down to the banana patch you can see in the video. The stumps will sprout back, but that's good 'cause we can coppice them and use the nitrogen rich leaves as mulch and/or compost Permaculture-style. :)

We've been planting some seeds from fruit we eat in flats and pots in the meantime too. We're expecting the rock dust and shell and other organic amendments we ordered to arrive sometime in the next week or two, so we'll work them into the soil and then will be ready to start planting. Yay! We did soil testing and analysis in order to find out the condition of the soil, what it needs to get back to what it should be from where it's been. That's why we're waiting for the amendments, so we can make sure the soil has everything it should in order to give the plants every chance to have everything they should, so that we have every chance to get everything we need from them. :) We'll probably maintain the fertility primarily with compost after this initial amending, lots and lots of compost. :)

We've been getting sprout discards from some friends of mine who run a commercial sprouting operation not far from our farm. It makes terrific compost along with the grass clippings from the land - and our own compost from eating of course. We'll probably get compost from other people as well once we start doing markets again. Compost is definitely the health food for soil and we plan to give it plenty. :) We get the sprouts in trash cans and sometimes they make castles like sand castles at the beach when we dump 'em. Nifty! :) Here's what I mean:

It's so nice to be planting fruit seeds, knowing that we'll be able to grow and take care of them through their fruiting years. :) I'm also gonna' be able to finally plant cotton there too, once we get things going on the edibles. I've got seeds not only from locally grown organic white cotton, but also heirloom cotton varieties from the Mainland that yeild naturally colored cotton: brown, rust & green are the colors I have right now. So I'm soooo looking forward to planting, harvesting, and spinning them in order to make clothes and things truly from scratch, naturally and organically. :)

We've been quite entertained by our pool-pond which is an above ground pool that we're using for ag water storage. It's got fish and plants and is basically a pond in a pool. The water gravity feeds into it from the stream, we have a filter on the intake so we don't suck up any fish from the stream. We have another filter on the intake for the pump so we don't suck up any fish from the pool-pond to water the farm as well. There are two filters in-between there to filter water before it goes through the pump as well. We don't have to use the pump for lots of things down lower as they work gravity fed. We'll be using the pump to run the sprinklers for the veggies and such at certain times of the day though. We gathered fish, clams, prawn and plants from the stream, nearby pond and local rivers to put in our pool-pond to help keep it healthy.

We also got some fish and plants from the pet store and put 'em in there for biodiversity. We weren't sure at first if we were doing the pet store fish a disservice by putting them in a pond after they've probably lived their lives (possibly generations of them have lived their lives) in sheltered aquariums. We weren't sure if they'd be able to adjust to a more natural and wild-ish sort of life. Now we're sure we made the right choice as they've all taken to it very well. We don't see them all of the time as the pool-pond is deeper than we can see and there are all the plants and things in there as well, but when we do see them they look very happy, natural and well-fed. It's fun to watch all the fish we can see and other things in the pond at the end of the day with my hubby. :)

Dragonflies like the pool pond too. I've been trying to film them for a while now. Finally I caught one just sitting on the end of a water hyacinth stem, a pretty red one. I took a few videos of it, but don't have time to upload them now, maybe I'll upload it another time. It's getting late. Here's a picture of it for now. It's wings are down:

There's so many other things to tell y'all about to catch up, but I don't have time right now to tell you it all, so we'll have to catch up more later.

Aloha for now! :)

8/14/09 - Hi'ya! Yep. Still here...

Well, I've decided to stop apologizing about not being as consistent with these posts anymore as I used to be. So here's a bit of an update post...

First, here's the usual stuff about today:

Sleep:
woke at 3am for temp. & work, skipped temperature 'cause I'd gotten up to drink water & go pee too soon before... and didn't have time to sleep in more after alarm, since I needed to get ready for working at the gym

napped a bit at the farm this afternoon (~1-3pm-ish, off and on)

looks like I'll get to sleep for the night tonight at about 9 or 9:30

update: nope, was about 10:30 by the time I got to sleep, oh well...

Food:

~4am: on the way to the gym, had half of a large pineapple (~6 cups I'd say)
~10:45am: 4 medium sized dragon fruit while hubby drove us around on some errands
~12:30pm: ~4 or 5 medium apple bananas at the farm that I'd forgotten there from yesterday
~3pm: 1/2 of what was left of the pineapple from the morning (~3 cups)
~7pm: cucumber "noodles" (3 large cucumbers) with tomato (1 large), 1 tsp. olive oil, 1 tsp. mixed Italian herbs, 1 Tbsp. nutritional yeast

We were low on ripe bananas today, but had some dragonfruit so it worked out just fine. I also didn't have any salad or celery available, but did have some yummy organic cucumbers I got at market this week. I splurged a bit and had the olive oil & spices (nutritional yeast is a spice for me - substitute for Parmesan cheese on 'pasta'). It was yummy, not ideal, but still good enough for me, tonight at least. Perhaps I underate on the calories, but will know tomorrow when I'm more hungry (or not).

I've been having pineapple every day while it's still pineapple season. I cut it up and store what I can't eat (due to the burn starting) in the morning for later in the day - either I finish it all or I share the left overs with my hubby.

Yesterday if I remember correctly I had pineapple for breakfast, lychee followed by bananas for lunch, pineapple before dinner & salad with the tahini/lemon dressing for dinner.

Exercise:
I just got a new toy this week: a pedometer. I'd been reading about people wanting to do 10,000 steps and such, using pedometers and I've been curious for some time now how much I actually walk in a day, so.... I finally got one (and have been playing with it since). LOL

Today, according to the pedometer, I walked over 3 1/2 miles, almost 9,000 steps (if I remember correctly) by the end of my work at the gym. You can measure your stride length so it'll estimate your mileage from the amount of steps it reads. It doesn't read all of my steps all the time & sometimes I take it off (like when I was napping) and forget to put it on for a bit. I figure that evens out with the extra steps it registers when I pull my pants down (& up) when changing clothes or going to the bathroom. So far it says I've walked 15,001 steps today, which is 5.918 miles at the stride length I have. I figure I'll get to 6 miles by the end of the day...

It's interesting 'cause I'd read that it's hard for people to get the 10,000 steps, so I was really surprised about how many I do without thinking about it. I don't even consider myself very active right now either. I wonder how many I do when our farm's up and going full speed... hmm... guess I'll find that out later on. :)

Let's see, what else did I do besides the walking around during the day? I did 100 squats as fast as I could followed by 20 jump plie squats and some stretching before eating after my nap. I did some inner thigh leg raises just before my nap - think it was either 50 or 100 on each side, can't remember anymore (was sleepy and all). Guess I should have written it down... I was gonna' do some stuff with an exercise band at the gym when things were slow at work, but got the wrong one so skipped it.

I'll probably do about 16 or so pushups before going to sleep, perhaps some other stuff. I feel like running on my treadmill (yeah, we got a treadmill, well my son got one, inherited it actually), but I'm trying to take it easy for now. I had a bit of foot pain on the top of one of my feet the last time I was running on there so had to cut that session short for the running portion. I still finished 3 miles, but most of it was fast walking instead. It seems to be a pulled muscle or something - think it's from driving with the seat pushed back too far - the reaching forward and such. Not sure, but I figured I should take it easy for a couple of days and then try it again. I'm gonna' try it tomorrow morning! :) Wish me luck! :)

I'd kinda' gotten a bit out of shape fitness-wise for a while - had gotten out of the swing of formal exercise since I was getting more than enough from the farming and markets before. Then we moved our farm and found that new place was not suitable and stopped farming for quite some time. I didn't get back into the swing of exercising apart from my lifestyle again until fairly recently. So, I'm working back up to the levels of things I used to do when doing that sort of stuff again.

I'm up to 25 minutes of solid running (with 5-10 minute warm up and cool down brisk walking), although my running's not all that fast right now when going that long. I'm gonna' work up to 30-44 minutes solid, then work on the speed more. My goal is to make at least 3 miles a day from either walking or running or a combo. of the two. I've found that the distance goal actually helps motivate me to run more than simply going for a duration of running. I'm sort of doing both: following the plan I did to get up to 30 minutes of solid running the first time around (which involved duration and not distance) and combining it with the 3 mile distance goal. I tend to want to run more again in what would have been the middle of my cool down walking period in order to get to the 3 mile distance goal sooner. Then of course I need to cool down again, but I get to the 3 miles quicker that way. :) I actually end up doing more than 3 miles that way now, which is fine. The 3 miles a day thing is based on a goal of covering at least 20 miles a week, as I've read studies that have shown that there's a significant difference in the health of people who do 20 miles or more a week as opposed to those who do less. That works for me - needed some sort of parameter goal anyway. Might as well be 20 miles a week. I also have a goal of running 30-45 minutes solid again, which I'm getting close to accomplishing. Yay! Another goal in relation to running/jogging is to be able to average at an 8-minute mile pace for the running I do. I figure once I'm up to that speed I can run about 40 minutes a day, as little as 4 times a week and still meet the 20 miles a week goal. Cool. That will allow me to add in other cardio stuff on the other days - cross training and such. I'm thinking bike riding and/or rowing... I love rowing...

I've been using the weight machines at the gym after my shifts here and there as I have time and been doing bodyweight things when I don't have time for the machines. I have also been using my son's Bowflex and the free weights a bit, but not so much recently. I've been more into bodyweight stuff and bands. I used to not be into the bands before, but now I've discovered how to use them in a way that actually does challenge my muscles well enough - and some movements on them that I can't really get otherwise. My hubby and I are working on a little craft project of making some custom bands. Once we figure it out I hope to do a little podcast sort of short film thingy of how to make your own custom exercise bands. I'll post it on this blog when/if I do, so you'll know. :)

I want to work Ashtanga yoga into my schedule at some point too, but am waiting a bit until I get more regular with the rest first. I do some light non-yoga stretching after every cardio workout, but I want to do the yoga for more than just the stretching. Ashtanga's a power yoga so it works on strength, endurance, and so much more... miss it still. I've got the video series my instructor told me about so I'm planning on using that when I get back into it again.

Oh yeah, I've also got a Leg Magic machine, finally. I'd been wanting one for a while, but put it off thinking I didn't really need it. Found one locally on sale, so no shipping, which saves a lot too. So, got it. It's a good workout for the inner thigh muscles, so I'm glad I got it. It's not so easy to get those muscles at home otherwise, even with the Bowflex and such. I do about 60 or so of the inner thigh squeeze dealies almost every day, minimum, now too. Sometimes I'll do the other leg exercises they have on the CD as well, but usually don't do it that way. I'm not so into circuit training right now for some reason, perhaps it's 'cause I'm working on my running and all. Who knows...

My exercise (stability) ball is pau (Hawaiian for done, finished, spent, etc.) and I haven't gotten a new one. So I haven't gotten back to doing things with it since I've been back at the formal exercise stuff. I'll get one again sometime in the next few months. They're fun. :)

I use my in-door pull-up/chin-up bar from time to time, but haven't gotten consistent with it enough to get my chin-up back. Perhaps later.

I also discovered that I can work out at another gym that's closer to my house for free since I'm an employee of the gym where I work. They've got a mutual agreement for employees. So I've gone there a few times as well. Their place isn't as well-stocked with equipment or space as the one I work at, so I haven't been as into going there lately. Not since I've been more into the exercise bands and bodyweight stuff at least, and been more focused on the running goals lately as well.

I figure that the more exercise options I have access to at all times, the more opportunities I can and will take to get back into it. I love it, just get caught up in other things, and am still getting used to the early morning schedule and afternoon napping. So it's good to have a variety of things available. Oh, yeah, on that note I also got a kid's jumprope (for a buck) and was using it fairly regularly at the farm for a while too. Fun! I keep it in my bag (like a backpack, but shoulder bag instead). I decided to take it easy on that for a bit too 'cause of the foot thing and all. I use a kid's one 'cause I'm small and they work better for me.

Well, that's all the stuff I've been doing exercise-wise recently that I can think of right now. I guess I'll cover anything I forgot to mention as it comes up when doing it again in another post...

Detox:
I've been sweating buckets while running - completely soaking my workout clothes and dripping on top of it, so I think that helps move things out a bit. I've gotta' drink more water to make up for it though, but not as much as I'd think. I weigh myself naked before working out and after in order to know how much water to drink - naked 'cause my clothes will have the weight of the sweat in them if I weigh myself with them on after my workout. I rehydrate an ounce of water per ounce of weight lost - or one pint of water per pound of weight lost. It's usually about a half pound or so.

I've had a bit of trouble with a sty that keeps wanting to form on one of my eyes - along with eyelashes that grow in a way that sticks in my eye. It seems that one condition will cause and/or irritate the other so it's hard to tell which is happening ('cause it's often both, but I don't know at first). This happens to me when I step up my cardio so it's not unusual. I've also learned that I need to keep up with the exercise and not skip days and such in order to keep the sty in check. I figure it's some sort of detox going on and keeping the circulation going will help it not clog up. The sty does seem to get worse if I skip a day or two, and better if I don't. It was almost gone the other day, then I got another one of those eyelash things and had a hard time finding it. My hubby had to get magnifying eyeglasses and a magnifying glass to find it. They're sometimes really skinny hairs and little so they can be hard to find. Now that I'm taking it easy from the running for a couple of days my sty's a bit more challenged, but it's still keeping in check since we've gotten the latest eyelash thing out of there... Hopefully the running will go well tomorrow and the sty will clear out once and for all (well, at least for this round of stepping up).

Female:
Didn't take my temperature today, but did a couple of days ago. Here's that info:
3am temp: 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit, that was day 1 of my cycle, green day, no kid icons

The Rest:
It's sooo exciting to be setting up our new farm now that we've got a long-term farming situation! :) We'll actually be there to benefit from all the things we do for the soil fertility that allow things to get easier and more fertile over time. We are also able to plant fruit trees and longer term things now too! Yay! Finally! :)

I'll post more on the rest of all this stuff in my next post, which hopefully will be fairly soon. I'm gonna' go now and get ready for sleep.

Nightie Night Everyone! :)

Aloha!