Today we woke up and had some breakfast at the hotel. I'm really not a huge fan of breakfast in general (I know I know, it's the most important part of the day), and I'm even less of a fan of it when it's prepared by the hotel staff. It just tastes like frozen food defrosted or cafeteria food. Not my style.
Anyway, we're sitting there enjoying eating our breakfast and basking in our morning cup of coffee when we see this baby, about 1 and a half/two years old, running through the booths. Recipe for disaster, right? Absolutely correct. All of a sudden we hear an extremely loud THUMP. It was this kid's head hitting the floor like a bowling ball. We could feel the thump's vibrations through our feet - that's how hard this baby hit his head! Then the wonderful mother picked up his wailing body and proceeded to yell at him while continuing on with her eggs. I mean, yeah, the kid did need a little scolding, but I'm pretty sure she should have made sure he was alright first and worried a little less about her eggs getting cold. I'm telling you: this kid hit his head SO hard on the concrete. Some mom's just suck.
Anyway, after breakfast I did a short and easy workout. Here's how it went:
Warmup/Cardio
1 minute walking warmup at 4.0
5 minutes of 30-second running/walking intervals (run @ 9.5, walk @ 3.5)
1 minute walking coll down at 3.0
Exercise Ball
25 regular crunches
25 alternating cross crunches
60 second plank with your feet on the ball
20 in and outs
20 full range sit ups (all the way back on the ball past horizontal, all the way to sitting)
Extras
50 bicycles
30 ceiling humps
15 second hold at the top
20 more ceiling humps
20 bicycles
100 inside leg pulses (each leg)
15 sumo dollies
2.5 minute quick cardio
20 seconds high knees
20 seconds fast feet
20 seconds jumping jacks
20 seconds mountain climbers
10 second rest
20 seconds mountain climbers
20 seconds jumping jacks
20 seconds fast feet
There you have it. There were 2 new vocab words it there (in and outs and ceiling humps) that I will put in the vocab post. I'm thinking about making a page dedicated to the vocab words; this way it'll be easier to locate.
Now it's time to shower and get ready for Linner (lunch/dinner) and off the some shops later on tonight to pick up souvenirs for some special people ;)
Alright so I know I'm on vacation, but I think it's still important to keep up the workout. Once you get in the habit of not working out out it's so easy to fall right back into that rut when you get back home. So therefore: working out it is. Even if it's just a small workout while you're away, do it! I did skip Tuesday. I usually go roughly every other day while I'm on vacation. I try really hard to go every day, but sometimes the day does not permit me to if we have a lot going on that day.
Sunday and Monday I just engaged in some light cardio then some quick 10 minute ab toning. See? Nothing crazy! Last night, however, I was in the workout mood. If you didn't check out my last post, click here for some workout vocab so you know what I'm talking about! Here's my excellent workout that mildly kicked my butt:
Cardio
4 minutes: incline walk. Incline- 9, speed- 3.5
6 minutes: fast jog/light run at 7.0
1 minute: brisk walking at 4.0
4 minutes: 30 second-interval running. Run at 9.5, walk at 3.5
1 minute: walking cool down at 3.0
Leg, Butt, and Ab Toning
20 walking lunges
15 squats
30 second wall sit
15 side lunges
20 stationary alternating lunges
20 laying leg lifts (I used 10 lb weights on each leg)
25 weighted inside leg pulses (each leg)
50 non weighted inside leg pulses (each leg)
8 pee on the fire hydrants
16 butt leg extensions
8 pee and extends
**repeat the last 3 another time**
20 crunches
20 sit ups
20 butterfly crunches
20 tuck ups
20 straight leg ceiling crunches
20 butt ups
60 second plank
25 crunches
30 second hollow body hold
20 reverse crunches
30 second plank
20 side crunches to each side
20 bicycles
30 dollies
20 twist and crunches
end with a 60 second plank with your feet on a big ball.
There you have it! I broke it up into leg, butt, ab, and oblique exercises just in case you only wanted to do one or two of the body groups. It really wasn't all that bad. A little time consuming, but totally worth it; I feel great this morning! Today I'm thinking some ball-exercises. (Get your minds out of the gutter...I mean the big exercise balls!)
Alright, so I just did a really great workout that I'm dying to share. However, a hand full of the exercises I do don't really have names, and if they do then I definitely don't call them by their right name. I tend to make up names for a lot of the exercises. I call them weird things, so beware. This is why I've chosen to dedicate this blog post to some workout vocab so that in future posts you'll know what I mean when I say weird things. Here we go. We'll start off easy and work our way up to the really out there ones.
1. Tuck-ups: Like a V-up, only you tuck your legs in and out as you crunch. Sit on your butt, legs in a tucked position, then lower your shoulders down as you straighten your legs. On the way back up bring them back into a tucked position.
2. Butterfly Sit Ups: These may look a little awkward, but they're great. Sit up in a butterfly position so your feet are touching then lay back. Crunch up toward the middle with your hands pushing in front of you, not toward the ceiling.
3. Straight Leg Ceiling Crunches: This is where you lay on your back, bring your legs straight up to the ceiling (straighter legs are better, but they can be slightly bent), then try too touch your toes. Your are essentially crunching to the ceiling with your legs straight.
4. Butt-Ups: Start in the same position as the Straight Leg Ceiling Crunch. Instead of reaching up for your toes, keep your back and shoulders on the floor and simply lift your butt up. You want to try to drop your legs as little as possible. Pretend there is a wall on the other side of your legs and your straight legs can't go past the invisible "wall". This trick always seems to work.
5. The Audrina: I gave it this name because I got this exercise from a Shape magazine article that featured Audrina Patridge. I'm going to try to explain this as easy as possible. It's a different take on the standard "Tuck Up". Lay on the floor with your legs straight at a 45 degree angle. As you crunch and lift your shoulders off the floor, you're also bringing your knees in toward your stomach. Then as you bring your shoulders back down, your legs should straighten back to 45 degrees.
6. Dollies: Sit with your legs in a straddle and your hands by your ears, elbows out. Go side to side alternating touching your elbow to knee, then elbow to knee. Kind of like a see-saw. Back, forth, back, forth.
7. Sumo Dollies: Stand with your legs apart and bent outward, like a Sumo Wrestler. Then engage in the same motion as you did with the dollies. Hands by ears, elbows out, elbow to knee.
8. Reverse Crunches: Lay on your back at 90-90 (hips flexed at 90 degrees, knees flexed at 90 degrees). Keeping the knees at 90, brings heels to the floor by extending your hips. Just before they touch the floor, flex the hip again, but this time bringing your knees all the way up almost to your chest, lifting your butt off the floor just a little bit. The key to this is form. Really try to keep those knees at 90 degrees the whole time.
9. Peeing on the Fire Hydrant: Okay. Bear with me on this one. Get on the floor on your hands and knees. Keeping your knee bent, lift your leg as if you were going to pee on a fire hydrant. Voila. Great butt exercise.
10. Pee and Extend: Do the Pee on the Fire Hydrant except at the top, instead of bringing your leg back down, extend it out so your leg is straight. Then bend the leg, and retract the "pee".
11. Butt Leg Extensions: Hands and knees again, bring one let out to the back and horizontal (straight from your back, to your butt, to your toes). From this position bring your leg up toward the ceiling then lower it back to horizontal.
12. Laying Leg Raise: Lay on your side with the bottom leg bent. Raise the top leg to about 45 degrees, hold for 2 seconds, then lower it down. Easy Peasy.
13. Inside Leg Pulses: Alright let me try to explain the one. Lay on your side, legs straight out so you're in a straight line. Take the top leg and bend it over the bottom leg so that you're underneath leg is still straight and almost peaking out through the bent "bridge" that I like to call it. It may be easier to hold the foot of the leg that's bent because once you start the exercise it tends to do some sliding. Now lift the bottom leg up and down in a "pulsing" motion. At first you feel silly and it doesn't hurt, but do 50 or so of them and your inner thighs will be burning!
14. Twist and Crunch: This I may have got from a Zumba move, but it's really great and works your obliques and just your core in general. I'm a big fan of this one. Stand with your legs shoulder width apart and arms bent, knuckles facing each other (but not touching) as if you were going to bow to a Chinaman. Now do the twist...kind of. Twist from right to left then back to right, but as you go right again bring your left knee up to your elbow. Then lower and twist left, right, back to left and as you go left bring your right knee to your elbow. Love these!
Okay that's all I can really think of as of now, but I'm sure there will be more weird ones that I'll have to add but I think we're safe for now!
Oh, family vacations. With these little getaways comes some really excellent people watching (and judging). Don't even say I'm awful because you do it to. We all do, not matter what you say. I've seen some pretty awesome things and some pretty hellish things. Here we go:
Awesome:
The little girl in her little two piece. She. Is. Adorable. Blonde hair in a little curly pony tail, about 3 or 4 years old with that little baby belly. She couldn't be more than like 20 pounds. Just a little nugget of a human. I honestly wanted to pick her little excited body up and squeeeezzzeeee her and play with her and slide down the slide and make sand castles and be little again. (in the most non creepy way possible). Kids like that are awesome; not a care in the world. They're just excited being a kid with their mom and dad by their sides.
Hellish:
The little overweight girl in a two piece. Actually, she's not so "little" anymore. She's probably around 8 or so and about 25-30 pounds overweight. And wearing a bikini. Please, just tell me why? I'm not understanding here. Why would you put your daughter in a bikini like that?? Call me a bitch, but I just don't think it's necessary. It's fine that your daughter is overweight (well, not really), but people are just going to make fun of her. Now why would you want that for your little girl?
Awesome:
Couples in love. You know, on their honeymoon or celebrating their engagement, first anniversary, whatever it may be. I love that they're so effortlessly in love, being a little mushy but mostly fun, darting from ride to ride. It's just so excellent.
Hellish:
Couples in love that wear those corny T-shirts. Today I saw one that had their names in a heart on the front, you know, like how in old movies they used to write their names on a tree? "Allen + Jane AAF". On the back it simply and vomitously stated "Once in a lifetime [insert silhouette of Mickey Mouse] life give us a true fairytale". Ughhhhhh. Really? That just sickens me.
Awesome:
When those girls get the princess treatment. Let me just state that it's ONLY cute when the girls are 6 and under. Anything older than that it just gets a little weird. Anyway, I love when they're dressed up as Belle or Cinderella with the little dress, bun on the top of their head and sparkles everywhere. It's even better when it's their first visit and they're just gleaming with excitement.
Hellish:
Wardrobe. This has to be a list because I could have an entire blog post just on the hellish wardrobe choice of some people. I get that sometimes its culture, but sometimes it's just weird. Examples:
- Fanny packs. STOP THAT. Men, women, Coach, Walmart. It needs to stop.
- Maxi dresses. You've got to be dying of heat.
- Heels. Really, ladies? Heels at an amusement park?
- "Smith Family Vacation" shirts. Thanks guys. We all are super ecstatic that you're on vacation, but so is literally every other person here.
- Those giant Goofy hats (the character Goofy). Once again, you've got to be sweating!
I can go on for hours, but I guess I should stop here.
Alright so we board the plane. There I am next to the window trying not to have a huge meltdown and piss everyone on the plane off. I get in my seat, put my carry-on under the seat in front of me, buckle up, send my parting text messages and turn off my phone. The flight attendants come around, do their spiel and we're ready to go. Or so I think...
All of a sudden the pilot comes on the loud speaker and says, "Alright folks, I just got a message from air traffic control saying there's a big storm ahead where we're supposed to be flying through. I'm just waiting for a re-route and we'll be on our way. It should only be a few minutes." Oh. Great. Of course that would happen.
I'm keeping cool, no big deal. Just a little turbulence, right? (:::We're going to hit the WORST turbulence, those little masks are going to come out and we're all going to die a long, slow, freaking-out, tragic death:::) Okay fine. I'm being a little dramatic, but whatever. Anyway, we start to take off and there go my ears. Pop, pop, pop. I look out the window and what do I see? The wing is shaking. SHAKING. What's going through my head? Of course the worst possible things.
We get up in the air and everything's fine. A little iPod action, some magazine reading, and some random small talk with the woman sitting next to my sister.
And now it's time for descent. This is where I have a problem. My ears are really bad. Of course, like everything else on my body. So we're on the way down and all of a sudden the pressure in my ears is SO bad I literally thought my ears were going to start bleeding. I couldn't hear anything, including that woman who decided now was a good time to chew our ears off. After some light turbulence, the sky going from clear and blue to almost black and cloudy, we were on the ground. Finally. Andddddd my ears still didn't pop. Of course that would happen. Luckily, I woke up this morning and all was well in the hearing category. Wouldn't that have been tragic.
All in all I guess it wasn't too bad of a flight. Now it's time to finally shower and get ready for dinner!
P.S. RIP Amy Winehouse? Crazy. I guess she should have listened to them when they said...
Here I am sitting and waiting at gate A7 for the giant metal machine to touch down and take me away. We should be boarding in about ten minutes and taking off in 25. I feel like I'm going to vomit all over the place, possibly on my sister. Mostly because she's currently reading Harry Potter.
Real quick: my parents haven't flown in about 20 years, so naturally my dad is freaking out. He's walking around pretty frantically, babbling like a nervous wreck and really needs to sit down because he's freaking me out.
Also, my dad made sure to lock every single bag just in case the Bag Monster came into the baggage claim and stole all of our socks and underwear. Actually, ya know what? That would happen to me. My stuff would get lost. I'm that girl.
Alright, that's it for now. I'll be sure to update on the trainwreck and random chaos that will be this vacation. That is, if I make it out of the flying machine alive...
Soooooooo......I really want a tattoo. Really bad. But I'm not going to get one right now and here's why:
1. I don't know exactly what I want.
2. I feel like it has to mean something. I don't want to to be like "YES! I got it. I love peanut butter, so I'm going to get a jar of peanut butter tatted PERMANENTLY on the outside of my ankle." That is a hideous idea. Just because you like something a lot, doesn't mean you can get it tattooed on your body. If that were the case, I'd have a roll of sushi, peanut butter, a portrait of Blake Shelton, a lame quote from Sweet Home Alabama, and a slice of vegetable pizza tattooed on my body. Not ideal.
3. Tattoos can cost a pretty penny. And guess what? I don't even have an ugly penny. I can barely afford regular life, let alone a tattoo of the NY Yankees emblem that I'll regret tomorrow.
Now, these are examples of "What the Hell" tattoos:
Really?? Okay, I get it. You like clothes. But a hanger?? Come on.
Over it. So overdone. Let's think of a new quote, shall we?
I bet that'll look real cute and sexy when she's 65.
See? What the hell are people thinking? I'm all for expressing yourself freely through art blah blah blah but lets get logical tattoos please?
Soooo...for now I guess I'll put a hold on the whole tattoo business. Once I find something I really like, then wait a few months, see if I still like it, then maybe I'll have it drawn up or something.
