le blog de bloogue

Started off this lovely Sunday by dropping Katie and Brandy off at the airport around 8am. They listed themselves for a flight to Duluth to spend a day with Kris and Cliff, get some shopping in and some Red Lobster. Meanwhile, Kieran and I took advantage of the empty Mall of America and walked three laps in there for a nice 1.5mi walk. Kieran pointed out each store that was closed. Even by the third lap, he was still amazed how many stores were closed. After we finished our walk, we took the light rail up to Minnehaha Park and wandered around there for a bit. We haven’t been there before so we figured with the extra time on our hands, never a better time than the present! We continued on, back on the light rail, to downtown Minneapolis. There was clearly a Twins game today as a majority of the people on the train had jerseys on and such. I guess baseball will never be one of those things I’ll ever understand or get excited about. We arrived downtown, and I convinced Kieran he was hungry as it was now around 10am and neither of us had anything to eat yet. After getting off the light rail in the Warehouse District, we took a shot in the dark and headed to Pizza Luce. With some luck, they had JUST opened up for brunch! Kieran nabbed some OJ and a cheese quesadilla while I had some sort of scrambled marinated tofu, peppers, hashbrowns, and tomatoes (I think). My GOD it was GREAT! Due to our train tickets expiring in the next half hour, we decided that we better get back on the train and back to the mall. From there, we headed back to Chaska and nabbed some petunias, a tomato plant, and a few planters from Home Depot. Ok, so it’s probably a little too early for it all but we’ll give it a shot anyway and keep an eye out for low temperatures.

I’d have some photos to share but the Wing got left at work on Friday. I had left early to go with Katie and Brandy to the school district’s early childhood screening. She did a great job and took it very seriously! With that, she scored a 30 — with the requirement for Kindergarten being a score of over 21. She’s still another 1-1.5 years away from that but at least we know where she’s at.

I started going to Lifetime’s Team Weight Loss class every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday in order to suppliment my Weight Watchers progress. Every Monday, we meet with a nutritionist for a half hour and get chastised if we’re not filling out our food/exercise journal. I’ll likely get regularly yelled at for lack of filling mine out — it’s just so much easier to keep track of my food via Weight Watchers eTools than it is figuring out how many starches, proteins, etc. I’ve ate during the day. The other half of the class, exercise, usually lasts 25-50 minutes per nights. We’re usually on a treadmill with weights and bands and keep our heart rate up in the zone 2-3 range. This will go on for a total of twelve weeks and we just completed our first week so I don’t really have any progress to report. However, I am starting my fourth month of Weight Watchers and have lost a total of 43lbs since mid-January. Earlier last year, I was seriously considering pursuing the idea of getting the lapband — the gastric bypass alternative, to assist me with my weight loss. Then later that year, I started thinking… you know, if I can raise two kids, I should be able to lose this weight on my own. So far, that method of thinking has been working well.

Nothing else to report for now. So far I’m surviving the possible NW/Delta merger, pending congressional approval. Keeping myself as optimistic as possible with Brandy’s assistance. Bye bye.

I don’t know if I’m proud or embarrassed about all the time I spent trying to finish it.

Brandy took her GMAT test today, boasting a score of 680, requiring little effort on her part (I would have scored a 2 – if even possible). She’s now officially met her registration requirements for UWEC this fall having already filled out the application, paying the fee, and providing transcripts from Bemidji State, St Katherine’s, and Vermillion Community College. A little more about what that test score means – UWEC’s requirement for the MBA program was 475, national average is 526, average for Harvard is 701, and a perfect score is 800.

Edit: I stand corrected – she got a 680, not a 640 which I originally reported.