On the train in the way in, our sober selves...














After a few (many) beers.

The photos after this get very blurry and mainly involve song sheets and us singing at the tops of our lungs.
A brilliant time!











By the way, if anyone knows of anyone looking for a flatty, please let me know. My flatmates are driving me balmy. All I need is a garage for the bikes and I'm happy. I work out East Auckland so anything around Botany etc would be grand.

Gee time flys

Once again, I hadn't realised that its been so much time since I posted. I read other blogs regularly so I just seem to think that mine updates magically too :).
I've been busy since the last time I posted. I applied for a new job, got offered it, but in the end decided to stick with my current job.
I've spent a couple of weeks on Sydney working, had an absolutely brilliant time with a great project team. My time in sydney had a lot to do with why I decided to stay at my current job. The project leader is a great time, and I've a huge amount of respect for how he does his job and it started me thinking, maybe I should work towards project management.
It was a very stressful time trying to decide what to do, with only a week to make up my mind. It obviously affected me a lot as I had a nightmare one night which was truely terrifying. I know no-one likes to hear about dreams but...
I was taking a shower, when a man all in black came in with something black over his head. There were other people not too far away, and I tried to scream but he hit me extremely hard in the head and I couldn't scream and before I blacked out, I knew that I was going to be raped/killed. It was the most terrifying feeling in the world and my terror was palpable when I woke up.
I can start to understand how rape victims never get over the terror. It took me a long time to get back to sleep that night.

A bunch of us went to beerfest at Alexandra Park Friday night, had a great time. They got all the girls up at one point and we had to do this cheerleading knees up mother brown thing. For some bizarre reason, I won, not quite sure how, but my friend Sandy said she helped by pointing out I've got huge tits. Gee thanks. Anyway won a bottle of Moet Champange and some Paris perfume which is a pretty cool prize.
Got home at 3am, love catching the train home, so cheap! Saturday was very quiet indeed. We did drive down to hamilton to pickup a redbull trolley racer that Greg brought for its race wheels but it wasn't quite what we thought it would be, so greg changed his mind. He knew the buy selling it, so it there weren't any problems.

We got home T 6pm and lay down for a 20min nap since we were still so shattered from the copius amounts of beer the night before, and before we knew it we work up the next morning at 7am! Couldn't believe we'd slept for 13 hours!!!

We went riding out at Woodhill on the dirt bikes, I'm not sure what was up with me, but I had quite a few hard crashes so have some good bruises today and my muscles especially around my shoulders and chest are really quite painful. I might be able to use them as a convenient excuse not to go to the gym tomorrow....

Talking of the Tuesday night session, I went last Tuesday and they've changed the format or something, now its the Max fit class, and I have never been to a harder gym session. I sweated like a pig (tmi) and was completely knackered by the end so I'm not sure my sore muscles will cope with tomorrow.

Will see if I can post some charming photos of us at beerfest.

Ouchie sore muscles.

I try and go to the gym on Tuesday nights to do an aerobics class. It’s the only class I can fit in around my (t.v J) schedule. That do have classes on Thursday but I’m normally pretty busy working on bikes, at the pub, busy with work etc.

So this week I trotted off to the gym and the instructor is mean!! (in a lovely way). She decided we should be doing crosstraining. So sessions on the reebok steps with interdispersed with running around the gym, doing lunges up and down the gym etc. I sweat like a pig during it (nice imagery) and haven’t been able to do so much of the jumping lately as I seem to have sore boobs. My sports bra is a bit past it as well I think, so time to buy a new one.

I was suppose to be going to Thailand this wkend, but that’s been postponed, not sure when its going ahead.

I’ve been eating like a pig lately, just so hungry all the time and it doesn’t seem to be abating. I think I’ve put on a little weight but a bit too scared to jump on the scales.

I was thinking last night maybe I should go back to Weight watchers for the motivation but I find it really hard to stick to 20 points a day and I think I eat really healthily (most of the time). I did watch The Fat Chance last night (videoed) and think maybe my portion sizes are too big a lot of the time as well. Need to concentrate on those more I think. And I will keep thinking about the WW thing.

 

Other than that, not much news. Managed to get the work done on the bike last night, and plan on tackling it again tonight.

Caio.

Mid year spew

Well I’ve been very busy lately. Had our mid year ‘do’ at Toto’s on Friday. It was a medieval theme and I hired a dress to wear. Had a fantastic time right up to the point where I woke up on the carpet at 7am. I remember everything pretty clearly right up to dessert then nothing after that.

I threw up everywhere, in the taxi, all over myself, outside and on the carpet. Nice….

Apparently they couldn’t get me out of the taxi, I refused to move and was lying on the floor right at the back trying to sleep. Its not cheap ‘soiling’ a taxi either. That was an $80 bill! Ouch.

So Saturday was a complete writeoff, I woke up at 7am and greg helped me into the shower to wash the vomit out of my hair. Took some sleeping tablets and woke up again at 1pm, had another shower to try and wash the smell out of my hair. I found it really hard to walk and stand, my legs were shaking violently so spent the rest of the day in bed while my darling boyfriend went out and got junk food (a necessity) and a dvd.

Sunday we went dirt biking out at Woodhill. Had a few crashes, Greg had a classic one when he was trying to ride up a dune on the beach and hit a log. It took a long time to stop laughing much to his disgust (once I realised that he was ok of course!). We got home around 6pm rather buggered.

 

Off to the gym tonight, still sore from riding (my chest, arms and shoulders) so might find the pushups a bit hard.

Sounds like I might be going to Thailand next week for work, they should be fun (the travelling/sightseeing bit, not so much the work, I’m not that sick!!)

 

On the lard front, I have been eating lots of crap lately. I find the more fat you eat the more you crave it. But made a delish casserole last night which is pretty healthy and will do me for dinner for the next couple of nights. And have my home made minestrone super-tasty soup for lunch. Just need to stay away from those biccies!!

My weight doesn’t appear to have gone up much, but hovering way closer to the 70’s than I would like!

 

Taa raa!

fULLON wKEND

Well it was a pretty full-on wkend. We went out with a bunch of mates for dinner at Thai flame just around the corner from work. It was a pretty good price and the food was very tasty. I managed to consume most of a bottle of wine so was feeling rather cheery after that.

On Saturday once we finally managed to drag ourselves out of bed (at 9:30!) we loaded the van with the two dirt bikes and gear. We’d been rather concerned with the fact that two dirt bikes just might not fit on, but managed to squish them in there without too much fuss at all!. We were out at Woodhill by 12 o’clock, it takes just over an hour to get there. We then spent the next 4 ½ hours blasting around the tracks. It was great fun riding with Greg, it’s the first time he’s ridden his bike (its been a work in progress since he brought it at the start of the year), so he was happy it didn’t fall to bits. It did boil the coolant at one stage after a mammoth uphill, which I’ve never heard a bike to before but it seemed pretty sweet after that. Greg’s since brought a new radiator cap. We were out of there at just after 5 and home at 6:20. Since we had a party to go to in Balmoral at 7, it didn’t leave us much time to do anything so the bikes stayed in the van for unloading and cleaning the next day.

I was completely shattered after the riding and only lasted at the party until 9:45 (loser!) before we had to pike as I was starting to not make any sense.

We then got up about 8:30 the next morning as I wanted to go to Botany and get my hair done. I haven’t been to the hairdresser since November so it was looking a bit straggly. Got 12 foils in blonde and brown and a cut, and it only cost $66! I think she must’ve made a mistake as I’m sure it cost me 100 last time. I wasn’t about to complain though!

We had lunch at the pub then did a bit of shopping before heading home to unload the bikes. Got them out and found that the hose wasn’t there so we couldn’t wash them so decided to drive out to the Hunua ranges and do a bit of mountain biking instead. Out there by 4pm, we went down a trail we haven’t been on before. After a while it started getting dark and we were getting rather concerned as we looked to be in the middle of nowhere and had no idea at all where or when the trail ended. We stopped at one point and could see what possibly was the gravel road cut into the side of a hill so took another trail heading in that direction and we were lucky enough that we found it.

We were quite a long way from home and by the time we got back it was pitch black (but only 10 to 6 damn sunset) headed home and chucked a casserole on for dinner and ate cookies and cream icecream while we were waiting. Damn that stuff is good.

 

So we ate lots of bad stuff in no moderation during the wkend but also did a shite-load of exercise. Weight wasn’t looking too good this morning though at 69.1! But hopefully it will head back down.

 

Hmm, its been a while!

Morning weight: 69.2 (was 69.4 on Saturday)

Points eaten yesterday: 19.5

Exercise: Nada

 

Well it’s been a while since I updated so I thought I should pull finger and write something (not that anyone reads this!). I’ve been really busy with racing, travelling and all that. I’ve also NOT been losing weight and the pair of jeans I use to measure my fatness are rather tight. Bad leo!

So yesterday was the start of leo-stop-eating-everything again and so far its being going good.

 

I brought a copy of the Healthy Eating magazine. They’ve got a great looking recipe for lasagne in there that I will have to try sometime. Anyway they talk about your metabolism and how’s its made up of 3 parts. Your basal (basic) metabolism is the amount of energy required to tick over in a steady state and makes up 60-80% of energy used by sedentary adults. The diet-induced thermo-genesis is the amount of energy needed to process food eaten, and the last bit and only bit we can really control is physical activity and can vary the metabolism rate from 10-15% in lazy people to up to 50% in active people.

They also made the comment that people losing weight lose lean muscle mass which slows down your metabolism so it becomes even more important to exercise to try and not lose that when dieting. So I need to keep that in mind and kick my own ass to do some exercise.

Although in saying that, my quads are extremely sore at the moment from racing, and I can barely hobble along let alone exercise! I even resorted to buying deep heat last night to rub on them. Wish I had brought it to work today.

 

I made a big batch of pumpkin and chickpea soup last night to bring for lunches. With a bit of light sour cream on top and some toast it’s divine! I had a WW cheesy macaroni last night for dinner, its not the best but at least it was hot and went some way to filling the gap.

 

One last thing, what ever you do DO NOT buy the Tip Top Cookies and Cream icecream. It is soooo good with huge chunks of cookie and so so so bad!

More from Oz

Stupid email didn’t send, try again. This is quite old now:

 

Gosh its been a while since I’ve written, I did start writing a post about how my trip to the blue mountains went but that’s a couple of weeks old now and the brain fog has already set in. Its enough to say that they’re absolutely stunning and well worth a couple of hours spent hiking around the trails and board walks.

I’m still in Sydney but this is my third visit here (in 4 weeks). This is likely to be my last one as well for a while. I came in last night, and work had put me up at Sofitel in the city instead.

I was most disappointed to walk into my room and see two single beds, and tried to exchange rooms to no avail. But once I actually did manage to get to sleep last night I slept pretty well. Its been years since I’ve slept in a single bed (apart from the occasional drunken night) but it wasn’t so bad.

The sofitel isn’t up the same standards as the crown plaza, the room is a hell of a lot smaller and I think the bathroom is less than half the size but at least theres a different room service menu to order from.

I’m hopefully going to go out and find a supermarket tonight to buy some muesli bars and a razor. Damn forgot mine.

I also want to hit the gym, unfortunately its not part of my hotel fees so might have to fork out for it myself. I walked past it this morning on the way to pickup the car and all the gym equipment looks mega squashed in, I hope they have a tv for me to watch. Ahhh so shallow and pathetic am I!.

Had a pretty good wkend, work was crazy busy on Friday as workmates were sick/away so I was the (only) hero of the day. It did mean I didn’t get to Thames till around 8. G was at the pub with some mates, so he was already half pissed by the time I got there. I think we left around 10. Slept till 11am the next day! I spent the whole wkend feeling absolutely shattered so that sleep was good. We had a very unproductive afternoon working on the bikes, then went out for dinner and to the hot pools with a bunch of mates, good fun.

Sunday I watched home and away, I already know what happens cos Oz are ahead and I can’t help but see the captions in the paper but it was still very exciting.

Then I had to leave to drive home, pack and catch my taxi to the airport. At least I’m building up some airpoints.

 

On the weight front, despite upping my exercise I’ve been putting on weight and my pants are getting tight around my thighs, not good!! Damn alchohol keeps calling my name too which doesn’t help. Must remind myself how many calories it has and ignore all wishful thinking it’ll be so tasty.

Another wkend gone.

Well its almost the wkend again, and I still haven’t said anything about last wkend!

It was really fullon. I worked on my bike till 10 Friday night, and greg turned up at 12:30am after working on his. I was already asleep by this point, and it was really really nice having him turn up and snuggle into bed with me.

Next day we spent trying to work out my gearbox problems (I had one of the gears the wrong way round) and then find another shim washer as one appeared to be missing. Also had to shoot out and buy another helmet. I’m really happy with the one I got, its an HJC with a very styley matt finish in red and black (cost 150 down from 350!). If I was at all motivated I would take a photo and put it on, but I think blogging photos might be a little beyond my ability. I managed to pick up a washer from someone else who races at 6pm so the gearbox was done by 8 and van loaded by 9.

Then racing all the next day. I will put the report on my other blog, but in short I had lots of electrical problems and need to spend heaps of money getting it all replaced.

I’ve just paid for the parts today, 417 euros plus currency conversion etc, ouch considering I’ve just paid the last 920 dollar bill for parts off the credit card.

Heading to Sydney for 2 weeks on Sunday so that will save me a bit of money.

Tonight I’m going out for dinner with my sister, cousin, greg, and some other people at an Italian place in parnell so that should be fun. Tomorrow I’m climbing Rangitoto and working on bike after that.

Weight loss not going so good, I have been so munchy this week. I have to take progestertone for some female stuff and I take it in 2 week stints. I think it makes me really hungry but at least it appeared to fix my periods, having them monthly instead of weekly.
I did fit fine into my leathers last week, think the late nights working on bikes not thinking about eating (hence eating) helped. I’m about the 68kg mark at the moment.

Well time to eat some lunch.