AtomicMrX

I’ve added some cool stuff to the old blog. All the research for the other web sites is paying off because I’m finding some very helpful plugins for my own blog. I’ve added a very easy to use Photo Gallery tool. It is so easy to upload the pictures now and it make the thumbnails automatically. I’ll be uploading more photos now that it’s much easier to do. Plus you can still click on any of the photo thumbnails and it will open an enlarged version with the photos caption.

I’ve taken some Summer time pictures of the garden. We have herbs, herbs, and more herbs. You can only eat so much herbs and Shannon planted a bunch of them! Just go to the Photos tab at the top of the page and you will see the Album with all the Summer pictures.

For the 4th I went over to Jim’s house and he prepared some very delicious chicken, BBQ Beans and Potato Salad. It was a nice time. I unfortunately spent a great deal of the visit on Andy’s new laptop hooking him up with fonts, software, and basic updates. You could call it a working dinner. I still had fun but in a geek-e-er way.

I still have to do one software install for him. For some reason it didn’t work right at all. It could be how I duped the files. I’ll retry from the original.

When I got home from Jim’s; Shannon and I went to the River Front Park and watched the fireworks. It was crazy packed with people. They gave shuttle busses of people rides from the River Market to the River Front Park. There were probably about 12 or so very long school busses making the circuit.

I didn’t like being around that many people in one little area. It was weird. Kind of felt like a sci-fi movie and we were all fleeing the city with the only transportation left. As we sat in the school bus going over the bridges; people were walking along side the bus in hordes. It was very surreal.

Jaki handled the fireworks very well this year. I don’t think there was as much illegal stuff shooting off this year as in the past.

I hope everyone had a safe and fun filled fourth!

My Topsy Turvy Tomato plants are really growing with all the rain we’ve had this past week. The gardens are really enjoying the rain as well.

I got the Wii Fit and have been using it every day. It is a good work out for a person like me (totally out of shape). The Yoga and Strength exercises are really making my thighs work! I can feel it and then some! I have really good balance and posture (at least that’s what my Wii Fit Instructor keeps saying) I just need to work on my core so I have better balance. I tend to sway when the exercise requires me to balance on one foot. I just need to build up the muscles in my feet. I use to have fairly strong feet in college but that was over 25 years ago (I AM SO VERY OLD! - sigh).

Jaki is loving the backyard. She runs around out there whenever we are working on the gardens and stuff. We don’t leave her back there unattended because there are some VERY big dogs that could (and have) jumped our fence and would easily think she is dinner.

Shannon put a lot of time into our gardens and it shows! I will take some pictures and post in the next week!

I used Mr Clean on the floors yesterday and I am very impressed! I use to use Pine Sol and thought it was good but we used it all up and I happen to have some Mr Clean left over from apartment days (over 5 years ago) so I used it instead. The floors have never been so clean, shiny, and feel great on the ol’ bare feet! The Pine Sol would tend to leave the floors sticky if you got the ratio off on water to product.

I had a great concoction last night. I wanted a smoothie and I didn’t have all the ingredients to make a Weight Watchers recipe so I made one up base on it. It was like a shake and kind of like sorbet. Very good and I ate the whole thing (I need to make a smaller batch next time!). Here is the recipe and it is very easy and simple.

1 package of Sugar Free - Fat Free Instant Vanilla Pudding & Pie Filling mix
16 oz package of whole frozen Strawberries
2 Cups Skim Milk

This makes 2 rather large servings or 4 one and a half cup servings (I went with one humungous serving!).

In a blender, put the milk, Vanilla Pudding & Pie Filling powder mix, and frozen strawberries; blend on high (scrapping down the sides often) till nice and smooth. This will thicken as it sets because of the Vanilla mix. It’s part of the Core plan for me so I don’t know how many points it would be for the Flex people.

It was so good - I thought I was cheating! I also bought a Chocolate Fudge Pudding & Pie Filling mix and can’t wait to try that one out!

Work has been very slow which is very unusual. We are normally doing over time because of the political season and the Memorial Day holiday - but we are not. We barely have work to keep us busy during the work day! I hope things pick up a little bit more as we get closer to election day!

I downloaded a free demo of DS Crosswords and it was a lot of fun. Made me think about spelling (which I’m horrible at) and wasn’t too hard to make me feel discouraged. It’s a cheap game too… only $20! That is unusual! I think I may pick it up - I need to keep this old brain a thinking and a little practice at spelling words correctly wouldn’t hurt either!

Okay, here is my Weight Watchers progress as of Tuesday nights weigh in. I weighed 202 pounds, a loss of 1 pound from the week before, and a total loss of 18.6 pounds so far (starting weight of 220.6 pounds).

And I thought I was going to have a bad weigh in! I ran out of my food and had to borrow some from Shannon. So I had “real” salad dressing instead of my Fat Free version and I had some other things too. Not bad!

As a celebration and because I was very hungry, we went out to eat at Sweet Tomatoes (an all you can eat salad bar place). It was great! Plus we had a 15% off coupon to use up before April 30th.

Shannon bought an egg coloring kit and wanted to do it before Easter - so that meant today!

Here are the pictures of our little fun. I haven’t done this in years! It was fun and we didn’t even make a mess (big shocker)!

Now we have to eat them all!