After almost 4 days without power and almost 5 days with no TV or internet, I’m back online! What a doozy of a storm! It actually didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. I read some books I hadn’t read before and reread some I had. I found some of my old stories and writings that I had started and never finished. I reviewed the recipes I had started for cookbook 2. I feel pretty productive. My neighbor chopped up the fallen trees into smaller pieces.

I had to completely throw out everything in my fridge so I’m starting from scratch! Right now, I have some eggbeaters, veggies, deli meat and cheese, dressing, protein shakes, and soda in there and some grouper in the freezer. Now that everything is getting back to normal, hopefully my eating will too!

Still no power. At this point, I’m just trying to get by until the power comes back on. I’m having to eat out every meal and I’m actually sort of sick of that! They’ve said the power should be back by 10 pm tonight (although yesterday they said it would be back 10 pm last night). They also said some people could be out until late Saturday. I’m just tired of it LOL! My pool looks like a brown pond and I have a fridge full of rotting food. I’m not sure if it’s worse to keep it in there where it’s at least slighty cool, ok at this point, probably lukewarm or put it in the outside garbage but since Trash Day is Monday and it’s supposed to be mid 90s this weekend, I’m not sure I want all that food outside in the hot sun. The raccoons would definitely come out of the woodwork for some stinky Tilapia! Gahhhhhh!

I’m here reporting from Oz! Well, not exactly. We had a major storm blow thru the area. It knocked out my power (still out!) and lightening knocked down 2 trees. One of my neighbor’s trees fell across the driveway (we share a driveway since we are the only two houses on the pipestem). My other neighbor’s tree got hit and the top of the tree fell into my yard but didn’t hit or damage anything. I spent a large part of last night running around to stores buying more flashlights, batteries, a crank radio, and a cell phone charger that you don’t have to plug in…oh and a phone with a cord. So, between all that happening, I didn’t get to eat as planned yesterday. The pork chops I wanted to cook last night have probably gone bad by now because I’ve been out of power for 18-20 hours now. I ended up getting a tuna sub from Subway last night because I was starving after the whole ordeal. I did manage to lose 1.5 lbs though! I ate kind of crappy this morning and I’m currently drinking the largest coffee I think I’ve ever purchased. I’m not sure what I’ll be eating for dinner because that’s going to depend on whether I’ve got power or not when I get home from work!

Weight: 143

Breakfast:

• French toast sticks and hash browns

• gigantic coffee with cream

Lunch:

• Probably chipotle chicken salad

Dinner:

• ???

I was so organized last night. I made a stir-fry for dinner (with leftovers for lunches) a quiche for breakfasts during the week, and turkey bacon for breakfast and snacks. I sort of winged it with the quiche. I got eggbeaters because I was lazy and just wanted to pour and go. I added some leftover half and half, some parm, and some frozen spinach. Then I baked it for 50 minutes at 350 degrees. OMG I wish I took a picture - it puffed up like a souffle or something. It deflated once I took it out of the oven but it was pretty amusing to look at.  Tonight I’ll be cooking up pork chops for dinner. I’m down a .5 lb from yesterday so it looks like my NY indulgences will soon be gone.

Weight: 144.5

Breakfast:

• quiche and turkey bacon

Lunch:

• Chicken Stir-fry

Snack:

• turkey bacon

Dinner:

• pork chops, veggie, salad with dressing

Snack if needed

I’m not sure if I should call this the official day 1 of my birthday challenge. I didn’t have any food at home so I ate out for breakfast and got a salad bar for lunch. Dinner was awesome! I did a stir-fry and topped it off with this sauce I found at the grocery store. It’s called Makoto Vegetable Sauce (it also says White Sauce on the bottle). It tastes sort of like the pale orange sauce you get at japanese steakhouses. So yummy! It wasn’t too bad in the carb department - only 1g per 2 tablespoons. It is almost all fat though so use sparingly! It’s 180 cals for the 2 TB. It appears to be mayo, tomato paste, spices, butter, cream and some other stuff. We’ll see how it works with my diet plan, but wow, it made boring stir fry really tasty!

So the bad news: 145 lbs. I’m not totally convinced those are “real” pounds. I’m PMSing at the moment so I may be a bit bloated. But either way, I’ve got approximately 1 month so let’s see what happens! Today wasn’t a true “eating low” day - I wasn’t really prepared food wise so there’s more than a few carbs in today’s menu, but I stopped at the store so I’ve got food ready for tomorrow.

Breakfast:

• French Toast Sticks and hash browns

Lunch:

• Salad with chicken, hardboiled eggs, veggies, cottage cheese, and blue cheese dressing
• Orange segments

Dinner:

• Chicken Stir Fry with the vegetable sauce

You probably aren’t having problems, but if you know someone who has Suddenlink and couldn’t access the web site at all (even just the main home page), it’s because Suddenlink marked my site as porn! I think the problem is fixed - one of my members who has Suddenlink called because only my web site was blocked to them and she found out that my site had been marked as porn on their servers. She was able to get it unblocked. Another member emailed me about the same problem today but now they are able to access my site, so I think it’s ok now. Sheesh!

I just got back home from NYC. Whew! I had a great weekend. It was tons of fun and I did pretty much everything I planned. We went to a ton of stores in Soho and thankfully didn’t spend too much money.

We went to Chelsea on Saturday and got completely rained on but it was still fun and I got a NYC Starbucks Bearista bear - I have a small collection of the Starbucks bears so I was happy to find one that I can’t get in DC. They are so addictive and cute!

We hung out in Little Italy two of the nights since our hotel is right around the corner and it’s the Sorrento Cheese Festival. They had some carnival stuff set up and the streets were all blocked off so you could walk around and eat on the sidewalk.

I even went to two sample sales. I have a total jeans obsession and the sample sales have really good prices on designer jeans that are usually $200-300 in stores. I turned down not one but two pairs of Rock and Republic sparkly butt jeans that I really liked but the legs were way too long and I would have had to get them hemmed or something. Plus, they were still expensive (even at half off). So, all I ended up with was this cute cupcake shirt!

I’ll do a weigh-in tomorrow and see what the damage is. I had salmon two nights, but also some late-night pizza! I’m going to start my next challenge up tomorrow with a new goal of getting to the low 130s by my birthday (July 10th). I’ve got a few more pics on my friend’s camera so I’ll do another post when I get them!

I’m leaving tomorrow so everyone have a good weekend! I don’t have much to report other than today was a crazy busy day! I think I’m mostly packed. I had to do a last minute shoe switch because my favorite shoes suddenly started squeaking - i think i had a blow out! Anyways, the challenge will pick back up when I get back from NYC!

I was crazy busy at work today and tomorrow will be just as crazy. I’m trying to get stuff wrapped up (or just under control) for when I’m out of town. My weight: 141. Still kicking myself over Saturday/Sunday. I’m trying to pull it together a bit before NY but I’ve only got 1 more day and I’m all over the place trying to get ready to go.

For now, it is what it is. I know how I’ll eat in NY which is neither on plan nor horrible. It’s usually somewhere in the middle. So the plan is to start up the challenge when I get back from NY. I’ll have about a month and a few until my birthday so that will be my next goal.

Well, here we are at Day 10 and my weight…lol exactly what it was when I started this challenge - 142. Have I mentioned how much I regret Saturday night (and the associated recuperation on Sunday)? If it hadn’t been for that, I’d still be in the 130s. I’ve still got 2 days before I go to NY so perhaps I can get back down a bit before I go. This just goes to show that if you find yourself having a cheat day every week or so, it can undo all your hard work! Is it really worth it?

Weight: 142

Edited to add: I weighed myself after work because I felt thinner (LOL) and I was 141.

Breakfast:

• Spinach Artichoke Quiche

Lunch:

• Chicken and tomato sautee thing I made yesterday
• veggies and salad dressing

Dinner:

• Turkey burger with swiss cheese
• Sauteed veggies
• Salad with dressing

Snack:

• EAS and/or pistachios (if needed)