Well Hello There

Posted on February 18, 2014 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

Well hello there.

Thanks to those of you who submitted questions for me to answer! I will be putting together that post with answers later on in the week. Keep them coming so I can have more things to divulge!

ANYWAYS. Hi, there! Remember me?! Need a refresher?? Here’s one:
My name is Jen
I live in Antarctica
Just kidding, Canada.
My dogs shed like crazy
I seriously dislike public transit
I workout like crazy
I like wine and beer. I don’t discriminate. Unless it’s a super hoppy IPA, then I have issues.
That about sums it up.

So what the hell have I been up to these past few weeks, you ask?!! (You most likely know if you follow me on Instagram. Conversely, you most likely don’t care.) Here are some highlights:

1. I had my FIRST visitor to Canada! My high school friend, Amy, flew up from NY for a long weekend. Places of possible interest that we hit: 80th & Ivy for dinner, Canmore for shopping/snow games, Lake Louise to see…umm, Lake Louise, Banff {Wild Flour for lunch, Liquor Depot for booze, Saltlik for dinner, Sasquatch for dancing, Caribou Lodge & Spa to sleep, The Keg for brunch. We also made it a point to spend all remaining money on fudge from The Fudgery, as well as visiting The Fairmont, and the Banff Gondola– altitude of 7,667 ft!}, Brewster’s for dinner, Calgary Farmer’s Market to buy anything/everything to have an at-home charcuterie board.

2. Went to Pig & Duke for an insane pulled pork lunch/Lost Coast Tangerine Ale.

3. Started my own personal 30 day hot yoga challenge. I’m not planning on doing yoga for 30 days straight, but I bought a monthly unlimited pass and decided to go 4-5x/week. Pro: It clears my mind and stretches out my hamstrings. Con: They jacked the price to $150. I’m talking to you, Hot Yoga on Crowfoot, don’t make this girl go broke(r)!!!

4. Tyler and I have been meeting with a kitchen consultant at Home Depot to renovate our kitchen. It’s current status: closet-tiny. What we hope the results will be: open and airy and not obvious that it was originally built in 1981.

5. Since it was a long weekend and I got bored, I decided to hop on that demolition train and knocked down one of the two walls we plan on removing to accommodate our new kitchen layout. (I’ve since done way more damage than depicted)

6. I have been obsessed with the Olympics. Ever notice that every Olympic games, the media really focuses on one sport over others? This year, it’s totally Ice Dancing. Cool, but um give me the sports where the guys are wearing unitards. SPANDEX unitards. Also, I have the luxury of watching the American broadcast (Bob Costas, I love you forever) and the Canadian broadcast (where they don’t tell the hockey announcers that they’re still on air and you can hear them humming and clearing their throats. I’m waiting for a fart, though)

(yeah, that may be a dirty inference. Push it…push it real good)
7. Not to bring up any ill-feelings for Bronco fans, but I went out for Superbowl with a friend and we started the evening by wearing our orange/blue beads and had to switch to green/blue beads by half time. Mostly because Seahawk fans were buying us drinks, so we had to comply.

8. I still have a $50 gift card for Lululemon from Christmas and I think I FINALLY found what I want to buy. PS: Popped Amy’s Lululemon cherry when she was here. Methinks she might become just as addicted as I!
9. Just when football season ends and I think I get my husband back on Sundays, he goes and sells back all his old video games and pre-orders 4 new ones. To each their own, I suppose. He coincides his game-playing with bread-making. Besides, I’m gone for about 2 hours each night to attend Hot Yoga classes.

10. I worked out at home and barefoot the other day and the combination of super dry skin + an excessive amount of reverse lunges and plank jacks = tearing the skin off the bottom of my big toe. I’ll spare the picture, just know that it’s gross, it’s painful, and it’s not conducive to all my downward dogging.

11. I haven’t tried a single new recipe lately. Bad Jen. I need to hop back on the baking wagon. I DID, however, try a new sandwich concoction that proved to be WAY TOO DAMN good. It consisted of some locally baked sourdough, sheep’s cheese (vendor at farmer’s market with very heavy accent sold it to us saying this is ‘cheep’ cheese. Not cheap as in less money, but as in “baa-baaa”), Saskatoon berry jam, bacon, and baby kale. Mmm, mouth is watering.

12. I finally put blonde back into my hair. And no one has noticed. It took 3 months for someone in my office to notice that I previously chopped off 6 inches, so I’m guessing it’ll be another month or so before I get comments on the color.

13. Referring back to our adventure at Sasquatch in Banff: drinking age in Alberta: 18. Therefore, most everyone in there was about….18. I told just about everyone that approached us that I could have birthed them. It could ALMOST be true. Also, I saw Sasquatch. He scared me at the coat check.
14. I had Pho for the first time. I called my mom and told her I had Pho and she replied “Mmmm that sounds delicious” and then I asked her if she knew what I was talking about and she said ‘no.’ Sersiouly, does anyone else’s parents act like this? Take another example, holding the phone to their ear while FaceTiming. Ugh.

15. I have done 2305972309572 different workouts lately and plan on sharing some of them in a post later this week.

That’s all I have to share for now. Do you feel sufficiently updated? I do.

In the comments:

Where’s the last place you traveled?

Have any good restaurant experiences lately?

Ask Me Anything

Posted on February 11, 2014 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

Ok, now I seriously don’t understand how some people make the time to sit and put their blog posts together! Between, work, dogs, commute, gym, food prep and house chores, I have zero extra time. Except to watch The Bachelor. But even then, I’m using multi-tasking or constantly pausing the show to get other things done.

So props to you, fellow working/busy bloggers.

I should probably make time this weekend to share what I was up to this past weekend (this is just a note to myself)

I have some fun workouts that I should also share. Ok, maybe ‘fun’ is not the word to use. Maybe just that they could be something to change up your routine or refresh on certain exercises. (Again, note to myself)

I’ve also bought a ton of crap that I could share (don’t think it’ll be everything, my memory isn’t that good)

I could share my opinions on things. (HAHAHAHA well that just opens the floor for potential rude responses)

Or, I could just keep living my life and try to keep up with the 30 hours of things to do in a day in only a 24 hour window.

BUT FOR NOW..I leave you with this: ASK ME ANYTHING! That’s right, post a question in the comments below and I’ll compile them all together- with responses- in a future post! RULES: Don’t be nasty. 🙂

3×3 (or not) Workout

Posted on January 28, 2014 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

Ever have one of those days where you just don’t want to do a damn thing? I don’t feel sick, or really that tired (and only a tad sore from the last few workouts), and all I want to do is go home and veg out in my jammies.

Ok, I probably lied a little bit. Now that I think about it, I am pretty effing tired and super sore and just want to NOM the hell out of all the junk in the house (note: there is like NO junk in our house, which gives me a big huge sad face on days like this). Woof.

I just wanted to check in today and share with you the workout I did last Wednesday that I said I’d post.

So, to give you a bit of info about this workout: there are three sets of three exercises (first set are compound exercises, second set focus on upper body, and third set focus on lower body). When I wrote up the workout, I originally decided on completing 50 reps of each move. Then I thought maybe I’d nix that and attempt rounds to fatigue of each set before moving to the next. I finally went with lumping the 9 moves together and moving through the list, completing 10 reps of each at a time. I managed to get through it 4 times before hopping on the treadmill to finish off with some intervals before it was time to get back to work.

Moral of the story: you can do this workout any way you’d like!

50 reps of each move (completing 50 before moving to the next)
10 reps through each for ‘x’ number of sets
3 sets of ‘x’ number of reps per grouping before moving to the next
completing reps to fatigue of each move, ultimately reaching 50 reps per exercise (completed in however many sets needed)
go home and eat Ben & Jerry’s and think about the workout (unless you live in Canada, it’ll probably be Chapman’s ice cream since B&J is like $30283520386 a pint).

There ya have it! Now I want a nap.

Workout Wrap Up

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Jen @nutcaseinpoint

Hi internet. I have so many drafts of posts waiting to be finished but I A) don’t have the time to finish them, and B) don’t have the desire to finish them. So basically that tells you that those posts are full of information not even worth sharing. But workouts are almost always worth sharing as I find it super helpful to read ACTUAL workouts of others to get inspiration.

Last week’s workouts were just OK. Nothing super impressive. Or maybe they were good workouts, just offset by my overall exhaustion and excessive snacking.

Sunday:100 box jumps; weighted step ups; clean and press; Lat pulldown progressions (8/10/12) w/increased weight; cable pull progressions (same); plate push finisher

Monday: Top 10 workout; treadmill sprint interval finisher (I did the same workout WAY back in the day. Original post can be read here). Obviosuly not really using it for comparison, as my workout approach has been drastically different each time I’ve attempted this workout. All I know is it kicks my butt each time.

Tuesday: 50 min run (1 min moderate/1 min moderate-fast intervals)

PS: This is a treadmill from my office gym and I am NOT using the display for any type of reference as to how my workout was..other than time. I just so happened to notice that my previous run to this was with slower intervals and longer recovery periods, yet the machine read more calories burned and almost the same distance! *I* know that machines are never accurate, but a lot of novice gym goers don’t know that!!

Wednesday: 3×3 workout (posting this tomorrow- it’s a REALLY good one with tons of options on reps/sets/etc. Stay tuned!)

Thursday: Box jump/Single Arm kettlebell clean & jerk Reverse Ladders (10 box jump, 1 clean and jerk per arm, 9 box jumps, 2 clean and jerks per arm…) Hint: if you get fatigued at any point, hop on a row machine or hold a plank for active recovery!; Cable hip adductions/stability ball hip abductions; HIIT on bike

Friday: Lots of walking around downtown (of course it counts!)

Saturday: Cleaning the hell out of our house/running errands like a demon (aka: it was so time consuming, I had no time for a designated workout).

I am an avid 6-day a week worker-outer and it really can be a mental thing if I do any less, but lately I have just had too much of LIFE get in the way, and what’s life if you don’t live it? Tyler and I have been chatting on how best to ‘organize’ our weekends so that we can still get stuff around the house done, maybe some workouts, and some together time a little more efficiently. On a lady note: this is going to be SO MUCH EASIER now that football season is O-V-E-R.

In the comments: Tell me something funny (this will tell me if anyone actually read through this whole post 😉 )