because i'm not strong enough to stop drinking wine

the blogging juices are running dry, my friends. an empty blog for a week; 23371562736251 unread posts in reader; unanswered emails... i am a Very Bad Internetter this week. a few things i've been up to, though:

last weekend, my gorgeous friend charleen got married to her absolutely wonderful (now!) husband, matt.

i met char on one of the first days of our freshman year of highschool. my highschool friends are some of the best i've ever made, so it was really, really nice to see so many of them all in one place.

congrats, char! we love you one million :-)

next up: yet another exercise challenge i've set for myself wherein i'm all gung-ho at first and then most likely let it piddle out halfway through when i get bored. fun, right?? except this time i have a calendar to track my progress and everything, so i'm hopeful that i might actually stick it out.

also i'm unable to fit into several of my pants, so that's a good motivator too.

while at blogher, i briefly met kristen from motherhood uncensored, who introduced me to the concept of shred heads - those folks who start the 30-day shred and then actually, you know, DO IT every single day for 30 days. i can't do ANYTHING every day for 30 days straight except for eat, sleep and poop, so this was intriguing. i know myself and my life-ADD, so i knew i wouldn't be able to commit to shredding every day... but after thinking about it for a while, i decided to challenge myself to exercise in SOME WAY every day.

..and then made a google calendar for it, because i'm much more likely to do something if i get to check stuff off and make lists and have a pretty calendar for it.

the blue bars are the proposed exercises i'm supposed to do each day; the red bars are logging the successful completion of each one (with details like how far i ran or what level of the shred i did) and the yellows are big fat FAIL days, where i've already screwed up.

(one fail was because i'd planned to go swimming at the hotel the day after the wedding, but the pool was outside and it was thunderstorming; yesterday's fail was because i showed up at the gym to run and learned i'd forgotten socks, and after coming home and making dinner i accidentally fell asleep on the couch [whoops!]; the first fail was because i was busy having a date and i refuse to feel bad about that one.)

i've decided that each failed day will be tacked onto the end of the 30 day challenge - so already, for example, this is being extended to 33 days to compensate for the 3 where i sucked.

since this isn't technically about losing weight, and more about seeing if i can just sort of reduce the general mass of ye olde midsection (and also because i don't have a scale), i didn't weigh myself for before/after comparisons. i DID take some crappy mirror photos of me in a bathing suit, though, so if this regimen actually makes a difference, hopefully i'll be able to see it there.

i suspect my inability to diet / stop drinking so much wine is the REAL reason i have the extra flesh clinging so lovingly to my spare tire region, but maybe i can coerce at least a bit of the insulation off this way. i'll let you know 19 22 days from now.