I got the hint!

When I woke up this morning, I got a slight hint as to something that I was being, well, told to do (it wasn't on my to-do list, but I am getting the stuff that is on there done, so it's not impacting my time too badly).

Here is the hint that I had -

That's a pretty blatant way to get the message across, I have to say. The hint, of course, was to make chocolate chip cookies, and I've obliged by making them. The only difference between the recipe I was suggested to make and the one I did wind up making was that I used a different brand of chips to the one that is in the picture. The recipe on the package I used is the exact same one as on the other one.

I don't know about you, but I think that Toll House should consider suing Hershey's for stealing their recipe. ;)

Anyway, it went together in the usual fashion - cream 2 sticks of butter with 3/4 cup each of white and brown sugars and 1 teaspoon of vanilla, then adding 2 eggs and mixing that until it's combined. Next is beating in 2¼ cups of flour, ½ teaspoon of salt and 1 teaspoon of baking soda (mixed together in a separate bowl), then adding in the package of chocolate chips.

Here's what the bowl looked like when I was mixing it all together -

One thing that we've always done when making chocolate chip cookies is to mix the chips in using a wooden spoon, and it always comes out good. Here are the cookies before they went into the 375°F oven for 10-11 minutes -

Just a note about this pan, it is one of those "air cushion" pans - we've used it for many, many years now, and we have not burnt a single thing on it. They're relatively inexpensive and I heartily recommend you using it. :)

It took a little over an hour to get all the cookies done; even after having some of the dough (bad, I know! ;)), the final yield was 49 cookies, because there were four batches of 9 and a batch of 13; here they all are on the cooling rack -

So, I got the hint and came through with it, and there won't be any complaints about not doing what I wasn't asked to do, just what I was hinted at doing. ;)

The Week in Walks, etc. Vol 11

I'm making some changes to my walking routine; while the long walks are nice and very good exercise, they take too much time out of my day, and I always seem to be quite unproductive after I go for my walk. So, from this week, I'm going to do a combination of long and short walks, depending on how I'm doing with the work I've got slated for the day.

Monday, 1st October - Long Walk

A very interesting, and different, mushroom seen along one of the paths...

I went out walking between rain showers; I started with the sun out, but not long afterwards, the clouds started to gather. While I was walking, I wound up chatting to someone who lives not that far away and who takes his dog walking in the park during the winter. I know I won't be alone then. ;)

Total Distance - 10304 steps 8.24km

Tuesday, 2nd October - Short Walk

Some nice red leaves in the park, right along the edge of the path.

It's been a while since I've done a walk this short, but after thinking about how I can improve my time management, I realized that it wouldn't be the end of the world if i cut back to a one-hour walk, with the occasional long walk thrown in. It was a cloudy day, but not too bad for walking. Interestingly, the train that was there when I went out was still there when I came back.

Total distance - 5021 steps, 4.01km

Wednesday, 3rd October - Short Walk

Fallen leaves cover the path through the park; they're really loud when you walk on them. ;)

The sun was out today and the weather wasn't too bad. I took some time to try to eradicate some more weeds from the trees, but wasn't totally successful. I also tried walking off of the road for a bit as the sides were nicely mowed by my town earlier in the day.

Total Distance - 5433 steps, 4.34km

Thursday, 4th October - Short Walk

A hint of color appears above some still-green leaves.

If someone came here and you told them it was October after witnessing the weather, you could excuse them for thinking that it was a nice spring day. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was quite warm. It made for a nice walk.

Total distance - 5383 steps, 4.30km

Friday, 5th October - All-day counting

Leaves of all sorts look gold during the "golden hour" - sunset. :)

Admittedly, I got lazy with the counting today, and just counted at two points - before my walk, and then at the end of the day. Also, I'm not sure that all my steps were counted as I was wearing different pants and wasn't hearing the clicking of the pedometer as I was walking. I got done with volunteering a little bit early, so I walked the long way around to my ride; it was really windy there. The walk was shortly after getting home, and it was quite warm, so I got very sweaty...

Distances - before walk - 4288 steps, 3.43km
end of day - 10357 steps, 8.28km

Saturday, 6th October - Short Night Walk

I've mentioned where I walk in the past; anyone wanna guess what this interesting contraption is for? ;)

It was quite warm today; you could have confused the weather for the middle of summer. By the time I went to walk at 6pm or so, the temperature had only gotten down to 28°C (82°F), with a dew point of 21°C (70°F). It was not a fun walk, especially when I was getting disoriented (that's because of the white light, not because of some kind of heat stroke or anything.

Total Distance - 5327 steps, 4.26km

Sunday, 7th October

I'm delaying the walk again until a little bit later when it begins to cool off a bit; as I write this, the temperature is currently 29°C (84°F). I'm thinking that it might be better off if I change the week in walks to Sunday-Saturday (still posting it on Sunday), so that way I can focus on just walking on Sunday, with all the rest of the photos done. Let me know what y'all think in the comments. :)

In other news, my little assignment notebook experiment has been going quite well. I've actually made to-do lists for each day over the last week (even though yesterday's just had one thing on it - "f--k with template"). I'm also managing my time better, and actually finding that, with the to-do list and focusing on what I should focus on, I feel like I have more time in my day.

This week, I'm continuing work on the new version of my blog, on WordPress; I've been playing around with the template. It's starting to look really slick, and I feel that I'm only a couple of changes away from it being perfect (for now). :)

Also, my goal for the week is to get in at least 2 long walks; it's supposed to be cooler, so the conditions will be much better for walking.

The Week in Walks, etc. Vol 10

Note: Like last week, I'm posting this before the Sunday walk. Check back in about 3 hours for the Sunday walk write-up and the In Other News section...

Monday, 24th September

Looking back towards the parking lot of the park from the road leading to the entrance/exit.

It was a warmer day, and I made a really bad decision. I went out of the park and around the long way, up the road that I go under to get to the park. That led to me having to slide down a big hill very slowly. Not an experience I'm going to be repeating anytime soon, unless I want to take a really long walk.

Total distance - 11324 steps, 9.05km

Tuesday, 25th September

Looking down a slide on the playground equipment? Wanna go down it? ;)

I walked just after the rain ended and got back just before it started raining very heavily. Quite good timing, I should think. Even the mosquitoes weren't too bad though their numbers did increase as I went along as it was still quite humid. Hopefully it will end soon and they will go away!

Total distance - 10418 steps, 8.33km

Wednesday, 26th September

A grab shot experiment - this is of the parking lot; I really liked the colors as they wound up in this picture. :)

I really cheated today. I was making good time when I started walking, but due to some conflicting events (such as needing to head to the grocery store to visit the bank before a specific time), I wound up only walking halfway back home until I was picked up. I decided to then make up the rest of the way to 10000 steps by doing some walking around the house. ;)

Total distance - 10337 steps, 8.26km

Thursday, 27th September

An anvil cloud forms to the north of the park; I don't know if it actually caused any rain though.

It was another wet day, this time with thunderstorms in the area, but I waited it out until the rain stopped. Just to be sure, I took the umbrella with me, and that was good since just as I was walking out of the park, a light shower started which lasted for maybe 30 seconds.

Total distance - 11230 steps, 8.98km

Friday, 28th September

A bit of a time lapse look at some bugs flying around alongside the road. I decided to go around them ;)

Again, being Friday, I decided to repeat the keeping track of my steps during the day while at volunteering. I walked in the evening using the white light and it worked actually quite decently, better than I would have expected.

Distances -
10.13am (after walking to volunteering and working for a couple of hours) - 1403 steps, 1.12km
3.35pm (after volunteering) - 1651 steps, 1.32km
6.15pm (after getting home and before walking - 4433 steps, 3.54km
8.20pm (after walking) - 13354 steps, 10.68km
end of day - 13560 steps, 10.84km

Saturday, 29th September

A 30-second timelapse looking towards the southwest. The purple light is actually a combination of the white and red lights on my headband.

I went to walk late in the day again, just because I still have time management issues. It's something that I desperately need to work on. Anyway, as I was walking, I spotted what I thought was lightning in the southwestern sky, but I think now it was just a camera's flash, as it only happened a couple of times, and wasn't followed up by thunder. I continued on though and it never did rain.

Total distance - 11446 steps, 9.15km

Sunday, 30th September

A woodpecker goes to work on a tree. (I'm having problems with the image showing up, so it might not appear for you...)

Today's walk was a bit different because I decided to break it into two distinct sections. I decided to get to the shelter that's at the park and then stop to do a bit of writing - it worked pretty good, I think because I don't have the distractions that I have on the computer available to me in the park. Hopefully, it will help me to focus on writing when I'm at the computer.

Total distance - 10752 steps, 8.60km
---

In other news, I'll be honest and say that it wasn't the greatest week with keeping on target with my goals. I'm still falling victim to temptations on the internet. As I mentioned, what actually worked was taking 15 minutes with a pencil and paper to sit and write in the park. I also fell down on the work with putting together a to-do list every day; I only admittedly made one on Thursday.

I've now purchased a very simple day planner (no fancy type on it that says "Day Planner" or "DayRunner®". Nope, this is just a $1.84 "assignment" notebook, with a line for the date on it; it's simple and, provided I make myself determined to actually stick with it, should work. I'm also taking advantage of a small egg timer I have here to help me with eliminating the distractions by allowing myself only to do them after doing something, and only for a short period of time (10-20 minutes).

The final GYST Update:

Has it been 4 weeks already? The time certainly seemed to fly. I've successfully made it to walking 10,000 steps every day this week; however, I am still around the 2-hour mark for my daily walks. I've gotten to the point now where I will walk in just about any conditions, including the dark of night, with the assistance of a headband flashlight.

However, this week, I've been bad with my eating by having junk food (really the first junk food that I've had for almost a month, but still it's bad) and doing a bit of overeating. It's a minor setback, but I feel that I'm ahead of where I was at the beginning of the month.

I still have issues with resolving the distraction issue I have, along with managing my time so that I can do everything I want to do in a day. I've invested in a small notebook which will be only for setting out tasks for me to do on the day, and am going to make use of a small egg timer that I have to put a limit on the time I take in pursuing my distractions, if they do arise.

I feel that I've made a start on the way to improving my life, but I know that there is still a long way to go for me to get to where I want to be. However, I know that I can make the changes, I just have to commit to them.

Zucchini Files, part 2

After making the Zucchini Bread last week, there was still an appreciable amount of shredded zucchini left. In fact, it almost completely filled up this container in the fridge -

That means only one thing - I have to find more things to do with the zucchini, other than just putting it into a shape that looks like bread. As it also happened, my mother took one of the loaves of bread into her work, and on Monday I received a thank you card from the person who's in charge of the office she works at.

The best thing about the card is that the reason it was sent was that they liked the bread and were apparently sending a message of "More, please" for me to make some more stuff to be brought in.

My latest experiment was to make the same recipe that I used for the bread, but I made the decision to halve the recipe because I wasn't totally sure on how it would work to use the bread recipe for muffins. Fortunately, almost everything converted neatly for halving - the only "oddball" measurement was the milk - 1/6th cup; no half eggs needed either. ;)

The batter all came together quickly this time, and I had some fun with the bowl while waiting for the oven to heat up - manually taking the spatula and creating a bit of centrifugal force causing the batter to go up the sides of the bowl.


Then I put the batter into a couple of muffin tins, chucked it into the oven for about 15 minutes, after which time it was all done. The half-recipe yielded 12 larger muffins and 9 mini muffins which made a nice pile when it was all done. Amazingly, we still have most of the muffins - one is enough for a nice snack. :)

Here are a couple more pictures -

The mini muffins ready for the oven

All the muffins made, piled up and ready to eat.

An example of disorganization

A few days ago I was tagged by Meg for a meme called the Blog Improvement Zone. She tagged me because I'm getting my world more organized.

However, there are some stumbling blocks to my organization. I'm not saying that it's an excuse as to why I'm not already more organized, but once you see it, you understand why I'm working towards changing this one thing.

This is a picture of my desk as it is right now. I will say that it has improved greatly over the past when I had a CRT on it (over on the right hand side of the desk, over the lower compartments), however, as you can see it doesn't take a lot of stuff to make the desk cluttered.

A couple of weeks ago, I did a major cleanup of the desk, throwing out a lot of junk because I looked at the area around the desk, looked at the mess that the desk was in, and it made me feel really blah. It was right there when I realized that the thing that is holding me back from a lot of stuff is actually my desk - it's too small and inefficient for me to be able to reach my maximum productivity.

An interesting thing about this desk is that it is the same exact desk that we've had ever since we bought our first computer over 13 years ago. If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a sort of corner desk with a small piece connecting the main desk to a printer table at a ninety degree angle, a feature we never took advantage of.

A few years later, we decided to get a new desk that was larger due to us having a larger monitor that didn't exactly fit onto the old desk. This was a really nice desk - a proper corner desk with a keyboard drawer and plenty of room to move around in. It also had a nice side shelf on the left side and an open space on the right side, which was useful to put things like a VCR (and this was in the days before I had a TV card).

When my brother moved out, however, it was around the time that I was heading off to college, so there wasn't a real need for the desk to be here anymore, so we let him have it. I think that he still has it, but I haven't asked if he's still using it or not.

Where I go to volunteer, I've worked the last couple of times at a desk that is a full corner desk, fitting into a space of about 8 or 9 feet square, and the surface is about two feet deep. I have room on that desk to spread things out and work on them. However, a quick measurement of this desk reveals that it is a little over 3.5 feet wide by 1 foot 11 inches deep.

I have the computer on a small table to the right of the desk and on my immediate left is a couch which winds up being a dumping ground for other stuff I've used such as newspapers and books. We're thinking of moving a table out here to take the place of the couch, the only problem being that the table is appreciably higher than the desk - I can deal with that though.

However, I am now saving up to either build my own desk or buy a kit to build a desk. I have a draft drawing of the size I want the desk to be - if I keep it as I have it now, it will be a massively huge desk - approximately three or four feet deep and filling an area of 11 feet square. Needless to say, I'll have to reduce the size I want in order for it to fit into the space I have for it. I haven't even started to think about materials or even how the desk is going to hold its own weight.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has tips of where to find a good desk plan (that's free preferably), or if you have an idea of a desk that might be a good fit for me (what I'm looking for is a corner desk with the monitor in the corner part, and the option of having a keyboard shelf - preferably wide enough to have the mouse down there as well), please let me know where to find it.

And as far as the meme goes, I've discussed the thing that I'm going to change for my blog yesterday, but if you have any suggestions for what's bugging you with this template, let me know. ;)

The Week in Walks, etc. Vol 9

Just a note - I'm posting this before walking today as I have a function to attend this afternoon and didn't want to delay the posting of this. Be sure to check back later tonight after I have walked for today's picture and the write-up of the walk.

Update: I've now posted today's walk. ;)

Monday, 17th September

One of the younger trees in the park, picture taken just as the rain was starting; I put the camera away shortly after.

Well, it worked out well to walk when I did. Never minding that it was warmer so the mosquitoes are out in force (again!), right in the middle of my walk, it started to rain. However, I was not deterred, and kept on walking. As it turns out, I went the farthest that I had in a walk up to now.

Total distance - 9996 steps, 7.99km

When I took the pedometer off and saw that, I was tempted to put it back on and make the four more steps to make up the full 10,000, but I figured that's be cheating ;)

Tuesday, 18th September

An interestingly placed penny in the park's shelter. I don't know why someone nailed it there, but it's there so I took a picture... ;)

I decided to do some exploring by heading furhter down the road I walk along before heading into the park. I did find the remnants of a guardrail that was there at one point in time, but went away for some reason. I also found an alternate path, but that had a no tresspassing sign, so I made the wise decision to just turn around and head back to the park. I followed the mostly usual trail around the park and the soccer fields, then headed toward the parking lot to check in on the trees, which are still there.

I then headed back via the disc golf course and cutting between a couple of the holes in the high grass that is there. When I got back, I checked the pedometer and saw that I was close to 10,000, so I decided to walk around the house, and that worked. ;)

Total distance -10017 steps, 8.01km

Wednesday, 19th September

This is one of the stands of trees - you can see the colors starting to come; they're a bit early (thanks to it being kinda dry in this area), and not very colorful...yet...

I tried a different route today, by going up the old "longer" route, and wound up actually doing less steps for what seemed to be a longer distance (go figure eh? ;)). It was quite warm again, but the mosquitoes were actually tolerable (I think they're naturally sorting themselves out).

On my way back, it turned into a race, which I won ;)

total distance - 9566 steps, 7.65 km

Thursday, 20th September

A hint of color here, thanks to a red oak(? - it might be a maple leaf) leaf lying in the middle of the path

I started out walking thinking that I'd make it a bit of a shorter walk because my ankle had been giving me grief all day long, but as I started to walk, I got into my rhythm and started to just "do my thing". I went and explored another part of the park that I hadn't in the past, which led me into a couple of swarms of mosquitoes - aside from the general annoyance they cause, it was not that big of a deal.

I then did a couple of laps around the parking lot, swerving between sides of the aisle to increase the distance I was walking. While on the stretch run, I can tell that I am getting tired when I walk as I was barely feeling like I was moving, even though my feet were going one in front of the other.

Total distance - 10658 steps, 8.52km

Friday, 21st september

One of the kites that were up flying in the park

A bit of an experiment, I've had the pedometer on all day. I've kept track of the steps at various points of the day, just to see how much walking I'd done while I was volunteering. The only estimated reading is the end of day one, as I had taken the meter off after getting back from my walk (yeah, I know, lazy!).

The walk was done straight after getting back from volunteering so that I didn't walk into the night like I did the last time I went volunteering. While out, I saw some folks with kites launching them in the decent conditions for flying - it was quite windy.

Here's the progression of the distance -
7.55AM (after arriving at volunteering after a short walk from my drop-off point) - 1152 steps, 0.92km
3.30PM (after volunteering, before walking back to the pickup point) - 1896 steps, 1.51km
4.30PM (before heading out to do my "daily" walk - 2923 seps, 2.34km
5.02PM (after putting bugspray on for the second time and on entry to the park) - 4673 steps, ~3.74km
5.25PM (in the park, after going through the forest and around one of the soccer areas) - 6506 steps, ~5.20km
5.53PM (still in the park, after going around the main area of the park) - 8011 steps, ~6.41km
6.23PM (after leaving the park, on the way back to the house) - 9942 steps, ~7.95km
6.50PM (after getting back in the house) - 11727 steps, 9.38km
bedtime - approx. 12000 steps, 9.60km

Saturday, 22nd September

Three hot air balloons fly to the south of the park. There wasn't much wind today, so they didn't last too long up there.

I went walking later in the day again, but it wasn't too bad, even if the mosquitoes were almost as bad as they were in the beginning of the month (they've gone away quite a bit, but are still there). I finally had to resort to taking out a notebook I have in my bag (a decent sized one, which I'm using to draw up my desk plans in) to try to swat at them. It wasn't the most effective thing, but it did work as temporary relief.

While out, I saw two groups of people playing disc golf; the only thought (aside from shut the f--k up for the one group who were screaming like crazy - ok, they're having fun I know ;)) was that these are the people responsible for leaving junk everywhere. Yeah, it still bugs me, even though the amount of trash isn't as bad as it had been at other times. Other than that, I have started to do a trick of walking back and forth in the parking lot of the park, just to build the distance.

total distance - 10670 steps, 8.53km

Sunday, 23rd September

I haven't gone walking yet, so I'll update the post later on in the day when I have gone out to walk. I have to go to an anniversary party and have to head out to my bank to put in a check I received, so time management is still an issue for me, obviously. ;)



It's a reflective sign, lit up by my head! ;)

I've come back from walking - I gave myself permission to do a shorter walk since I had first gotten out to start walking at 7PM. I have a new toy after getting a mention that it's hard to see me - this little head light. It works really good, and I prefer to use the "traditional" flashlight lamp.

Total distance - 9073 steps, 7.25km

---

In other news, my desk plans are going somewhat slowly, mostly because I'm having a hard time coming up with a design I'd like. All I know right now is that it's going to be a corner desk, and somewhat large (I'm thinking like 11x11 feet, but that's just a first draft in which the feasibility hasn't even been tested with rulers yet). As far as my time management planning has been going, it starts good, but then I get off track, usually by finding something that will distract me.

I've made up the list of daily tasks, all I have to do now is actually put together the little sheet where I check off after I get the task done each day. As far as getting things together to make some spare cash, I've managed to get 4 items listed on ebay to sell; I'd share the information on that, but that would reveal my true identity; something I'd prefer not to do here. I've also gotten a reply on a bid I made on Sponsoredreviews, and you'll be seeing that coming later today or tomorrow.

Here's the GYST update for this week -

This week, I've gotten myself over 9500 steps every day, and over 10,000 steps on four days (so far, I'll update this after I walk today). I've also been better with getting tasks set for myself, but time management is still an issue for me as I tend to get distracted by random things like videos on youtube. I've also been keeping good with eating less, and have noticed that if I want something at night for a snack (bad, I know!), I usually just open the refrigerator and close it without taking anything out of it.

My goals for the upcoming final week are to work on the time I take to walk, by speeding up my pace I walk at, with the goal to get the time I'm walking down to between 1:30 to 1:45 from the current 2 hours. I'm also going to work on eliminating distractions from my work in order to improve my use of time. Also, I'm going to keep on making to-do lists for every day and making sure that I do reward myself for a job well done.

Zucchini Bread, Yay!

Over the last couple of years, we've been changing up what we grow in our garden here. It used to be that we'd grow the staples - potatoes, onions, radishes, lettuce, tomatoes, beans, peas, carrots, peppers, cauliflower, broccoli and a couple of rows of sweetcorn.

Then, we decided to have a go with starting our own seeds, along with planting some different vegetables. One of the vegies that we planted were zucchini. Prior to growing our own zucchinis, I hadn't tried it, and thought the idea of zucchini bread was bizarre - I mean, vegetable-based bread? You can't be serious.

However, we planted a couple of them, and they came up. We then got one recipe for bread with chocolate chips - that turned out really good and we've already made two loaves this year of that (the recipe makes 2 loaves). Even after that, we still have loads more shredded zucchini. Since it was up to me to shred it up, I wasn't totally sure on how to shred it, so I did some searching and came across this recipe which was a result of the person having fifteen cups of shredded zucchini.

As you can see, it does call for some interesting ingredients, including lemon or orange zest (which I did skip since we don't have any oranges or lemons around), and an interesting quartet of spices - cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice. I knew that we didn't have allspice, and wasn't totally sure about the ginger, yet the whole thing worked thanks to a miracle product: Pumpkin pie spice!

Yep, pumpkin pie spice has cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and allspice (along with an anti-caking agent). As the recipe calls for a variety of amounts of the individual spices, I decided to go on my own with the measuring and went with 1 teaspoon of pie spice, along with 1 teaspoon of cinnamon (since it was 2 tsp. of cinnamon for the recipe). I also skipped the raisins and only put in about a half cup of walnuts.

By far the coolest thing was making oat flour by putting a cup of Quaker Rolled Oats and processing it in the food processor for a couple of minutes.

I could have gotten three slightly-smaller loaves out of the recipe, but I decided to make two larger loaves. Fifty-five minutes later, it was done; so I let it cool for about an hour or so before taking it out of the pans. Before I took a picture, I had sampled a piece of the bread and it was fantastic. ;)

And, of course, here's the bread, minus a smallish sample ;) :

The Week in Walks, etc. Vol 8

Monday, 10th September

Here are the horses I blogged about ages ago, coming towards me. I bet they were drawn in by the orange shirt I was wearing... ;)

So, I've learned something about my new shoes - they're not waterproof! Then again, it might have something to do with the fact that I did walk a long way through grass that should be shorter than it is cut (you'd think that a soccer field would have short grass, but it doesn't for some reason). As I had mentioned, it was only 12°C outside when I went walking, so I did take the opportunity to take the I'm walkin' here shirt for a test drive. It worked very well, as everything I put into the jacket's pockets stayed dry, even though it got really cold. I also stayed nice and warm the whole time and relatively unbothered by mosquitoes.

That is, except for the one mosquito which decided to fly into my mouth. That was a very unfun time, until I spat it out. Probably TMI, but you never know.. ;)

Total distance - 8536 steps, 6.82km

Tuesday, 11th September

A look towards the southwestern horizon; sorry about the sky blowing out, the skies were blue, with clouds (as evidenced in other pictures I took).

The winds were really up, but this was the first time since last Sunday when I went without bug spray. The mosquitoes are actually down to manageable levels again, except for another one which decided to fly into my mouth....

While I was out walking, I spotted someone cutting the lawn in the fields, but I guess they must have lost interest or something since they only bothered cutting like 1% of the whole fields, and hardly any of the soccer fields.

Total distance - 8950 steps, 7.16km

Wednesday, 12th September

A hawk, in flight over the trees in the park. I have some more shots of a hawk up close (though not too close), which I'll post in the future. :)

It was a warmer day, so that meant the mosquitoes were back again. :( However, I just put on the bug spray and went along, not being bothered that much. I'm finding that as I walk more, I'm being able to "find" steps in unlikely places, like discovering the road that leads out of the park, and by walking around the disc golf holes. I'm also walking around the parking lot, along the outside of it. Right now, it's about building up the distance I'm walking.

Total distance - 8739 steps, 6.99km

Thursday, 13th September

An interesting tree. Does anyone know what kind of fruits these are? I don't believe that they're bananas since we're not exactly in a tropical environment...

A warm day, so more mosquitoes, and this time they were worse than the day before. Though that might have been because of the fact I didn't wear my long sleeve shirt because of the temperature. I decided to meander around the park, and generally stay away from the forest and that was a strategy that worked out for me, but not so much for the mosquitoes. ;)

Total distance - 8928 steps, 7.14km

Friday, 14th September

A squirrel which startled me sits on the tree before climbing further upwards

I went a bit earlier; it was much cooler today, and it wasn't too bad walking. I also did some exploration of the park, going down to the lower half of the park where the first part of the disc golf course is. I decided to go up one route where the course went, and wound up climbing straight up a hill that is meant to be gone down (there are some interesting grades along that course, incidentally).

I then went up a path and discovered two trees that had fallen down across the path. Instead of going back and going around, I just climbed over the one tree and around the other tree.

Before doing that, I came across a father and his son and asked if I could take a photo and they obliged, and the photo came out really nicely. However, I did not ask for permission to post it online, so I can't let y'all see it.

Total distance - 8865 steps, 7.09km

Saturday, 15th September

The last light of the day, with the moon visible in the distance

This seems to be happening every week now, where I go out way too late. I've been going out at around 7 pm, and this time wasn't an exception. Unfortunately, the sun doesn't like to stay out for the same amount of time, so I wind up walking further and further into the night. By the time I was getting ready to start out of the park, it was almost pitch black, and by time I got out to the road, I had to use a flashlight. The good news was that no cars came toward me and dazzled me.

The best part about walking in the really cold air (I'd guess it was around 10°C at the beginning of my walk and downhill from there), was that I encountered a grand total of 3 mosquitoes the whole time.

Total distance - 9131 steps, 7.30km

Sunday, 16th September

This is the other part of the grass story. As you can see, they did finish the grass cutting; except for the area inside the actual soccer goals.

My strategy as of late with respect to the bug spray is to spray when I get close to the park so that it's at its most effective level of work. I followed approximately the same route as yesterday, but did some more distance while out there. While at the park, there was a couple of parents with their kids playing around on the gym set. I decided to pass on the photo opportunity this time.

I did pause and sit down during a walk for the first time in a long time, but it was with a reason. I took time today to think up a plan to get myself to a place where I can improve my situation. I wrote it down in my notebook. :)

Total distance - 9458 steps, 7.56km

In other news, I didn't go volunteering this week. It has been a bit of a down week for me this week as a result of not being able to use the new scale I got - I'm too big to get a number on there, however now I do know what my goal is for that - to get a number on the scale.

The plan that I was mentioning above is for me to work towards improving the area I work in every day. I won't go into full details about this right now, but the short part of the story is that the desk I'm working at is the same desk we've had ever since we bought our first computer back in 1994.

My plan is to either save up enough money to buy a new desk outright or to actually build one from scratch (I'm up for the challenge of drawing the plans and building the desk on my own, I was thinking of plans while I was walking today).

The way I'm going to do that is to actively pursue opportunities to make money through my blog, such as bidding on a couple of offers on Sponsoredreviews each day, also checking in on Blogsvertise every day and seeing what they have up for offers. I'm also going to watch payperpost on Tuesdays like a hawk - they have some great opps that come up on their $1k Tuesdays. If I post about it, then you'll know that I got in on one of the opportunities. ;)

Another thing that I'm going to do is ramp up selling stuff on ebay. I've been talking about it for ages, but have only listed two items in just over a year. I'm looking to build that up to getting anywhere from 5-10 items listed over the next couple of weeks.

The last, and most important thing is that I have to get back on track with making daily to-do lists and rewarding myself when I finish something on my list of tasks.

I'll post my GYST update as part of the update tomorrow's blog round-up. ;)

Grilled Salmon & Veggies

Last week, we heard of a sale of salmon at one of the local grocery stores - they were selling whole fish at $1.99 per pound. These weren't your farm-raised Alaskan or Chilean salmon, but came in fresh from Lake Michigan in the back of a truck.

The only processing that was done before they came to the store was that they were gutted and had the scales removed. The folks they had there gave everyone the option of having fillets, steaks or a combination of both. We opted to go for the half-and-half option of steaks and fillets.

When we got home, we cut the fillets down further to cuts of about 1-inch or so, perfect for a single serve of fish. We also packaged each of the five steaks separately, freezing everything but two of the steaks. It was then my time to go in search of a recipe to make.

The one that I found - Grilled Salmon Steak - is a recipe that is easy to make; the only change that we made was substituting black pepper for white (after seeing that the white pepper was $3.59 for a small container). I went along with the instructions; one orange, and two limes and lemons were all that was needed to get the 1/4 cup amounts. I wasn't sure if they meant to cut the actual rind out from the flesh of the fruit, so I just put little slices of each item in there in place.

On the side, we had gotten some asparagus (also on sale $2.99 per pound), so I made that, along with a small zucchini picked fresh from the garden, using olive oil, lime juice, kosher salt, black pepper, thyme and garlic as the marinade for that.

As you may already know, we've switched from charcoal to gas for our grill, and I have to say that I'm now getting accustomed to the different flavor that you get from a gas grill. It's also so much easier to use compared to the charcoal - no need to worry about getting the paper lit for the coals, and there's hardly any waiting necessary for the grill to either heat up or cool down. I can totally understand now why gas is preferred to charcoal now. ;)

So, it was a quick 10-minute warmup for the grill, after which I put the salmon on to the grates, and put the vegies on a piece of aluminum foil over the other side of the grill.

After about 12 minutes or so of grilling, it was all done, and the salmon was nice and flaky. It was interesting trying to take the steaks off the grill with a pair of tongs - they fell apart, but luckily nothing fell between the grates. The vegies were also nice and tender, with some charring on them, but not a lot.

It all tasted excellent, though in hindsight, I would have just left the lime juice out of the asparagus and zucchini; we've always had it without, and it added a bit of unusual flavor to them, though it wasn't that bad.

Of course, here are the pictures, clicking on them will make them bigger -

The salmon, sitting in its marinade after an hour in the fridge.

The vegies in their marinade.

The salmon, just after putting it onto the grill; the white specks you see are the "grated" onions.

Just after flipping the salmon, you can see the wonderful grill marks on the fish ;)

Here's everything, just before being taken off of the grill and into the house.

The Week in Walks, etc. Vol 7

Time to recap my week of walking, and set some goals for the week. As always, clicking on the pictures in the post will bring them up to 1024x768 size.
Monday, 3rd September

A view of some of the rolling hills of the park

Whoever said walking was a good way to clear the mind never walked during an active infestation of mosquitoes. Although I had bug spray on (Deep Woods Off - 25% deet), it didn't do anything to make the bugs any less tolerable. It took me getting all the way to the parking lot before I could have a chance to pause for more than a brief second and drink some water without having to deal with the bugs.

total distance - 7358 steps, 5.88km

Tuesday, 4th September

Maybe 1% of all the mosquitoes in the area

Well, on the radio today, they mentioned all the mosquitoes in the area. The reason they're all out there is because of all the rain we had a couple of weeks ago. It turns out that the rain has hatched mosquitoes which have been eggs for many years. Not only that, according to this article in the paper, they're expected to stick around for upwards of a month!

Ah well, we have a lot of bug spray, and I've been using it quite judiciously. However, it doesn't help the fact that they will fly up to me, touch my skin and then fly away. At one point, I looked down at my legs, and they were just swarmed in mosquitoes. Again, I decided to go up to the parking lot to get away from them, and wound up in the middle of soccer practice for the local community clubs. I probably lingered too long up there before deciding to start back into the flying haze.

As I was walking back, I made the decision to walk in the middle of the road - that way, I'd be at least 10 feet away from the areas where they were congregating. Luckily, it worked out reasonably well, as they did tend to stay away.

Total distance - 7162 steps, 5.72km

Wednesday, 5th September

The gate I walk around to access the park, from the other side of the road

It was another hot day, so I made the decision to go out later in the day again. And yet again, the mosquitoes were evil! However, I'm learning some new tricks to handle them though, such as spraying my whole shirt before I go out and walk - that way they don't bite my back. Of course, if it were about 15 degrees cooler, I'd wear a long sleeve shirt because the feeling of the mosquitoes going on and off of your body is just creepy!

While I was walking, I heard something. It was the sound of all the mosquitoes buzzing around out there, one of the most horrific sounds I've ever heard in my life, but that's just me.

Total distance - 7134 steps, 5.70km

Thursday, 6th September

Some leaves fall from trees that have already changed colors, aided by the breeze.

After I tried on my new shoes, I went for my walk. I had to walk earlier (a good idea with the mosquitoes), and I went around 2pm. The bugs weren't that bad at all, especially in an open area like the soccer fields - they were actually not bothering me constantly! It was almost amazing. I also did some exploration around the parking lot area, and consequently wound up walking a longer distance than I had ever done before.

Total distance - 7890 steps, 6.31km

Friday, 7th September

A flock of birds fly towards the sunset.

After coming back from volunteering, it was already later in the day when I first had the opportunity to walk. However, I first went out to walk at 7pm - which meant that it would be dark by the time that I'd get back. As it so happened, that did occur. I could see well for the first part of my walk, but as I was starting to head out of the park, I could not see anything in the forest. The only light I had was from my mobile phone, which I only used sparingly so that I didn't attract mosquitoes to the light.

When I got back out to the road, it was dark enough that you could see the lights from cars reflecting off of things. At one point, a car came along the road, and then I got dazzled by its lights; I was already over to the end of the road, but I almost fell over from the dazzling.

total distance - 7146 steps, 5.71km

Saturday, 8th September

A better view of some of the turkeys. :)

I walked actually during the daytime, but it would seem that the bugs were just as bad, if not worse than at night - it took about three minutes of being in the parking lot before the swarm cleared away from me. However, it was still a good day to walk, with a nice breeze blowing. I walked back and forth on one of the soccer fields before heading back out, and decided to cut back across some high grass, but that didn't take away too many steps from my walk; that'll help out to get me to the next step for walking.

Total distance - 7798 steps, 6.23km

Sunday, 9th September

A fawn in the field; first one I've seen while walking. When I heard it rustling the grass in the field, I thought it was just another rabbit, but then I saw it jumping, and knew it was something else. :)

Over the last couple of days, I've been doing something different - listening to music or today, listening to the radio. I started to do it on Friday because of the experience I had on Wednesday with hearing the swarming, and it's something that's got a bit of a calming effect on me, even though the mosquitoes are still there. Also, I am a bit more attentive to exterior noises such as cars and other things when I'm walking with the earbuds in.

Today, I walked along the parking lot and then walked across the soccer fields and cut across a bit of the disc golf course to head back out of the forest; the mosquitoes actually weren't too bad away from the forest again, like on Thursday.

Total distance - 7350 steps, 5.88km

The update for the GYST challenge; this is what I'm going to post on Craig's site - This week, I've really come together with the walking, even though we are being bombarded by mosquitoes. In fact, I exceeded my goal every day this week, travelling no less than 7100 steps per day. I've even managed to cross the next goal of 7500 steps twice. I've also met my goal for water each day, mostly through the use of an ingenious idea - a pitcher that holds about 1.5 liters. I'm also watching my diet carefully, and working on that as well.

In other news, I mentioned on Friday that I went to volunteer; I went and when I got done, I was tired - it's been over two years since I've put in a day's worth of solid work in. However, I did like doing it and am going to continue to go in on Fridays.

I also worked on the proposal that I've been mentioning. Right now, it's being mulled over, but apparently they've had something similar in the past, so there needs to be some contacting made on their end to find out the story behind that.

This week's goals include improving on my time management - it's something that I really need to work on, and am kinda bad at keeping track of.

I'll be back with the blog wrap up

No Shopper's Remorse for me today

I haven't mentioned it here, but recently I got a voucher to an online clothes store which caters to folks who are more my size. A couple of hours ago, I heard the door open, followed by the sound of something being put on the floor. I went to investigate, and it turns out that my package had arrived!

Now, I knew it would come today, but I expected it to first get here at 5pm or later, so getting it at 1:30 was a pleasant surprise.

Here's what I got:

From the left, a fleece windbreaker/light jacket (which is very roomy and will be really nice to walk in during late fall and winter), a pair of winter boots (fleece lining, fit nicely, made in Canada), hiking shoes, and a pair of pants which I haven't tried on yet.

As I hadn't taken my walk for the day before the stuff came, I put on the hiking shoes and they fit perfectly. In fact, you know how shoes usually require a bit of time to break in? These didn't need that time - they were great to walk in. In fact, I took a longer walk than I had before, but more on that Sunday. ;)

I also tried one of the boots on and I can tell you now that they will be lovely during winter.

Tomorrow, I should be getting another parcel delivered. It's like my birthday has come early. Well, not really early, since it's on Tuesday.