Oct 23 - Happy Family

  An early morning, I got up and did my first set of back stretches and was puffing away on the cross trainer by 6:40am!  I watched Channel Ten's Breakfast show and spent the whole time shaking my head at it, Paul Henry is an ass.  I need to pick another channel.
  After exercise, I hit the shower.  I've finally started using my shower timer in the last couple of days and I'm please to note I have them down to ten minutes.  That might sound ridiculous but they were often twenty minutes so that's a huge improvement.  I'm afraid that the tape on my back didn't make it.  After 40 minutes of sweating followed by 10 minutes further drenching in the shower, it almost fell off.  Once I was dressed and ready I made myself a lovely breakfast, photographed it 'rustic style', ate it and then headed off to work.
  I actually managed to get through a bit of my own stuff today.  My desk still looks very much like a bomb's hit it but I'm hoping things will get better before they get worse.  My calendar reminders for morning and afternoon snack are working and I used my morning snack time to have an apple as well as do a set of back arches on the floor behind my desk.  I was finding without the reminder that I'd forget to pause and have a piece of fruit and that ended up making me much hungrier on getting home.

  I got an email from Teddy in Boston at lunch today which always perks me up.  My lunchtime is around when he gets home from work so it happens relatively regularly.  I answered it while I ate.  It was kind of funny, I hadn't heard from him in a week or so and when the email popped up the song Dirty Boulevard was playing on the radio.  Lou Reed is one of his favourite artists so it made me smile, thinking of one of our in jokes: You can't be sad because today is Lou Reed's birthday.
  After lunch I got up to date on my invoice preparation and managed to sit down with Ops Man J and go through some of my queries.  My entry deadline is tomorrow so it was relief to have them all at least half signed.  I just have to hope my boss signs the other half swiftly tomorrow!  At afternoon snack time I had a peach and did my third set of back stretches for the day.
  When I got home today, Dad was already there waiting for me, checking his emails and facebook.  We only had to wait a few minutes longer for the arrival of Mr Smart then we all headed down to Bertie's place.  I know I wasn't going to be seeing much of Mr Smart but he decided since he definitely couldn't make Bertie's official birthday celebrations, he would like to join us for the small but ever-important family birthday dinner.

  From Bertie's we headed to Hog's Breath and had a lovely time together.  Many laughs were had, many many many laughs as we waited an hour for our main meals.  I've been there before and service has normally been fine but it was really slow tonight.  All my thoughts of what to have of course evaporated and I ate too much of the wrong things as usual.  My blood sugar was not overly bad though, considering I had both rice and potatoes!  It came in at 7.4 when it should be 7.0 or less.  Not terrible for a splurge night, but of course there are three more meals out this week!
  Mr Smart hung around for a little while after dinner but regrettably had to head back home to make a fresh start on study in the morning.  It did mean I started tonight's blog quite late, in fact he's already made it home as I write this and the wag has posted a "Where's the blog?!!?" comment on my facebook wall!  Cheeky devil.

  Today's food and exercise were:

• Exercise was 40 minutes on the cross trainer at load 2 and three sets of back arches throughout the day.  I also got up from my desk regularly to stretch.
• Breakfast was toasted banana bread with yoghurt, slivered almonds, pumpkin seeds and honey.
• Morning snack was a Pink Lady apple (cored and sliced).
• Lunch was a Mission Wholegrain Wrap with two slices of Bega Extra Light Tasty Cheese, 97g of Pastrami, fresh mushrooms and five sliced Perino snacking tomatoes, all toasted in the sandwich press.  I also had about 50g of Yumi's Eggplant Dip with some cucumber slices.
• Afternoon snack was a small white peach.
• Dinner started with a taste test of Bertie's ChocBanana Paddlepop Cocktail (omg, yum!) and after that there was a rather long wait as mentioned earlier.  We chose not to have entrees so I chose to have the main size garlic prawns with a side of garlic mushrooms.  Not terrible, but I wouldn't order it again.  It was bland and the sauce was heavy rather than creamy (I did not eat all the sauce, probably about half of it).  I also ate Mr Smart's serve of curly fries (he is not currently eating chips at all), two or three of them were dipped in ranch sauce, and I had one of Bertie's calamari rings.

  Past my bedtime now so goodnight world!
  Jess