Carousing with Chris

What a great night! I got to Chris' hotel around 5pm and we sat in the lovely courtyard and enjoyed each other's company for a couple of hours before our dinner reservation at 7:15pm. We had a glass of wine together and talked and laughed just like old times. It was so nice.

The restaurant we ate at was a tapas restaurant called Pura Vida, where they bring you appetizer-size portions of food of many different things for you to sample. We tried several items, and while we didn't eat all of everything, we did at least sample everything. The bill ended up being over $100 which he paid for, being the gentleman that he is, and we enjoyed an evening full of full-flavored Latin cuisine. And I took a ton of pics!!

Tilapia Tica Ceviche:

Button Mushrooms Pinchos:

Chicken Picadillo Empanadas:

Hanger Steak Pinchos:

House-cured Trout Caviar on Carrot Pancakes w/ Smoked Crema:

Mayan-spiced Creamed Beef over House Angel Hair Pasta:

We also had Diablo Shrimp Coctel & Mi Media Noche, but the camera batteries died and I couldn't get pics of those! When we left the restaurant, we went to a gas station and bought some batteries so we could take more pics when we got back to the hotel.

We ended up sitting in the courtyard again after dinner and talked for hours on end. I believe it was 1am before we finally ran out of steam. It was a great time catching up with Chris, and he'd like to come back again maybe in January, with some things planned for us to do. He wants to go to the Fox Theater and see David Copperfield in January, and some other things in Midtown, like visiting the Woodruff Arts Center, the Aquarium, etc.

Here are all the pics I took of us, both at the restaurant, and in the courtyard:

The only thing that was missing was Pam. All 3 of us went to high school together, and I actually met Chris through Pam...they were friends first. We talked about how nice it would have been to have her there with us...she lives in FL and has a husband and son, so it's a little harder for her to get away than it is for us single people. But we missed her terribly!! Maybe one day we can plan something far enough in advance where we can ALL get together...that would be fantastic!

I'm headed to the gym now to get in my treadmill and weights for the day, then off to run my usual Friday errands. Hope everyone has a spook-tacular Halloween weekend!! :)

Quote For the Day:

"Kites rise highest against the wind - not with it." -Sir Winston Churchill

Early Weigh-In This Week

I decided to go ahead and weigh in today instead of tomorrow. As I mentioned earlier in the week, I'm scheduled to go out to dinner with my friend Chris tonight....the only night that worked for both of us while he's in town for a few days. I'm not even going to deal with a "fake" gain tomorrow due to the sodium in my restaurant meal tonight. I've been known to gain 5-6 "fake" lbs overnight just from sodium in one meal. No thank you, lol.

So....this morning the scale reads 228.0, for a loss of 1.8 lbs. this week! Knowing I've had a little cold all week and have done NO exercise, I'm happy that I still had a decent loss. I'm looking forward to hitting the gym again tomrrow and seeing what a week of exercise gets me!!

This completes my 5th month on my weight loss travels and I have a total loss of 5 lbs. this month. I'm only 1 lb. away from my next 15 lb. mini goal. If I lose at least 1 lb. next week, then it will be time for my next reward! I'll be posting pics tonight of my dinner out with Chris. Have a fabulous day! :)

***A message for blog reader Steelers6....I know you've asked me to respond to a couple of your comments but when I click on your name, I can't find a profile or blog for you, so I don't know how to reach you!! Please email me at the gmail addy listed on my sidebar, and I will be more than happy to answer all of your questions...thanks! :)

A Treasured Award

My beautiful friend who lives across the pond, Sheilagh at Sixty by Sixty, has bestowed the Gorgeous Blogger Award upon me....what a treat!! Thank you so much Sheilagh for passing this adorable little award along to me, and I love that the color matches my blog page!!

I believe I am to pass this along to 7 other most deserving bloggers. All of them are listed on my blogroll on my sidebar.

Billie @ Let The Skinny ME Out!
Dawne @ 365 Days To A New Me
Andrea @ Beauty and Old Things
Brenda @ B Huron's Lighthouse
Tina @ Fat Girl Dives In
Leslie @ Something Brilliant Is Brewing
Marcelle @ South African from Cape Town Now Living In Germany

This is a fantastic group of ladies that I draw inspiration from weekly. I love following their blogs and know that each one of them deserve this award. Enjoy it ladies! :)

Now I am to list 6 interesting things you may not know about me. This is kinda' tough....seems like I've already told you everything....so here we go...shooting from the hip, as always:

(1) Christmas is my absolute, all-time favorite holiday. I love everything about it. I put up my Christmas tree and decorate my entire house on Thanksgiving night. It's a month-long celebration in my home!! It's just a magical time of year...I love the hustle and bustle of the shopping in chilly temperatures, the welcoming and comforting aromas that fill my home when I'm doing my holiday baking to make baskets of goodies for loved ones, the decorating and making new crafts and ornaments to give out as gifts, having my parents, sisters, nieces and nephews over the 2nd wknd of December for my own special family Christmas dinner, and our very weird and unique tradition for Christmas Eve dinner at Mom's house on her red Cape Cod dishes.....her homemade egg rolls, hot wings, huge cocktail shrimp platters from Red Lobster, and the homemade cheesecake that her friend Jennifer bakes for her every year. I started collecting nativity sets several years ago. Then I collected snowmen. This year, I'm starting a collection of Santas.

(2) I always wanted a tatoo on my lower back when I lost all of my weight...until I told Dwayne, and he said, "You want a tramp stamp???" At that moment, it suddenly lost all of it's allure for me, lol. But I still think they're interesting to look at, so I put one on my sidebar. :)

(3) I was born and raised in Jacksonville, FL and lived there for the first 27 years of my life, give or take a year or two. As Leslie mentioned on her blog, there is one season there..."hot". I can't tell you how many 80 degree Christmas' I had there. It really sucked to be sitting in the livingroom in a pair of shorts, after sweating all day, and watching Christmas shows on TV with snow everywhere. It made me ache inside. I've always dreamed of traveling to another state up North that gets covered in snow for the winter, even if just for a week. I want to be standing in 4 feet of snow, frozen like a popsicle. It's a dream of mine.

(4) I decided many years ago that there are 2 places that I am definitely going to visit before I die. I want to travel to Colorado to see the Rocky Mountains up close, preferably with snow on their peaks. And I'm going to eventually take a cruise to Alaska....the last great frontier. Interestingly enough, Amy H. at "No To The Deuce" has extended an invitation to all bloggers who want to go on a hike with her next summer and she lives in Denver, CO. I would LOVE to go, but still being on unemployment, I'm not sure if I'll have a job and enough money saved in time to go. If not, maybe we can do it the following year. An Annual Blogger Hike would be awesome. :)

(5) Billie at "Let The Skinny ME Out!" and the friend I joined the gym with asked me if I wanted to do a 5k with her next spring. Absolutely!! I'm looking forward to it. Due to my knee, not sure yet if I'll be walking or jogging, but either way, I'll be there!

(6) My astrological sign is Leo. I'm a leader, not a follower. I'm not really into the stars, but after reading things here and there through the years, I can see where there are certain traits that seem to be true. I once read something about Leo's that said the bad news is that when they don't get their way, they act like total brats....but the good news is, they almost always get their way. :)

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Sorry I didn't post last night. I just wasn't feelin' it. I've caught a bit of a cold, and I've been praying it doesn't turn into something worse. I've done zero exercise yesterday and today. Just getting lots of rest and drinking lots of liquids. Yesterday's calorie count was 1349 and today's is 1500. I'm planning on staying indoors the rest of the week and out of the cold, rainy weather. Will the rain in Georgia EVER end???? So tired of it.

I've got a dear friend from high school coming in town on Thursday and we're scheduled to go out to dinner together. His name is Chris and I told him I've got a bit of a cold, but if I'm feeling up to it, he still wants to go out together. He lives in Charleston, SC. We lost touch for several years, and then met up again just a few months ago on Facebook. It's funny how with some people, years and years can pass between seeing each other, and yet, when you meet up again, you pick up right where you left off like you never missed a day. He's one of those kind of friends...a lifetime one. Love him to pieces.

I've got a few food pics for you. The first one is one I forgot to post last week when I made it. It's Mediterannean Chicken w/ spaghetti squash. Then there's one of today's breakfast...an egg white scramble w/ fresh mushrooms, onions, and 2 oz of grilled chicken left over from Sunday's cookout. Next is a bowl of homemade chicken noodle soup that I had for lunch today. I made it last night...it's got chicken, whole wheat egg noodles, carrots, celery, onions and garlic. And finally, tonight's dinner, which was Southwestern Turkey Bean Chili....I added baby portabella mushrooms to it, as well as 1 c. of Dreamfield's macaroni elbows....and I had it with a cup of hot cranberry tea.

Well that's it for tonight. I'm going to log off and watch the Biggest Loser. I pretty much decided the show is rigged a couple of weeks ago when Tracey got to choose the people for the Blue and Black teams. But...I've already gotten interested in all of the other contestants...so now I've got to watch the rest of the season. Thank you again Sheilagh for the lovely award. Knowing that you chose me as one of the 7 recipients just makes my heart smile. :)

Quote For the Day:

"We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

Thrills, Chills & A Milestone Reached!

Some of you have been asking for some updated progress pics, but I wasn't planning on doing "official" ones until I've lost a total of 60 lbs. I think the effect is more dramatic when there's more lbs. lost between pics. I took my first ones at 30 lbs. gone. I want to do my next ones at 60 lbs. lost (I've only lost 42 so far), and then my final ones at 92 lbs. gone when I reach my goal weight of 180 lbs. However, I will be posting normal ol' crappy pics of myself along the way when I do special stuff.

I've got some pretty crappy ones to show you from last night, lol. Dwayne took me to Six Flags Saturday afternoon for Fright Fest and I had the time of my life! I've written before how when I was about 15 years old, I was too fat to ride on a roller coaster and I had to get off the ride and "walk the plank" while everyone waited for me to waddle off so they could ride the coaster. That was over 20 years ago and I haven't been to an amusement park since. Well tonight we went and I FIT ON ALL OF THE ROLLER COASTERS!!!!!!!!!! WOO HOO!!! GO SKINNY TAMMY!!!!

I have a love/hate relationship with roller coasters. I love to ride them and experience the adrenaline rush, but at the same time, I hate them profusely due to my fear of heights and can't keep my eyes open while I'm on them. I flashed my eyes open 2-3x on each ride and then squeezed them shut tight again, screaming like a banshee the whole way!!! It was awesome. :)

One of the ones we rode I think was called The Acraphobia maybe? The name means "desperate fear of heights", or something like that. I cannot believe I got on that thing. I have a serious fear of heights. It's enough to send me into a panic attack if I let it. You hop up on this bicycle-type seat and then pull the shoulder bars down over you and latch the seatbelt. Your feet don't touch the ground. You're just kind of hanging there til they lift you up. It's a hydraulic system. As soon as the bars latched over me, I started feeling like I couldn't breathe. I told Dwayne I was going to hyperventilate. He held my hand and told me I'd be fine, that the ride only lasts about 10 seconds. And that's true. They raise you up about 200 feet or so, so you can see the Atlanta skyline off in the distance and probably a couple of other states! I couldn't look. I kept my eyes shut tight and just practiced on keeping my breathing slow. The guy controlling the ride sings a little creepy song into the microphone along the lines of "Pop Goes The Weasel"....except his limerick was worded "Drop Goes The People".

Dear.
God.

They hold you up there for a few seconds and in the middle of the song, while you're trying to concentrate on what he's singing, the bottom falls out. You free fall all the way to the bottom, where the hydraulics stop you. Dwayne was screaming bloody murder while I was quietly praying for a quick, painless death, lol. When we got to the bottom I started laughing and shaking, saying, "I can't believe it! I did it! I'm still alive!" I was more disturbed after I got off the ride than when I was actually on it. The more I thought about it, the more shaky I got, completely unnerved that I was that high up and just let them drop me. Insanity. I told Dwayne I would never ride that again, and he's determined to get me back on it. I see some vomiting in my future, lol.

We wanted to ride Superman, but the line was 1 1/2 hr wait....so we passed. We rode the Georgia Cyclone, the Georgia Scorcher, Goliath, Batman and a couple of others I can't remember. The pics aren't that great. Dwayne was taking them from his camera phone, not to mention we were bundled up in our hoodies and my hair was all wind-blown. I almost didn't post these pics...but then I changed my mind. If this blog is ANYTHING, it's REAL. Gotta' post the less flattering pics, no matter how much I don't like them. But they DO mark a milestone for me....being able to fit on and enjoy roller coaster riding for the first time in 20 years....that makes them important. :) These are just kind of sporadic pics...if I had of been the one taking them, we would have gotten a lot more. We were there from 4:30p-9:30p...5 hours. Some of the pics were taken after dark and they just didn't come out. But here's what I've got:

The eating completely sucked this weekend. Just too much. The only thing I'm proud of is that we didn't eat anything the entire 5 hours we were at Six Flags. No kettle corn, no funnel cakes, no greasy cheeseburgers, no footlong hotdogs, no cotton candy. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. We didn't care about the food...we were too excited about the rides. So we ran around in the 50 degree weather like a couple of kids, up and down hills all over the park, bouncing from one ride to another. It was just a fantastic time together. It was perfect. :)

On the exercise front....Billie and I went to the gym Friday morning and I walked 3 miles on the treadmill. We had lifted weights on Wed and Thur, so we didn't do it on Friday. The trainer told us to do it every other day, so we took a break from it. And as sore as we were, I don't think we could have done the weights even if we had to. Saturday I opted out of the gym because I knew Dwayne and I were going to be walking around Six Flags for several hours. Sunday (this morning), Billie and I planned to meet at the gym at 8:45am, and we did. But when we got there it was closed. That's when we read the sign on the door that said the gym was open from 10a-5p on Sundays. Doh!!

I didn't bring a jacket or hoodie with me because I was counting on being inside. It was pretty damn cold out and the wind was blowing, so I just wasn't able to go to the park and walk. So we missed out on the walking AND the weight machines today. I couldn't come back later and do it because my day was already packed. I had to go grocery shopping and get home and start cooking for Mom's retirement party/cookout at my sister Brandy's house this afternoon.

I made 2 pumpkin rolls w/ cream cheese filling for our dessert. The filling calls for 1 c powdered sugar, 8 oz of cream cheese, 4 tbsp of butter and 1 tsp of vanilla. In an attempt to make it a tiny bit less fattening, I used reduced fat cream cheese, and only 2 tbsp of butter instead of 4. But all in all, this still isn't a healthy dessert, lol. I also made a pot of green beans and I sauteed some baby portabella mushrooms, onions, & green, red, orange bell peppers together in a touch of olive oil. Then I made a big bowl of potato salad (Mom's recipe) and this is where I really screwed up. I haven't had any full fat regular mayo in my frig in almost 5 months. The only kind I have is Kraft Lite Mayo. Oops! I had to make the potato salad with the lowfat mayo and I just knew everyone was going to hate it. I held my breath while everyone was eating it and surprisingly, I got even more compliments on it than when I make it the regular way!!! After I was sure everyone loved it, I told them what I did. They were all shocked, but continued to say how good it was, so that turned out unexpectedly well.

I took a bunch of steaks up there that I've been buying on sale for the last month and putting in my freezer. I wanted Mom to have a special retirement party meal, but I also took up 6 chicken breasts, so that I could have something a little healthier. I don't know why I bothered, since I'd already eaten too much this wknd to salvage anything. But I passed on the steak and had chicken.

The cookout was at my sister Brandy's house up in Ellijay, which is in the Northeast Georgia mountains. Our leaves have just started to change this week, but they're not at their peak yet. I took some pics from her back deck:

Next are some pics of my nieces and nephews; Grace and Carla are both 4 years old. Elijah will be 3 years old next month, and Cyress turned 2 years old this past June:

Here's a pic of my sister Amy and her daughter Carla (I call her Ladybug):

Next is a pic of me and my niece Grace:

Here's a pic of Mom and Dad...the best parents in the entire world:

Next is a pic of my sister Brandy and her husband Steven. He grilled the steaks and chicken for us. I'm basing my goal weight of 180 lbs on Brandy. I'm 5'10...she is 6' and weighs 155 lbs. I prefer not to be that thin. I want to be a little more full-figured than her:



Here's a pic of my roommate Shane and his girlfriend Billie...the weight loss blogger at "Let The Skinny ME Out" that I joined the gym with:



Here's a pic of my mom and I, my sisters and I, and then just a pic of plain ol' me:







And last but not least, here's the pic of my pumpkin roll, and the plate of food I had to eat...a spoon of potato salad, a spoon of green beans, and a big helping of onions, peppers and mushrooms. The grilled chicken wasn't ready yet, so I took a pic of that afterwards:

I can tell I'm developing a cold. My nose is stopped up one minute, and running the next. These usually come on me pretty fast, so I will probably feel like total crap when I wake up in the morning. Bummer. Time to go drink some OJ!! Hope everyone had a fabulous weekend...I know I sure did! :)

Quote For the Day:

"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." -Eleanor Roosevelt