The Modern Gal's Page

Have you ever had the urge to throw a cream pie or maybe some paintballs at The Modern Gal? Well, you're in luck.

No, I'm not hosting a pie-throwing contest -- although it's not a bad idea as I wouldn't mind picking up a little extra cash to supplement the income -- no, NetDisasters.com allows you to wreak havoc on any website of your choice. Besides throwing things, you can also have ants dismantle a page or have a dog poop on it. Even God Himself will smite a web page of your choice (though remember today is a day of rest for Him).

All I ask is that you be gentle with The MG. Throwing tomatoes will get the point across. Having Mars attack just seems unnecessary.

I'm finally getting into the kind of Saturday routines that I like: get up early, laze my way through my morning coffee and newspaper and then run errands. Fun errands like hitting the Farmer's Market and shopping, because shopping is totally an errand.

It was my first trip to the Farmer's Market since moving to town, and while I was a smidge disappointed with the selection -- it was heavy on the arts and crafts and light on the actual food selections -- I still came home with some gorgeous squash, zucchini and heirloom tomatoes. I found a dude selling gourmet doggie treats and I may or may not have indulged in a to-die-for chocolate chip cookie on spot. Don't worry, it's going in the Weight Watchers log.

My favorite local artist was there (check her Etsy shop out here), though I'm waiting until I get the pictures I already own hung on the walls before I decide to buy anything. I also stopped by my favorite little clothing boutique. The girl there was bizarrely traumatized by my designer Keds and proceeded to unleash her lifestory about being a bully in middle school and making some kid cry. I bought an antique bracelet in hopes of ending her misery and ran out quickly.

I love how the Farmer's Market brings the hippie/yuppie crowd out in droves. I saw a beautiful orange Vespa, one of these little things, about three dozen Obama stickers, tons of reusable bags and this bumper sticker:

I don't watch Firefly, but you know, Joss Whedon and all that jazz. I haven't had the time to check out Dr. Horrible yet either, but I'm hoping to box out a window tomorrow for it.

I picked up the rest of my desired produce at a nearby produce market and then went Krogering to pick up some cereal and canned stuff, which led to another lovely discovery. My Plus Card coupon o' the day turned out to be one for Seventh Generation. Turns out, they have coupons online too. Hooray! Cheaper green stuff!

There's a new JibJab and it's hilarious -- especially Bill Clinton's cameo.

Em from Joe's Used Toy Emporium invited me to be her friend at boot camp this week. I asked her if it was a good idea for someone who hadn't worked out with any regularity in about a month ... errrr, month and a half ... to try boot camp.

"It will be hard, but it won't kill you," she told me.

Well, she was right. It was hard as crap, but I'm still alive enough to write about it. It's taken me nearly all morning to recover (thank God I didn't have to work until this afternoon). And I'm definitely already feeling the burn.

Em was much more realistic about how I'd feel about boot camp than some of the other instructors: "It's fun!!" they shouted at us seconds before screaming at us to keep our butt down, get our knees up and for Pete's sake KEEP MOVING!! And when we didn't keep moving, we had to drop and give them ten of some sort of hybrid push-up/jumping jack thing whose name I've already purposefully forced from my brain.

Basically the workout consisted of a circuit of stations where we did some sort of strength activity like push ups or jumping jacks or lunges interspersed with sprints and shuffles and other cardio activities. The kicker of the whole 45 minute process is that you're never allowed to stop moving. The camp runs every day for a month, I think?

I completely understand the value of boot camp in trying to whip yourself into shape. It forces you to push, push, push your limits. I think the same people who are good at making themselves train for a marathon would find a lot of success in boot camp.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite there yet. Right now my greatest obstacle is, in fact, my brain. I have a hard time forcing myself to work harder because I've been in lazy mode for so long. My body was still an obstacle too: I was completely red-faced and dripping and gasping for air and spitting like a boy midway through the workout. But I completed it, and that was reward enough for me at this point. As a bonus, the extra exertion for the day earned me five bonus Weight Watchers points.

I doubt I'll be joining boot camp just yet -- but I haven't ruled it out altogether. But I definitely plan to ease myself back into exercising on a regular basis. Once I feel better about how much I'm exerting myself, there's a chance I'll use boot camp to push myself to the next level. In the mean time, what a way to kick off my renewed commitment to working out.

The regularly scheduled episode of The Modern Gal's weigh in will not be broadcast tonight.

With Weight Watchers, you get one mulligan for your session. You turn in a little pink slip when you're supposed to weigh in and voila! no weigh in. It was like WW gave me my own birthday gift this week.

I told my mom I was skipping the weigh in today, and of course she told me to face the music and save the free pass for later. I argued that I had a very good reason to opt out of weighing in this week (ahem). I shouldn't feel the least bit guilty for having two one really kinda largish slice(s) of ice cream cake to celebrate my birthday. On the weeks when I have absolutely no good reason for having gained everything back I'd already lost having a minor relapse into my old ways then I absolutely should have to deal with the guilt of stepping on the scale.

And it's not like I didn't weigh myself in the privacy of my own home this morning. I know exactly how much I weight right now, I just didn't want that weight recorded in ink in my little tracking booklet.

You know what would have helped this past week? Exercise. The exercise I haven't bothered to do in about a month and a half, ever since receiving that offer on my house. I mean, I've been waaaaaaay too busy to bother with any exercising since then, right? Yeah, that excuse is about to lose it's validity as I have about two boxes left to unpack and one wall to finish painting.

It's time for me to get back into the swing of exercising, and I've decided it's time to add some variety to the old go-to-the-gym routine.

By the time you read this post, I will have died from successfully survived Operation Boot Camp. I'm attending the Thursday morning session as a guest of Em's, who swears by the benefits of boot camp. I'm thinking it's going to absolutely kick my ass, but I suppose that's a good thing. And much different than the old go-to-the-gym routine.

I also forced myself to go buy an appropriate workout swimsuit. The kind that I can wear to swim laps in the pool at the gym. I hate trying to fit into one pieces, because they're never tailored to properly fit gals like me who have a teeny top half and a voluptuous ass. But, I feel it wildly inappropriate to wear any of the two pieces I have for when I go to the lake or beach, so it had to be done. I found a cheap Speedo suit at Sam's (yes, Sam's) that I didn't even try on, but turns out it stretches and shrinks in all the right places. So my second way to deviate from the old workout routine is to hit the pool and swim some laps.

Method three in shaking things up is to literally shake it up: The Modern Beau gave me Dance, Dance Revolution for the Wii for my birthday. I've tried it once on the most basic level, and let me tell you, it's way harder than it looks. The grading scale kept giving me Ds. On basic. Ds on basic. So it might take a while before I work my way up to making As on the expert level, but it should be a fun and weight-loss-inducing trip.

The MB is toying with the idea of training for a marathon, and if I get really ambitious I may try to take up jogging. No marathons in my future, but perhaps enough to do a 5K. That would be a big enough step as I can never keep my mind into the whole jogging thing long enough to make it to the 5K point.

Also, I want to be fit enough by next spring/summer to achieve the hike up to LeConte Lodge. For the un-locals, LeConte Lodge is atop Tennessee's second-highest mountain and the only way to get there is to hoof it. There are several trails of varying degrees of difficulty, but they all take several hours to conquer. Fortunately there's a whole national park full of hiking trails near by on which to practice.

But enough about me, what are the rest of you doing in your summer workouts? What should I be doing that I'm not?