Arevelo Academy

Steve's been pushing for me to go work out at a gym for a couple of years now. I don't know why. Maybe he thinks I'm too girly?
So I finally signed up. The Arevelo Academy is run by Rudy and offers Mixed Martial Arts as well as an adult Kick Boxing program, and martial arts for all ages of kids. But the class I was most interested in was the morning women's course. It is called the "Women's Hard Core." After my first week of classes, I understand that meaning. It mixes kick boxing with very intense training, mostly targeting the areas on women that tend to be PROBLEM AREAS. My abs, thighs, and butt have been worked very very HARD!!!
This morning I took my camera, and got a photo of me and Shanna working the bags.
Kind of a neat coincidence, that we have the same name pronounced differently.






And you know the place must be hard core if there's a picture of Bruce Lee in the bathroom:

Food Recalls

I just read about the ongoing investigation of the cookie dough e.coli poisoning. They just announced that three different e.coli strains were identified.
Fortunately, I don't have a cookie dough fetish.

But I DO love tomatoes, jalapenos, and lots of other veggies. And last summer, we ate quite regularly the cream cheese stuffed jalapenos wrapped in bacon that Pioneer Woman showed on her website. And we made cheese stuffed tomatoes, and we ate lots of corn and onions, etc.
The FDA announced their concerns of a Salmonella outbreak, and they assumed it was from tomatoes. Once we heard that, we cut back on the tomatoes.

But we continued eating plenty of jalapenos.

And at the end of the summer, the FDA announced, "Oops, we were wrong. It wasn't the tomatoes, it was jalapenos."
Well that would explain my digestive problems.....
I had salmonella all of last summer, and the effects did not go away for many months.
I always had to be near a bathroom.

But I read this article today that states many people don't even pay attention when there's a food recall. Okay. That's logical. Not.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/WellnessNews/wireStory?id=7331774

Not So Smart Phone

I'm not a "tekkie" and I don't always need the latest gadgets. But last year I found myself with a very busy schedule and the only way to keep up was to get a Palm that could remind me of my appointments and stuff. So I got a Palm Centro phone and I've struggled with it ever since. It has a touch screen, and if that touch screen should come into contact with change in your pocket or something it doesn't like, it shuts down. No touch screen, no phone. I paid a lot of money to fix the LCD touch screen when that happened.
So it's a phone you can't put in your pocket. Or have in the bathroom while you shower because the moisture can corrupt it just as badly as a rain storm. And it can't be in the heat because it will shut down. It had internet capability, but the only time I was able to successfully log on is when I wanted to download new ringtones. I had them all: AC/DC, Superman Theme, some Bluegrass, Whitesnake...
But I was never able to log onto the internet to check news. And that, I hate.

Basically, it's an undependable laptop that you have to carry around with you all the time.

I was cleaning the pool yesterday when my little undependable laptop slipped out of my pocket and into the water.

I didn't even try. I remember on the older phones you could dry them out and they'd work again. Nope, not on this one. It was toast. Went straight to the Sprint store and picked out a new one.

This time, no touch screen and it's a flip phone so it doesn't matter what's in my stinkin' pocket. And the display screen is HUGE.
Here's a pic of old pink phone next to new purple phone:



And check out the screen on the new phone:



The new phone is not a "Smart Phone" so that means I can't sync it with my computer. But I didn't ever do that with the old phone. So I don't care. But it has a card slot so I can import and export pictures and files to my computer. Or I can just email them to myself. Email that I can check on the new phone just fine--all three email accounts are already set up on there.
I have no phone numbers yet because we're waiting for the old phone to dry out so we can attempt to extract all 300 contacts. It's sitting in a bag of rice right now.

How pitiful. A $400 piece of technology ruined because I had to clean the pool.
Another lesson learned.

Country Cookin, Sort Of

I'm one of those people who learned to cook with the internet. When I was teaching myself with cook books and stuff, it wasn't that fantastic.
But Tuesday night was an experiment that I didn't use Pioneer Woman for. I found a roasting chicken at the store for $7.00, put it in a roasting pan with butter and seasonings for 90 minutes, and out came this glorious piece of meat:



Steve's in the background, ruining the gravy I'd just made.

Right Wing Extremists

Went to a Right Wing Extremist meeting on Monday night, to hear Randy Pullen speak about political issues in both our State government and Federal. Mr. Pullen is our Chairman of the Republican Party in Arizona. And the Right Wing quip is just a joke; as you can see we're all quite calm and normal looking.

I tend to space off during the Federal discussions because unfortunately there's nothing we can do. We have voiced our opinions very loudly (T.E.A. Parties across the country--none of our voices were heard) and we've made sure that we've elected men and women to offices in Washington D.C. who feel the same way we do. But they're in the minority back there and no matter how hard they work--the government keeps stepping on its own pee pee.

Oh well, the food was good.

Legitimate Me is Goin' To Washington!!

I've come a long way since my first meeting with Santa Claus.

In fact, here I am with Satan Claus. Oops I mean Buster.



I just got my letter, I'm being accepted into the Dodie Londen Excellence In Public Service Series for Chicks Who Wanna Be In Government And Stuff.
Training starts in October, in Phoenix, and once a month we meet to have class time. Then we go to Washington D.C. next May for a four day adventure.
Geez, will we even have a government by then? Hard to see the future, with the way things are now.

You know why they accepted me? Because they ADORE Buster. And I was name-droppin like nobody's business!!!

21 Years Later

Just so you know, it takes approximately 21 years to get over something traumatic. My brother and I spoke on the phone this morning and we found ourselves laughing a little bit.
We repeated some lines from the "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" movie, where Leonardo DiCaprio's mentally challenged character named Arnie keeps saying, "Dad's dead."

So, I guess you could say we're over it.