The Workout Challenge

So, as part of my attempts to get back into a workout routine, and to help a friend with her motivation, I’ve started a workout challenge.

It’s not the perfect challenge to be sure, but I think it works well for our purposes. Hopefully!

Each week (Friday – Thursday) we track exertion in calories burned on MyFitnessPal and at the end of said week, we make a tally and whoever has the most, wins that week. Whoever wins the majority of the weeks in the month wins the month.

And then, at the end of the year, whichever one of us has lost the year, buys the victor a book. (A wonderful reward idea if I do say so myself.)

I’m rather certain this model would be more motivating if the winner of the month was entitled to a book… Perhaps a change is in order.

Why Han Solo's 12 Parsec Kessel Run is Not Only Relevant, but Factually Correct

Or,  How I know I'm an Uber Geek...

Everyone who's watched Star Wars ( And hopefully if you've only ever watched one of the movies, it was the original) has heard Han Solo say "You've never heard of the Millenium Falcon? It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in under twelve parsecs." His boastful comment is generally thought to be incorrect. It's not.

The reason people think it's incorrect is because he's asked if it's a fast ship and that's his response. A parsec is a unit of distance, not time, however, the "Kessel Run" a smuggling route from the planet Kessel to the Si'Klaata cluster is not about speed. 

Between Kessel and the cluster lies the Maw... an area full of black holes, so the Kessel Run is usually a route that covers eighteen parsecs. By doing the run in under twelve, Han took himself closer to the black hole cluster than anyone else had to that point (someone else beats his record later on, but he and Luke will reclaim his title).

This drawing is not to scale in any way... it's just a basic visual.

So when Han says his famously thought wrong comment, he's not telling them how fast the ship can go, but that he's ballsy enough to get by the Empire.

(As a side note, I feel that this is a comment on his ship's speed, since your ship would have to be pretty fast to escape the gravitational pull of the black holes.)

Freezer Cooking

So, we don't have the CSA this season. There's so much going on in the next few months, and we'll be gone so often that it just wasn't worth it. Instead, we're trying out something I found while perusing Pinterest. Freezer cooking.

Well... you don't cook with your freezer, you just make large amounts of meals ahead of time, toss them  in the crock pot in the morning an forget about them until you get home from work and voilla!

This is what our freezer looks like (though there's a bag of french dip soup in there now too...)

We tossed together a bag of teriyaki chicken (Just cubed chicken, a can of  pinapple, a quartered onion and a chopped red pepper - add the teriyaki sauce when you toss it in the crock).

There's a bag with French Dip Soup (Loads of Onion, cubed beef, garlic, brown sugar, thyme and cumin - add merlot and beef broth when you toss it in the crock)

And we made a taco meat loaf (it's in the flat cake pan on the bottom of the top shelf) The recipe for that is here.

There's BBQ Chicken, Chicken Spaghetti from this live journal account (No, I am not pregnant - that just happens to be the reason she was doing it)



Beef Stew, Chicken Tortilla Soup, and Pork chops and Veggies from this blog (I changed up the pork to use porkchops we already had.)

In the end we have over 2 weeks worth of food from a $115 shopping trip - and no coupons were necessary!