Wednesday, February 28, 2007

His and Hers





Jordan got us his and hers Schwinn cruiser bikes. Aren't they cute? Now I just have to wait for the snow to melt!

Awesome biking bars


Hi guys. Just made a very good biking bar.

Easy to do too.






Here it is:
3 c. granola
1 c wheat germ
1 1/2 c peanut butter
1 t Van. Extract
1/3 C whole wheat flour
3/4 c Honey
1 c dried cherries or cherry flavored cranberries
1 c slivered almonds
Some ground flax seed

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Lightly grease a 9 by 13 inch pan with cooking spray
Combine all ingredence in a large bowl and spread into pan. Press firmly
Bake for 10 min. Remove and let cool for 5 min. (pat top down firmly during this time, makes easier to cut later)
Cut into 24 bars while still warm. Shape bars with hands for perfection, and place in plastic bags and put in fridge.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Day 5 as a Vegetarian

My new vegetarian outlook on life is going well. Last night I had mustard greens smothered in onions and olive oil over bulghur wheat. Yum-my! I should of taken a photo for you. It was a tasty green mess.

I have Betsy S to thank for this new approach. Thanks, Bunny! Today's menu stars eggs and toast. Tonight it's veggie burgers (hand made). To celebrate going meatless, I'm getting a microwave so I can heat up all those veggie burgers I'm going to make.

In other news, Wisco is getting more snow (insert cuss word here). The mailman left me a note yesterday to the effect of " please shovel out the approach to your mailbox." I'm going to leave him a note that says "please leave chocolate and I'll shovel out the mailbox."

Is he kidding?? There's 5' of snow in front of my mailbox!! If I wanted to break down a concrete wall I'd do it. In the meantime, I'm going to put a laundry basket on the lawn with a sign: "LEAVE MAIL HERE."

Alrighty, if you haven't figured out that I've got nothing meaningful to say today, you need more coffee. Humm. coffeeeeeeeeeeee.....
dq

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Killer Yoga, Rockin'on Rocks and *(*%Snow

Hi all you crazy cats. What a fun weekend! Sorry 'bout all the snow but at least we kept busy. Cari, it's a good thing you went out last night 'cause we barely made it out of the driveway this morning. I got up and looked out the window and was disappointed again that my neighbors had not cleared my driveway yet. Harumph!! It would seem that the feeling sorry for the poor single woman thing isn't working anymore??

Well anyway, I was getting confident of my driving-in-snow ability so we blasted out of the garage, me driving and Betsy manning the garage door opener, but we lost traction half way up the driveway. The second time we made it farther up the driveway. The third time we got stuck and were forced to shovel the car out. Betsy and I were a little sore from yoga yesterday so while the shoveling was hard work, at least we were loose!

My favorite b-fest placed was closed and so was Caribou so we went to Starbucks. Here's a photo of Betsy opening the door. Look, the door has a convenient "snow stop."



After b-fest we checked Betsy's flight and discovered that while it'd been showing up as delayed until noon all morning, it was miraculously moved back to its original time slot. That meant a mad dash for the car. I think Betsy made it on as I didn't get a phone call. I'm hoping like heck she made it out of Milwaukee.

Btw, Betsy showed me her Sodoku method and I've already messed it up. I tried to do it and duhhhh....I forgot how. Betsy, I am giving myself a D so far on Soduki.
Cheers,
dq

Good Morning


Hello all.
It was such fun hanging out with you guys. I'm not sure if I'm sore from the yoga or the rock climbing, but both were awesome. Had major withdrawl once I was home.

Hope everyone gets home safely.
Momma Schmitt

PS: I had to write the message "backwards" for the camera. How's that for skill?

Monday, February 19, 2007

Gnomey Says HI TEAM!




Hi y'all,
Some of you newer cowgirls may not know about Gnomey yet. He's had an eventful life, thanks to the team. His story is he used to reside in Rachel Couch's Boulder, Colordado garden but then Trish (sniff sniff, our Aussie cowgirl who is now back in OZ) liberated him from the garden and Gnomey went on a road trip to Boise, Idaho. There he lived with Lala (Laura Downey, sniff sniff, another cowgirl who retired then unretired) who took him to California last March. Gnomey got to see Pomona and had a good time. We even blogged about him then.

Gnomey arrived in Madison last spring and has had a respite from travel. He's getting tired of snow and not traveling has made him sad. He is ready to go on a road trip and is very excited that the team is coming to town. He knows he'll get to ride in a bike box soon!

So expect to see him in California again, or maybe West Virginia??

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Outdoor workout hazards


That's right.... MOOO!

Today, I decided that it would be a perfect day for an outdoor ride-even though everything told me that it was below zero degrees. It just looked too nice outside with the sun shining. I would take my mtn bike on the Galena River Trail and do a little snow riding on the trail. (Part of the trail is accessible by cars, so I knew a part of it would be plowed.)



Well, I got there and tried to ride on the snow. One thing I didn't consider is the type of snow. This snow is like sugar- you could never make a snowman with this snow, and as I found out today, it is somewhat-impossible to ride on! I ended up taking a nice leisure 25 min ride. The cold wasn't tooo bad, but the face was a little chilly.
Towards the end of my short-lived ride, it was getting colder and I noticed everything icing up a bit. Nothing too serious though... THEN, I saw this sweet snow pile. I gave into the temptation to jump on to the snow pile and make it 'splat'. Well... needless to say, I hit it and totally endo-ed. man! ouch! weird. I peeled myself off of the ground and looked around to see if anyone saw this display of ridiculousness. Everything is okay, a few more scratches on the bike, another bruise on the bod... but really it is just a reminder of how much I need to work on my jumping skills.

Outdoor workout hazard #1:
Beaware of little snowpiles that look like they may be slushy.. they are not- the're probably frozen.

News from Chetlain Lane...



I thought I'd introduce you all to the second piece of cow paraphernalia I have received since I joined the team. Rob (my dude) picked up this funky looking cow at the ski resort that we work at. Get to know the cow now, because he has made it known that he will make guest appearances in the future.
*note, the photo IS blurry-- My camera is broken and I can't turn the flash on-- it works fine in the sun... :) & also note... the cow has some huge biker calves.

Other news: We have had pretty icky weather- other Wisconsinites can empathize... As of late, the issue in our area has been snow drifts. Check out the new doo on my car! I felt bad knocking this snow-art off of my car!!




Until the next post....
chao.
~~
K8

Monday, February 12, 2007

Indoor workout hazards-part II

Ancient Sony Discman (yes, my listening technology is also 10 years behind the times) or instrument of torture? After my sprint workout this weekend, I'm not so sure. While Betsy and Julie have managed to whack their shins while riding their trainers, I have discovered another hazard of training indoors in the cold, dry weather: static electricity. I was doing my first sprint workout of the year on rollers with a magnetic attachment, listening to the Spin Doctors on headphones so as not to disturb my landlord (although I'm sure he's getting mighty tired of the rumbling on his ceiling). The first three sprints went well, and I was happy with the numbers I was seeing. Then on #4, just as I hit a new PR for max speed on rollers, a bolt of electricity arced between my right earpiece and a plaque on the wall next to me (did I mention the rollers had scooted over during my last sprint and were now lightly rubbing against a furry bath mat I have underneath?). The jolt nearly caused me to crash, but I recovered and yanked off the headphones. I decided to switch to speakers after that, my landlord be damned, because I had four more sprints left to do, but now I was nervous every time I started to crank up my speed and couldn't get it up enough to make them worthwhile. Perhaps like a rat in a Skinner box, I became conditioned very quickly not to do the thing associated with the shock, or perhaps the jolt zapped all my energy, but the rest of the workout was a low-energy slog.

Is it time to buy an iPod? Or a less furry bath mat? Maybe the cycling gods are trying to tell me I'm not meant to be a sprinter...

Sunday, February 11, 2007

Good morning



Just couldn't sleep anymore, so I came downstairs to talk to you guys in peace. And yes, that is instant coffee - with a whole lot of creamer! So who had the best workout weekend? It will not be hard to beat me, but I need some insperation. Lay it on, and maybe I'll get my trainer out and whip off the cow webs. Later
Mamma Schmitt

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Chic and Jaunty


I heard all the cool girls are into Holsteins. Good thing I've had this in my closet for 17 years!

Whoa...PITA!

As in pain in the ass. I did some research on the problems with blogger and concluded that the problem we were having is that we had not switched our site over to Beta (something that Google introduced last fall). I made the switch, then logged in and voila. I logged in as Julie Schmitt and used our normal password and voila.

BLOG AWAY!! We're back! (just go to bloger.com and log in as you used to, just log in as Julie S...

Monday, February 05, 2007

Trying to fix this mess.


This is crazy.

Sorry for the trouble.
Hope all are back on soon/

J