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Exercising Reboot with a Surprising Soundtrack for EK!

I think it’s beyond time for an update.  Just because I have not been posting, doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. This week in fact I have been very busy. Tuesday we took our daughter Elizabeth and her boyfriend Marcus to the Newark Airport. They are taking a trip to Portugal, where Marcus’ grandparents live. They will be staying with them for a few days and then they will be sightseeing for the remainder of their nine-day trip.   So while the farthest I’ve ever been from home is Florida, Elizabeth has been to England and Ireland and now to Portugal. Anyway a typical 3.5 hour trip to Newark and back took 5.5 thanks to a horrible t-storm while I was driving on the NJ Turnpike and then a traffic jam getting back on the NJ Turnpike. Yesterday we babysat Zoe, while our daughter-in-law took Logan to the Paediatrician for his 7 month checkup. The little chunky guy weighed in at 22 lbs!
EK Starts Exercising Again…..
At the beginning of the week, I decided that it was time to start exercising  again so that I can start running again. I stopped running in the beginning of June. I had some funky twinges in my left knee and I decided to rest it for a few days. Well, a few days turned into a few weeks. During that time, I also stopped doing any extended cardio exercising. The only thing I continued to do was my morning yoga. This last Saturday (July 14th) I did a 30 minute cardio workout and felt pretty good. I followed that with a 3.30 walk/jog on Sunday. Because I felt pretty good after those two workouts, I decided to go full steam ahead this week. The result has been a great week of exercising! Every day, including Monday a Target work day, I have had at least one 30-50 minute cardio workout that burned 300-500 calories. The routine that I have been doing includes: some dance-cardio (or in my case some movement cardio), a set of Kundalini yoga, kettle bell and bands. Yesterday, I also added a 30 minute plus walk! Two out of the four days (Sunday-Wednesday) I surpassed my steps goal of 14,300 steps. One of the days I didn’t make my goal was Tuesday, which was the day I was in the car from five and a half hours!  Anyway the bottom line is that I think I am doing well as far as exercising goes
……With A Surprising Soundtrack
The soundtrack  for the dance-cardio portion of my morning workouts has been music from the late 50s and early 60s. I think I’ve chosen some classic tunes that really get my old body moving! What do you think?? I have some thoughts about the pop music of the 60s versus today’s pop music that I’m going to share in a future post! But until then get moving!! Guess you can say that I am and was sweating wit the “oldies”!

Time Enough For Blogging???

Zoe makes blogging harder but I wouldn't trade her for blogging
Can I Find Time in My Day to Blogging?  How Do They Do It?
So I need to find a way to get my blogging Mojo back again! Oh, wait there’s a book for that on my Kindle. It’s title is 31 Days to Finding Your  Blogging Mojo. Do you think reading it again will help?  Did I ever have a blogging mojo to lose?  Over the last few months, I’ve started several posts, stopped and never finished them. I know that it’s mostly in the evening I’m either trying to finish a post or sometimes even starting a post. If it’s the latter, then I’m trying to finish the post even later in the night.  That is not a good thing for me. I do my best thinking and writing early in the day. When I was working, I would try to do whatever writing I had to do in the morning, then I would do the outside physical work in the afternoon. Now how can I battle ending up writing and posting late in the day. To do that let’s look at how I spend my weekdays. My Monday through Friday schedule typically is as follows:
My Typical Weekday Morning Schedule 
Monday & Friday Target at 7 am until 12.45 pm Tuesday –  Wednesday – Thursday either Babysit  Zoe and Logan together from 11:30 or 12:30 until 5:15 – 5:45 or Zoe alone,  picking her up at school at 10:30 and then babysitting her until her dad gets home at 5:15+/- I do about 30 minutes of yoga each morning. On Tuesday and Thursday for the last month ( this week excluded) I have been running. Running usually takes up more than an hour, when you include prep time, running, cooling down and showering. So the combination of yoga, meditation and running takes over two hours, typically,  from 7:15 to 9:30. Then there’s breakfast to make,etc. If I couple all of the above together and add in the fact that I also need time to read the books that I write about, as well as, listen to the music I plan to write about,  then the result is the time I have to write during the morning hours shrinks more and more!! Ouch! So my question is: How do people do it??? Should I just try to write five posts on the weekends to be posted on various days of the week? Or should I get up every morning at 5 and write between 5 and 7?? Alternatively I could just say:  I’m old, nobody reads my stuff anyway, I should just quit blogging?? That last idea seems to be  becoming reality,  as I have less and less desire to post! Help! Of course then if the options are sitting home alone staring at a computer writing a post or staring at this little guy or being with Zoe as I am in the featured image, I think I’ll take the latter all the time!!!

A Hand-Me Up Fitbit Blaze Reignites My Workouts!

Exercise Equipment used in my workouts

Ok  so I have said before that a Fitbit in and of itself will not make you fit. However, it does show you the fruits of your exercising and helps to motivate you.

EKK starts the Year Sans Fitbit…

This year, I didn’t have a Fitbit at the beginning of the year. I had two Charge Hrs, however, both had fallen apart to the point that they couldn’t be recharged. And one had frozen during a firmware update. For a while I was able to charge and use the unfrozen one. But then it also froze during a firmware update also.  The end result was, I found it hard to get motivated to do some of my more energetic workouts. So I was exercising, but not very hard. Read More

Cranking Up My Daily Workouts – Without a Fitbit!

Ramping up Workouts without Fitbit Charge HR

I Miss My Fitbit

Okay I’ll admit it, I miss my Fitbit Charge HR. After my first Fitbit finally fell apart for good, I received another. I threatened to switch to a Garmin to get it though. The second one also fell apart. Then it died when it froze trying to update the software. Finally, when my daughter Elizabeth upgraded to a Fitbit Blaze, she gave me her Charge HR. That Fitbit has also fallen apart. So I am without a Fitbit or any other Fitness Tracker. As a result, I have not been working out as much! Actually,the lack of a Fitbit is probably just a convenient excuse! Read More

A Knee Injury and Dr. Amen lead to Positive Changes!

Goodbye Coffee and Coca-Cola – Hello Teas

So last week was basically a week without exercising. The reason is that sometime during the previous week I reinjured my knee.

It all began about a month ago, when I fell near the end of a four-mile run. I scraped my knee and a finger or two. Both of the scrapes healed over the next few weeks, but there was still some discomfort in the knee, particularly, when I put pressure on it. Then on Thursday night November 9th, my knee really hurt,  when I climbed into bed.  I worked the following morning at Target, but my knee hurt really bad. I even complained about it to one of my co-workers. Read More

DNA and Ancestry.com Help Uncover Ashton Ancestors

The longer I go without writing a new post the harder it becomes to write one. One reason is that so much has been happening I really don’t know where to start.so at e I’ll just start where I left off.  My last post was about my family genealogy. At the end of the last post I wrote that I would tell you how DNA helped me discover some new cousins. So here goes… Read More

Sixties Baseball Memories of Some Great Seasons….

Baseball Memories – Thank You “Uncle” Barney

As I sit and watch the Cubs in the baseball play-offs memories arose of some magical years in my life. I was born in 1951 and I have vague memories of the 1957 or 58 World Series my mother was rooting for the Braves over the Yankees. The first time I really remember watching the games was 1960 when the Pirates beat the Yankees in a seven game series, which ended on a Bill Mazeroski homer. I remember getting home from school just in time to see the homer! Read More