My life lately consists of work, working out, and eating. Any other time I am recovering from one of those three.

The contest is 7 weeks away--and I leave for England two weeks before that, so I really feel that I need to be ready in five weeks. The workouts, and especially the cardio, have become much more intense in my effort to peel off the necessary bodyfat to be show-worthy. The trainers are pushing me to do two cardio sessions a day--which I'm able to do three maybe four times a week. (Oh, and the cardio is supposed to be no less than 45 minutes, preferably an hour.) I'm actually managing to get in about 10 cardio sessions a week, and I can usually do at least 45 minutes worth. The biggest problem I have is that I get so damned bored! I like doing the running best, since it's out in the "real" world and I can set a distance beforehand, so I know I won't quit early. I've been running 4-5 miles, and I'm hoping to push it up to 6 next time I go. The problem with the running is that now that the weather is warming up, I can really only do it (without dying) in the mornings. So, it tends to be very schedule-dependent.

Now that I've bored you thoroughly...

My team had a crawfish boil yesterday, with all the wives and family invited as well. I'm allowed to eat crawfish, so I indulged thoroughly. I also wore an outfit that showed off all the hard work that I've put into this body, and if the wives didn't like it, screw 'em! It was just khaki shorts and a black top that was mostly backless--quite classy, not slutty, but it showed that I'm definitely in good shape. I decided that if the wives don't like the fact that their husbands work with someone in good shape, then they can get their butts into the gym and get in shape themselves. So there. Pffttthh.

I'm loving the new computer, though I had a bit of a problem with the CDrom at first. I'd had it for about a week, when all of a sudden the CDrom stopped working. So, I called Dell tech support, and the first person I got was an absolute twit who insisted that it had to be a virus. I explained that I had only downloaded one program, and that was from a very safe site, but she insisted that I would have to call Norton, oh and by the way it was going to cost me about $30 to get it fixed.

Sigh. I am not a nerdly type, so I dutifully call Norton, and luckily I got a guy who Had A Clue, and listened to my symptoms before charging me, and he told me that no I do NOT have a virus, and it sounds like I'm simply not getting power to my CDrom.

So I call Dell back, and luckily I do not get the twit again, and instead get someone who knows his shit. He was terrific, and managed to talk my computer-fearing ass through opening up my system and changing wires around and tightening other stuff up, and basically got it working again. Pretty darn cool.

Otherwise, my life continues in pretty much the same vein as before. I've been busy and tired. I haven't even been keeping up with my food diary the way I was supposed to this past week (and I'm sure I will get spanked for that this coming Thursday when I meet with the trainers again.) I've kept my diet properly clean, but I just haven't been writing it down, and They want to see what I've been eating, so they can make their little tweaks and adjustments to it.

I finally ran out of peanut butter, and I steeled myself against buying any more, so I can stop cheating with that. I also discovered that the diet V8 splash is sweetened with Splenda, so I've been loading up on that. (Love Splenda, Hate Nutrasweet.) I've also actually been cooking out of sheer desperation for something different--and I've actually been having a fair amount of success with my experiments. Go figure! Best one was sauteing crawfish tails in chicken broth, minced garlic, chopped muchrooms, and topped with a bit of low-fat parmesan. Actually tasted like Real Food. I got totally sick of chicken for a while, so I went on a tuna kick, then I got totally sick of tuna, so I'm trying to spread my protein choices around a bit more. I'm starting to really look forward to when the contests are over and I can have things like dairy, and fruit... real food!