Exercise and some food...for thought

I finally picked my poor, aching body up and headed back to the gym this morning. I've taken the last two weeks off because of my sore back/side. It's still fairly on the achy side, so the game plan was to take it 'easy'. I met my SIL at the gym so we could work out together. It's always more fun when you have someone with you, so we're planning on making this a Friday 'ritual'.

Since my back was still bothering me, I decided I would only do the treadmill. The thought of lifting any weights or doing any of the machines made me pre-cringe.

I figured that since I was 'only' going to do the treadmill, I would increase the time from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. So I was doing a quick walk (the speed was ranging from 3.7 to 4.1 miles per hour) and the time was getting towards the 45 minute mark and thought 'well this isn't too bad', and I kept increasing it by a minute here and a minute there. Before I knew it, I did an hour and walked 3.49 miles and burned off 348 calories...and here I was saying I was going to 'take it easy'. Yeah, right.

By the end of the treadmill exercise I was feeling good, probably too good. I actually couldn't feel my legs, I was on an adrenaline high and felt that I could do another hour no problem. (I didn't.)

After finishing up and getting changed, we decided to go out for coffee and some girl talk. While we live fairly close to one another, we rarely have (or set aside) any time to just hang out and talk. It was really nice, we talked about a bunch of things, but mostly we talked about the adoption. It's nice to talk about it and get a lot of positive feedback/comments about it one-on-one. While I talk about it a fair bit with my family, I hold back sometimes since I feel like I kind of overwhelm them with all the short forms (DTC, LID, etc). Though I don't talk to my brother about it much (hi ugly), I know that he takes his own interest in the adoption because he's told me that he reads my blog every night when he goes into work.

While I know a lot of you don't like your families knowing about, or reading, your blogs, it makes me feel good to know that he's taking an active interest in the daily goings-on about it. :)

Now for something completely different...

I'm fairly sure that Americans don't go in for the whole poppy thing for Remembrance Day/Veterans Day but there's a bit of a controversy brewing in Canada. Every November 11, and the days leading up to it, Canadians are encouraged to wear a red poppy to remember the war dead and veterans from the various wars.

Apparently there's a group in Alberta that's distributing white poppies to remember the victims of wars instead. While it's a nice thought to wear the white poppies, personally I prefer the red ones. There's much more history and recognition to wearing the red poppies than the white ones.

For any of the Canadians reading this, remember the old red poppies with the green centres? I miss those. Why do they always have to go change a good thing?

Any thoughts?