My First Time Using the Bar

The Healthy: Crossing off one of my fitness goals

So, this week I got to cross something off my list in terms of my fitness goals and that is… I finally completed a few sets of lifting the bar!

I know that may seem silly to some but I have always been intimidated by the bar, not because I think lifting will make me bulky, but because I will look like a fool trying to place heavy weights on the bar.

I was still recovering from the awesome wedding last weekend, rendering me useless for the next few days. By Wednesday, however, I felt rejuvenated enough to get my workout on.

I scheduled a workout date on Wednesday with one of Appan’s female friends/coworkers who happens to be well versed in the art of lifting. I am definitely less intimidated when I train with my own gender because if I look like a fool I’m not as embarrassed.

We went to a 24 Hour Fitness which is notorious for being packed to the brim, with long wait times for the squat rack and bench presses. Needless to say the weight room was filled meatheads and bros, with few females in between. Since I was with Kim, however, I didn’t feel nearly as intimidated.

After I did a few sets I generally felt positive, but the back of my neck was kind of sore from where the bar sat. I had no idea it actually hurt like that, but apparently it’s normal. I’m told I will get used to it, so I’m willing to stick it out.

All in all it was a great workout and we plan on going this Wednesday as well.

The Happy: July 4th weekend recap

Friday

In other news, over the weekend we celebrated July 4th and it was a pretty relaxing long weekend.

On Friday, both Appan and I had the day off and went to the mall to Macy’s and Williams Sonoma to start creating our registry. No one told me how much of a pain it is to create a registry is…

We got to Macy’s, signed up for our registry, and promptly received our scan gun which I was super excited about. We were only 5 minutes into actually scanning when Appan and I got into a tiff  because he refused to believe fine china should be on our registry. After he stormed off, I wandered around the china section lost and bewildered for 20 minutes because I had no idea what to add to the registry.

Those champagne glasses are pretty unnecessary

I called him and he came back with an apology for being grumpy and all was forgiven. We continued the grueling process of adding cake holders, cake cutting utensils, towels, pots and pans, an ice cream maker, etc. at both Macy’s and Williams Sonoma for a few hours, all the while realizing we really didn’t like doing this at all. We are the type of people that like to research every single expensive item we buy, from towels to pots and pans.

Deciding what 100 items to put on our registry all at once was a daunting task for us both, so in the end I thought to myself this isn’t nearly as fun as I imagined it to be. We might just scrap the whole registry idea.

Saturday

On ‘Murica’s independence day, we celebrated by going to a pool party with some of our friends, grilling, and swimming. Afterward we went to my cousin’s house for a “surprise” birthday celebration for his dad.

My cousins literally planned the party on Wednesday/Thursday of this week, so I wasn’t expecting an over the top party, but it ended up being a really fun mini family reunion. They catered tasty Thai food after calling ten places, and apparently this one was one of two that were open on July 4th.

Afterward we lit sparklers and threw poppers outside with the kiddos, which I hadn’t done since we were young. It was nostalgic and super fun. We hadn’t planned on actually driving to any of the city fireworks because of the unnecessary amount of traffic, but we went to a secret hilly spot that not many people knew of and watched multiple fireworks shows across the horizon.

At one point there were literally 6 different fireworks shows going off that we could see. It was pretty cool.

It was a relaxing and fun weekend, and I was happy to get the day off on Friday because of my stressful week.

How was your July 4th weekend? What is your favorite part about July 4th?