As August draws to a close, I am suddenly realizing that my August challenge went to hell in a hand basket.  Whenever I have a challenge, and I have people participating with me, you might not see it on the blog, but I personally email the participants every few days to see how they are doing, if they need some cheerleading or just high fives because they are on track.

After I got bronchitis, the more I couldn’t work out to meet my challenge, the less I talked to my participants, and I apologize for that.  For the 32 people who joined my August challenge, I will be emailing you today to see how you did, and will be doing a recap tomorrow as well as picking a winner for the case of Chobani and my salsa.

I hope my getting off track didn’t put you off track – and again I am sorry I didn’t personally support the challengers this month. Sad smile

I do have to give a shout out to one of my participants though, who I have been emailing simply because she took the initiative to email me, and I thank her for that.

Meet Louise!  Louise was my oldest participant at 65 years old.  When she first emailed me to say she’ll take on the 100 mile challenge on her exercise bike, I have to say, I initially thought that it might be too much for her.  But I couldn’t be more wrong!  As of a couple days ago, she was just two miles away from her 100 miles!  And knew that by tomorrow she’ll probably exceed her 100 mile goal.  I am so proud of you Louise!

Oh, and if you ever need some really creative greeting cards, she makes the cutest ones on Etsy – www.cards4ubylouise.blogspot.com – you are very talented Louise!

Ever leave your camera on overnight?  Typically after dinner is when I down load my pictures from the day and spend about 5 – 10 minutes figuring out which ones I want to post the next day.  The night before last after I downloaded them, I left the camera on all night, so when I went to take a picture of my breakfast, it was D.E.A.D.

My phone to the rescue!  Another slice of my summer quiche, an English muffin and sliced apple.  I love that I have all my meds on my desk at the ready!

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I have stopped taking prednisone.  I am feeling about 90% back to normal.  The reason?  My doctor said my blood sugars would spike around 200 – um guess again.  The first day was fine, but the second day my blood sugar readings were in the mid 200s.  Last night before bed my blood sugar was 313!  I took 12 units of insulin to bring it down, took my long lasting night time insulin.  This morning?  My blood sugar was 422!  I haven’t seen numbers like that in years.  So long prednisone!

Lunch was a bunch of leftovers – grilled chicken left over from our grilled caesar salad morphed into a chicken and spinach quesadilla – on the side is a mixture of 1/2 cup brown rice, 1/4 cup refried beans and 1/4 cup of my grilled cherry salsa, with more salsa on the side to dip my quesadilla in.

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Dinner didn’t work out as planned.  We are out of charcoal, so the Weber was out.  So I went to heat up the gas grill and . . . no gas!  Although we tried to think the last time we refilled it and its been a while.

I had Nicole’s pork satay dish on the menu.  I made the sauce exactly as the directions stated.  Instead of threading the pork, I just sliced of four thin slices from the pork tenderloin.  The problem?  My indoor grill pan didn’t really get hot enough, so the brown sugar didn’t caramelize  as it would have on the grill, then the grill got too hot and the mixture started to burn, so I kept having to move the pork chops around – they were tender, but didn’t get all the flavor as I would have on the grill – it was tasty, but I’ll definitely make this again when we have an operating grill!

I had Tony make his famous fried rice – the only veggies I had in the house were carrots and zucchini – I also diced up some of the leftover beef roast we had last week – I’ve gotten a lot of use out of the leftovers!

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The drizzle of the extra sauce and tablespoon of chopped peanuts over the top made this dish for me – that and Tony’s amazeballs fried rice – I swear to God its perfect every time he makes it.  And it helped that I picked up a large white rice from my Chinese restaurant on my way home – best $2 bucks to accessorize our dinner. Open-mouthed smile

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I realized I never put any of my food into fatsecret.com yesterday, and now I am running out of time – I am going back to my doctor before work just so he can make sure I am really on the road to recovery.  I am so looking forward to exercising next week!

Has anyone been having problems leaving comments?  It’s been hit or miss for me – even trying to leave comments from home, or on two different browsers at work – I type the comment, and then it just disappears – so if I normally comment and you don’t see it – its not for lack of trying, but I am still reading!

Who has plans for labor day weekend?  I am not sure what we are up to, but I forgot to give a Happy Birthday shout out to my SIL Jody – her birthday was yesterday – Happy belated birthday Jody!  She works at a high school and the marching band surprised her by coming into her office and playing the fight song – so cool!

Alright, off to get ready for my doctor appointment – hope everyone has a great weekend and come back tomorrow for my August challenge recap. Open-mouthed smile