Squatting Through Thanksgiving

[This was written just before Thanksgiving, and I intended to post a picture of my fabulous engraved pumpkin centerpiece, but I didn't get any pics of it. My sis did, but has not emailed them to me yet. So alas, I do not have documentation of the triumph, but it looked pretty darn good. Martha Stewart's is shown here].

I've become a little obsessed with squats. I know, that sounds unbelievably weird, but hear me out. I've been trying to get motivated to exercise more and get back on the freaking WW wagon, but I can't. I'm motivated to get motivated, but I can't seem to complete the second step. I went in for the personal trainer session and had her kick my ass around. She had me do a bunch of squats, which will hopefully not make my knees cranky, and definitely got my glutes' attention.

At the same time, Jonny just introduced me to Fitocracy, which turns exercise into a D&D game with quests and adventures and levels. Only it all revolves around fitness. I just leveled up to 4 and Jonny is getting nervous that I'm catching up to him (he's been sick, or there wouldn't be any need to be worried). And I won either a quest or went on an adventure that involved squats. 

This evening I found myself busting out a couple sets, just for kicks. And then I started thinking, hmmmm, these are really powerful. If I could just find a few times during the day where I could do a set. Maybe at work--"

And then I get this mental image of me barking at one of my staff members, "Sure! I have time to meet. Come on, we'll do some squats while we talk!" 

In other news, I spent last weekend in a flurry of holiday preparations. I figured it was a good time to get on top of the apple butter situation, and give the vanilla syrup thing a try. And there was pie crust to make, and pecans and pine nuts to toast. And check this out:

[Mine definitely didn't look as great as Martha's, but it was pretty darn good.]