After a failed attempt to go to Curves tonight (who knew they closed at 7:30!! so early!!), I decided it’s time to take my health and fitness in my own hands. I’ve had this Lifetime Fitness Ladder bookmarked for months but just now got around to reading about it. I like the idea. It’s a ladder of daily exercises that you slowly increase at your leisure. It’s not time consuming and you can do it all at home with no extra equipment!

One of the tips of the Lifetime Fitness Ladder is to schedule a regular routine. I’ve always had a hard time motivating myself to go exercise since the only time I can go to the gym or run was after work. After a long day of work, exercising is the last thing I want to do! With this routine, I can do it when I wake up, right before I shower since it doesn’t take up much time.

Since I’m incredibly out of shape, I’ll be starting with the Introductory Ladder. An example of the ladder is like this:

Rung – 1
Bend – 2
Sit up – 3
Leg lift – 4
Push up – 2
Steps – 105
Count – 1, 30

There are 15 rungs in the Introductory Ladder that increase in quantity with each rung. The website explains in detail each of the very simple exercises: bend, sit up, leg lift, push up, steps. Since this is the Introductory Ladder, the exercises are more easier than the traditional versions. After you are comfortable, you can move onto the real ladder.

The guy who created this ladder said he was able to get to rung 28 in 90 days while losing 20 lbs. I’m not interested in losing that much weight, but I hope that this will get me more fit and increase my stamina. I want to one day tackle half dome and other strenuous hikes. I hope I will be able to stick with this!!!

To read all of the details go here: Lifetime Fitness Ladder

I want to enter in this Fodor’s contest where you have to submit a photo from your Alaska trip. Please tell me which photo you like best from my slideshow please??? :)

My Alaska Slideshow

The winner gets a Garmin Nuvi 760 and a chance for the photo to appear in the next Fodor’s Alaska book!

PS. There are 37 pictures total. Just leave a comment with the # of the one you like best! (I hope you can make it all the way through without getting bored hehe)

I love crockpots! I’m the laziest cook and crockpots are the epitome of lazy cooking. I just discovered this cool blog where a women decides she is going to crockpot every day for a whole year! She documents her recipes with pictures and a verdict. I’m so inspired.

Her latest is korean ribs…yummmm
and I totally have to try this Trader Joe’s leg of lamb. gourmet!
and who knew you could make CREME BRULEE with a crockpot???

Check out the rest of her recipes here.

We had our first hike of the year this past Saturday! If you remember, last year I started a hiking group amongst some friends. If anyone lives in the LA area and wants to hike with us, contact me! We did the Mishe Mokwa Trail which was actually kind of challenging for me since I haven’t been doing anything strenuous for MONTHS now. It did feel good to be active again and outside on such a nice day! The only bad thing is that we dropped my GPS and cracked it! That means we can’t go geocaching anymore. I only got to go once so I’m kind of sad.

If you don’t know or have never heard of geocaching, it’s actually a sort of nerdy thing to do. There are several geocaching websites online. Here is a great tutorial. Basically, people hide containers filled with random items and they post up the coordinates of the cache online. You enter in the coordinates and proceed to find the cache and take an item from the cache while replacing it with a “treasure” of your own. There’s all different types of caches. One interesting version is a destination cache. This is where a cache is hidden in one location but is supposed to end up in another location. So each time you find the cache, you are supposed to hide it somewhere closer to its destination until it ends up where it’s supposed to be. Cool huh?

Anyways, geocaching is a lot of fun. I’m one of those dorks that love treasure hunts and stuff though. Here’s a picture of my cousins and boyrobot finding a cache in Little Tokyo (yes, they are pretty much hidden anywhere and everywhere!)

This one was found under the sign. You’d never have guessed it was there just walking by!

I’m going to have to find another cheapo GPS now so I can do more of these!

Top 10 most evil human experiments
The Indiana Jones handbook
Science tatoos – hardcore nerd!
America’s Favorite Books – #1 is the bible
The fattest states – it’s true. people in the midwest are FAT!
The world’s craziest houses

the world’s biggest spiderweb. creepy.

One of the major stories from this week was about a 13 year old girl who had a school assignment to make a protest sign. She decided to make a sign that said “If you love our nation, stop illegal immigration.” The sign got passed around at lunch and supposedly a group of 20 latino kids started harassing her including beating her up and threatening to rape and kill her. You can read about the story here.

So guess what just came out? The girl FAKED the whole story. And get this, she caused the injuries to HERSELF and was caught on tape!!! I hope kids really do harass her now.

Did you know these people have blogs??? I know celebrities are just like you and me but it’s hard imagining them sitting in front of a computer, uploading their photos and talking about what they ate for breakfast that morning.

Martha Stewart
Kanye West
John Mayer
Paris Hilton

I just wish Britney Spears updated her blog more!

I love this group! I’ve been following them ever since I read about one of their MP3 experiments. They are a group of random people who pull “pranks” in public places. A lot of the times, people like me and you can help get involved!

One of their most famous events was when they froze Grand Central (they gathered a bunch of people who stopped what they were doing at a predetermined time in the middle of Grand Central and also when they organized the national No Pants subway ride. Click on the links to read more about it. You can see all of their “missions” here.

Their latest one was so cute and right by where I work! They turned a little league game into a major league event. They even got legendary sportscaster Jim Gray to call the game and NBC sports to get involved. All of the kids and the parents had no idea what was going on but they really enjoyed it. Check out the letter that one of the parents wrote in:

I believe you guys are behind the “Hermosa Beach Little League” taping that took place Saturday, March 10th, 2007. The parents will be talking about this for a long time… the kids even longer. My son was a pitcher on the Lugnuts. We had a long/tough season last year. Saturday made up for everything. I want to sincerely thank you for making Saturday so unbelievable. It was like a birthday, Christmas, and New Years Eve captured in a few amazing hours. Thanks a million for a once in a lifetime opportunity.

You can watch the video and read all about the details here.

Next time they have a mission in LA, I’m totally down to get involved. Who’s with me!? :)

Conversation with my insightful cousin:

hergraymatter (11:03:59 PM): when do you think you’ll have kids?
Dustofconfusion (11:04:13 PM): i have no idea
Dustofconfusion (11:04:15 PM): maybe 31?
Dustofconfusion (11:04:19 PM): that’s 3 yrs!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hergraymatter (11:04:22 PM): lol
hergraymatter (11:04:32 PM): man
hergraymatter (11:04:35 PM): it’s going to be SO weird
Dustofconfusion (11:04:38 PM): yeah
hergraymatter (11:04:41 PM): when you have a kid
hergraymatter (11:04:45 PM): it’s like
hergraymatter (11:04:48 PM): a kid having a kid

So weird but so true.

Redbox is awesome. I posted about them on my Qeeper website when they were giving out free rentals every monday but I just found out that there’s a bunch of websites out there with free Redbox codes! In case you don’t know what Redbox is, it’s those video rental boxes you find in supermarkets. It costs $1 a day to rent from them and I think they are pretty cool. If you want some free movie rentals through Redbox check out these websites for some free codes:

Inside Redbox
Redbox Codes