I saw this really fun meme today on Cynthia’s blog.  Since I love to travel, I thought it would be something fun to do.  A lot of the questions are about international travel.  Even though most of my travel has been domestic (I’ve been to 47 of the 50 U.S. states so far), I decided to play anyway.   As always, you can click each photo to biggify it.

A:  Age you went on your first international trip:  Ok, this is a little bit of a sad way to start, but my first international trip was in 2005 when I was 41 years old.  My friend Tracy and I went to Mazatlán, Mexico together.  Loved it!

B: Best (foreign) beer you’ve had and where:  I don’t think I’ve ever drank beer in a foreign country.  I’m not much of a beer drinker.  When I do drink it, it’s generally Guinness.  I blame it on my Irish heritage.

C: Cuisine (favorite):  This one is really difficult. I love so many ethnic cuisines — Mexican, Italian, Greek, Indian, Thai, etc.  The list could go on and on.

D: Destinations — favorite, least favorite and why:   One of my favorite destinations thus far has definitely been Hawai’i.  I went to there three years ago with my BFFs Terri and Tracy (I keep hoping if I link to her enough that she’ll start blogging again ).  It was just so gorgeous there and we had a blast!  Here’s a photo of the sunset at Waikiki Beach in Honolulu.  That’s just a raw photo without the use of filters.  It really doesn’t do it any justice either!

One of my least favorites would probably be Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.  It’s not because it’s wasn’t beautiful because it clearly s as evidenced in the sunset photo below.  The reason I didn’t care for it was due to the inundation of people selling things on the beach.  Literally every two to three minutes, another local would come by trying to sell some sort of trinket.  I realize they rely on the tourists to make money, but it was just a bit much.  It made it very difficult to have fun.  Once you got away from the beach, it was much less intrusive, thankfully.

E: Event you experienced abroad that made you say “wow”:   That would probably be on a Mexican Riviera cruise I took in 2007.  I ended up with a horrible case of Montezuma’s Revenge and missed out on a couple of days of the cruise, including our port of call and planned snorkeling excursion on a private beach at the edge of a rain forest near Puerta Vallarta.  I was stuck in the stateroom on the ship sick as a dog.  I just kept saying, “Wow, I don’t remember the last time I was this sick.”  These photos are courtesy of my traveling companion who I insisted should still go on the excursion since we’d already paid for it.  It was bad enough that we were going to lose my money for it, no need for both of us to throw away our money!

F: Favorite mode of transportation:  I adore the Pulmonia taxis in Mazatlán!  They’re so famous there that they even have a bronze statue of one on the sea wall!

G: Greatest feeling while traveling:  I just love going to new places and seeing more of the world!  I’ve only started expanding my travel outside of the continental U.S. in the past few years by visiting Mexico a few times and going to Canada twice.  I’m really anxious to expand that even more and visiting Europe and taking a Mediterranean cruise in 2014.

H: Hottest place you’ve traveled to:  Phoenix

I: Incredible service you’ve experienced and where:  There was an amazing waiter named Jorge at the condos in Mazatlán where Tracy and I stayed in 2005.  He took amazing care of us while we were there!  We went to the pool every afternoon for a couple of hours and I don’t think our drink glasses were every empty.

J: Journey that took the longest:  Hmmm, well, I guess it would be the Mexican Riviera cruise since that was 8 days.

K: Keepsake from your travels:  My pearls from Hawai’i.  We won’t discuss how much I paid for them, ‘mkay?  Thanks!

L: Let-down sight, why and where:  I can’t really think of any place I’ve traveled that has let me down.  I can generally always find something fun to do anywhere I go.

M: Moment where you fell in love with travel:  I think it was probably when I was eight years old.  I had just finished my 3rd grade school year and my family traveled to Florida to visit my great aunt.  We arrived in Pensacola just before sunrise.  My dad drove us to the beach and we watched the sun rise over the Gulf of Mexico.  It was one of the most beautiful sunrises I’d ever seen and the first time I’d seen the “ocean” (yes, I know now it’s not really the ocean, but rather an oceanic basin).  Anyway, I was hooked on travel from that point forward.

N: Nicest hotel you’ve stayed in:  Well, that’s an easy one — the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel.  Several years ago when I was still married, a dear friend of mine gifted us a weekend at the Ritz in an oceanview room for my birthday.  She also provided us with gift certificates for his & her full-body massages at the spa and dinner at the hotel restaurant.  It was heavenly!

O: Obsession—what are you obsessed with taking pictures of while traveling?  Sunsets!  Here’s one I took a couple of months ago at the Grand Canyon.  There are no words to describe the beauty of the sun setting over the canyon!  Everyone should see it at least once in their life.

P: Passport stamps, how many and from where?  I’ve had a passport for several years, but I don’t actually have any stamps in it.

Q: Quirkiest attraction you’ve visited and where:   It would be a toss up between Vegas and the Grand Canyon.  I’ve tried trips to both of those attractions that were less than 24 hours each.  Yeah, don’t ask, it was crazy.

R: Recommended sight, event or experience:  As I mentioned earlier, I would definitely recommend seeing the Grand Canyon at sunset.  It’s beyond beautiful!  I would also recommend a trip to San Francisco if you’ve never been.  It’s one of my favorite cities to visit (and one of my planned trips for 2012).  Lastly, I would highly recommend taking in a hot air balloon ride!  I’d been to a couple of balloon races/festivals when I lived in Nashville, but finally went on a hot air balloon ride a couple of years ago.  It was a.maz.ing!  Here’s a picture I took of another nearby balloon as we were both floating over the southern California wineries in Temecula.

S: Splurge; something you have no problem forking over money for while traveling:  Definitely food!  I love finding local restaurants and checking out the local food scene.

T: Touristy thing you’ve done:  Oh, I’ve done lots of touristy things.  I usually do at least one touristy thing on every trip I take.  Perhaps the biggest touristy thing would be going through the tour of Jack Daniel’s Distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee multiple times.  That’s the town where I grew up, so every time friends from college would come home with me for the weekend, that’s what they always wanted to do.  Then again, since the town was only about 360 people, that’s about the only thing there was to do.

U: Unforgettable travel memory:  During a trip to Michigan a couple of years ago, the friend I was visiting made arrangements to have some mutual friends drive up from Indiana to surprise me.  We had just arrived at a nice restaurant for dinner when someone tapped me on the shoulder to ask if the empty chair next to me was available.  When I looked up from my menu to say it was available, well, you can clearly see my surprise in the brief video below when I realized it was Betsy (another wayward blogger ) and  her wonderful husband, Mike.  It was so unexpected and such an awesome surprise.

W: Wine, best glass of wine while traveling and where?  Well, since I’ve yet to travel to France or Napa, I’ll go with the amazing Late Harvest Riesling from the Chateau Chantal on the Old Mission Peninsula in Michigan.  It’s crazy good!

X: eXcellent view and from where?:  As is evidenced in photos I’ve posted earlier in this meme, Waikiki Beach and the Grand Canyon at sunset.

Y: Years spent traveling?: I’ve no idea, but not that many probably.  Many childhood vacations were cancelled due to my dad’s job.  Once I became an adult and got married, there usually wasn’t money for travel.  It really wasn’t until I divorced just before my 40th birthday that I actually started really traveling.  Everything up to that point were mostly trips to visit friends and/or family, but not a real destination vacation.  These days I seem to be making up for lost time.  I have three trips planned already for 2012.

Z: Zealous sports fans and where?:  Cleveland Browns fans in the original Dawg Pound at the old Cleveland Stadium. OMG!  They were NUTS!

So, that’s it for me as far as my ABC’s of travel.  If you opt to play along, please leave me a comment with your post so I can check it out, too.

Until next time …

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Woo Hoo!! I’m going on vacation …. next year. The parents of my friend Tracy invited us to go with them on an Alaskan cruise in July 2012. After talking it over, we decided to go for it. So, here’s where you’ll be able to find me next summer.

We’ll be going on Royal Caribbean‘s seven night Alaska Sawyer Glacier cruise on their Rhapsody of the Seas ship. This will be my third cruise, but my first on Royal Caribbean. We’ll be sailing out of Seattle up the Alaska Inside Passage with ports of call at Juneau, Skagway, Tracy Arm Fjord, Victoria BC (Canada), and then back to Seattle.

We’ve been talking about this trip for a little while now. It’s starting to finally feel more real now though as we booked our stateroom and paid our deposit yesterday. The countdown has now begun … only 457 days and counting.

In addition to just being a really awesome cruise, one of the reasons I’m so excited about this trip is because it will let me mark state number 48 off my list of visiting all 50 U.S. states. After the Alaska trip, the only two states I’ll have remaining will be North and South Dakota. I definitely want to try and hit those in the next three years so I can say I visited all 50 states by the time I’m 50 years old.

Until next time …

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Woo Hoo!! I’m going on vacation …. next year. The parents of my friend Tracy invited us to go with them on an Alaskan cruise in July 2012. After talking it over, we decided to go for it. So, here’s where you’ll be able to find me next summer.

We’ll be going on Royal Caribbean‘s seven night Alaska Sawyer Glacier cruise on their Rhapsody of the Seas ship. This will be my third cruise, but my first on Royal Caribbean. We’ll be sailing out of Seattle up the Alaska Inside Passage with ports of call at Juneau, Skagway, Tracy Arm Fjord, Victoria BC (Canada), and then back to Seattle.

We’ve been talking about this trip for a little while now. It’s starting to finally feel more real now though as we booked our stateroom and paid our deposit yesterday. The countdown has now begun … only 457 days and counting.

In addition to just being a really awesome cruise, one of the reasons I’m so excited about this trip is because it will let me mark state number 48 off my list of visiting all 50 U.S. states. After the Alaska trip, the only two states I’ll have remaining will be North and South Dakota. I definitely want to try and hit those in the next three years so I can say I visited all 50 states by the time I’m 50 years old.

Until next time …

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I’m back from vacation and had a wonderful time! San Francisco is such a wonderful place to vacation. There are tons of ways to get in activity which helps burn off some of the delicious food that can be found there, too. I’m not even going to pretend that I ate properly while we were there, because I didn’t. Everything I did eat was really tasty though.

Speaking of activity, on Thursday, I actually registered a new personal best for steps taken in a single day. According to the pedometer on my Bodybugg, I logged a whopping 18,427 steps that day! Of course, it didn’t hurt that it was a VERY active day for us. We walked the Golden Gate Bridge in the morning, then wandered a bit down in the Fisherman’s Wharf area for lunch, and then went on a tour of Alacatraz Island that evening.

I’ll share a couple of photos and then get on to the main purpose of this blog entry. If you want to see the rest of my photos, they can be viewed here.

Taken as we were getting ready to walk the bridge

Taken as we were climbing the hill up to the cellhouse

Now, on to Project 100! Now that vacation is behind me, the time has come for the beginning of my Project 100 undertaking. As you may recall from one of my posts earlier this month, I have set a goal for myself to lose 100 pounds between now and January 1, 2011 (1/1/11). As part of that endeavor, I have outlined some criteria to help my reach that goal. To hold myself accountable, I’m going to share those criteria here:

1. Average of 1000 calorie deficit per day

In order to meet my goal, I will need to lose between 1.75 and 2 pounds per week. This means I will need to average a 1000 calorie deficit each day. For those who may not know, one needs a deficit of 3500 calories in order to lose 1 pound. So, if I want to lose 2 pounds per week, that means a weekly deficit of 7000 calories which can be met by a daily deficit of 1000 calories.

How do I plan to meet this 1000 calorie deficit goal? I will be doing it the old-fashioned way of eating less and moving more. Per my Bodybugg program, my AMR (Active Metabolic Rate) is approximately 2550 calories per day. What this means is that I can eat around 2500 calories per day and maintain my current weight due to how many calories my body burns through my day-to-day activities. Since I want that 1000 calorie deficit, I’m planning to reduce my calorie intake down to 1800 calories (750 calorie deficit) and burn the other 250 calories needed through exercise. On the days I don’t exercise, I will drop my calorie intake down to 1550 in order to still meet my 1000 calorie deficit goal.

2. Exercise at least 5 times per week

Some might wonder why I don’t set a goal of working out every day. Well, that’s because I know that the body also needs rest in order to rebuild the muscles I’ll be working. For the few weeks, I will pretty much be doing only cardio in order to get myself going and set a good routine. There will be a bit of strength work since I will be using some of my fitness titles (like EA Sports Active More Workouts) for my Wii console on some days. At the beginning of February, I will add in a basic strength training routine at the gym as well.

3. Early to bed, early to rise

I freely admit that I am a horrible night-owl, so this one may well be the most difficult for me. However, I have heard repeatedly that getting a good night’s sleep is paramount for weight loss, so I want to tackle this one. Sleeps aids weight loss both in giving the body the energy it needs for metabolic function, as well as reducing the amount of stress hormones created. So, my goal during the week will be to go to bed at 11pm and get up at 6am. This will allow me to get 7 hours of sleep (I usually only get between 5-6 hours most nights now), and will also give me time to get in my workout before going to work.

4. Other Misc. Things

Since none of these really warrant a separate entry of their own as they don’t really require explanation, I’m clumping these final items into a single bullet point.

• Walk around the parking lot at work on my break when weather permits.
• Drink a minimum of 48 oz. of water per day.
• Eat at least 5 servings of fruits & vegetables per day.
• Consume at least 2 servings of dairy products per day.
• Brown-bag my lunch instead of eating in the cafeteria or going out to eat.
• Faithfully keep my food journal each day — good, bad, or ugly.
• Weigh in each Saturday and post results here (unless on travel).
• Take body measurements every 4 weeks.

I had Tracy take some before photos of me when we were in San Francisco on vacation. I haven’t downloaded them from my camera yet though. I haven’t decided how often I’ll take updated photos, but I’m considering once per month since that’s how often I’ll be taking my measurements.

Ok, I think that’s it for now. If I think of other things, I’ll post them later. For now though, I have to finish this up in order to make my bedtime.

Until next time …

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I’m having a GREAT time on vacation. Sorry I’ve not been posting, but we’ve been having to much fun.

We made it over to Alameda today for a visit to Needle in a Haystack. Of course, you know it’s not a vacation without a bit of stash enhancement. Here are the goodies I picked up today:

I’ll close out with a few random vacation shots. I’ll try and post more pics when I get home. You can click all images to biggify.

The Tejon Pass (black & white filter)

Hyde Street – we hike up & down this hill whenever we go anywhere

Hanging out at Pier 45 with Alcatraz in the background

The Fishermans Wharf Sign

Pier 39 Christmas Tree

Union Square Christmas Tree (iPhone photo)

Union Square Macy’s (iPhone photo)

Cable Car stop outside our condo

Until next time …

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