One Has to Keep One’s Wrist Happy

Several months ago Bryan got a pair of Garmin Vivofit Wrist Bands, a black one for him and a teal one for me. This is a device by which one can keep track of how many steps one takes throughout the day, and is really pretty cool.

With just the push of a button, I can switch between the Time, the Date, How Many Steps I've Taken, How Many Steps I Have Left to Meet My Daily Goal, How Many Miles I've Gone, and How Many Calories I've Burned.

If I have been inactive for too long it has a band of red lights that blink at me. It starts out with just one light, but the longer I sit there doing nothing, the more lights it adds on until I end up with the entire display blinking at me. To get the lights to go away, I have to get up and walk around a bit: the more lights I have blinking at me, the longer I have to walk around.

As I always say, “My wrist is yelling at me to get up and walk!”

There is a program online that I log in to where I have created my own page to keep track of my progress. I can adjust my band to my personal step size, give it my height & weight, and even keep track of my sleep patterns and moods.

A typical day for me has my goal set at around 4850 steps. If I just go to work and then home afterwards, I have to really work at getting to my goal. If it’s one of the days I go to the gym, I usually go over my goal by about a couple thousand. On my recent vacation, I had about 5 days in a row with around 10,000 steps a day – as opposed to the sick day I had to take once I got home, where I logged in at barely 500.

Originally, the goal was set at a random number based on the information entered in to my website page – but the longer I wear it, the more it adjusts based on my history. Which basically means, the better I get at meeting my goal, the higher my goal becomes!

It’s been pretty fun, actually, and really has encouraged me to be more active throughout the day.

Scrapbooking Conference in Bellevue Washington

Yes, I know. I am not a “scrapbooker” – I’m a card maker. But they had classes on all sorts of paper crafting things, so I was able to keep busy the entire time.

Thursday night was a 12x12 Layout Workshop from 6:30 to 8:30 pm which I basically took just to get a feel for the place so that I’d know what I was doing the next two days.

Friday was my busiest day with 7 classes (1. All About Cards, 2. Newest & Coolest in the Scrapbooking World, 3. Designer Cards Featuring Simple Stories, 4. Pop-it-up Pivot Cards, 5. Shake It Up Shaker Box Cards, 6. Celebration Wine Tags, and 7. Trendy Card Creations) leaving no time to shop the vendor faire or even lunch break.

Saturday was an easier day for me, since I only had 4 classes (1. A Full House - Cards for Every Occasion, Trunk Show, Sun Kissed Fleur Cards, and Cards Full of Sunshine). I had plenty of time to eat lunch and go shopping and even rest for a bit; sadly a necessary thing by that time, since I was really not feeling good at all.

The hosts of the convention had drawings each hour for various door prizes. I got a ticket for each class I took plus one for each day that I was there: in total I ended up with about 20 tickets. Out of the thousands (only a slight exaggeration, there) of people who attended = my name actually got drawn not once but TWICE!

Woo-Hoo! I ended up getting a free stamp set from Heartfelt Creations (worth $18.00) and $20.00 worth of free paper from Keller’s Creations.

In addition to the door prizes, each class had their own give-aways & drawings – so I ended up coming home with way, WAY more stuff than I arrived with. In fact, if I were to add it all up, I bet I ended up “winning” crafting supplies worth more than what I paid to attend the conference!

Plus 54 cards!!!

Am I going again next year?

Hell, yeah!

My Week in Seattle/Bellevue

I was in the process of creating this big long post about my Seattle vacation the other day when it dawned on me that you probably aren't that interested in what I had for dinner each day or how long we had to stand in line at the car rental place. What you really want to know about is just the highlights: what we did and where we went.

So, in a nutshell = here’s the condensed version of my Vacation.

We went to the Seattle Science Center under the Space Needle where we leisurely browsed the Tropical Butterfly House, the Children’s Insect Village and the Chihuly Garden & Glass exhibit.

We went down to the docks to shop at Pike’s Market and take a ride on their new ferris wheel, called the Seattle Great Wheel, which stands 175 feet tall and extends out over the pier by at least 40 feet.

We did some shopping at several stores that are not in Alaska: namely, Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, Lush, and See’s Candy.

We even took a short hike in the Bellevue Botanical Gardens where we got to traverse a 150’ long suspension bridge!

My main reason for going on the trip in the first place was to attend the Creating Keepsakes Scrapbooking Conference in Bellevue, and boy oh boy did I have fun! 2 whole days of back-to-back classes from 8:00 in the morning till 6:30 in the evening! I learned so many cool new techniques to use on my cards: my next post will give you more detail.

Unfortunately, I ended up getting sick the very day I got there – so that by the time the conference started I was in full-blown-cold mode, heavily medicated just to get through the day in a vertical state.

I had a good time, regardless - but would have preferred to be healthier.