Fitness is nice but can we talk about how good cheese is?

So the walking group was wonderful. It was hella cold, but the trail was really nice and by the time we made our way through the whole thing we'd walked about 2 miles (then we walked a little extra so it ended up being 2.5ish). The club only meets once a month, so in the meantime I've got to find a way to get in some exercise on my own. So I've gone walking a few times at the indoor walking track at my church, which is free after you pay the one-time $5 membership fee, and there's always a cute old man working the front desk and he doesn't know that I haven't been through the "equipment use and care" session so I can even use the treadmills and eliptical machines in the workout area. I'm not one to skirt authority, but come on. I can work a treadmill and an eliptical machine without a 45-minute seminar. I haven't made use of those machines yet, because they've been in use when I've been. I've just used the walking track. It's pretty short- it only takes me about a minute or 90 seconds to make a lap around it, so that's not awesome, but it's indoors, and that's infintely preferable to having to be outside. I don't know how people go running outside in the winter. I don't know how they do it in any other season either, but don't your lungs and your nasal passages burn like fire? Maybe I can get past the exhaustion and the runny nose and the agonizing pain in my legs, but seriously folks, how am I supposed to BREATHE?

I've also been stretching more, and doing some ab work to try and shape up so that it's like a double surprise when I lose the weight. I'm skinnier AND I've got muscles. Out of my way! Erin e-mailed me an 8-minute ab workout, which seems right up my alley (8 minutes a day, and you can lay on the floor the whole time), but you've got to have a computer nearby to go through the workout and we are a 1-laptop household, so whenever Mike is gone or working, I just have to kind of improvise. I took an abs class at PC and there are ab workouts from the 30 Day Shred that I try to pull from, so I'm hoping to look just like my abs instructor Mellette or Jillian Michaels in a few days. I actually kind of like ab work. But it's not going to mean much without some (extensive amounts of) cardio to firm up the (really) jiggly bits.

In a mealtime story that doesn't further my fitness cause at all, last night I made a chicken pot pie. It required a great deal of chopping and stirring so I was anticipating some stellar results to match the effort. Unfortunately, it turned out more like soup with a little crust blanket on top. It tasted fine, but it was nothing to look at and there was definitely not enough crust. It seemed like way too much filling to fit in a little pie dish, so I put it in a big rectangular 2-quart pyrex and it was impossible to get the crust thin enough to cover the whole thing. It looked sorta pitiful. Imagine a murky brownish puddle with a grocery bag in the middle. Next time I'll just use two pie pans and it should be better. Except nobody will eat it because all they'll be able to think about is a wet trash bag. More for me! That's probably something Jillian has never said.

Tonight I'm going to do lasagna, and I've got higher hopes for it since I've made one before. And as long as there are noodles and cheese, you've got a winner in my book. Maybe I'll skip the trip to the grocery store altogether and just put noodles and cheese in a bowl. Lately I've been going to the grocery store just to get the things I need for one or two meals at a time. I can't decide if this is better than one big trip every couple of weeks. I feel like I'm spending a lot of money, but I don't buy things unless I already know precisely how and when I'm going to use them. How do you grocery shop?