Anyways, here is the meal plan for the upcoming week:

Su- Chicken Parmesan burgers
M- Crock pot pasta sauce over penne pasta
Tu- It’s a secret to everybody… (doing something nice for the bf)
W-Crock pot kalua pork with rice
Th- sweet and sour chicken
F- Salmon with broccoli and rice
Sa- homemade pizza (going to try and make a white pizza for the first time)

For our second hike of the year, Amanda and I decided to hit up Twin Falls (which was recommended to us by my boss). Forecast called for a beautiful, sunny day so I decided to stick with a thermal shirt and a hoodie to keep warm during the hike. We got to the trail at around 8:30/9:00 AM (PST) and reached the car at around 11:00 AM (PST).

It took us a little longer because we stopped a few times and took more pictures than we did during the hike to Rattlesnake Ridge (it helped that my camera’s battery was fully charged) and had to move to the side to let other, larger groups of folks pass us going up the hill as we were coming back down.

The start of the trail is more or less flat and then climbs up to where you can sit down on a bench and take in a nice view of the waterfalls from a distance before you decide whether you want to continue on the trail to go on the bridge by the falls or if you want to turn back to the trail head. So, naturally we decided to keep on going so that we could get a better view of the two falls (that and we had barely walked over a mile at this point).

We continued on the upper half of the trail (the lower half was closed due to maintenance; presumably because of trees being knocked down during the snow/ice storm we had a few weeks ago) and then kept going until we realized that we had gone about 2.5/3 miles (which is longer than the site had told us the trail was).Turns out that the upper trail connects to two other trails (one of which is closed until spring), which would have resulted in a 15 or so mile hike (round-trip) if we were to have kept going.

More pictures from the hike: http://www.flickr.com/photos/11353708@N08/

• File taxes
• Write blog posts every week day (Not done but I still did a lot more than I usually do. Yay me!)
• Participate in the sprite stitch challenge this month (Totally didn’t do this, but I have until the end of February to do it)
• Read the ISBC book for January
• Read at least one additional book this month (Read an additional 3.5 this month; still reading Interesting Times)
• Make/mail gifts to the following birthday people:
  -Aunt Anne (Fail all around on my part)
  -@Sunshine_Guinn (Sent a gift to her, but didn’t make it)
  -Tottendad (Sent a gift to him; but didn’t make it)
  
• Make budget for the month
• Write a letter to a friend
• Donate clothes (I put them all in bags to be donated, just have to do it now…)
• Put money in savings
• Do something special for myself for 25th birthday

So, I think that I did pretty well (over all) when it comes to trying to accomplishing my goals last month. Now to see if I can do it this month! I think since I did a lot more reading than I thought I would, I am going to up the 1+ books to 3+ (would do 4 or 5, but it is a shorter month and I’m only just now finishing up Interesting Times).

• Read this month’s ISBC book
• Read 3+ other books
• Put money in savings
• Book rental car for vacation
• Do the Sprite Stitch Challenge
• Make a budget for the month
• Write letter to a different friend
• Write blog posts every week day (failed already yesterday….)
• Arrange for shuttle pick up/drop off for next month’s vacation
• Get an average of 70,000 steps a week on the fitbit
• Stick with the 100 push up challenge

Anyways, here is this week’s meal plan:

M: Chicken mushroom lettuce wraps (bf is doing flat bread instead since he doesn’t like lettuce) (2 pts each)
Tu: Colombian steak with onions and tomatoes (4 pts)
W: Chicken enchiladas (3 pts) with yellow rice (4 pts)
Th: Grilled steak fajitas (6 pts for 2 fajitas)
F: Crock pot pasta sauce over penne pasta (2 pts for the sauce, no idea for the pasta)
Sa: Shrimp po boys (lettuce wrap for me, bread for the bf) (have to calculate points)
Breakfast for the week: hash brown egg white nests (1 pt each)

Some basic facts based on the experience yesterday:

Trail name: Rattle Snake Ridge
Location: near North Bend, WA
Distance: about 4 miles round-trip (up and down)
Elevation: 3,480+ feet
Difficulty: Better for a mid-beginner/intermediate hiker
Things to bring next time: wind/rain breaker (wore a hoodie which got soaked through), extra battery for the camera (had to use phone part-way through because the battery died in my camera), a small backpack to carry water and stuff, an extra pair of socks for after the hike, and I need to water-proof my shoes (using running shoes which were plenty comfy until the rain/snow water started to seep in).

I think that we were a happy mixture of pretty prepared and horribly unprepared. At the bottom, it was flat and green with a few trees that had been knocked down after the snow/ice storm we had gotten a week ago. It did, however, kind of reinforce to me that I have been horribly inactive lately and that I need to get better about it.  I also learned that the craziest things can motivate me to keep going (I was going to give up with only .50 or so miles to go until someone said that there was a cave at the top. Of course the first thing in my mind was “I have to see if it’s the G.D. bat cave” and continued to go).

Overall, it was a really fun hike and the people that we met on the trail going up/down were all very nice as well as encouraging. I would like to do this hike again later on in the year after it has gotten a little bit warmer and the skies a little bit clearer.

The rest of the pictures are posted on my flickr (until I find a way to display pictures on here that doesn’t drive me crazy): http://www.flickr.com/photos/11353708@N08

• I started to write up questions for discussion tomorrow, but it felt too much like I was preparing essay questions. So instead of posting discussion questions, I’ll start with a question at 10:30 AM (EST) and then will move the discussion along throughout the day. If that doesn’t work out well, then we will try the discussion questions with next month’s book.
• As far as I know, we are still on for the Google+ hangout with Kent Nabors and Jayson E. Street to discuss the book this Saturday at 8PM (EST)
• Speaking of next month’s book! Just wanted to remind you all that we are still set to read Kevin Mitnick’s Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker next month (which starts on Wednesday).
• March’s book was supposed to be Silence on the Wire: A Field Guide to Passive Reconnaissance and Indirect Attacks, but after consideration and a lot of input, it will be switching places with September’s book (Metasploit: The Penetration Tester’s Guide).

I think that is it and I look forward to the discussion tomorrow morning and the G+ hangout on Saturday!

All three answers can be found in the story portion of the book and you can email me your answers at: magen@tottenkoph.com

The questions from Jayson are:

1. How many Scooby Doo references are in the book & on what page numbers?

2. Who had the “Pulp Fiction” avatar?

3. One of the characters name was taken from an email used to propagate a virus who is it?

The prizes are a USB pen (like the one used in the book, except it has a laser pointer in it) and your choice of: 36 pack of Pepsi, 36 pack of Diet Pepsi, or a Pepsi-Cola wall-mounted bottle opener.

UPDATE:I also wanted to let you all know that Heidi has told me recently that she spoke with Syngress and No Starch Press and it has been arranged to have some copies of the books from those vendors at Shmoocon.

And as far as next week’s meal plan:

Su: Roasted chicken legs, rice and broccoli (~9 points; instead of 5 spice like she used, we are going with a lemon and herb roasted chicken)
M: Sweet and sour chicken with 1/2 cup of rice (6 points)
Tu: Sausage-stuffed shells with side salad (11 points)
W: Crock pot creole chicken (5 points a serving)
Th: Salisbury steak with mashed potatoes and broccoli (7 points)
F: Orange-glazed chicken with 1/2 cup of rice
Sa: Chili (unknown; will update with points)
Breakfast: home-made granola bars with pecans and chocolate (4 points a bar)

What I’m listening to: The Automatic Automatic: Not Accepted Anywhere

What I’ve been reading: Dissecting the Hack: The F0rb1dd3n Network (Jayson E. Street, Brian Baskin, Kent Nabors); The Light Fantastic and Sourcery (Terry Pratchett)

What we (bf+I) are watching [American TV]: Castle season 4; Fringe season 4; Damages season 4; 30 Rock season 6; Archer season 3

What we are watching [anime]: The same anime night line-up as last month (only change is that Fate/Zero is on hiatus for a season I believe). We have also watched When They Cry-Higurashi* (Higurashi no Naku Koroni), it’s sequel Higurashi no Naku Koroni Kai*. And we just started watching Toaru Kagaku no Railgun (pretty fun spinoff from the Index series).

*Don’t watch this with children or if you scare easily. Don’t let the really cute drawing style fool you.**
**No, seriously. This stuff is kind of messed up, y’all.

I have an idea for a second entry for the sprite stitch challenge (the exquisite corpse challenge is supposed to span over two months, so there really isn’t any reason why I shouldn’t be doing two entries). Based on the clue that I was given, I was thinking of having the second entry be of the black mage trying to attack a chocobo with other chocobos behind the mage, unaware. I’m unsure how it will turn out, but I guess I will see later today when I try to make the pattern.

On the diet front, it has been 5 days since I started the diet and have been good about staying on it. I have to fight the urge to hop on the scale every day to see if I have made any progress, which I know isn’t really going to help me any or is a good thing to do. I have been slacking a little bit on drinking water at home, but have increased the amount of green and white teas that I drink. I’ve also been craving chocolate. Badly. Like I would gladly sell off the bf for a king-sized bar of quality dark chocolate. But I haven’t. I’ve been doing pretty good at fighting that craving (we’ll ignore the fact there is no chocolate in the house and we can’t go anywhere because the roads are covered in ice and the bf’s car has crappy tires).

I’ve been unable to start going back to the apartment complex’s gym like I had planned to start doing this week (not just because of the snow, but they are doing some upgrading to the equipment that they have). I have, however, been doing yoga every morning in the living room before logging in to work. It has helped to keep my back from hurting since I’ve been in a weird, hunched-over position to work on the laptop from my coffee table. I’ve also noticed that I have been sleeping better since starting to do this daily again.

I also finally finished this month’s ISBC book and am working with Jayson on a giveaway when I post up this month’s discussion topics. I feel kind of bad about having the twitter/G+ discussions this month since a lot of people will be at Shmoo, but I figure that they can participate in the convo from their phones in between talks and can join us on the G+ Hangout at 8PM EST on Saturday if they are able to.