In terms of the wildfires, thankfully they seem to be mostly contained at this point. The vet school has launched a pretty big response, so I’ve been taking several shifts a week to help care for some of the animals coming in. I also signed up to become certified in disaster response. This stuff is so important. I want to help, but you never know what to expect until these things happen, hence why I want to get trained specifically to respond.

In terms of workouts lately, I’ve mostly been running and doing Crossfit, and squeezing in a day of weights on my own every week to maintain basic strength. I’ve also been working on higher box jumps, which is fun! The boxes at the gym at padded, which is why I feel comfortable enough doing that. I’m maintaining my squat program, and also doing the same sequence with deadlifts. The disadvantage of the gym at school is it’s a quite small gym for like 25,000 people, so there’s usually a line for the squat racks, so I have to be smart about when I go, and still allow a minimum of 10 minutes of waiting. Boo. Here are my weight workouts from the last 2 weeks. I’m off-setting the squats and deadlifts by a week in terms of number/percentages (so my heaviest days will be different for squats vs. deadlifts).

Week 1:

Not on the squat program yet, but working on building volume. Day 1 of deadlifts.

4×3 back squats with 3s pause at the bottom

8 minutes of 2 backsquats every 30 seconds (155#)

12-12-10 deadlifts at 145-155-165

4 rounds of single leg rdls and 20 heel raises (to help with plantar fasciitis)

3×6 box jumps

Week 2:

Going an extra rep on the squats, and finishing the last week heavier than last time through the program.

Back squats: 11-11-9 at 135-145-155

Deadlifts 10-10-8 at 155-165-175

4×6 boy jumps (I worked up to maybe 28ish inches? It felt high!)

Half of an ab video

I think I bruised my tail bone a little bit a while ago (not really sure how), so I haven’t done much ab work lately, and I didn’t want to push it with that.

And now onto the fun stuff! I went to Apple Hill yesterday. It’s east of here, and it’s a little town that goes crazy with apples this time of year. There are a bunch of farms that sell apples and every imaginable apple product. We were hoping to pick apples, but apparently there weren’t too many places that let you do that, and they were already picked out for the season. Darn!

That didn’t mean I couldn’t get ALL THE APPLE PRODUCTS though. Plus, it was festive and so pretty up there!

Even better, my friend brought her adorable puppy!

The first thing we did was get some apple goodies. I got an amazing caramel apple!

There were a bunch of vendors selling various crafts and food products. I went home with some blackberry honey from that place, and some apple cinnamon BBQ sauce, apple salsa, and unsweetened apple butter from the next stop.

Christmas trees growing nearby!

I brought home a big bag of beautiful pink ladies!

Necessary apple cider donut!

Overall, it was a fun day but not quite what we were hoping for! It was super crowded, so in the future I would go earlier in the year!

I’m excited to do EVERYTHING with these apples this week!