I work up early Sunday morning. Nothing unusual for me, really, I try to wake up at the same time every morning, regardless of whether I work or not. I flipped on the Wii to do my morning weigh in.  I’ve discovered in the last couple of weeks that contrary to my own belief, I eat less on weekends than weekdays.  Perhaps because I’m more busy or distracted by housework and errands or fun stuff (like the benefit concert Saturday night).  I am steadily losing the pounds, slowly but surely (or safely as both the Wii Fit Plus program and SparkPeople website reassure me).  I decided to adjust my Yoga and Training routine to shorten it, with a goal to do roughly fifteen minutes every morning after my weigh-in.  I’m finding it very easy to insert my cardio into my daily routine.  It’s the strength training that’s tougher (in more ways than one).

Since I thought Terry had had a rough night with no sleep since he crawled into bed after five in the morning, I let him sleep and opted to attend church remotely via WFC‘s online campus.  The lead teach pastor started a new sermon series last week urging us all to know Jesus (as opposed to knowing about Jesus).  The second sermon of the series focused on Jesus as Creator.  My notes haven’t made it online yet at my other blog, but will sometime today.  Our plan had been to attend church at WFC’s Speedway campus, which just happens to take place inside the Legends 14 Theater.  We prefer the praise band that leads worship there and had hoped to take in ‘We Bought a Zoo‘ at the first showing of the day.  As I learned when Terry woke up around ten o’clock, we could have gone had I woken him up.  But I did not know that he had actually slept most of the night in front of the television.  Oh, well. We can still see the movie on Monday.

I started preparing the marinade for grilling our chicken.  Since the temperature outside approached the unheard of lower sixties (in the middle of January in Kansas … beyond unbelievable), we decided to fire up the outside grill.  Or rather I did.  Terry supervised since he’s still only got the use of one arm for the next few weeks.  After the chicken had marinated for over an hour, I placed it on the preheated grill and lamented not purchasing some asparagus while at the grocery store Saturday afternoon.  Steamed broccoli and a spinach and baby spring mix salad would have to do.  Thirty minutes of grilling later, we had perfectly cooked Honey Garlic Chicken to savor.

Terry and I had started watching a Christian movie I had sitting in our Netflix streaming queue while cooking lunch.  The Encounter proved disappointing for me at least.  Terry expected company to arrive soon after we finished, so I decided Roxy and I would go for a walk.

I walked at an easy, slow pace to accommodate her arthritis (and the fact that she hadn’t been walked since Rachelle returned to Texas last week).  We crossed Main Street and headed west on West Mary Street, but rather than continuing west, I turned right on a newly re-installed access road that cut parallel to Main Street back north to Kansas Street, crossing over West Kay Street, and the house we rented prior to purchasing the home we now own on Bambi Street.  We turned around at Kansas Street and decided to climb the hill back up to Main Street via the abandoned West Kay Street’s crumbling pavement (see photo above).

Roxy did very well walking on my left, even with cars and trucks whizzing by her not ten feet away.  Of course, by that time, she just wanted to get back home and take a nap on the memory foam topper on the hideaway bed.  She perked up and even pulled me most of the way home because she spied another woman with two dogs (one small dog and a medium-sized dog) about a block ahead of us.  I even thought about taking both Roxy and Apollo to the dog park, but worried that Roxy always overdoes herself chasing after the little dogs and the younger ones.  It usually takes her a day or two to recover from her dog park adventures.

After Terry’s friend departed, we sat down to watch another movie, this one a foreign film called ‘Point Blank.’  I liked it and did not realize that French films could be just as good as an action flick produced in the States.  A good story (if predictable) but better than average acting (even having to read English subtitles).  I’ll write a separate review later today.

For dinner, Terry wanted to use the last of the chicken pot pie filling and gravy.  I had another tube of croissants (of a different type) so I improvised some turnovers by placing the filling (without any extra gravy) in one triangle and placing a second triangle of pastry over it and pinching the edges together.  I had enough filling for four turnovers.  I popped them in the oven for twenty minutes at 375 degrees and warmed up the gravy when I took them out of the oven.  Not bad.  For our after dinner movie, we watched the re-broadcast of the Hallmark Channel’s most recently original film: ‘A Taste of Romance‘ – better than average and a bit of a tear jerker a couple of times.

I checked my e-mail and social networking sites before heading off to bed, noting that before dawn on Monday I had an interesting conjunction of moon, planet and star I could witness.  I stepped outside this morning, first through my front door (but couldn’t see the moon at all from that vantage point), then out my back patio door and looked directly south.  And what did I see?  The same exact thing displayed in the graphic to the right.  Saturn, the quarter crescent moon  and the star Spica.  Sadly, I couldn’t locate my binoculars nor did I have my tripod available (it’s in the trunk of the car).  Not that attempting to photograph the moon (always too bright a light source) with the dimmer planet and star in the same from would have resulted in any post-worthy photographs.  A grand sight to behold first thing in the today on such a clear, still, not-quite cold morning in mid-January.