The next day was the Quarterly. I took this one pretty easy actually cos I was pretty sore from the day before. I did a one-hour RPM charity ride, BodyCombat, BodyJam and BodyPump. Listened in on some other education sessions etc but didn’t do all programs.

Anyway in other news … it was a long weekend here so it was nice to get home from AZ late Saturday night and still have all day Sunday and Monday to do stuff! Went to see a movie with Matthew yesterday (Tropic Thunder - he loved it, not really my cup of tea) and BBQ’d steaks in the afternoon/early evening. Today … I have just spent hours in front of the computer so far (and it’s only 10.41am!) just catching up on emails etc. (And not even work emails!)

That’s about all … I had hoped for a pool day but it sure doesn’t look like that’s happening … I guess DVDs it is!

MH

Pictures:

BodyCombat is coming to Gold’s HB! Yaaaaaaaaaay! My baby is growing up in So Cal!!

So have I mentioned that I am addicted to my iPhone?! Turns out I can even blog directly from my iPhone! Maybe I’ll actually update every now and then! I heart you, Steve Jobs!

So this morning my alarm clock went off and I thought, “ARGH I’m tired” cos I had some really stupid dreams last night (actually, I had stupid dreams all week. Now, thinking back, I realise I ate food with red sauce all week. Pasta sauce, this yummy Lean Cuisine Thai Chicken thing that has a tomato based sauce … lots and lots of red sauces filled my week. And as my mother will tell anyone who will listen, red sauce gives you crazy dreams. Something about them tomatoes. This was kind of figured out when our family would have a pizza or pasta night and everyone would yell over each other at breakfast to recount their weird dream.)

But, because I am addicted to my iPhone, I looked over at it and looked at my Yahoo email, and low and behold, there was an email from Les Mills that had the word “Assessment” in it. Naturally my eyes were wide aware by this time, and I read that I had passed my RPM video!

Okay, so for those of you who don’t know how this works, for Les Mills you go to an intensive instructor training course. (Either two or three days, depending on the program.) At the conclusion of that, you either fail, you get a pass “withheld” (basically means, fix a few things then it magically turns into a pass after you Group Fitness Manager signs off on it) or you get a flat-out pass. Assuming you got a pass of some variety you then begin practicing and teaching, normally team-teaching (teaching part of a class with another instructor till you’re comfortable to fly out of the nest) and then you teach solo. Within three months of your training you need to film yourself teaching the entire class, and submit it for assessment. There are five “key elements”, and three are compulsory in order to also receive a pass on your video. You can either get a resubmit (means send in another video), a pass withheld on your video (again, get a form signed once you fix something/s) or a flat-out pass. Once you pass your video you are truly “certified” and done with assessment and you are a totally legit instructor.

So anyway, I got my video assessment back and not only did I nail the three compulsory requirements, I got the non-compulsory ones as well! Basically put, I rocked. YAY!

It’s been a busy week (and months) with work. And “gym-work” has been busy this week too - Rachael and Keenan were out of town, and also Christine at the other gym, so I taught (or will be teaching or co-teaching):

Monday: 2x RPM, 1 x BodyPump = 3 classes
Tuesday: 1xRPM = 1 class
Wednesday: 1xRPM, 1x BodyCombat = 2 classes
Thursday: 1xBodyPump = 1 class
Saturday: 1xBodyCombat, 1xBodyPump = 2 classes

Total = 9 classes
Normal week = 5 classes

Apart from that … well, it’s a little tense in Commune de Hinojosa/San Gil (we’re no longer a Casa, if you’ll all recall, now that little Natalie has set up her own big girl house) on account of Nat getting fired. (Nat, I do actually think there should be a whole blog devoted to that! Whaddya think.) So there’s all kinds of drama to discuss on Thursday’s Family Night. (Then again we can normally come up with some!) Matthew is on his way to Bakersfield to go fishing with his Dad and brother tomorrow, and I am enjoying many hours of watching House MD (Season 4) which just came out on DVD. Teaching tomorrow (Combat and Pump), and a girl’s night (with Nat and Virginia) to see Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants and drink some wine or champers.

That’s all I can think of right now, but let’s be honest, that was a bloody long update!

PS. Apparently it was the source of some amusement in a long meeting today that Australians say and spell the word “aluminium.” (Sound it out: “Ah-loo-min-ee-um”.) To the point where one of the guys would just randomly say it for giggles.

From my mother!

Duties of Wives..

Three men were sitting together bragging about how they had given their new wives duties.

Terry had married a woman from Greece, and bragged that he had told his wife she needed to do all the dishes and housework. He said that it took a couple days but on the third day he came home to a clean house and the dishes were all washed and put away.

Jimmie had married a woman from Italy. He bragged that he had given his wife orders that she was to do all the cleaning, dishes, and the cooking. He told them that the first day he didn’t see any results, but the next day it was better. By the third day, his house was clean, the dishes were done, and he had a huge dinner on the table.

The third man had married a Australian girl. He boasted that he told her that her duties were to keep the house cleaned, dishes washed, laundry and ironing twice a week, lawns mowed, windows cleaned and hot meals on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn’t see anything, the second day he didn’t see anything, but by the third day most of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, just enough to fix himself a bite to eat, load the dishwasher, and call a handyman …
God Bless Australian Women

Ohmigod this is the greatest thing ever!

http://www.apple.com/iphone/

So can you believe I actually bothered to post just a few days ago (or was it yesterday …?) and now I actually have an update?! Jeez, I totally shouldn’t have bothered!

Anyway, so we had another earthquake here in So Cal today. Apparently 5.4, based in Chino Hills. I was at home, and the building shook for a while (enough time for me to realise what it was, get up, head for the front door and stand in the doorway, and wait it out.) Then a little mini one afterwards. Kind of weird seeing the garage roof continuing to sway down there even after it stopped! Matthew was at work and on the phone with me practically as it started, cos as we know, Aussies are wimps when it comes to earthquakes. Natty was out basically by the epicenter, in a therapy gym where the roof came down, equipment fell all over the place, and they got massively evacuated! (She’s not sure whether she’ll even be going in to work tomorrow!) And Bella was hiding under the bed. She couldn’t even be coaxed out for quite a while with treats … !

Anyway obviously we’re all fine. They say the damage isn’t too bad, it was a fairly small one. What is weird is how widely it was felt and how long it went on, given it was lower on the scale than some others.

In other news (because I don’t believe this victory should be neglected just by the ground burping!) I filmed what I believe to be my final RPM assessment video today - YAY!

Alright, I guess I’ll stop being so very lazy and actually update. Plus I’ve discovered that I don’t get email updates when people post on blogs I didn’t write, which means I never remember to check and actually write on it!

So the haps around here are:

Had a great weekend of lounging by the pool. Now I’m depressed to be back at work and inside … *sigh*

Thursday night, we had “family night” at Kabuki (sushi), with some PinkBerry to follow (dessert is very important!) and then saw Batman. Man, Heath Ledger is wicked creepy. Good movie, and Christian Bale is just beautiful … Mmmmmmm.

On Friday night, had some new friends over for dinner. Nat, Matthew and I had our friend Virginia from the gym and her boyfriend James over. They are a funny couple - Virginia is very blonde, very bouncy, very loud, and a lot of fun. She just recently trained as a BodyJam instructor but it’s her very first program so she’s stressing a lot and trying to learn how to be an instructor (which is tough enough, but man, Jam is like the hardest program to learn!) So we had a great night - food, champagne, the works.

Virginia and I also booked our tickets to Arizona for the next Les Mills quarterly. I am so excited! They are doing instructor “upskilling” sessions, basically three hours devoted to the program (BodyPump and BodyCombat, three hours each) and you present tracks (aka teach them) to the group and they give you feedback to make you an even better instructor. Then the day after that is the quarterly - all programs, back-to-back, so I’ll be riding RPM at 8am, Combat at 10, and BodyPump at 6pm, which whichever other programs I feel like taking in the middle there! It will be Virginia’s first quarterly so this will be a total blast!!

Nat and I taught Combat on Saturday morning as per usual, then all day Saturday was spent lounging by the pool. I learned that I read way too quickly, as I pretty much devoured two books just in the space of Saturday and Sunday by the pool! Saturday night we went for dinner at our favourite Hawaiian restaurant.

Sunday morning Nat and I went to our favourite BodyPump instructor’s class (where I successfully added weight for every track! It’s nice sometimes to not have to be the one with the mic …!) and then practiced RPM, since we are both in the middle of filming hell …

So I filmed an RPM video this AM that I’m not terribly happy with. I’ll try again …

Anyway nothing much on for the rest of this week … Nat goes to Vegas this weekend so I’ll be flying solo for Combat on Saturday (well, actually, I’ll be teaching with Dave.)

Work is always busy.

And that’s all folks …

Michele very trustingly gave me access to post.  Given that we’ve all established our moisturising routines here’s something new.  A Natty update.

I started my summer “job” last week.  I’m spending four weeks hanging out with the Out Patient Neuro Rehab team at St Jude’s Hospital.  Surprisingly I am actually enjoing it!  The case load is pretty much 50/50 adults children so I have some comfort zone left and it’s not all strokes like I had imagined.  I even have Autistic preschoolers so I am well in my element with them.  What have I learnt in 3 days?  Well, all the “stuff” I memorised in college “just to pass the exams” actually stuck somewhere and I am slowly able to retrieve it.  Nice!  Anyway, the people are nice and they’ve already asked me to stay on part time after my 4 weeks.  I won’t be doing that (3 days after summer school has finished and I already miss my boys). 

There is a Vegas trip happening at the end of next week.  Mike, I’ll be in town Friday night through Sunday night if you want to come hang with me and the Rowland Unified crew.

That’s all.  Michele, got any news to share?

Log your answers now please.