The plan for this past weekend was simple. It was going to consist of a stack of rented movies, a little house cleaning, and lots of air conditioning. That's not quite how it turned out.

Friday night started out on track, we went out to dinner. We had some amazing Ecuadorian food, and I think it was fairly healthy too. Saturday morning continued as planned, with some laundry, and egg sandwiches for breakfast. I had a moment of motivation, and knocked out a quick dumbbells workout.

But by lunchtime, cabin fever had already set in. Chatting about how much we missed our friends up North, we decided to pack up the kid and dogs and head to the hinterlands for the weekend.

By the time we hit the road, it was 4pm, and we had to grab something quick to eat, for the road - KFC. Ack, I was off to a terrible start. I got the buffalo Snackers, some potato wedges, and a diet soda. I picked most of the bread off the Snackers, and only ate half my wedges, but still, I felt icky.

We rolled into town, dropped off our boy at his friend's house, the dogs at our old house (which is STILL for sale!), and headed over to Sedona to say "hi" to my folks, and then meet our friends at the Brewery. Sedona was eerily quiet. Seems the fire has scared away a lot of the tourists, which I am sure is bad news for the local businesses. The food damage for Saturday: KFC, two glasses of wine, 1.5 pints of stout, and some Dibs.

Sunday morning, we had planned to spend the day swimming in the Creek, which should have burned some calories to boot. Alas, the forests were closed due to the fire hazard situation. Nonetheless, at the house, a month's worth of weeds had to be pulled from the garden and the flowers dead-headed. That totaled about 45 minutes of stooping and digging. My hamstrings certainly feel like they got a workout.

Then we were faced with a breakfast dilemma. There is no food in the house, nor pots, nor plates, etc. Every place in town would be PACKED at that hour, and we had to be at our friend's house soon. Hello, McDonald's. I figured an Egg McMuffin wouldn't be too bad, if I skipped the hash browns. Alas, no more breakfast was being served. So we hit up Taco Bell. Ulgh. I got one of those chicken enchirito things. It was pretty nasty.

Then we headed to our friend's house, who was making stuffed manicotti. Sheesh. I did my wine spritzer strategy again, and I think it worked pretty well. Three hours went by, and my bottle was still pretty full, almost to the neck! I also had a huge salad with vinaigrette before tucking into that luscious pasta.

Our friend sent us home with some homemade fried chicken and gravy, which we had for dinner. I had brown rice with mine, instead of white, and peeled the skin off of the chicken, and I served it with a pile vinegary cucumber salad - not too bad of a finish to a challenging weekend.

This morning, I didn't have much time, but I hit that elliptical machine HARD, trying to make penance for a weekend of sins. I don't have high hopes for Wednesday's weigh-in. At this point, I'm aiming to just hold the line.