What a gorgeous Saturday! Temperatures in the mid-eighties, sunny and balmy.
I got up earlyish because my employer said that I could go to a free screening of Cars 2, the new Pixar movie. I'd seen the first one and had really liked it, and I really enjoyed this one as well.

Decided not to stop at work, and to do that tomorrow instead. (It's not a hardship - I volunteered for a few extra hours for this weekend.) Did some shopping on the way home - nothing exciting, just cleaning products and kitty litter.

Fixed myself a nice lunch when I got home - man oh man, I sure got my recommended daily servings of vegetables, and then some! I actually had veggies even in my breakfast (made scrambled eggs with spinach, onion, and cheese), and I think this might be the key in "beating the box", using up all the veggies this week before I pick up the next box on Friday. Anyway, lunch was a big bowl of arugula, bell pepper, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, basil, avocado, and that delicious tomato walnut vinaigrette that had winked at me at the farmers market a few weeks ago.

After this late lunch, it was time for the first stage of the Tour de France. It's my favorite sporting event to watch - first of all, it's such a great athletic feat, to ride a bike for 5-7 hours every day for 3 weeks. And not just toodling along, but making serious time up big mountains in the Pyrenees and Alps! There are all these specialists - climbers and sprinters, and supporting riders for the team captains and main contenders, and leadout men to get the sprinters in perfect position for a win at the end of the sprint stages.
And then there's all the team tactics! Lance Armstrong has said it's "high speed chess", and I agree. I find it just fascinating. And the commentary on Versus is just excellent; they explain all these things really well. I recommend it highly.

It was an exciting first stage, made even better by the fact that I managed to stay away from the results on Twitter and Facebook, so I didn't know who was going to win. I was riveted.

Whew. I was all spent after that. Needed a nice dinner, which of course was more vegetables - I used some of the mizuna and tatsoi for a stir-fry, and loaded up good on some of the onions and garlic that have been piling up for the last few weeks.

After dinner, I sat outside on my kitchen steps for a while ... I've been contemplating surprising side effects lately. There's this stray cat who's been coming around - I think my (indoor) cats encourage him; they're social little butterflies. The stray (I call him Catman) is a scrawny little thing, so I started feeding him, so of course now he sticks around. I won't let him in the house because one of my indoors is REALLY territorial - she pretty much turns into Clint Eastwood, snarling at him to git off her lawn. So I feed him outside. I stay while he eats because the Scrub Jays were taunting him very rudely. So, to make a long story ... not any shorter, really ... I sit there at night and look at the stars, a nice new habit that is all credit to Catman. He eats his dinner, and then he curls up on my lap and purrs and drools and scratches my arms because he is not very careful with his claws when he "makes biscuits". Oh well, I don't mind much.

Back into the house and onto the mat at last. I wrote up my abs exercises here:
http://elkit.blogs.com/elkit/2011/07/july2nd_abs.html

Been thinking that maybe my Health Month middle name this month should be "Shut Up Abs", in honor of the Fit Abs Challenge, and even more so one in honor of my favorite cyclists, Jens "Shut Up Legs" Voigt.