Tumblings of Team Cross

The plan for this year’s reading continues to grow and evolve. But I’m going to start at the same place as last year and try to read the most borrowed books from the Hennepin County Library. No surprise there is some overlap from last year, but not as much overlap between the print and e-book list as last year! I’ve already read 10 of the 20 total, though The Women was on there 3x’s! Here is the…

Time for some stats! I read 76 books in 2025! For total of 25,000 pages! That was a lot of pages turned. Most of my reading was paperback, so truly pages turned. The most popular book I read was It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. 7 million people have it shelved on Goodreads. The least shelved book was Risk: A Life Saved By the River by Susan Norman. Only 57 people have shelved it. I actually…

At the beginning of 2025, I completed the 75 Hard Challenge, which required reading at least 10 pages of a non-fiction book each day. This wasn’t a challenge for me as sometimes I read my 10 pages (really a chapter or two) and then read a book for pleasure. And honestly, I read a fair amount of non-fiction so it was more about being intentional during the 75 days. I read a total of 16 books 7 of…

I read a lot of books this year. Not as many as some people, but I’ve read 76 books so far this year (with 3 days left). Fortunately, most of them came from the library. I actually checked out 69 books from the library, but a few were books for work (elementary-aged books), and several were cookbooks. Randomly, at the start of the year, I saw a blog post from the Hennepin County Library of their…

1 gallon of water a day. That’s not too bad, right? For some reason I thought it was 64 ounces, not 129! When I got to 64 I was surprised at how easy it was. Then I looked at the app I was using and realized I wasn’t even half way yet! Oops! It takes some focus to get to the gallon and a lot of time in the bathroom!  The main water bottle I used was 25 ounces. So a little more than 5 of them! I…

I love reading. Last year I read over 60 books. I always try to read a mixture of genres, authors, etc so I end up reading quite a bit of non-fiction books. So the idea of reading 10 pages daily of non-fiction wasn’t completely outlandish! Though some days it would’ve been easier not to read. Or it would’ve been more enjoyable to spend my reading time caught up in a fictional world. I was able…

This was another relatively easy task to complete each day. The tracking app I used helped serve as a reminder in case I forgot. But I tried to take it in the morning before or after my shower. It was nice to mark it off early and be on the way to daily success! I wrote on one of the first days that I wasn’t a fan of this task and didn’t really see the purpose in it. I’ve seen transformation…

One of the requirements for completing 75 Hard was not drinking any alcohol during the 75 days. For me this wasn’t really a problem. I maybe have a drink or two on the weekends or special occasions. During January it was really easy as a lot of people celebrate Dry January. It felt a little more challenging after that. But realistically every place serves non-alcoholic drinks, even if it’s just…

Complete!! 75 Hard is done. I’ll plan to write more over the next few days about the different aspects of it. Today was rather uneventful. I did yoga this morning and then did the Out in the Open 25.3 workout in the afternoon. I also did a 1 mile sandbag carry to get the full 45 minutes done. Walking the shuttle runs was kinda lame, but that’s still where I’m at.  They were also a little hard…

My body wouldn’t really let me sleep in. My Saturday routine lately has been doing my reading then hitting the gym. I was a little tired and slow moving to get out of the house, so I had to mix up the order of my workout. I swam first and then did my lifts. I’ve been doing the bench and shoulder press. The pool was busy but the rest was emptier than usual. Like if I failed a bench rep no one…

There was a full lunar eclipse that hit totality between 1:30-2:30am this morning.  I figured that if I got up at 2am, I would get some sleep before and after and see the eclipse. I decided that I would go for a 45 minute walk at 2am to the lake and see what I could see! Then I could sleep in later since I would already have my 1st workout done! It worked pretty well. The moon was tiny way up…

Another rather uneventful day! The warm weather has made the walks in the afternoon nice! It wasn’t quite shorts warm this evening but close. I was able to get the hot tub started back up. It’s an inflatable one we got for Christmas. It worked okay until the first deep sub zero day and then the 4 inch long pipe from the heater to the tub froze. I tired a few times to get it thawed but I couldn’t…

This afternoon I forgot my partially drunk water bottle at work. So that threw off my water measurements. I decided I probably didn’t drink much from it and didn’t estimate it for my calculations. So I drank more than a gallon. I’m a little intrigued to see how much of it I’d drunk. Nothing exciting to report otherwise for either workout. Though I did wear shorts this afternoon for my walk!

And the final countdown begins! This afternoon I chose to walk to a rally my union was hosting at the district headquarters about budget cuts to special education next year. The headquarters was about 2 miles away and I was already a little late. But it seemed like a perfect way to get my second session done. I didn’t exactly have a ride home lined up, but was easily able to find one! I…

Another weekly Vault workout. This one had running and Manmakers. I obviously couldn’t run, so I walked half the distance. I probably shouldn’t have done the Manmakers, but I did then pretty slowly.  I definitely want to retest this one when I’m able to run. It will be rough!! In a good way! This afternoon I went to the Chiropractor and got a lot out of my upper back and neck.  He also had some…

This morning was my monthly bike assessment. 29:06 for 15 miles. 11 seconds slower than last month. So that’s not too bad! This afternoon I chose to do yoga in the driveway followed by a quick battle ropes workout! You know, just to mix it up a little bit! It’s almost 60 and sunny so it was nice to be out there!

I went to the gym and did 5/3/1 bench and shoulder press. I decided not to swim to give my head and shoulders a little bit of a break! It so warm right now that I did my afternoon ruck with only a sweatshirt. Seeing people out running in shorts really makes me want to run!!!