The husband and I have been trying to find a new place to eat (and drink) . If I can’t travel to far off places? At least I can visit new bars.
Enter the Barnhouse Grill and Pub.
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Husband found an old washing machine at the entrance, which thankfully wasn’t for sale.
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This is a relatively new place remodeled from an old seafood market. It’s rustic and takes the barn theme seriously.
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Chickens and cows were plentiful, as were the bartender’s pours. It’s not often I call it quits at two margaritas… but I did that day in an effort not to fall off my stool.
The decor was down home country with a sense of humor, and when the husband came back from the men’s room requesting my phone, I knew it would be good.
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Keg urinals. The ultimate in recycling.
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There was also another antique washing machine, complete with rooster.
This got me curious what the ladies room had to offer so in I went, phone camera ready.
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Thankfully this wasn’t the only toilet. But aside from more chickens that was about it. Not nearly as much fun as the men’s room.
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I’d like to tell you I took pictures of the wonderful chili, the strange but quite tasty macaroni and cheese bites, and the fabulous charbroiled mushroom Swiss burger we ate, but I didn’t.
All I managed at the end of my second killer ‘Rita was one shot of the Philly cheesesteak egg rolls. Weird? Yes. But also really, really good.
Most of the time the Facebook ‘memory’ feature annoys me, but last week it flashed back to this day 8 years ago and I had to laugh.
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Because 8 years ago that day our farming neighbor’s goats broke free and headed straight to our house. Have you ever tried to herd goats? As our neighbor will tell you…
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It’s not a one man job. We chased them around our property for quite a while and got nowhere, but with reinforcements we eventually managed to shoo them back home.
In other news, I saw this and had to share.
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Now that’s what I call mother’s revenge.
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Scrabble. Even with letters like that I reigned supreme and won the game.
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We have a dying shrub and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why. We planted it 18 years ago and have never had an issue.
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Then I looked underneath it one day and saw the giant woodchuck burrow. Mystery solved.
I’ve found the perfect work out routine for my inner couch potato. And if, like me….. your idea of strenuous exercise is slicing another lime for your margarita rim?
Rejoice! And read on.
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Can 4 Seconds of Exercise Make a Difference?
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Four seconds of intense intervals, repeated until they amount to a minute of total exertion, led to rapid improvements in strength and fitness in middle-aged and older adults.
In what is probably the definitive word on how little exercise we can get away with, a new study finds that a mere four seconds of intense intervals, repeated until they amount to about a minute of total exertion, lead to rapid and meaningful improvements in strength, fitness and general physical performance among middle-aged and older adults.
I have often written about the potential benefits of brief, high-intensity interval training, or H.I.I.T., an approach to exercise that consists of quick spurts of draining physical effort, followed by rest, with the sequence repeated multiple times. In studies, short H.I.I.T. workouts typically produce health gains that are equal to or more pronounced than much longer, gentler workouts.
But the ideal length of the intervals in these workouts has been unsettled. Researchers studying H.I.I.T. agree that the optimal interval span should stress our muscles and other bodily systems enough to jump-start potent physiological changes but not so much that we groan, give up and decline to try that workout ever again. In practice, those dueling goals have led H.I.I.T. scientists to study intervals ranging from a protracted four minutes to a quickie 20 seconds.
But Ed Coyle, an exercise physiologist at the University of Texas in Austin, and his graduate assistant Jakob Allen suspected that even 20-second spurts, performed intensely, might exceed some exercisers’ tolerance. So, he decided to start looking for the shortest possible interval that was still effective.
And in the new study, which was published this week in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, he and his colleagues settled on a blink-swift four seconds.
To test that idea, the researchers turned initially to eight healthy college students, asking them to sprint on the bikes for four seconds periodically throughout the day, to see if these short, strenuous workouts would counteract some of the undesirable metabolic effects of sitting all day and eating poorly. They did, as I wrote about in April.
But that study focused on robust, young adults and repeated, if diminutive, workouts sprinkled throughout the day. The scientists now wondered if a more practical, single session of four-second sprints would be enough exercise to improve health and fitness in out-of-shape adults well past their college years.
So, they recruited 39 of them, men and women aged 50 to 68 who were sedentary but had no other major health concerns. They tested the volunteers’ current aerobic fitness, muscular power and mass, arterial flexibility, and ability to perform what are called “activities of daily living,” such as getting up out of a chair.
The volunteers began visiting the performance lab three times a week. There, they completed a brief workout of repeated four-second intervals on the lab’s specialized bikes. At first, they sprinted for four seconds, with Dr. Allen calling out a second-by-second countdown, followed by 56 seconds of rest, repeating that sequence 15 times, for a total of 60 seconds of intervals.
Over two months, though, the riders’ rest periods declined to 26 seconds and they increased their total number of sprints to 30 per session.
At the end of eight weeks, the scientists retested everyone and found substantial differences. On average, riders had increased their fitness by about 10 percent, gained considerable muscle mass and strength in their legs, reduced the stiffness of their arteries and outperformed their previous selves in activities of daily living, all from about three to six minutes a week of actual exercise.
A majority of the volunteers also told the researchers during follow-up interviews that they enjoyed the workouts and would continue them, if possible, Dr. Coyle said.
The upshot, he said, is that these intervals, despite being as brief as possible, effectively boosted health and fitness in ordinary adults.
We came home from the grocery store yesterday and found this:
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The contractor had been at work in the barn and started the bar!
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My husband was thrilled… but had to check the measurements to be sure.
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Can you picture me standing back there mixing margaritas?
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I’ve been battling for a nicely stained finish but the husband is trying to cheap out and go natural. I fear neither of us will be fully satisfied… but at least we’ll have someplace sturdy to belly up to soon.
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On second thought, don’t. Some things are simply too frightening to contemplate.
Just in time for Christmas … I bring you the perfect stocking stuffers.
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That one’s bound to fill up in no time.
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I am so buying this for my husband.
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Who in their right mind would want written proof of that?
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I may need 3 or 4 of these.
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If you have an extra world take over plan kicking around, feel free to share. Mine are usually hatched after a pitcher of margaritas and tend to be less strategically sound when read sober.
In my purse, in my pocket, in my hand. It’s rarely more than 10 feet away from me at any given time…. which drives the husband crazy. (This could be because he’s always doing something photo worthy, but that’s another blog entirely.)
The other day as I was sitting on the barn porch with a book and a cheaters bottled cocktail…..
A fly had the audacity to do the backstroke in my margarita.
This will not be tolerated, so after removing the thirsty Esther Williams wannabe?
My cell phone saved the day….
And the rest of my I still don’t feel comfortable going to our local pub for a real one margarita.
Reason #56 why you should always have your cell phone nearby – cocktail fly blocking.
River's world..... 