My Bulletproof Experiment

If you haven't been living under a rock for the past 6 months or so, you have probably heard of Bulletproof® Coffee. I believe Dave Asprey brought it to our attention.
The fun part of starting a new diet or "way of life" (which is how you should approach it) is trying to figure the damn thing out! Unfortunately, Dave's book doesn't come out until Dec 2nd so that leaves a lot to interpretation.
I started off with Bulletproof® Coffee and I'm really liking it. I had started doing low carb and stumbled upon the butter coffee idea as a way to "stay full" (i.e not accidentally eat anything for breakfast that was going to blow my daily carb allotment) while waiting for lunch to roll around. I have managed to replace breakfast entirely with butter coffee. Lunch is usually a salad with some sort of protein or if I can wait, I do!
It's been an interesting transition for me with a steep learning curve! I went from not caring what the stuff I eat was made of as long as it didn't have carbs to wondering why otherwise "simple" foods should have a paragraph of ingredients associated with it. A majority of the words being chemicals I can't pronounce. I started taking supplements he was suggesting and slowly transitioning to the eat clean mentality. I am in no way there yet, I still eat something's that aren't bulletproof approved but overall I feel pretty good.
I have been away traveling for a week and packed my immersion stick blender and cup. I poured MCT oil in my little 3oz containers for the TSA. I wasn't able to take the recommended Kerry Gold unsalted butter because that would have surpassed their rules on ounces. Instead when I landed in Oklahoma, I headed for Walmart and found Kerry Gold but salted so I passed on that and purchased some sticks of another grass fed butter. I also went without my Upgraded™ coffee beans because I didn't want to pack a grinder (I try to be a carry-on only gal whenever possible). I ate out for seven days attempting to make the best choices I could and with the heavy use of charcoal and DAO, managed to return seven days later two pounds heavier. Now I know that doesn't sound good but after one full day back at home, I weighed myself the next morning and lost half a pound but 2 pounds of body fat. When it comes to weight I always care more about whether or not I'm mostly comprised of fat or lean muscle.
I can't wait for the book to come out but in the meantime I will continue to muddle my way through the forums, podcasts and videos to piece it all together. Thanks Dave!

‘Upgraded™ and Bulletproof® are trademarks/service marks of Better Baby LLC'

The Winter of My Discontent

Where do I begin? I was on a roll. My husband and I were escaping somewhere at least two weekends a month and we were relaxed and happy. 2013 did not start off well for me or my family. New Year's Eve marked the passing of the one man that has loved me from birth. Our family patriarch. He was a wonderful man and I'm glad I was able to be with him into his 80's. Especially since we lost our mother in her 60's.
So all of 2013 was a blur and 2014 I thought was starting off better but this hellish nightmare called a Polar Vortex ravaged the country and we were inundated with snow and below zero temps. I was paying more in heating bills than the car note and insurance. Needless to say or travel dwindled to non- existent and I realized how sad that made me. A light bulb went off and I came to the conclusion that travel is really in our blood. No matter what we have to try to save our pennies and go somewhere even if it's New Jersey! I had made some headway in the hotel points game and actually had status in a couple. I can't let it go to waste!
Just knowing I have made plans to go a couple of places starting this Spring has made such a difference in my outlook on everything. I was actually putting on weight brooding about my situation. Ok I vented and hopefully this will resonate with somebody out there and give them the strength to shake it off and GO SOMEPLACE!

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Review of the Hyatt Regency Bethesda Hotel

But maybe it's me when I stay at a Hyatt I kind of expect to be "wowed". At least a little! Now mind you I've only stayed at two Hyatt Regency hotels before this one-The Hyatt Regency Sacramento and the Hyatt Regency San Francisco. Both had a wow factor when you entered the lobby and the rooms. This one screamed "Okay, nice architecture" and the room was like "It's clean and serviceable, it'll do". Maybe because I don't spend 300 nights of the year in hotels as part of my work so when I do go somewhere I want to say "Hey, this is REALLY nice!" As I said the hotel was okay and the front desk staff are really nice and very helpful. Try as I might I always forget people's names so I can't mention the specific people I dealt with. My King bed room was roomy and I was very pleased with the size of the bathroom. Usually the bathrooms in a lot of hotels are kind of small but this one was very roomy. The bed was also very comfortable but still suffers

from that "motion transfer" issue I hate when sleeping with another person. Better known as the "I can feel it every time you move" syndrome. The location is very good but be warned you have to pay for parking even if you are parking it yourself. When I was there it was $15 per day for self parking and $20 to valet. There's also some type of pay difference between "in and out" and "park and stay" but I don't remember what it is because I've never been on a vacation where I had a car and didn't move it or use it for daily or even multiple times during the day/night.

They have 2 restaurants, Morton's Steak House and the Daily Grill. I ate at the Daily Grill (which also provides room service). The food was tasty but service is slooow. I had breakfast Saturday morning and there were several large tables of people already there but I waited at least 8 minutes at the desk waiting for someone to acknowledge my presence and seat us. Fortunately I wasn't starving or my grumpier nature would have taken over and I would have left. After we were seated as usual the waitress came 5 minutes later and asked us for our drink order. I just asked for coffee and my husband wanted tea. That took another 10 minutes!  When she came with our beverages we decided to give her our order in case we never saw her again. Once we got our order (omelet and a continental breakfast plus yogurt and berries) 20 minutes later we had been there from start to finish a total of 43 minutes before we got food. As I said once we got our food it was delicious but unless there is only one person back in the kitchen with one arm and one leg, it really seemed to last forever!

My other pet peeve was the wi-fi which seemed to be slow in the evening and faster in the morning-maybe more people were on it in the evening not sure but if you are charging $12 for "premium" service i.e. faster than basic but they don't tell you the speed but since it's double the price I want double the speed!

After an evening out on our return to the hotel I wanted a cup of coffee so I stopped at the Daily Grill for a to-go cup of coffee-how long do you think that took? Yep, another 10 minutes to pour hot brown liquid into a cup. A lady next to me was going to order but asked me how long I was waiting for coffee and when I told her she decided to bolt since she had a show to catch. Later on that evening I decided to push my luck  and call them for a piece of cake but this time I didn't time them but it sure felt like they came back quicker with the cake than any of my prior orders!

Frequent Traveler University in Tampa 2013

So this was my first FTU ever in life which I guess isn't odd considering I just started paying attention to the whole miles and points thing.  I have to tell you I'm glad I came for a lot of reasons. I would say I networked my ass off but that would be lying since I am inherently shy and really don't like talking to too many new people at once. My friends laugh and asked me if my brain was on the verge of exploding because of all the people. Now that I think about it I don't know why they are my friends, they are just lucky that I'm too shy to want to make new ones! That being said, my fellow miles and points nerds are awesome! I really like that there are so many people that are getting into this hobby. I really like travelling and have always enjoyed going to new places and seeing new sites but most of all meeting really nice people. Ok I know that sentence sounded like the direct opposite of how I started this paragraph so let me explain. I don't mind meeting new people but I'm awful at small talk, if I meet them in the context of a shared interest (i.e. miles and points) then we have something to talk about but to start off with no common area is foreign to me. Hopefully that makes sense and I sound less crazy than I intended.

Back to FTU, anyone who wants to start learning about the travel hobby should really start reading the blogs like Million Mile Secrets, Loyalty Lobby, Mommy Points, Pizza in Motion, Frequent Miler....I could go on but if you start with any of those you should be off to a great start. I met a mix of people who either thought these get together's were great to those that have gone to a few and found them redundant. Since this was my first, I can't say either way but I do know I want to go to another one next year because they had so much great information but I couldn't go to every talk since some overlapped in regards to time, so my strategy is to go to the ones I missed on subsequent seminars. But let's face it, there is so much information and since unlike the serious bloggers, this isn't my "job" so I don't devote nearly as much time to the hobby. As I mentioned earlier, I've only started doing this earlier this year and my focus is on hotels at this time. I'm giving myself a year before I start on the airline stuff.

Speaking of the airline stuff, I sat in on a talk given by the Miles Professor and I was totally lost! She was talking about off peak European travel and how to save 10,000 miles by doing an open jaw going this way and that way, my head started spinning! Whew! She's really a professor and a mathematician and I felt like I was in the advanced class but I also knew that since I haven't done anything but join the different airline clubs, it would make sense that I had no idea what she was talking about. That's why I'm not concerning myself with that right now, it isn't my first goal or priority. The one take away I got from every presenter I heard was-Set a Goal. So my goal for the next year is to get some status going without credit card assistance because I have 3 boys in varying stages of education which require parent loans so I can't really take a chance on playing with my credit scores nor can I take expensive flights or take extended time off from work so right now it's strictly being a weekend hotel geek grabbing as many nights/stays as I can to rack up my points and elite status. I'm not biting off more than I can chew, I'm taking human bites! So what about you? What are your travel goals for the next 12 months????

Saratoga Springs/Lake George Area

Well my husband and I drove to Saratoga Springs for the weekend hoping for lovely spring weather and to be able to stroll hand in hand along the little streets with different colorful shops in mind. What we got was a grey, overcast, decidedly dreary wet day! But the hotel looked nice. We stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn & Suites in Saratoga Springs.








After a good night's sleep- I always sleep better in the rain- we got up and found a Cracker Barrel for breakfast. I have a thing for Cracker Barrel food, I try to have at least one meal there on all of our trips. What can I say? If there's a Cracker Barrel within 30 minutes of where I am staying or within an hour of where we are sightseeing, I'm going!
The weather right now is still overcast but Andrea is moving quickly out of the area. Our plan is to eat breakfast, go to the Regal Cinemas near by to see Star Trek( yes I like that too!) then by the time we emerge from the theater it should be sunny and then go to Lake George. It sort of worked in Burlington so why not try it again?
It worked! Our wacky plan for sun has been successful. Off we go to see what we can see! Our plan was only moderately successful. Turns out this weekend there is a Tour Expo for bikers. The whole town was flooded with bikers, there wasn't a single place to stop so we could enjoy a stroll through the streets and enjoy the little shops.















We switched gears and headed towards Lake Placid as the sun looked like it may be making an appearance. The town was empty compared to Lake George but as you can see from the photos, the sun failed to make an appearance!








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Location:S Broadway,Saratoga Springs,United States

Happy June!

Wow! Another month already! Time is flying although I can't complain. The faster it goes, the faster my son graduates from college. Whew! I can't believe he's so close. The best part is, we get to turn it into a lovely vacation spot as well. Friends and family will gather in Hawaii for the graduation and to stretch out on the beach. Not a bad thing that's for sure. June is the traditional month for graduations so let me say "Congratulations Graduates of 2013" to those of you graduating or have people graduating in your family.

Burlington/Boston MA

We took a rainy car ride to Massachusetts this afternoon. We got to see tons of traffic and a car accident. Luckily no one was severely hurt just some minor cuts and the girls were shook up. Their car didn't look so good but overall I think they did ok.
We pressed onward to Massachusetts and was welcomed by....more rain! Yay! "Welcome to gray, overcast and cold Massachusetts" the sign said. Okay, so it really didn't say that but it should have. All the places I wanted to go were outdoors so I was outta luck. We did go to Not Your Average Joe's restaurant for dinner.




Sunday started off rainy and a chilly 38 degrees so we decided to have breakfast in the hotel. We stayed at Hyatt House and it was pretty nice. The omelet station is great when you get to it before the kids that seem to have taken over the hotel this weekend. From the looks of them I would say there is a team event happening and it is the girl's division playing. I'm going to go out on a limb and say its a girl's soccer team and considering I don't follow any sports it's a big guess on my part. Breakfast was good but we had to take it back to the room because there wasn't a seat to be had. That was ok too since we weren't in a hurry to go anywhere in the rain. I suggested we go to a movie and maybe by the time we got out of the theater it would stop raining and maybe warm up.
We caught a showing of Fast and the Furious 6- can't believe we are at 6 already- and it was pretty good. No action film is complete now a days without some "Matrix" moves thrown in. When we got out it was still overcast and chilly. We went downtown and the sun peeked out for a few shots












And across the Tobin Bridge




Because it was starting to rain again, my husband said "Let's try New Hampshire since we are so close". So off we went to NH in search of some sun and pictures.














We ate at The Cheesecake Factory when we got back to Burlington only because it was 8pm and two of the local spots we wanted to try were either not open in Sundays or was going to close at 9pm.
On Monday it was 70 degrees and sunny! We were heading home but since we knew we would hit traffic we took the back way and at least I got to see 2 rivers which we couldn't pull over to photograph but I did get a snippet of one.


Oh well, maybe next trip we'll actually be able to tour Boston! Such is my life...

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Location:I-95 N,Burlington,United States