So you know the experts always say that the best time to exercise is whenever it works best for you. I have always, always been a morning exerciser. That is not to say that I always exercise, but when I do it is 99.99% of the time in the morning. I needed to be at work super early on Thursday, and I figured I would get up even earlier than my early exercise-in-the morning time. So I woke up extra extra early, and what did I decide? To go back to sleep! I decided to exercise after work instead. Generally when I decide to exercise after work it never really happens, but this particular Thursday it did.

So my Shaking It Up may have been due to a bit of laziness, but I pulled it off anyway.

Just another example of how we get in a routine which really should have some flexibility.

I did also have yellow instead of red cherry tomatoes and gala instead of pink lady apples, but some people (my children for example) might say that doesn’t really count for shaking things up.

😊

Two Thursdays ago I decided to do something different — at our morning meeting I announced that Karla and I are collecting winter coats to donate to the men’s homeless shelter. Even though this is not a work-related activity, I decided that it was fine to talk about it in our morning meeting. Not too much else was different last Thursday, although I did have a very different soup the night before when out with friends — sort of a pre-Shake It Up meal.

So what happened as a result of the winter coat announcement? This past week someone at work brought in two winter coats for us to donate. The beauty of Shake It Up Thursday is that it has a positive impact on others, which makes me very happy.

And this past Thursday? I decided that I would be in charge of dinner. Those of you who know me well are aware that I don’t really do much cooking. At this point some people might say “much? are you joking?” So what did I do? I took my husband out for dinner!!

Dinner at Lao Laan-Xang. Yum!

Sometimes you just by definition shake things up. We spent time with some of our very dear college friends a couple of weeks ago. We rented a house on Cape Cod, and spent a week sightseeing, talking, walking along beaches, talking, eating, talking… you get the idea. So that Thursday everything that I did was pretty much out of my routine. One of the favorite parts of that day was taking a tour of the Cape Cod Potato Chip factory — how cool is that!

Yummy potato chips!