Three Beautiful Things 10-02-2023: In the Money, I Like That Exercise Mat, Delicious Pasta Salad

1. The 2023 season of the two fantasy baseball leagues I'm a part of ended on Sunday. My fantasy teams have never performed well in League 1, a rotisserie league, and finished in sixth place (out of eight teams) this season; but, in League 2, which features a series of weekly head to head matches with league opponents, I finished in third place -- that means I won some money. This is just the second time in my five years playing in these leagues that I've finished in the money. It won't be a lot (last time it was 50 dollars), but it was fun to have a team that was relevant and won a prize. 

2. Today the exercise mat I ordered arrived and it made doing floor exercises much more comfortable and enjoyable. The second box of resistance straps also arrived and I have some work to do to figure out how to best use them -- I made some progress today. So, right now, using a chair,  the mat, and the straps, I'm doing exercises to stretch and strengthen my legs, the muscles around my knees, and my core. I've been wearing out search terms online for exercises for 70 year olds, and I found a set of upper body stretches I'll also start doing. I've also been looking at chair yoga exercises. 

3. For dinner tonight, I dove into the HelloFresh box and pulled out the ingredients for a pasta salad. All I had to do was chop a carrot, shallot, red pepper, and tomato. I opened two packets of Italian salad dressing and put the dressing in the bottom of.a bowl with some olive oil and salt and pepper. I put the chopped vegetables and some chili flakes in the bowl on top of the dressing and tossed it all.At the same time, I boiled cavatappi and fried a packet of bacon. When the bacon was crisp, I roughly chopped it. I drained the pasta, cooled it off with a rinse of cold water, and combined it with the vegetables and dressing. 

I would have added the fresh dill I had roughly chopped, but I knocked my little bowl of dill onto the floor and settled for dry dill weed out of a jar. 

I added the bacon and a packet of feta cheese to the salad, mixed everything up again and Debbie and I agreed about this salad.

It worked!