How to walk 10,000 steps in a day

I LOVE Elle's comment from yesterday. How excited she is to see where I walked my 10,000 steps. Well, you're going to love this story.

First off - here are my WHITE shoes. They're actually not that bad once I started walking with them. They're comfy. And now they're mine!! Actually, they were pretty comfy - just the tongue of one shoe needs to be adjusted a wee bit.

My white shoes

When you're in a new location, one must start by checking Google Maps to see where you are and the potential for walking paths. Hmm - there are some potential roads around the hotel. I can walk those. Keep in mind that we are NOT in Nashville proper. We are in the suburb of Smyrna. The hotels are close to the interstate and we're in a somewhat new development of hotels.

I started off on the sidewalk that passes by the hotel. The sidewalk ended at the entrance to the complex. ZIP for sidewalks alongside the main road. Hmm - there's a sidewalk on the other side of the street, I'll go back up towards the hotel. Then I took another side road in this complex and thought I'd walk along the back along the smaller roadway on the other side of this complex. No sidewalk once I reached the smaller roadway. That's OK - I walked on the opposite side of the road facing traffic. Trees on one side and undeveloped land on the other. I reached the rest of the road system that I was going to walk - NO TRESPASSING and it was a muddy trail.

Seriously????  OK - so back to the roads with the sidewalks. There are more roads on the other side of the hotel. I arrived only to find that it was a gated community! Gates are closed - well, one gate was open. But again, big signs NO TRESPASSING and I wasn't going in if the gate was going to be shut when I wanted to come back out.

Next, I ducked into the parking lot of the hotel beside us and walked the perimeter of that hotel parking lot. Then I repeated that process several times to get close to 4,000 steps. The most interesting thing I saw????  These poor pansies.

Pansies - not frozen, but not warm either

Once the sun came out, it started to warm up pretty quickly. It wasn't cold so it was a pleasant walk, but I do have my orange jacket and a scarf. No hat.

Then I was off to meet my colleagues so we could drive to the office. I managed to get a few more thousand steps in during the day, but when I arrived at the hotel after dinner, I still had 1,000 steps to go. I was NOT going to achieve my goal for the day, so I decided to walk the hall of the hotel. Oh yes - it was crazy.

It's a long hallway. I took this picture from one end. I wonder if once along that hallway will give me 1,000 steps. WRONG!!!!

The hallway at the hotel

This hotel is a Hilton Home2 Suites mixed with Hilton Tru which are rooms. The room section of the hallway looks like this.

The Tru side of the Hilton hallway

And the Home 2 section looks like this. It looks all warm and inviting with the lights outside the door and warmer colors.

The Home 2 side of the hallway

Here you can see the break between the two which is near the elevators.

The two different sections

I'm on the third floor in the Home2 section. I walked from my room to the end of the hallway. Then I went down to the second floor and walked the entire length. Oh boy - not nearly enough steps. I took the stairs back up to the 4th floor and walked back the other way. I had to do that about 4 times to get 1,000 steps!!!  Oh my goodness - what we will do to keep up to a goal.

But I was glad I did. With all the sitting - I'm just not used to that!!!!

I had a crazy person above me or beside me this morning. They tromped around their room and made a ton of noise, slammed the door on the way out. Now it's so quiet!!!  They are HUGE signs around telling us the quiet hours are between 10 PM and 8 AM. OH shoot - there's still someone tromping over me. I guess I had two culprits.


Elle - NO exciting scenery around Nashville. Just trees and pansies!!! I'm going to take a slightly different route today to see how that is. It's partly where I walked the last time we were in the area. Hopefully, it works out.

It was a great day yesterday. We got to see all the educators and I think everyone is here together. They really are a fun and totally creative group and the level of creativity and knowledge is beyond my wildest dreams. There are times when I think that I'm not worthy to be in that group. I've got so much to learn and yet I know a lot. Sometimes, I need to jump outside the box a little bit more than I am. It just that there's not enough time in each day.

I'm comfortable knowing that there's enough learning to go on that I'll be busy for the rest of my sewing days and that makes me very happy. And the technology - it's not just about the sewing machines, but it's about how to hook up phones as cameras and projecting them and integrating it into a presentation that will wow the socks off the customers.

So I learned a ton of things in the morning. Then it was onto more learning in the afternoon. I struggled a wee bit after lunch. I don't normally eat that much for lunch - note to self - don't eat a lot at lunch. I had to get up and walk around the room a wee bit just to stay awake. It's not that the presentation wasn't interesting, it's just that I'm so not used to sitting for so long.

After that presentation, we got to do some fun stuff. Hit the sewing machines!!!  Margaret and I had opted to work on the sergers and we came super prepared. Between us (but mostly because of Margaret), we had stuff ready to try out the new decorative and utility feet for the Husqvarna Viking Amber Air s400.  Emily, who is the serger queen, helped us through.

Our samples waiting to be sewn

 Holy   -- it makes a HUGE difference to have someone like them sit beside you. I struggled a wee bit with some parts, but now I feel like I can do that all on my own. I got tips for threading the serger - not that I couldn't do it, but I wasn't doing it quite properly. This is where I should be playing more to find out why it isn't working just the way it's supposed to. Well, totally operator error all the way!!  Some of the others got in on what we were doing and it was great to get the feedback from everyone.

Lots of cool techniques for making finished edges on the serger. Stabilizing seams and a whole lot of other techniques. I've not sewn a whole lot on a serger and certainly, not a ton of garments. However, I want to try some of these techniques out. What am I going to make? I need to make samples!!!! 

We didn't get finished all the feet - we got about half of them done. So we're going to spend part of the day today, learning about the rest of the feet and a few more presentations. It's all very exciting and I'm so lucky to be part of this group.

On that note, I'm out of here. I'm heading out a wee bit earlier today as I'm not quite sure how long it'll take to walk my new loop and it's a loop - there's no cutting through. I can't be late or I won't have a ride to the office.

Have a great day!!!!

Ciao!!!!