Quiet on set June 12, 2009

My new office has been so quiet this week, which is a complete 180 from my last set up.  I no longer have a talkative office mate, loud laser printer, drawer-slamming staff member, busy hallway right outside my (interior) window, noisy door, or anything else that my old shared office had.  Phew! I cannot express how much of a relief it is to move on and no longer be in that suite 🙂  Yee-haw!

Today was a nice wrap up to my first week in the new space–quiet day, not many people there, got a lot done, had a good client meeting, good dinner, great workout, and now a great snack.  Only bad thing is I can’t stop reaching for the roasted almonds at my side!

Let’s recap the eats for the last few days.  How about a new style–meals side-by-side from both days?  Sounds good to me 😉

Breakfast: Kashi Go Lean Crunch with soy milk both days.  Add ins varied from banana to strawbs, bluebs, and ground flax. 

Lunch:

Thursday’s salad (Romaine, Boston, green leaf lettuces with avocado, pickle, grape tomatoes, balsamic) withwas a little sad after having sat in the fridge for over a day, but still tasted great!  I ate some leftover veggie lasagna on the side, and munched on the carrots, cherries, and apple mostly during the afternoon.

Friday’s salad was scrumptious! I nuked a portabella Gardenburger and put it over the top of the aforementioned lettuces, avocado, grape tomatoes, pickle, and balsamic.  I think the burger has cheese in it, which I don’t really like, but it tastes good nonetheless.  Chris tried a bite (total skeptic) and said it was really good!  I snacked on my fruit and carrots over the afternoon.

Dinners: a Mexi marathon; shocking I know.  Thursday I had my leftover dinner from Wednesday, even though I knew it would be rich and overly cheesy.  This time around I didn’t get the upset tummy; I think it may have been more from the onions, so I didn’t eat most of them in the quesadilla.  Fresh avocado on top.

Friday we visited Si Senor again, but this time I had the Pollo Azado Burrito, sans pollo 🙂  Tasty goodness involving flour tortilla, rice, black beans, grilled pepp/onion/celery/zucchini/carrot, topped with verde sauce and pico de gallo.  I also added some guac and jalapenos fritos.  Wooee, those were some spicy peppers 😉

Don’t let that picture fool you, the burrito was HUGE.  I ate half and was waaaay too full.  And don’t shit your pants, but I ate a small piece of meat tonight.  Chris was like, “Here, eat this” when he thought he found beans on his burrito, but no, it was beef.  Oh well, no biggie I suppose.

Snackins:

The first pic is actually from Wednesday night after I posted.  Chris broke into the PB and I joined in for some of that goodness.

I went to Freddy’s and Costco to stock up on fruit, including grape tomatoes, pineapple, strawberries, cherries, and a nectarine.  Lovin’ it!

Can you read “yum” on the rim of my b’nut plate?  I thought it would be cute to try to write with ketchup, but it was a tad tougher than I realized.  LOVED these “fries” and can’t wait to make more soon.

Almonds are tasting sweet to me suddenly!  I’ve never noticed that before.  Oh, and shhh, don’t tell my dentist I’m eating them whole.  I told her I love almonds and other nuts and she said to chop them up before eating them to prevent cracking my teeth.  That’s no fun! 

Workouts the last few days have been good, but for forgetting my towel Thursday.  When I realized it I was in the locker room, and thought WTF, I probably should skip cardio today.  I did a good leg workout and called it.  Friday was an upper body extravaganza, including two exercises for each back, biceps, chest, triceps, shoulders, and abs.  I followed that up with a super sweaty 50 minutes on the stair mill.  Mercy!

While doing lateral raises I noticed how my forearms have become defined and my veins are coming to the surface.  Good signs in the fight against excess body fat!  Now if I can just get the abs to cooperate…

Hope you’re keeping it real out there 😉

Buzzin’ along June 2, 2009

You may notice that I’m now a Foodbuzz Featured Publisher 🙂  I did this to try to increase traffic to my blog, and perhaps earn a few bucks here and there (if you’re kind enough to click on the ad when it is embedded soon;)).  I like Foodbuzz–it is totally like Facebook for foodies, and I’ve enjoyed the plethora of recipes, posts, restaurant reviews, and more on the site.

Was today only Tuesday?  Felt like Wednesday somehow.  Our new office’s carpet still hasn’t been corrected, as we found out that the correct carpet is a few days out yet.  Effin’ project manager is grating on me nerves, argh.  (Yes, that was in pirate fashion ;))

I added Bob’s Red Mill ground flax to my oats yesterday and today, and I think I noticed it more today.  Kind of a bran-y flavor?  My oats were a little bland, but I won’t go and blame that on the flax. 

Lunch was a burrito gut salad, consisting of Saturday’s burrito contents, avocado, verde sauce, Romaine, and some of my homemade hummus.  Good, but too many pinto beans.  Leftover fruit salad on the side (I know it looks a little scary, but still tastes good).

I snacked on this fruit and carrot over the next few hours:

At some point I went for the candy bowl for a sugary treat (why exactly I don’t know…), and came up with this:

Dinner was a really delicious, special treat:  Tortilla Espanola.  Chris introduced me to this when we got together, and I used to make it a lot for weekend brunch.  It is a really simple dish (basically and egg, onion, and potato frittata), and accompanied by some sea salt and olive oil you’ll swear you’ve died and gone to heaven.  You’ll think you’ve transcended heaven when you make a sandwich out of it and spread garlic aioli on the bread 🙂  Tehehe.  I enjoyed mine with half of a potato burger bun toasted and drizzled with EVOO & sea salt.  I seriously used my finger to get the leftover olive oil and salt off of the plate :shocked:  It’s THAT good.  I’ll be putting the recipe on Foodbuzz I think…

Before my trek to the gym I ate the rest of the fruit salad:

After a good leg session I mounted the mill of glory for 50 intensely sweaty minutes of torture cardio, after which I was beet-frickin red.  Chris was still playing basketball when I was done, so I had a nice stretching session and a date with the ab crunch machine. 

What could have possibly been in order after that workout?  You guessed it, fruitas.  Chris promptly ate that pineapple, so I replaced it with some smaller chunks we have leftover.  I’m telling ya, that pineapple from Costco really was great.  It was like $3.19 and it is perfect–sweet and juicy, firm, and golden.  I rather enjoyed cutting it up, too.

That didn’t quite hit the spot, so a handful of almonds were in order.  My little LB wanted some of that action, but she didn’t get any of that goodness.

And here we are! 

Time to watch some Cheers with the man and hit the hay 😉

Super Sunday January 11, 2009

Woo hoo, I got some sleep last night!  I set the alarm for 8 so I could get up, eat, all that jazz, before yoga, but it was so hard to get out of bed.  I really wanted to sleep in all morning, but finally dragged my ass out of bed at 8:45. 

Coffee, oatmeal, and a little blogging followed.  I was really slow and clumsy for a little while, but eventually I perked up and was glad I got up instead of sleeping more.

Around 9:40 I left for yoga, and arrived to find the studio already open (no class beforehand) and the room really full already.  Wowza, that was one full class today.  We had to stagger and get pretty close, and the body heat was pretty intense.  It was a good class, tho!!  Loved it!! I was totally expecting to suck but actually did rather well and felt great.  So great, in fact that I did a half hour of intervals on the stair mill afterward.  Yay!

I ran to Costco afterward to pick up some laundry detergent, and ended up coming home with a stick vacuum, too!!  I’ve had my eye on the Electrolux Ergorapido for a long time now, and decided that having easily cleaned floors was worth the $90.  I hate sweeping with a passion, and I hate getting out the big vacuum to do the hard floors even more.  It is charging now and tomorrow I should be able to report on how the initial use goes. 

When I got home I was famished and really wanted something yummy and a little different.  I opted for a spinach salad with turkey, egg white, apple, shaved Parmesan, red wine vinegar, and black pepper.  The spinach was tough 😦  So sad!  It is a fresh bag with a date 1 week from now and I’m so upset it is not tender.  Boo.  I had the rest of the Pink Lady apple and some cottage cheese on the side.

I began cleaning and organizing, and a few hours later I was hungry again, so I had some yogurt with sliced almonds and 1/2 a banana, and a grapefruit.  Yummy!  The grapefruit was really ruby red and juicy, and although it was a tad bitter I did not add sugar and loved it as it was 😉

More cleaning and organizing, a shower (yes, finally, ew) later and we headed out for a roundabout of tasks.  I dropped Chris off at the gym and went to Goodwill to donate a whole trunk full of stuff.  Whew, that felt good to finally clear it out and help others in the process.  Then I ventured inside the store (an outlet store) and was almost horrified at first.  Imagine diving in giant bins of secondhand goods in a big open, stinky warehouse.  Wow.  It was intense.  I looked at some of the clothes, furniture, etc, and decided to head out without getting anything.  I think I’ll stick to the regular retail-style thrift store in the future. 

After the store and picking up Chris we headed to dinner at Fajitas.  My mom met us there.  I had part of a Casuela (super boozy tonight! :/), chips and salsa, and a ground beef taco.  I know I should have had chicken, but the beef sounded tastier. 

And, of course, I had La Casa to wrap things up.  This is such a sinful mix…I asked again what is in it and found out it is made with 1/2 & 1/2, not milk!  Eeeek.  So, all in all it is 1/2 & 1/2, ice cream, and Bailey’s blended with a nice dash of cinnamon on top.  I drank the whole thing b/c the convo was a bit stressful. 

I became really tired at dinner and coupled with the convo that put me in a funk.  After I got home I went into a tissy and began ripping nails out of the walls and hanging art that has been sitting on the floor in my  spare bedroom for far too long.  I’ve lived in this house for 4 years, and only had a few things on the wall.  Most of our walls were riddled with nails that Chris’ ex put everywhere, and they were all way too high for enjoying any art.  I hope Chris likes the new configuration…he’s out right now.  He was resistant to me taking down his old posters and hanging real art, but I think he’ll either like it or just deal with it.  It has really bothered me that for 4 years I haven’t had hardly any of my art hanging.  When my mom moved this summer I took a smattering of her art that I like, and that is most of what I hung up.

BTW, I say “my spare bedroom” b/c we have a 3 bd. house, and one of the bd’s is my closet; I call it my bedroom.  Now if I can just clean out the rest of the extra shit that has accumulated in there…

Well, it is almost 11:30 and I’m ready for bed.  I hope you all had a nice weekend and are ready for a great week ahead!!  I’m glad I had a productive Sunday, and look forward to enjoying my clean house and my new vacuum all week.  Cheers 🙂