Experiment Progress

Well, it's Day 5 of my experiment and so far haven't had a problem with not eating out.  Until yesterday.  Yesterday, I was downright twitchy needing a fix.  Yes, I know I'm sad.

Mondays are mine and Giraffe's usual going out to eat night because it's one of the few he has off from school and work.  Plus I'd had a blah day and enjoy going out to be in a cheerful environment.  To me, endless refills make for a cheerful environment.

Like I had said previously, the only stipulation to my experiment was I could eat out if someone invited me.  Coincidentally, one of our friends had a gift card to Applebee's.  Of course, Applebee's had a special where you could get an appetizer and two entrees for $20.  So we went whole hog: appetizer, entree, and then to the mall for ice cream at Marble Slab.  Dang you and your amaretto ice cream with strawberries!  I did have the smallest cup possible, which equated to about a cup.  Not so bad, I hope?

Anyway, I'm back on the horse today and feeling good.  I haven't trained for my race since before the weekend, so I need to get back on that horse as well.  Maybe I need a new metaphor since riding two horses would be tricky.  Today I might try running outside for the length of the race since I've only ran on a treadmill.  I like the comfort of the constant weather of indoors as well as the TV.  There are no headphones allowed in the race so I need to mentally train myself as well.  Being in a competitive environment will most likely cause me to have a better running time than usual, but I still need to be as prepared as possible.

Three Birds with One Stone

It's four months into the new year and so far I've been good about one of my resolutions.  I have managed to make something every month even though some of the things have been small.  It's still progress, right?  Anyway, my mom's work hosts a 5K run every year and in the past I have helped out with the festivities leading up to the run but never actually participated.  I never ever would have considered doing it before college.  I was content to be in marching band and eat whatever I wanted before I realized the mechanics of diet and exercise.  (See: Freshmen 20 within first month of college.)

So recently I'm looking up local races because I had decided that I was going to find a race and train for it.  Then I find the website for the one at home and it clicked.  Why haven't I thought of this before?  Not only do I know the people organizing it, but I get to have family and friends cheering me on while I run through the pretty residential area.  Giraffe is doing it too so that'll be nice even though I will totally be eating his dust as he laps me over and over again.  

I have been training for a few months now running on a treadmill regularly, but that ceased when I went to Europe for a week and came back with my knee giving me fits.  However, we did a whole lot of walking around so at least it was some sense of physical activity daily.  Unfortunately, I was in a lot of pain by the time we left and stayed away from the treadmill for over a week.

So that brings us to a couple of days ago while I was talking to Victoria about needing to find the motivation to start training again for the race, which is two weeks from this Saturday.  I started out small again by doing strength training for 10 minutes then ran for 15 minutes and walked for 20.  My quads are still sore, but I actually missed that feeling.  I plan to do some more running this weekend, possibly running outside for a change if the weather's nice.  Giraffe found a greenway that is about the length of the race so we might head out there to get some "real" training since it will be outdoors and not controlled by a treadmill belt.

In preparation for the race, I have decided on conducting an experiment alongside the race.  I plan to take on another New Year's resolution by not eating out for 2 weeks.  This has an exception, though: being invited out by a third party will not penalize me.  This has to be the everyday lunch and dinner struggle that I face.  This experiment, if all goes well, will be beneficial because:

1. I can put the right things into my body while training for the race.
2. Save some money and see what my account is like since most of my spending is eating out.
3. Learn to cook more freely and fearlessly.
4. I will lose some weight while training, potentially checking off another resolution on the list (lose 5 lbs).

There will be an ultimate reward for completely all this, even though the list above is more than enough to be rewarding.  After the race and I drive back to resume normal life again, I plan on getting a message at my favorite spa place.   Just thinking about all those Aveda products are putting me in a coma. 

Our Heroes

Oh yeah.

Pantry Organize

The clutter had taken over the pantry and it was getting out of control.  It was time.

Notice all the cereal on the top shelf.  And the chips up waaaay too high so that I could never reach them.  (To self: Must try this on things I overeat.)  The second shelf down was originally supposed to be the canned good shelf.  It's now home to instant mashed potatoes, jam, funny shaped Coke bottles...I started putting stuff up there because it had the most space, which went downhill very quickly.  (Sidenote: Can anything really go downhill slowly?)

Here's a close-up of the shelves I most wanted to tackle.  I started off meaning the "baking shelf" (3rd down), but it ended up being all three. 

This is the reason I wanted to do the baking shelf.  I had all this room in a cabinet that the baking stuff would fit perfectly in.  I have my vanilla, almond extract, cinnamon, cloves, ginger...you get the idea.  The inspiration came from when I was having to find a place for my new Dutch oven (<3!).

Here is the after of the pantry.  I'm praying people can notice a difference.  First off, the cereal is not as high.  I rediscovered my cereal bin (amazing what you can find when you clean up!) and put the two boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios (shout out to Victoria) in it.  Then I moved the chips down to normal people level so in case I do get a hankerin' for chips, I don't have to get the chair.  Or Giraffe.  Next shelf turned out very well.  I put the cans so you actually see what each thing is and grouped them accordingly.  I still have a few non-can items on the shelf, but at least they're in a neat little row out of the way.  The baking shelf doesn't look that much better in the picture, but it does in person.  I can see everything, which was not the case earlier.  I also did the last shelf, which didn't need that much rearranging, but it used a wee bit of tidying nevertheless.

The best part: it only took five minutes! That's including screwing up the pictures because I'm too short to get a good shot.  So there was lots of holding the camera above my head.  Good thing I moved the chips.

Exciting news: Astro and I are going to Europe!  We leave in 2 days and are hitting up London and Malta for 10 days.  Europe will never be the same.  I can't wait! 

Boyfriend Chronicles, Part III

After the Honorable Mentions, I went through the rest of high school with the company of my close knit girl friend group. We had so much fun, but the time came where we graduated and went on to bigger and better things. I went away to school, but not too far away, and made some new friends that went on to be another close knit group through most of college.  Anyway, the summer after my freshman year, I came home.  A couple of the girls in my group were part of a swing dancing club and invited the rest of us to join.  A few of us did and that's where I met B3.  The first time we all saw him, he was wearing a sweatband around his forehead looking incredibly geeky.  He was a very nice guy and a great dance partner, but we all giggled about the sweatband when we'd be sitting on the sides like wallflowers until someone asked us to dance.  It was a great summer filled with lots of dancing and new friends.

Somewhere in the middle was when I really started talking with B3 and got to know him better.  He was in his mid-20s when I was 19, which was so weird to me at the time because we were in two totally different stages of life at the time.  He was working on his Masters after achieving a double Bachelors degree in Music and Computer Science and I was only one year into my Bachelors degree.  Oh yeah, this guy was in Mensa, which my nerdy side thought was cool.  I found that out because one of my girl friends had found his website which had his resume, interests, etc.  I studied this thing and would occasionally drop bits and pieces of it into conversation, which seemed to dazzle this guy.  I mean, I mentioned LaTex code for crying out loud.  That's a nerd's dream to hear a girl talk about it!  Then one night at a swing dance function, he gave me his number because I mentioned I was throwing a party and he should come.  After the party, we went on a date and the rest was history.

We had a lot of fun going places and swing dancing.  It was so nice to always have a dance party at the functions and it was also nice to be able to trust your partner not to throw you around the floor.  Going over to his place was always strange because he shared a small apartment with his mom, whom he was extremely close to.  B3 and I were together for around 3 months.  We tried to do the long distance thing and he even made the 3 hour drive to come see me one night because I mentioned I was going to have dinner by myself and was lonely.  We stayed up all night wandering around campus because I couldn't bring a guy back to my dorm.  

After a month or so of trying to make a long distance relationship work, I realized something about us that I hadn't noticed while I was at home: he was kind of needy.  Also, remember that whole being in two totally different stages of life thing?  Yeah, it wasn't working out because he was ready to move forward with his life while I was experiencing my college years at 19.  I was definitely not wanting to settle down then.  So one day he called me saying that he felt like something was wrong.  I laid it out for him and said I thought we should break up.  He was pretty emotional about it and said, "Well, I need to go clean up before I go present at this meeting."  I felt like a jerk because he was about to present some research findings to his Masters committee and was all red from crying and upset that his girlfriend has just dumped him from 200 miles away.  There's never a right time to do these things, but man did I have impeccable timing...

We saw each other a few times afterward and I tried to salvage a friendship and I thought it was going to be okay, but I think he didn't want to see me anymore.  He got a girlfriend a while later that he's still with now and seems to be incredibly happy.  I said hey to him a couple of times when I'd see them and he would act cold and distant, so I just decided to quit altogether.  He's got the right to not want to be friendly.  I still feel bad about the whole situation because he was a really nice guy and a great boyfriend, but he just wasn't for me.  I knew he'd find the perfect girl for him one day and make her extraordinarily happy.

Lessons learned:

1. Be wary of guys who cut their ex-girlfriends out of pictures when you want to see old pictures of them.  It might show they have some emotional issues with getting over things.
   
2. An older guy still living with his mother is not always a bad thing.  Just double check.  (See: Norman Bates)
   
3. Don't lie about your interests.  While I never exactly said that I enjoyed some of the things he did, I didn't say I didn't.  I just alluded to knowledge I didn't have.  
   

Fashion Plates 2.0

Does anyone remember fashion plates?  They were these plastic plates that set in a holder with grooves over the outlines of the person and outfit.  Then you put a piece of paper over the holder and rub over it with a crayon.  The plates represented the three parts of the model: head, torso, and legs so you could interchange all the outfits and accessories. I had a set when I was in elementary school, but they were New Kids on the Block. There wasn't much changing them up for me because putting Joey's head on Danny's body was just too weird.  Sidenote: the outlines never looked as neat as they did on the box because you were 6 years old rubbing a crayon furiously over the paper to get the outline to show up.  

The other day I discovered the upgrade to the fashion plates: Polyvore.  This site allows you to search user-submitted outfits by keywords as well as being able to find where the items are sold.  When you select an outfit to view, you mouse over the piece of clothing/accessory you want to know more about, and it brings up a thing that shows you who made the outfit and a link to the website.  It's amazing!  You could search by person, phrase, color, season, etc.  For example, I chose winter to look up cute ideas for wearing a skirt in the wintertime and checked this one out:

Vintage:

Cows:

Marilyn Monroe:

Endless amounts of fun!

Today is also a special day because it's my Giraffe's birthday!  I'm cooking him dinner and sticking to what I know I can fix: steak and potatoes.  No creativity this time.  Just a sure thing man pleasin' type of meal.  And I get to cook it on this thing:

I won this in a drawing at Home Depot before Christmas!  It was a lucky few months because I won the drawing at the book fair at work in October and scored a free cookbook and then got a call about this beauty in early December.  I keep thinking I should go buy a lottery ticket to see if my luck continues because these things come in threes.

Tomorrow night is going to be the big party for Giraffe so pictures to follow!

Christmas Revisited

Everyone around me seems to talk about the whirlwind of getting things ready for Christmas and don't mention the aftermath of Christmas: the reorganizing.  I know my place was a total wreck when I got back from spending Christmas at home because I had left almost everything where I had left it prior to going home.  There were rolls of wrapping paper on the floor, craft items on various workspaces, my sewing machine open with the last thread I was using still wound, several bags and receipts about, etc.  Not to mention, I had a birthday dinner party to get ready for the day after I got back to town.  So yay for my Giraffe for getting things ready while I was away and he was in town again.  (*huggles*)

Now that everyone has received their handmade gifts, I can finally post the results of my hard, albeit very fun, work.  I still need to retrieve some pictures from Victoria, so those will be posted later.

We'll start with the ones that were given out at the Thanksmas celebration at Foodie's house. His present is one of those pictures to be posted later, but his fiance got some custom recipe cards.

The guys in Giraffe's family got homemade beef jerky.  Some of the guys ate their whole tin of jerky before all the presents were even unwrapped.  Success!

Undy, who loves the color red, got an apron with little aprons on it.

Astro got a hobo bag that she decided to use for her laptop and accessories.  I also have to post her expression because one day she's going to win the Nobel prize and I like having these kind of pictures handy. 

For Victoria, I had to redo her present because I had originally used fleece instead of the final crocheting, and didn't allow enough room for your hand to go into the mitten.  So she got her Christmas present for her birthday, which is New Year's Eve.  However, she really got her present a week or two later at a Chick-Fil-A.  

These are no ordinary mittens.  They're smittens!  You and your person each wear a mitten on the outer hand and then there is a big one for both your hands between you.  So you can hold hands while walking around in the cold. 

It looks like Victoria is about to deck Bo.  Well, she might have.  It was too cold that night for me to remember much in the parking lot.

All in all, Handmade Christmas 2008 was a success, and I plan on doing it again this year.  I started on the presents early, but I took too long a break between starting and leaving for Christmas and some presents I didn't even come up with the idea until the last minute.  Let's just say I was pretty sick of the single crochet come Christmas.