Winning Friends with Salad

Hey guys,

I took an unexpected blogging vacation, a blog-cation if you will. I’ve been kinda stressed lately, and things moved very quickly since Friday - I just need a little bit of time. I took some pictures, but you’ll have to excuse the gaps in photography.

On Friday afternoon, I came home and began cleaning the apartment. There were two vacations and a busy week of mess-making to clean. I had a snack around 2PM of a Honest Foods bar: Cran Lemon Zest:

Delicious, as per usual. After some vigorous cleaning, I had an early dinner at 4:30. I had my first training session at 5, and Peter and I were meeting for a movie after that - so I wanted to make sure I was fed for all of that.

I sat down with a turkey and cheese sandwich on double fiber wheat bread and a nectarine. I only took two bites of the nectarine though - it was too mushy.

My training session with MaryBeth was great! We talked all about my goals and what I’ve been doing so far. She was super happy to hear that I am working with a nutritionist and am striving for a healthy weight loss of an additional 30 lbs, a 50 lb weight loss since December 07. After talking about my goals, we did a mini-training session that lasted about 30 min. We did push-ups - and I did 20! Can you believe it?! I’ve never been able to do more than 3 at a time, but something about having MB there really motivated me! Aside from that we did some pilates inspired moves: 100s, bridge, breathing exercises. We also did weighted lunges and squats. It was great! Afterwards, we talked more about her history (she’s a NASM-certified trainer who’s been a trained ballet dancer all her life). She’s super sweet and peppy - and I really think she can push me - exactly what I need! We have our first 1 hr full session on Monday - I can’t wait! Since most of this session was spent talking, I didn’t get a huge calorie burn. Training Session with MB = 211 calories burned.

After our session, I went home and met up with P. Our movie was in about 45 min, so we divided and conquered - I showered and got cleaned up, he went to Balducci’s and got movie snacks. We saw Pineapple Express, which was good (love Seth Rogan), but the best part was that my favorite guy of all time, HUEY LEWIS, did the theme song, Back to the Future style. That made the Apatow gang a billion percent cooler in my book.

It was kind of funny though - it was alot more action film-y than I expected. You know those guys were just like, hey, everyone loves us so much, I bet we could do an action film and people would see it and love it and not even notice that there is no way in hell that we could be action heroes. Haha, oh well, good for them, they got to live their action fantasies.

On Saturday, we went to brunch at a nearby restaurant. I had a hot ham and cheese with greens (unpictured).

I spent the rest of the day scrubbing my apt. I met my new love: Mr Clean Magic Eraser. Holy crap, this product is amazing!!! It cut through 3 yrs of New York City soot and dirt on the baseboards of my apt. I couldn’t believe it. Parts of the apt I never thought could be clean are suddenly sparkling - with limited elbow grease. Just amazing. I now have 7 boxes in my apt.

And I know I ate stuff, but nothing really of interest. Seriously, I spent the entire day on my hands and knees scrubbing the floor with my new boyfriend, Mr Clean.

This morning I woke up ready to get back to reality. I headed straight to the gym - 10 min warmup on the funky elliptical, then I did a bunch of weights and mat work - basically the same stuff I did with MB on Friday. I did that for about 20 min before I headed out on my C25K run. I got a little behind on my runs because of vacations and things, but I’m back on now. This week I ran 3 min, walked 90 sec, ran 5 min, walked 2.5 min, ran 3, walked 90 sec and ran 5 min. I didn’t think I was going to be able to pull off those 5 min stretches - but I did! My HR was up there too - in the 170s! Weights plus C25K 4.1 Run = 527 calories burned.

After my workout, P and I decided to head out to the Brooklyn IKEA. I’m redecorating our very small NYC apt. I’ve looked high and low for a dining table that would meet our needs: seats 2, but able to accommodate 4, be around 29″ long and wide (or a diameter of 29″), and be somewhat attractive. I was even willing to pay a little extra for the right table - but it didn’t matter - I couldn’t find one! As a last resort, I tried IKEA - and voila! I found my table! Unfortunately it’s a blonde birch wood (hate light wood), but I’m going to paint it, so it’s all good.

Anyway, we set out on our voyage to Brooklyn. Before we left Chelsea, we grabbed brunch to eat in the subway. We split a Venti Iced Coffee:

And I had a peach and raspberry parfait - not the my ideal nutritional, but pretty good considering.

The trip out to IKEA was a snap. We really hit all the trains and the shuttle bus at exactly the right time. We picked up our little table, some mixing bowls, and a few wine goblets. Definitely a success.

When we got home, of course, I wanted to run to Anthropology first thing to get some cute placements and little bowls. So while I did that, Peter was kind enough to set up the table (the store closed in 30 min so it was now or never!). When I got home, I had a little snack while we finished setting up the table and chairs. 2 big scoops of 0% Fage with a banana and a little honey:

Yum!

Since we had eaten so little all day, P wanted a heavy dinner of burgers. Since he had made my dining table dreams come true, I had to oblige. Here is our first meal on our new table with new place mats:

I got a turkey burger with cheddar, and P and I split a small Air Fries, and a small mixed fruit. Yum! This dinner totally hit the spot. We were both starving (poor food planning today) - so this was great.

For desert, we split a piece of maple candy from Maine:

What a perfect little end to the day.

So here’s the table at large. Like I said, I’m going to paint it to tie into my new color scheme - but that won’t be until late September or October. Until then, it’s nice to have some place to sit and eat! (It doesn’t even look so bad with those chairs, either - and believe it or not, those were a completely separate purchase P made 3 YEARS ago).

Okay, so that was my weekend! Lots of nesting. Tomorrow morning, I’d like to get up first thing and do my C25K run. Night!