Held in Contempt of Car Dealership

Good morning  afternoon, dah-lings! I just got back from a 10 miler on the dreadmill. It was pouring when I woke up, and I had a 12 miler on the training plan (half marathon is this Saturday – !!!!) so I compromised with a 10 on the treadmill. I watched the entire movie, Law Abiding Citizen, which will undoubtedly give me nightmares, but was good nonetheless.

The 10 miles passed by surprisingly quickly. Before I knew it, there was just 3 miles left, and the I finished the ten in 1:37:53

What 10 miles on a treadmill looks like:

Ew.

Be glad you can’t smell the internet 😉

Pre-run breakkie:

Just Flat Out wrap with a smushed nanner and some PB & Co. Cinnamon Raisin PB in it.

 

So good, so simple!

Post-run luncheroni:

A Mediterranean scramble on some whole wheat toast – included were 2 eggs, 2 egg whites, artichoke hearts, kamalata olives, sun dried tomatoes, spinach, and goat cheese.

Oh, and hot sauce 🙂 YUM!

Man…I have quite the story for you guys.

So in light of recent changes and realizations, my husband, has been planning on selling his mistress beloved BMW:

I believe he wept a little on the inside.

He has been researching trucks, and found “the one” on Friday night. When I get home from my last training appointment that night, he said he’d planned on driving up to Elgin, Illinois (almost three hours north) on Saturday to get it. I volunteered to push back my long run to today and go along with him after my Saturday morning clients.

So before I headed out the door to train on Saturday morning, I had a lovely quick breakfast:

A toasted Ezekiel muffin with organic strawberry jam on one half and a carob powder/banana/AB sauce on the other half. Deeeelicious 🙂

Trained a bit, came home, and made up some “driving fuel” aka a Green Monster”

Just the basics – ice, 1 frozen banana, 1/2 scoop protein powder, almond milk, and a bunch of spinach.

And we were off!

It was kind of a long drive, so we stopped to have some lunch:

hahah kidding, we didn’t have lunch here, but I thought it would be a fun photo op 😉

We really just made a quick pit stop at Subway since we didn’t want to be gone all day long…little did we know then…

I ate about half, and eventually had to throw the other half out (I’ll explain later)

So we finally got to the HUGE dealership around 2:45 and started haggling. Both Shane and I hate this part of car shopping. But after about 4 counter offers, we caved and signed all the papers. Done and Done two hours later. Or so we thought…

We waited. And waited. And WAITED. Two hours had passed and it was almost SEVEN o clock. That’s FOUR hours after we arrived. The finance guy was back logged they said. We told him we had to drive three hours south after this and had a dog to let out. They couldn’t have cared any less. EVERY single manager was as rude as could be.

Oh! but around 7:00, we got free pizza for our patience…

lol

another snackie:

 

The hubski got so mad he raised his voice and said a few choice words to one of the managers who completely ignored us when we asked about how much longer it would be. Oh, and this was around 8:30. Then 9:00 rolled around…we’d been there six hours.

 

By this time we were so slap happy from staring at the same four walls and hearing the same music over and over again that we couldn’t stop laughing LOL.

Our “Honda faces”

LOL – about to go insane!

FINALLY around 9:30, we went back to sign the finance papers.

Shane told the only couple waiting after us that we had just posted bail and we were free bahaha

Seriously it was the worst car buying experience ever. We really didn’t have any options. We had sold our car, and couldn’t take the new car because of liability purposes. And apparently we couldn’t take a rental car because they couldn’t find any plates. I call BS but whatever.

We rolllled on into our house around 1:00 in the morning, and needless to say CRASHED.

hehehe. It was very disturbing, but hey, it’s a story to tell. The Honda behind it all…

                         

Well loves, I have a pretty busy day ahead so I better get crack a lackin! I’m working on a new flyer/poster advertising my personal training services to post around the gym. Right now mine are just made from Word…time to get fancy schmancy up in here! 😉

 

What’s the worst waiting experience you’ve had? It could be at a car dealership, an airport, the store, whatever!

It’s Shooow(er) Time!

Having a fab Saturday? I sure can’t kick!

Let me tell you, that Power Yoga was a SUCCESS! The class description said to prepare to sweat, and sweat I did.

The class is actually a class in the loft area of my gym. It’s an ashtanga yoga class with lots of vinyasas. It was also the “launch class” today and had a few newbies, so I’m hoping the regular weekly classes are even more challenging.

After class I was talking to the instructor about how much I enjoyed the class, and how hard it has been actually trying to find a good, challenging yoga class here in Bloomington. She felt the exact same way, and that’s how she got the idea to start the class. I’m so excited to start attending this class regularly 😀

After yoga, I did about 35 more minutes of cardio, and then headed back to the homefront to get ready for a shower.

Once showered, I felt a little snacky from my work out.

 

Lovely combo of plain Oikos, fruit + nut granola, chopped apple = happy belly

 

Tried to convince myself to clean the house, but only ended up doing one load of laundry, then started to catch up on your lovely bloggies instead 😀

All the sudden it was lunch time!

The last blog I read was Miss Snackface’s, and naturally, I had to try making some cheetahs!

 

 

OK ya’ll…I’ve made sweet potato fries before, but none like these. Yumtopia!!! Perfect amount of crunchiness. If you haven’t tried making sweet potato fries with this recipe, I encourage you all to do so stat!

But that’s not all. On plate numero uno, the cheetahs, and on plate numero dos…

 

Hummus and dippers platter! Dippers were orange bell pepper, broccoli, muchrooms, and crackers.

Nom to the nom.   

As I was finishing nomming, my ride to the shower came, and I grabbed my gift and headed out.

 

   

Twas such a cute baby shower! The decorations were adorable, and there weren’t too many cheesy games. Just a couple, and not the kind that make people feel awkward. My kinda shower.

Little self-tidbit: at my bridal shower, I didn’t have any games for the guests to play. Just mimosas 😉

Got home from the shower and started to actually clean the house. The original tentative game plan was to have another couple over for a night of Euchre, but that fell through, so the hubs and I decided to have a date night at one of our favorite restaurants in town, Biaggis!

I was feeling fun and had a martini while waiting for our table:

 

French martinis and I go back 😉

After being seated noshing on some bread and olive oil, our entrees came out.

For mine, I had the eggplant parmesan:

 

 

Gaahhh I can’t explain how delicious this was. Hands down best eggplant parm I’ve ever eaten.

Dessert, however, was in our future, so I had to force myself to only eat half – and there was a LOT of eggplant there!

Also had a glass of red, red, wine with the din:

 

 

Full, but not quite miserable yet, we ordered the white chocolate bread pudding to put us over the top:

 

 

OK…words cannot even explain how decadent and delicious this dessert is. I’ve never had anything like it before.

All right. That did the job. Now we were miserably full, and decided to linger a while longer, while digesting and chatting it up, and sipped some coffee to aid in digestion:

  

Perfect!

Now we’re all settled in for the night and playing a little Wii Mario World.

However, I’m beginning to think we should have gotten decaf coffee after our meal, because it’s about time for bed, but I’m ready to beat Mario World whether it takes all night! Back in the day, I’d do that all the time! Blasted sense of time…

Well folks, I’ve got a level two Sand World to beat. Hope you have a fabulous Sunday! The husband and I are trying out a new church tomorrow. We’ve yet to find one that just “feels right” here, and we’re really hoping this is the one. Wish us luck!

 

Do you like to play all the shower games at wedding and baby showers? I’m clearly not a fan. I’m a HUGE kid at heart, and usually love all games, but there’s just something about shower games that give me the groans.

A Snow Day!

Good evening!

I’ve had myself quite the nice little day! When I went to bed last night, a big winter storm was approaching. It kept on throughout the night and early morning, and ended up bringing along with it 7 inches of snow and heavy winds!

So when Niko woke me up at 5:00 this morning, the first thing I did was all our company’s hotline, to find out…they were CLOSED! Wahoo! Well, there was a delayed opening until 10:00 a.m., but since I already had my work lap top home with me, and at 9:30 our street still hadn’t been plowed, I decided to stay inside and work from home the whole day.

And not only did I get to work in my slippers (which makes work MUCH more tolerable, by the way) but I also got to work all day with this as my chair:

 

 

I’m a huge proponent of using your exercise ball as your office chair. They’re much better for your back, because the way you’re sitting, it forces you to tuck your tailbone under and have a flat back. Thus it naturally makes you to use your tranverse abdominis more in order to tuck your tail bone in. If only I weren’t too embarrassed to bring one into the office. Heck, I don’t even know if they’re ALLOWED in the office!

Besides, I couldn’t have used the computer chair if I wanted.

 

Seat’s taken.

You wouldn’t believe how much work I got done today. In the nine hours I worked, I probably got what I would get done in two days if I were actually in the office. I was mad productive. It’d be nice to have one remote work day per week…just to catch up if nothing else.

Another perk? Being able to actually walk down to the kitchen to make lunch. It really gets old having to make and pack up a lunch the night before, lug it to work in a lunch box, and nuke it in a microwave/eat it out of Tupperware.

Today I definitely took advantage of having a stove available on a work day and made  a 1 egg + 2 egg white, mushrooms, and spinach wrap – in an Ezekiel tortilla:

 

 

Sooo good. Sooo filling!

I also broke for a snack a couple hours before lunch. OK, this is my current snack obsession:

Plain Oikos and a Nutridel cookie. It’s SO yummy – and fun to eat! I just break the cookie into fourths, and dip it into the yogurt! I don’t know what I’m gonna do when I run out of these cookies!

Around 3:00, I needed a mid-day pick me up, and decided it’d be the perfect opportunity to bust out the juicer and make a grapefruit + carrot juice.

 

 

One big grapefruit and three big carrots, pulverized-style:

 

 

Drank it alongside the computer, and it helped me get over the mid-day slump. And tastes SO good. The husband calls this cup my sippy cup , by the way bahaha.

I think Niko was happy I could be home with her, too:) She had a lot of fun in the snow today. I even shoveled out a little area for her, but she thought it’d be more fun to tromp around in the deepest areas of the yard.

 

 

Aww. Yes, aww until she comes in and is covered with snow that will inevitable melt on the hardwood floor 😉 I honestly don’t know what she’s going to do tomorrow when the low is –11 degrees! –11!! shudders

 

Got done with work around 5:00, got in about an hour long cardio + weights workout, and got started on dinner.

On tonight’s menu was… Pumpkin Spiced Quinoa w/ Chickpeas!

 

 

 

For the chickpeas, I just used Mama Pea’s recipe for pumpkin spice roasted chickpeas, and then I basically used the same ingredients to season the quinoa. I was craving something sweet, and this hit the spot.

 

  

 

Deeelish!

After playing a little Mario Wii World with the husband, it’s now about 10:00. And I’ve got the lives of some Trashy Real Housewives DVR to catch up on.

Catch ya’ll lata! Happy Friday tomorrow (wahooo!!!)

Do you think you are/would be more productive if you worked remotely or onsite? I learned today that I’d definitely be more productive working remotely. And although I just listed a ton of benefits in this post, it might get lonely after a while. I’ve made so many friends at work, and I’m not sure what I’d do without some sort of people interaction after a while. Plus I’d probably get stinky, not having to shower and all. I kid, I kid 😉

Five Doors Down

Greetings!

 

Oooh, man – a blizzard is coming tonight! My company sent out about a dozen emails today telling employees to take their laptops home – and this place hardly EVER closes down. It’s only 9:30 p.m. now, and it’s supposed to continue on through the night along with high winds. I’m a wuss in the snow, so even if it doesn’t shut down, I doubt I’ll make it in at my usual time of 6:30.

This morning for breakfast, I had the most amazing breakfast cookie ever! I know I’ve said it before, but this one takes the cake cookie, folks. With that said, I’ve FINALLY found something that I like PB2 in. A breakfast cookie!!

Might not look to appetizing, but it was scrumptious! First I mixed the dry ingredients: 1/2 c. oats, 1.5 T hemp powder, 1.5 T PB2, chopped raw pecans. Then mixed the wet ingredient: 1/4 c. canned pumpkin puree, 1 T agave nectar.  Set it in the fridge over night, and woke up to a seriously delicious feast of breaking. Try this at home, kids 😉

Work was work. Had a lunch meeting, and did some catch up work, and came home to try and take Niko for a walk. I feel like I’ve been gone ALL the time, and I barely have time to exercise her and just spend time with her in general. Tis sad. But first, had a little snackie since my stomach has been somewhat of a black hole today:

 

Pretty slices huh? Thanks to my new little Pampered Chef toy 😀

 

Since it was only 14º out, we bundled:

 

Yeah, remember this doggy coat? She absolutely refuses to wear (or at least move while wearing) the faux fur hood on this coat. It’s too much for her. Luckily, I figured out it was detachable! Who knew. And we were off!

Aaand got about 5 doors down before the sidewalk turned to pure ice, as did the street, so we turned around and walked back. Oh well…an offer’s as good as a buy, right? 😀

 

After getting in and hopping on the elliptical for about 30 minutes, followed by lower body weights, it was time for dinner.

But by this time, it was already 7:00, and I really didn’t feel like cooking much. You know what this means…salad time!

Mmm, mmm. Spinach, broccoli, orange bell pepper, tomato, mushrooms, avocado, and julienned zuke. Wait a second…ok I’m an idiot. I have 5 Trader Joe’s Meatless balls sitting in the oven right now. Apparently I forgot to add them to my salad…and JUST NOW realized that. Darnit! I was really craving those too 😦 Bahaha I’m so aloof sometimes. Hey, at least I remembered to turn the oven off…

Regardless, this salad was scrumptious. And alongside I had a piece of brown rice toast and black cherry preserves.

 

The rest of the night has been spent lying on the bed watching Wednesday night TV (In the Middle, Modern Family, Cougar Town) with the husband. While watching, we munched on a HUGE bowl of air popped popcorn. We decided to relax and watch shows on the bed tonight because A) our upstairs living room furniture, while super cute, is uncomfortable and B) you just can’t cuddle in the theatre seating downstairs with unmovable arm rests! Sometimes you just need to snuggle 😀 Especially when it’s about nada degrees outside.

 

Well I’m off to bed to dream of work cancellations in my head 😉

Happy New Year/Binary Day!

Hey everyone! Happy 2010! Happy New Year!

Happy 01-01-10, or as my husband, the techie, cleverly put it, Binary Day! (Since computers operate on 0’s and 1’s)

I won’t tell him if you’re rolling your eyes 😉

Did everyone have an awesome last day of 2009? Mine was great! Although I did have to work, I got off half day, and headed to the gym for my last workout of 2009, which was a 4 mile run in 39 minutes and then a quick leggy workout. Cheers to 2009 workouts, and may 2010’s be even bigger and better!

 

I was SO glad I made all the goodies/appies Thursday night, because I knew I would need to get in a nap if I was going to make it until midnight. So after lunch, I hit the sheets for about an hour and a half for a glorious and refreshing nappy.

Woke up, and then it was all about getting ready for the New Year’s Eve festivities:)

 

And as more friends showed up, more food magically appeared on the counter:

There were only three of us couples, but we had enough food to feed an army! Twas a feast, in deed.

After catching up and munching on the appetizers, it was time to go downstairs to the party room to start getting our celebration on!

The girls kicked off the celebration with a cinnamon applesauce shot:

Just a wee bit of a kick 😉

The rest of the night, I had one more shot and a couple vodka and orange juices:

 

My friend, Destiny, brought over her dachshund, Pocket, and while we partied downstairs, they played and played and played upstairs:

BFF4L!!

Around 10:00 we took a break from the festivities to eat an actual dinner. Destiny’s boyfriend, Steve, brought over all the fixings for tacos. We had chicken, shrimp, and veggie tacos for everyone. And before long, it was nearing midnight! You know what that means…time to put your party hat on! What what!

Thankfully, we actually did the count down to the right time zone this year! haha. And there’s no friends I’d want to ring it in with more! Love these people 🙂

We actually all made it to bed before 2:00, and woke up around 10 for breakfast, coffee, and the obligatory New Year’s Day mimosa:

    
While I did partake in a mimosa, my next drink wasn’t so fun. I don’t feel too hung over or anything, but to give myself a little perk me up, I made myself a drink that tasted worse than either of the shots I had last night: Amazing Grass + Water:

Blech!! It definitely needed a chaser…

Yes, I actually enjoy the taste kombucha enough for it to be a chaser 😉

Then Shane got around to making a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast. I’ve said it before, but the techie (hey I kinda like that name for him,) makes the best eggs evah.

To compliment the eggs, we had cinnamon raisin Ezekiel, and Millet toast:

What a delicious first meal of 2010 😀

All in all it was a fabulous night of friends, cards, dance parties, and blow horns to ring in the new year! Can’t wait to see what 2010 entails.

Here’s to 2010 being everything you hope for and more. Cheers!

The rest of the day is going to be spent getting my pictures from the cruise organized – everyone has been asking to see them, and I’ve been a lazy bum and have only uploaded them here on the bloggy –  and possibly hitting up a movie later. Hmm Up in the Air or It’s Complicated…

 

How did you reign in the new year? A relaxing night at home? A night out on the town? A little of both?

I’ll Bet You Could Juice That!

Howdy, howdy!

Nothing like starting off a week than some fresh squeezed carrot, apple, and grapefruit juice!

More on that later 😉

This past weekend was a pretty short Christmas vacation (worked up until noon on Christmas Eve) however, somehow I feel adequately rested, even with all the celebration!

In fact, we concluded our Christmas celebrations by having Shane’s dad and his girlfriend, Linda, over for Christmas lunch!

I set my alarm for 7:00, so I’d have plenty of time to get in a good workout before finishing getting the house cleaned and the food prepared. Since we were snowed in, I had to workout upstairs, and I decided to make it a cardio + weights day, and fit the following into exactly one hour:

• 10 minute warm up on the elliptical
• Upper body: back and triceps with the following exercises:
• Skull crushers + long arm pullovers using a 20 lb. dumbbell (works better with a bar bell, though)
• one armed row on each arm
• tricep kick backs
• posterior flies
• 30 minutes on elliptical with an incline and resistance of 6-10

I was a sweaty mess afterward, so I hopped in the shower, and got cooked up a nice warm breakfast before I got started on the meal and appies. Since the almond butter was a-dwindling in my Trader Joe’s Almond Butter container, I jumped at the chance to make stove top OIAJ with these ingredients:

• 1 cup water, half cup oats
• 1/4 cup canned pumpkin stirred in at the end
• 1 T agave
• 1 T TJ’s pumpkin butter drizzled on top

 

Gah, this combination is a phenom in my book of oats!

Then it was time to get cookin’! For appetizers and snackies, I made hummus with crackers and pita chips, guacamole with blue chips, and shrimpies with cocktail sauce. I had all of this set out when Shane’s dad and his girlfriend arrived.

For the meal I made some lasagna roll ups! I made half vegetarian/portabella, half with meat – and each had ricotta, spinach, and tomato sauce in them:

After getting them all rolled up and in their respective pans, I covered them with tinfoil and put them in the fridge until our guests arrived. Then, I simply got them out of the fridge and popped ‘em in the oven! They needed an hour to bake, so that gave us plenty of time to munch on the snackies, and sip on the red:

Just discovered I like Chianti today! My SIL got me a bottle of it for Christmas, and I broke into it today. Thanks, Jami! 😀 I also love Pinot Noir, as you can see;-)

Thankfully, everything turned out fabulously, and everyone loved it all! Either that, or they’re really good fakers 😉 heh heh

Oh, and look at the sweet gift Shane’s dad got us!!!

 

A juicer!! I couldn’t believe it! Perfect timing, considering I’m suspecting one of the reasons my last blender bit the dust was because I fed it carrots 😉 While I was dreaming up the concoction above (holy yum, btw,) the husband was trying to come up with the craziest combo’s possible, taking the “it can juice about anything” quite literally. At one point, he even said, “Hey… I’ll bet we can juice a cinnamon roll… or how about pizza juice?!”  Honey, you can’t juice that.

And Linda, his girlfriend, also got us an amazing gift basket. She’s SO sweet, she did a great job on the gifts, too. This was our first time meeting her, and I absolutely loved everything in the basket.

I was so mad that I forgot to take pictures when they were here. We don’t have many pictures of Shane and his dad together, and I figured today would be a great day to change that! Unfortunately I remembered this about 10 minutes after they left. Oh well, next time…

 

The hubby and I savored hour last hours of the weekend by snuggling up on the couch and watching the movie, Up! It was such a cute movie! Squirrel!!

Hopefully everyone had a lovely end to their Christmas weekend!

Do you have a signature dish or appetizer that you tend to make often when you have company? I almost always make guacamole 🙂

Office Puppy Chow

And no, I’m not talking about gossip 😉

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Good morning! We’re almost to that weekend! 😀

 

First off, I wanted to let you guys know, I took a plunge yesterday, and did something very exciting yesterday!! It’s fitness/health/healthy lifestyle-related, but I can’t share exactly what it is yet, because it’s not100% certain, and I don’t want to jinx myself. Seems like whenever I talk about something like it’s for certain when it’s not completely 100%, it comes around to bite me! haha I will let you know as soon as I know though 😀

 

Secondly, after I posted last night, I got to work on the treat I am bringing into work today. There’s about a gazillion birthdays in October at my work (do you know a lot of people with October birthdays?) so we are celebrating with a “food day.” This typically consists of everyone bringing in inevtiably not-so-good-for-you food, and grazing all. day. long. I try to mostly stay away, unless someone has brought it something very yummy from somewhere like Great Harvest Bread or Panera. I can never turn down a bar or bagel from those places 😉

 

Well, this time I put in my part by making something I’ve been seeing on a lot of you guys’ blogs for a while…

 

Puppy Chow!!

 

Is there a puppy chow season or something? Seems like it’s been everywhere on the bloggies lately! Anyway, my puppy chow isn’t your typical puppy chow. Instead of chocolate chips, I use dark chocolate and butterscotch chips, and instead of peanutbutter, I use White Chocolate Wonder and Dark Chocolate Dreams peanut butter:

 

Ohhhh yeaaah.

 

I bought some Halloween cookies, in case I got home and realized I didn’t have all the ingredients or that I screwed it up (somehow??)…

 

 

Alas, I prevailed!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Mmmm sugary, chocolatey, peanut buttery goodness. I told Shane I’m like a crack addict around this thing. As soon as I finished making it (before even letting it cool) I made a small bowl for myself. I got my fix 😉 Hopefully it will all get eaten at food day today. However, I don’t know how appetizing it’d be anyway after a day of a bunch of hands being in it…eek.

 

 

Wish me luck on staying away from the “food table” all day 😉 I have a birthday lunch out with a friend today, so that will be my incentive. I don’t want to go out to lunch already stuffed, right? After this lunch, though, no more lunches out for me. Shane and I are trying to save, save, save, but it seems to be the season to spend, spend, spend. Every time I turn around, someone at work is telling me about some kind of party they are having, whether it’s a purse party, a jewelry party, or a fundraiser party. I don’t mind spending money for fundraising, but anything else, I pass on. I’ve spent enough money on Tastfully Simple, Lia Sohphia etc…

Do a lot of people you know have birthdays in October? When is the month where there’s the most birthdays for people you know? For me, it used to be March/April, but I think I’m singing a different tune, now!