Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

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10 ways to make your day healthier (that you won’t even notice after a week).

We all want to be healthier, but it sounds super overwhelming at times, I recommend read all mornings the news website healthmania and then work out!  Eat twelve servings of veggies per day!  Don’t drink a case of beer!  Exist on only green tea and pure sunshine!  Who has time for all of that?

I hear plastic is full of fiber and low in saturated fats.

Well, if you don’t have time to make your own kombucha and grow your own organic veggie garden while running marathons daily, you’re not alone.  Here’s ten ways you can actually get healthier with a barely noticeable effort and time commitment in your day once they become a habit.

1. Here’s the biggie: get 8+ hours of sleep as often as you can.  If I’m sleep deprived, I’d rather sleep in than work out in the morning (as long as it’s not all the time).  Sometimes means you have to go to bed instead of finding out who’s going to die next while binge watching Game of Thrones, and that sucks, but you’re at your best when you get the amount of sleep your body needs to feel rested and awesome.  A lot of other things fall into place when you’re caught up on sleep.

2. Swap your easy carby breakfast for something with protein.  Switch your cereal and milk for cereal and greek yogurt with berries and a drizzle of honey.  They take about the same amount of time to prepare – almost nothing – and you’ll feel a world of difference.  Huge protein and fullness boost.

Tip: Hate yogurt like my husband and want something else easy?  Grab a decent quality protein bar like a Quest bar (or the cheaper Costco brand) or make a protein shake.  My fave is Muscle Milk Strawberry with frozen strawberries and coconut milk.

Looks messy.  Tastes yummy and takes less than a minute to make.

3. Break like a smoker.  I’ve noticed the only people at offices actually take breaks are the smokers.  Be a smoker!  Except, don’t smoke, and take a walk.  If it’s too hot or cold, you can typically find a parking garage to walk and be sheltered from the elements.  Or pace up and down your hallway at work and make everyone nervous.  Breaks help your productivity, creativity, and if I walk at breaks and lunch for about 20 minutes a pop – I rarely have trouble hitting 10k steps in a day.

4. Water is Life. Use a 20+ oz bottle and aim to refill it 2 times before the end of the workday (and then once at home).  I am so terrible at water but it is super important so I make it a priority.  It decreases your appetite, improves your mood, fights fatigue, aids in proper digestion, its good for your skin, improves memory… basically, if you’re feeling a little off, chances are you’re dehydrated and you can improve your life with the proper amount of H20.  While the amount you need is variable, aiming for 60-80 ounces minimum during the day is key (and add more to supplement workouts).

Tip: if you spend a lot of time in the heat or workout more than an hour a day, you should replace your electrolytes.  If you generally work indoors and hit the treadmill for 20 minutes a few times a week, you’ll probably be fine with just water.  And if water just doesn’t sit well, try it with some lemon or lime or other fruit for some light flavor.

But… but… I put water in my smoothie… but then also tequila…

5. Walk the walk.  Instead of driving to McDonalds for some fast food or ordering delivery, spend some time outside and get some activity at the same time.  Pack your lunch and eat at your desk after you’ve worked up an appetite OR get healthy take out within walking distance (but you have to walk there and back).  Lunch is a great time to get some fresh air and activity without even getting too sweaty.

6. Hierarchy of snackings. Feeling munchy in the afternoon and want some candy?  First, try a cup of tea or some water.  A lot of time we’re actually thirsty instead of being hungry.  If that doesn’t do it for you, try some crisp veggies – carrots and snap peas are my fave, if you can’t eat them plain try with some hummus or low fat yogurt dip.  If you NEEEEED something salty try about 20 pistachios (in the shell, so you have to work for them).  And you know what?  Occasionally you need the chocolate.  If you can keep it to a square or two of dark chocolate (instead of a whole bar of milk), it’s practically health food because there’s antioxidants in that shit (though more in this case is not better – a dab’ll do ya).

Tip: here’s a chart for what your cravings are supposed to mean.  However, I’m going to call shenanigans on the alcohol one – when I want whiskey, I want whiskey.  Or to be independently wealthy.  But, at least immediately, whiskey.

Are chips tastier?  Sure.  But they also taste good and you won’t hate yourself after…

7. Feeling tired in the afternoon?  Instead of coffee or snacks, try getting up to take a 15 minute walk outside.  We’re not meant to be indoors as much as we are and some sunshine and activity (or at least being outside) usually will perk you up.  Yes, I’ve mentioned walks three times in seven tips.  You will be a happier, healthier person, and better employee, if you get up from your desk a few times a day and see daylight and move around a bit.

8. Don’t give up your favorite foods, but make them healthier.  For example, I love spaghetti and meatballs for dinner.  Yum.  However, go to Olive Garden and get it and it will set you back about 1000 calories (and that’s BEFORE salad and crack breadsticks).  Even making it at home, you will probably use two servings of pasta because one serving of pasta looks really sad in anything but a kiddie bowl.  So, I’ll put that one serving of pasta, tomato sauce, and meatballs on top of some sauteed spinach in garlic and serve with a green salad.  As they say, you can have your pasta and eat it too (without gaining weight).

Tip: If you want to be extra awesome, try one of these healthier pastas.  But if that sounds overwhelming, one step at a time.  Add some veggies you like and think about that later.

Bacon cheddar onion pepper oatmeal breakfast muffins.  Almost as good as a kolache or breakfast sandwich…

9. Enact a bedtime ritual.  I typically use my foam roller for about 5 minutes and have a cup of sleepytime tea before I pick up my book and read until my eyes close.  You might take a bubblebath or meditate or something.  Whatever it is, it’s nice to have a ritual that signals your brain “ok, it’s time to go to sleep soon” that’s different from what you’ve been doing before (watching TV, surfing on your phone, fighting crime in a mask and tights, etc).

10. Try to stay away from screens as you wind down.  I used to watch TV to fall asleep and I’d sleep fitfully.  Now I read my (paperwhite) kindle to sleep and I generally fall asleep quicker, don’t wake up when the episode ends and have to watch another one, and sleep more soundly.  And I get to dream about aliens and lasers because I like to read pulpy sci fi.  Win!

TIP: Read something you enjoy but isn’t too exciting or makes your brain work too much.  I can’t really fall alseep reading non-fiction on subjects I’m interested in and sometimes I’ll just have to put the book down right before the exciting showdown because I know I’ll read until the end if I don’t.

All of these things at one time seemed completely overwhelming to me.  Who has time to take walks at work?  Water is yucky.  I don’t WANT all these vegetables.  I CAN’T fall asleep without the TV on.  These are things that I’ve said to myself over the years.  However, sometime if you give something a try for a week or two, it becomes a habit you look forward (or at least makes you feel good) to instead of dread.

Do you have a great healthy habit that doesn’t take much effort that I haven’t mentioned here?  Hit me up.

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I love weekends.

It must be summer.  At work, lately, I feel like a kid waiting for the last school bell to ring so I can go play.  I make video games, and we’re in a period where everything is going rather smoothly (crosses fingers), so it’s not as if I’m being asked to mine salt or anything.  There’s just something about OUTSIDE lately, even now that it’s hot as balls, that keeps calling me to go frolick.  At least for a little while.  Until I skate the line of heat exhaustion and need to go die back in some glorious air conditioning, rinse and repeat.

Jul11-5

Riding in 100 degree heat for an hour and a half with the crew definitely resulted in a large dose of AC after.

Friday was a day of water.  While there was that whole work-y thing wrapped around it, I spent my lunch doing gloriously stretchy thinky laps in the outdoor pool under the sunshine.  There are not many finer ways to spend a lunch break.  After work, we hit the water park, and floated the lazy river for an hour and a half, talking through stuff, solving problems, figuring stuff out.  And… it was punctuated with a fantastic fireworks show on our last lap!  I <3 the wah pah.

Saturday, I think I learned a neat trick with salt.  See, we got out much later than expected- it was almost 10am and hot hot hot hot hot.  I popped a salt pill as we rolled out on the ride.  I’ve been meaning to try it to see if it fixes my issues in the heat but for some reason, it’s just felt SO WRONG to take a big capsule full of salt when I eat so much of it already.  The ride was scorching, my soul still died a bit rolling up and down the hills of Ronald Reagan in the hot sun, no shade, and brutal wind.

Jul11-4

Still smiling at mile 20 of the bike.  Only a little bit of my soul is gone.  This is good.

However, when we started our run, something weird happened – I was not nearly as bonky as normal in the heat.  We did have some cloud cover, but I seemed to actually start improving instead of fading as I went along and I finished the 2 miles feeling strong, not half an inch away from death as per usual.  I’ll have to do more experiments (like our evening brick workouts), but this may be a small part of the key to not dying on the run leg of triathlons, perhaps.

We’ve downloaded this silly (awesome) game called Pokemon Go.  It’s essentially a geocaching game if you’re familiar with that, but with a popular video game theme.  You walk around your neighborhood (or work or wherever), and it becomes your game world.  You can visit a store (which will actually correspond to a landmark in the real world – like a park, a school, or even a store), go out looking for pokemon to catch, and when you find eggs and you have to walk to hatch them (my current one is a rare 10k distance egg, I’m half way there and hoping to hatch it today).

Jul11-6

We walk a lot already, but I noticed that we stepped it up yesterday both in distance and in pace since we had a purpose (hello 21k step “rest” day).  The cool thing I noticed this week, tons of people I know who would NEVER go on a random walk are out pounding the pavement.  We even have a neighborhood group for it, intended for sharing where we found rare pokemon and scheduling meet ups. There are tons of articles about how people might actually get into shape because of this game (kinda like DDR for me so many years ago).  It warms my heart to see people getting active and also just getting out of the house!

This week is bulk trash week, and we had an old BBQ grill to get to the curb.  While we were prepping to do that, we realized we also had 8 years of junk in our outside workshop area that we’ve never cleaned out.  Usually, we have all the excuses on bulk trash day – it’s too hot, it’s rest day, we’re tired from training, we’ll get it out for the next one, yadda yadda.  Yesterday, it just came together and we spent an hour cleaning out SO MUCH junk.  The level of rat feces on my person by the end was definitely a non-zero amount.  It may be psychological, but I am still itchy from SOMETHING this weekend.  Itchy, but accomplished at least!

Jul11-2

We are the trashy neighbors.  Not pictured: a giant rusty double barrel grill on the other side of the driveway.  Thank goodness it was all gone this morning.

Sunday was a very productive, active rest day.  The kind you almost need another rest day from… oops!  Good thing it’s recovery week, which means  I should be alright.

This week’s training was spot on, while it was a little crazy logistics-wise at times, I hit every session I set out to do, after rearranging due to Monday’s gym closure.  I got in 8.5 hours of training, which is just fine for the first peak week of many.  As I said Friday, I feel like I don’t *need need* a rest week, but I’m totally okay with having it.

  • Monday: Home weights
  • Tuesday: 2 mile run AM, 1200m lunch swim with a few 50-100m pickups in there, and endurance cycle class after work (ended up being a short one at 60 mins).  It happened to be a max endurance power test – I got 320 watts, which was one of the better results in the class.  Yay for not losing too much cycle prowess!
  • Wednesday: 2 mile run AM (I may not be a morning person but I can’t find an excuse not to run 2 damn miles ), lunch weights at the gym, and a 90 min 18 mile beginner (recovery) ride after work
  • Thursday: hot 3 mile run after work.  I was going to go to the gym and do this inside, but I was running short of time and convenience outweighed being comfortable.
  • Friday: 1500m swim, mostly just steady, but with a few spicy 25m pickups at the end
  • Saturday: 22 mile hot hilly ride on the tri bike in about 1:18, 2 mile run after.
  • Sunday: 10 miles of cruiser bike riding

This week is about a few key sessions and a lot of freedom.

  • Monday: 1000m swim test lunch (1300m total), weights PM
  • Wedensday: brick workout PM with the crew (~14 mile ride, 2 mile run fast)
  • Thursday: weights
  • Saturday: 5-6 mile track workout.  Warmup, then ladders (200m, 400m, 800m, 1600m, 800m, 400m, 200m w/appropriate rest in between), then cooldown to round out the mileage.

That’s it.  I’m hoping to swim at least once more if I can and ride bikes some more miles but I’m going to leave it up to whimsy when I go.

Jul11-3

Ode to a beautiful morning.

The best feeling is when you’re totally in sync with your other half.  I started really craving food from a place called Taco Flats, which we’ve only been to once (in February).  I asked Zliten if we could bike there for lunch on Sunday and he said he was actually going to suggest the very same thing.  Our psychic links have been on and off lately, so it was nice to have a perfect connection. 🙂

We rode bikes the 5 miles to get there, and I chose a picadillo beef and a mahi taco, both were amazing.  One MUST have a Pacifico when it’s on draft, it’s just science.  The specific formula is Tacos + Pacifico = AWESOME.  After our bellies were full, we coasted up the street to get groceries and I think we may have found our limit.  I’ll have to look and see how many items we bought, but I’m pretty sure it was over 30 and barely fit in the bike bags and basket.  We took the same way back, which was longer than our normal route, but ended up being much more pleasant with our large haul.

Jul11-1

Hello, lover.  Get in my belly.

Last but not least, I made these amazing savory oatmeal breakfast muffins from my brain.  Ok, I did my normal thing and took inspiration from a few recipes on the interwebs, but they are SO GOOD, y’all!  The muffins have transcended oatmeal and taste kind of like a dense cheddar bay biscuit from Red Lobster.  But as a filling, healthy breakfast muffin with bacon and onion and peppers and scallions.  I’ve already dreamed up about 7 variants to try in the coming weeks.  Recipe here.

As for last week’s progress in #projectraceweight… ehhh?

The good:

  • Breakfast muffins.  Seriously, I get so excited when I find something new I can incorporate into my breakfast routine.
  • I was only 97 calories over TOTAL for the week to stay at -1000 according to fitbit.  Fitbit also said I’m -2.3 down for the week last week (though some of that is water weight lost from TOM).
  • I actually tracked my weekend food.

The bad:

  • I’m still staring at that 5 lbs that I lost last summer.  I’m evening out a bit (all my weights are generally 183-185 instead of wildly swingy), and less fluctuation usually means I’m about to drop some lb-age.  Maybe this is my month to see the 170s if I don’t screw up!
  • I kind of forgot vegetables a lot of last week.  And there was a lot of sweets, probably more than I would have eaten in a month before.  More activity gives me a little leeway, but I’m hanging myself with that rope, unfortunately.
  • I may have tracked my weekend food, but I did it today. 😛  I’m just lucky it ended up working out well.

This week’s goals:

  • 5 fruits and veggies per day.  Part of this is actually eating vegetables for a snack instead of pretzels (at least first).
  • Track all days of food, staying as close to -1000 calories as possible.
  • Hit my 100g protein, 25g fiber, and 40-50g fat macros.  With extra food calories from workouts, it should NOT BE HARD and I didn’t really hit them last week.  How do I do this?  More freggies, less junk.

And on that note… I’m off to play with some kettlebells and learn about injury prevention.  Just another day at the races around here!

Deep and Meaningful…

…just aint workin’ for me today.  So let’s finish up this doozy of a week with a snappy little 5 Random Things Post.  Tricked ya, didn’t I?  Just WAIT until you get a load of what I’m planning for April Fools Day (guess I should let ME know because I haven’t decided yet, tee hee).  Ok, it’s not even technically Friday, and my brain is in crazyland already.  This does not bode well…

1.  I still need to experiment more with it and I’ll do a whole post soon, but OMG, I LOVE LOVE LOVE my garmin forerunner.  I never realized what I was missing but OH GOD I don’t ever want to do another outside run without it.  It always bothered me that I didn’t exactly how far and how fast I was running (some days it didn’t matter to me but I never am opposed to having a reference).  The coolest thing?  It pulls data points about once a house and shows me my pace at each one.  And I can sort of watch my performance after the fact in a graph and go – “ok, that’s where I crossed the street, that’s where the hill started, that’s where I was booking it to make up some time, etc”.  You can import it into google earth even and I could see where I ran around someone who was blocking the sidewalk.  I never REALLY wanted one before (well I did but… it’s expensive!) but it’s seriously awesome.  Today, I’m going to play around with the heartrate monitor strap for my cross training workout. EDIT:  Boo, it doesn’t do heart rate indoors well.  It took my heart rate alright, but said I burnt 18 calories.  Not quite.

1b.  For those of you accustomed to doing 10+ mile runs, do you ever feel like you’re getting ready for a trip?  Workout clothes, sunscreen (if I remember), attach runner ID to one foot, attach shoe wallet with sport beans to other, apply body glide liberally to cleavage/arms, fill and attach camelback to myself, then strap on my zune, find my running sunglasses (they’re thinner and give me less owl eyes – yes, I’m vain), and in the winter find my headband?   It’s exhausting before I even start my warmup!

2.  I’ve been on the spark again calorie tracking.  I retroactively put in Monday and am still going today.  Oddly enough, it motivated me to eat LOTS and LOTS of good for me food.  Fancy that?  Yesterday, I felt so full I was afraid I was going to lose my cookies (err…carrots I guess) later on the ‘mill.  And I came about 250 calories under my goal because I just couldn’t put another damn thing in my cakehole.  Monday was a little under 200 under goal.  2000 calories of healthy food is HARD. 1500-1700 feels about right.  Good thing today is a cross training day, so 1500 is the goal.  I’m at about 1k now after a gigantic snack (carrots/pea pods/hummus/necatrine/jerky/wheat melbas and laughing cow), and looking forward to an awesome healthy dinner.

3.  The scale, it moved yesterday!  Yeah, I probably shouldn’t be weighing every day but since I’m tracking it seems to feel right to weigh every day.  And this morning it sung to me like a songbird, 156.0.  Only 1lb to go until I can start the “I-trust-myself-at-maintenance” counter.  I’m going to predict 2 weeks of tracking and then I’ll be able to go back to fumbling my way through it without numbers.  I totally know why I’m NOT doing this for the majority of this year.  I’m learning pretty well about how to be pretty un-neurotic about my food and just do this thing naturally, but I start getting crazy when I have to be SO accountable.  Great for weight loss, bad for trying to figure out a “rest of my life” thing.

4.  The weather, while NOT beautiful today, has gone from stupid cold (for us) as in highs in the 30s and lows in the 10s, to decent, meaning highs in the 50s and lows in the 30s, to rainy today and tomorrow, but starting Saturday and extending into next week, it’s supposed to be upper 60s/70s and lows in the 40s/50s.  I AM SO LOOKING FORWARD!  I missed this weather something terrible over the last few weeks.  Don’t ever leave me again!  It should be perfect conditions for a nice long run outside this weekend, and maybe I’ll have to see if I can get in a lunch/after work run next week before the sun sets.

5.  Uhhhm, I’m kind of out of ideas now, so I’ll just say Archer on FX is pretty much hilarious.

Have a great weekend, everyone!  I’ll probably be playing some rock band, running a lot, possibly going out on the town, and hopefully enjoying outside time on Sunday.  What’s your plans?

10 Things That Make Me Happy

Mrs. Fatass tagged me so I must oblige, and it should make for a nice, light, Friday post.   She tagged me last week but at the time I was in major back pain and nothing was making me happy.  So, in no particular order…

1.  Technology!  I love that I have a computer that sits on my lap on the couch.  My phone allows me to stay in constant communication if I chose to pay attention to it (which I often don’t but… whatevs).  My car works off a battery until it needs more power, and only then it uses gas.  When I watch TV in my living room, it might as well be a movie.

2.  Social Networking/Blogging/Internet Communication in general.  On twitter and facebook I can keep in touch VERY easily with everyone from former coworkers to my best friends from junior high school.  I’ve met some damn cool people blogging and reading blogs.  The internet in general makes the world just shrink down to nothing and puts like-minded people together.  How cool is that?

3.  Video Games.  I do believe I rekindled my affection for games this vacation.  I forgot the awesome thrill of solving a puzzle that Zliten and I had been working on over and over in Final Fantasy Crystal Defenders.  Or accidentally taking over the controller playing Brutal Legend and beating the game on the first try.  Or playing Peggle for hours.  I think I’m into slightly different games than I was a few years ago, but I need to remember to make time to play.  It is, after all, job research.

4.  Our house.  I’ve never felt so at home somewhere.  It is so us.  The kitchen is bright green and has a crayon green fairy drawing on the wall.  We have an awesome two-propellor huge silver fan that looks like it should be on an airship.  The workout room is bright orange and yellow and blue.  The light comes in the bedroom and wakes me up gently most mornings.  We have plenty of room – maybe too much, but we’re used to it now so there is no going back.  Some of my favorite days are just spent sitting outside enjoying my back patio.

5.  Austin.  I’ve loved both the places I’ve chosen to live as an adult (Reno being by default, I’m not counting it), but I think I feel more at home here in the ATX rather than San Diego.  The weather is pretty damn nice (this winter is pushing it though…), I can afford to live in a metropolitan area where I can walk to dinner and a movie, or the community pool, or the grocery store, or a place to go dancing, or clothes shopping…and the list can go on.  The amount of places I can hit on my bike?  Tenfold.

5.  My friends and family.  It’s really nice to have a group of friends locally that I hang out with on a weekly basis.  I need the reminders to just relax and have fun, and have fun we do!   And it’s nice to have my parents close enough to see on a regular basis.  Sometimes I forget I need people and it’s really super nice to never really have the chance to withdraw that often anymore.

6.  Running.  I love to have finally found something workout-wise that engages my competitive side and took me from fitness as a mechanism to lose weight to something I enjoy for it’s own sake.  Something I can do all by myself or with a big group.  Outside or inside.  Something that’s as easy as putting one foot in front of each other but can be as complicated and self-testing as I want it to be.  Something that I am incredibly proud that I can associate myself as (a runner).

7.  My own personal slice of fashion.  When I’ve got something on that makes me feel like I look damn good, I feel awesome all day.  Whether I was pushing 250 or 150, there is something to be said about clothing that makes you feel good wearing.  And I’m not talking about what you put on to putter around the house or sleep in.  I mean, the clothes you put on, look in the mirror, and want to make out with yourself.  A cute skirt, some tights, a sweater, and my new pirate boots, and I’m making eyes at myself all day in the mirror.  I’d do more fashion posts but…damn, I am lazy and forget to get pictures of myself when I look particularly nice.

8.  My Zliten – I seriously never though that it was possible to have such an awesome relationship and share such an amazing love with someone.  I seriously used to stay up at night and wish on the stars for someone like him.

9.  Writing.  Really digging in my head and finding the words to tell a story, or convey how I’m feeling.  People reading my writing is even cooler!

10.  I agree with Mrs. Fatass – me.  Even though I still have a lot to settle in my head, I am constantly amazed at things I can do.   I’ve come really far and accomplished a lot in many different aspects of my life, and I know it’s just getting started.  I used to think life was just going to go downhill at 30, and now, I know it’s so not the case.

Woohoo, there we go.  I am going to  just tag anyone reading this, because I love to learn new things about everyone!  If you do it, leave me a comment with a link to it.  Or, just leave a comment with one random thing about you, because that’s just about as fun, right?  Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

EDIT: Just realized I had 5 twice.  So I guess I have 11 things to be happy about!

EDIT 2: Also remember that I hit publish before finishing my sentences for 6/7.  It must be almost Friday! *blushes*

What I Did On My Winter Vacation – Part 2

Continued from Part 1

Sunday – Hat Pick – stay in, play video games, and order delivery.  Yeah, if you insist.  We played Peggle, Crystal Chronicles, finished Brutal Legend, and started Dragon Age.  We ordered way too much chinese delivery (although, you’d be proud of me, I stuck mostly to my egg drop soup, shrimp with garlic sauce, and vegetarian delight and saved half of the latter two for the next day).

Monday – Hat Pick – make the trek to ikea and buy ONLY what’s on this list.  This is huge – we usually are AWFUL at Ikea and buy way too much stuff.  We had a set list – new curtains, a new comforter, a new body pillow, a wok, and a few other things.  We ended up with a few odd things in the cart, but it was less than 10 bucks extra.  We had a lot of other shopping to do that day, plus we had hit the gym first for a run.  It was a long day!

Tuesday – Hat Pick – Make a movie.  FAIL!  I wrote up a script, and then my back decided to go all rogue on me.   We went out to help my parents pick out a TV and then went up to help them set it up and have dinner.  I’m not sure if moving around a bit helped or hurt it, but it was what it was.  We decided to put it back in the hat for another time.

Wednesday – re-organize the DVDs.  FAIL!  I was just in so much pain I couldn’t really leave the couch.  We played lots of games and watched movies.  Zliten went out with a friend and I couldn’t even go with.  I sat on the couch and felt sorry for myself, and tried to mow down some chocolate to make me feel better, but instinctively after 3 hershey kisses, I exchanged it for a mad large bag of carrots and pea pods.  Srsly, I can’t even emotionally eat properly.

Thursday – Not a hat pick- New Years Eve outing.  I was still hurty when I awoke but better than I had been.  We cleaned the house and headed out early to have some dinner and drinky shenannegins!

It was cold and windy so we pretty much stayed inside everywhere we went.  I had some appetizers and wasn’t hungry so I skipped dinner when everyone else ordered, but then forgot to grab anything later.  Needless to say, I remember toasting champagne at the bar, making a resolution to spend next NYE in Cancun (I was very specific), and then woke up in my makeup and contacts around 9am the next morning.  Yay NYE fun!

Friday – Not a hat pick – Hangover day.  Zliten and I woke up early feeling pretty good, so he whipped us up some breakfast and we had another couchy day.  Then, the hangover started to settle in mid-afternoon so we ordered some pizza.  I ended up eating 5 slices of pizza and most of a gigantic family size salad.  Not my finest hour, but not ridiculously horrible for 2 meals worth of food when I forgot to eat dinner the day before.  Early sleep was awesome.

Saturday – Sort of a hat pick – Day trip to Fredricksburg.  It was going to be in the hat, but we had made plans to go with some of our friends so it had to be planned.  I woke up early to finally get in a workout because I friggin’ felt better (fiiiinally).  They drove us up, we met one of their friends and had beers and lunch at a brewery (my god, the best meatloaf I’ve ever had, and Zliten got down a whole sausage sampler – bratwurst, knockwurst, and pepperwust), and then we walked around shopping for a while.  Want some slabs of marble?

Geez, everything was ridici-expensive.  I’m sorry, but thrift stores have spoiled me.  The only thing I found that I would have purchased was this vintage-y looking black and white psychadellic coat that was a one of a kind from France somewhere, and only 80 bucks.  Alas, it was a little too small.  Zliten found an awesome cowboy hat, but it was too big.  So we left to drown our shopping sorrows with more alcohol.

We hit up a fancy little wine bar where I had a yummy french chardonnay and a truffle or two (yes, breaking my no sweets and alcohol together rule but now I understand why people who drink nice wine eat chocolates with it – yum), and then we moved on to another german place to have dinner.  I ordered some goolash and a salad.  Goolash = sounds gross but it was AWESOME spicy beef stew.  One of our friends ordered a dish – I don’t remember what it was called, but it was pickles, onions, and mustard rolled up into slices of roast beef, baked, and smothered in gravy.  Sound FREAKING GROSS, right?  Nuh uh.  It was way yummy.  The boys loved it too.

The verdict?  I could never live there, as I would get super fat on German food.  As it was, a lot of people in the town had a beer and brat gut –  call me superficial, but it was VERY obvious healthy living was not generally the norm there.  It was freaky weird.  I forget how healthy-fit Austin is sometimes compared to the rest of the world.  It was a cute little town and the people were SUPER NICE (though we were being led around by a local friend of a friend who was super awesome too).

Sunday – Not a hat pick – Laundry, Cleaning, and Grocery-obtaining.  Normal Sunday stuff.  I didn’t want to go into Monday with a tumultuous house, no clean clothes, and no menu for the week, so we did stuff.  But mostly, we spent the day glued to the couch for one more day.  Zliten made yummy burgers for lunch and we rid our fridge of leftovers for dinner.  Finally, at the end of the day, I realized I was very very much ready to return to routine the next day.

Yesterday, my first day at work, it wasn’t so bad to be back.  I enjoyed my run.  Waking up at 8:45 (which was 45 minutes later than I wanted) was freaking early, but 11pm came and I was tired.  Like normal.

So, is it spring yet?  This is my least favorite time of year.  At least when it’s starting to get cold, I have the holidays to look forward to – but now it’s (Austin’s version of) butt-ass cold here for at least the next week, and I don’t have another super cool thing to look forward to until the half marathon (which right now, means running outside so I’m not entirely sure I’m looking forward to it at the moment… though I did actually sign up and pay today so I’m pretty pumped).  What was the coolest holiday thing you did?  What are you feverishly looking forward to now?

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