Sickeroo...

Nothing exciting today except that we got most of the morning off due to rain, then went out in the freezing wind where I layered on everything I had, then felt so sick and dizzy I had to go home...and slept for three hours, on top of the eight I got last night.

Taking the night to relax and hit the sack early so I can get better asap. Can't be sick for my race in 16 days!!! I still need to be running beforehand! That 1/2 marathon ain't gonna run itself w/o some training!

G'night all!

Because I’m Like That…

I only too four pictures today, and you get to see three. 

Everyone has been eating “Eggs in a Basket” and I couldn’t help but jump on the bandwagon…except I hate egg yolks.  Yuck!  They’re all grimy and runny…I can’t stand them.  When people used to give me sunny side up eggs, I would eat the whites around the yolk and if it broke, I ate no more of it.

So, what did I do to ensure I had no runny yokes?  Duh, mix it all together!

Oh yeah, and because I had nothing to make a circle for my eggs with my bread slice, I cut a “window” with my knife.  I’m so smart…and to help so when I flipped it egg wouldn’t go everywhere, I mixed the egg around while it was cooking in the “window.”

And I was totally feeling the need for protein today, so I added black beans and salsa on the side…which I eventually dumped on top of the egg and toast.

And there was of course, the mandatory carrot and hummus for the day.  More protein!

 

And then cashews.  More protein.  Can you tell?

Oh yeah, but dessert was the best part…and took me all of 5 seconds to engulf: Dark Chocolate Dreams by PB&Co and an orange.  (More protein!)

(I remember when I first tried the pb and orange together, and then heard Meghann tried it and liked it…fantastic discovery!  That’s what happens when you run out of apples and bananas though…)

Off to make sure I don’t get flooded away tonight…flash flood warnings for my entire county until 7am tomorrow!  Whooooohoooo….err, boo?

Life at Smith Point, Texas

I have yet to really show you where I have been working the past few months haven’t I?  Well, let me show you!

It’s so exciting…being 30 miles from the nearest freeway, 50 from the nearest decent grocery store and 70 from Whole Foods.  But who am I to complain? (ok, we already know I’ve done that…but I’m embracing it’s beauty now!)

So, this is where I go to to work every morning at 8am CST, but technically it’s according to normal ST, aka “bird time.”  Yes, there is such a thing as bird time…haha! 

I get to sit atop that thing for 9 hrs a day.  Not the very top; I’d probably get blown off.  But the big second level, which is actually three stories up…which means when the wind blows and it’s already cold…I’m a popsicle most of the time.

But want to see what I get to ride along on my bike in the mornings?

Don’t I look excited?  And yes, I took the picture WHILE riding my bike.  I’m talented like that.

This is what is considered Texas fall colors, but hey, I’m not complaining!   I think it’s rather pretty compared to some of the brown drab around here!

And of course there are the awesome sunrises (err, post sunrise about 1 hr…cause I don’t get there any earlier than I have to; why leave my comfy bed, right?):

(this one is along the paved road to the tower)

(this is at the edge of the bay right next to the RV park where I live)

(and I’m not sure where this was taken…somewhere along the 2.5 miles it takes to get there!)

And of course there is the view from atop the tower:

See, I’m all smiles…and TANNED to boot!  That’s what 9 hrs in the sun does to you!

Galveston Bay there…

And some homes that made it through Hurricane Ike last September…along with our awesome turtle filled pond…

So, I hope you weren’t bored by all of that. 

Haha…but I thought I might enlighten you of my current job before I move onto my new one in which I’ll be living in MIAMI, and doing research in the EVERGLADES on Wading Birds (ie Wood Storks, Ibis, Egrets, Herons, etc.) starting in January!!!  Yay!!!

Oh, but I couldn’t help but share this picture because it catches the part of me that my father says deems me his daughter: (please disregard the awesome camera shadow on my face)

See my left eye?  See that BLUE spot?  Yep…that’s the German part of me come’n through.  Along with all the other colored rings on my eyes.  You’d never guess that I was born with dark brown eyes eh?

Baking Time and Exciting News

First: Oh man, not only was my Sunday awesome because I finished my 12 miler with success, but also because I got to get my BAKE ON!!!  You all know I was all over that, since I haven’t been able to bake since I left home in EARLY AUGUST!!!!  (Oh yeah, and can you believe I have only about 2.5 weeks left here?  Where did the time go!?)

Anyhow, where did Amanda and I start on our baking extravaganza?  With all the ingredients of course:

 

(best chocolate brand on this planet: Guittard)

And me eating ingredients in the process:

  

We baked things like my Grandma Gwen’s famous PB Filled PB Cookies, but we added flair by including chocolate chips in the middle with the PB.  Heaven in a cookie.

And I made my favorite bread that I’m sure you remember seeing numerous times on the blog when I lived in Florida earlier this year: Blackberry Chocolate Chip Wheat Bread

And we tried making the Pumpkin Cranberry Scones out of Veganomicon but the dough was way too runny…so it came out more like a bread; still scrumptious!

And of course I had to make Tina’s Chocolate Pumpkin Loaf:

And I had to sample some, right?

Kiss kiss baby.  You know you want to go out and bake some now!

I brought home quite a few of the goodies to share with Jen, so they’ll be showing up on the blog soon.  But I have more exciting posts in the works so normal food blogging might not return for a few days (say what?!  Don’t lie, I know you’re bored of my food anyhow…).

Oh, but were you waiting for my exciting news?  Well, this chick

GOT HER NEXT JOB!

Where: FLORIDA

Doing what: UH, BIRDS, DUH. WADING BIRDS!!!

When: JANUARY TILL…

I’m so excited!  Not only do I get to play on airboats again with birds and jumping into awesome gator/snake/poop filled water, but I also get to see some of my awesome blogger friends again, and meet with new ones!!!  YAY!!!

Okie dokie…now I’m off to catch up on your lives since I was finally able to get home this morning and get back to my computer!  What a night it was with all the rain and flooding!  Whew!  And more in the forecast for Thursday!  Awesome!

Sorry peeps! No update tonite, I dont have my computer because Im flooded out! Hopefully it'll be down by tomorrow! Lots of rain in forecast tho! Gnight!

12 Miler; WHAT!?

Man, I don't want to sound conceited or anything, but dang! I give myself credit for my run today!

I had actually planned on running it alone in Houston somewhere but at the last minute thought, "Hey!? Why not ask for company?" I've done all of my long runs by myself as of yet, so last night I hit up Amanda and asked her if she'd like to ride her bike with me as I ran. Thank goodness she said yes because I don't know that I would have been able to do it on my own! Good company is always welcome; I mean, since when have I ever run that far and NEVER USED HEADPHONES!?

Anyhow, we headed out from her house just a bit after 10:15 this morning, following my 1.5 hr drive to get there (but totally worth it obvi!) and headed out towards Bear Creek Park, which is just a bit down the street from her house. It took me about 30 minutes to get there, and we headed into the park to get some more minutes in. We headed away from the soccer fields and into more of the wooded areas to get some peace and quiet. I was feeling good this whole time, mostly running on asphault and some grass along the roads when I could. My hips were getting a bit tight, but I was dealing.

The weather was nice when we left, sunny with not many clouds and a nice breeze and at this time some clouds started to roll in and cool things down, which I as greatful for, since I was getting hot! We turned around at 55:54 to head back home along the same route we came. I had no idea how far I had gone, but i was betting I was hitting my pace and distance. At this point I was feeling pretty parched and so was Amanda so the next water fountain we saw we drank away, which happened to be around 1:18.

We headed back and finished strong (motivated by the fact that we were absolutely dehydrated!) and finished at 1:50:00 exactly! Amazing! At that time I think the fact that my body was tired, hungry and thirsty made me start to hunch when I ran and my back was starting to hurt. But a part of me definitely felt like it could have kept going!

That makes me super excited for the race in exactly 3 WEEKS! I can't believe how fast it's getting here, and that for the first time, I actually feel healthy, happy and prepared enough to race it! Whooohooo!

I made sure to stretch really well and have a lot of water, since I was covered in sweat, which means DEHYDRATION! Of course there was also other things on the agenda for the day: BAKING! Unfortunately, I'm staying in Houston tonight and don't have my laptop, so you'll hear and see all about it tomorrow...along with all the awesome pieces I sampled. Wanna know what was made? I'll gve you a few hints:

-peanut butter
-chocolate
-pumpkin
-blackberries
-cranberries

Do I have your attention yet? I know you're gonna want to come back tomorrow to check those out!

Sorry no pictures too! I promise they'll be good when they come!

Off to sleepp! That run exhausted me!

A Big One

I've got my longest training run tomorrow: 12 miles! I'm really excited about it and hope that it goes really well! I've got a friend that's going to bike it with me and then afterwards we're going to get our bake on!

I'll make sure to post tomorrow about the run and then I've got some awesome posts coming this week including:

-This is what it's like to live 50 miles from civilization...
-How can I help the earth? By doing what?
-And a few more to surprise you!

I hope you're all having great Saturdays and have a wonderful Sunday!!!

But make sure to help out one of my awesome blogger friends land an awesome and totally fitting job!! Click her to vote for Lindsey! You can vote once a day until the 30th of October! So remember to do so everyday!!!

My Fashion…Not

Unlike Miss Snackface, I have utterly no sense for fashion; can you tell?

It’s because I live in very rural Texas…and have lived in rural Florida…and don’t have TV or Internet often.  Ok, really, I just have a horrible sense of fashion…either that or I was just FREAK’N FREEZING IN MY BOOTS RUNNING SHOES!  Broohahaha…

Anyhow, onto my insatiable appetite today, no?  And I had a lot of sweets to cure it too.  Don’t hate.

I started off well: Jenny style pb and banana w/ dried blueberry oats.  It was a cold and blistery day, so I needed something warm…too bad I used a frozen banana.  Good job Mel, good job.

 

I got my first fix a bit later on with this puppy…Oh lala…Love Odwalla…can they make me an official rep since I eat so many of their bars???? 

And settled on an awesome sandwich: 1/2 mushed avocado w/ salsa, cucumbers, tomato and spinach on 12 Grain Natur'e’s Pride Bread.

 

And there was a peach, and an apple, but you already know what that looks like.

Oh yeah, and a baggy of my homemade trail mix that you’ve seen the past few days…you already know what that looks like too.

I ended up biking to and from the tower today (5 miles) and then walking the same thing afterwards (5 more miles)…it was helping to loosen up my very tight hamstrings from yesterday’s ST session…

I settled on a dinner filled with veggies and leftover Mexican Snobby Joes:

And some corn chips in my carrot yogurt cup…x2.

And I actually took this picture at the tower with every intention of eating it out there, but never did.  Ergo, DESSERT!  DELIGHT!  Cinnamon H2H and raisins…um, just add a chocolate biscuit of sorts and some M&M’s and we’re set.  I can’t wait till there’s no more of these in my trailer!  No control!  Oh well, they taste dandy. :)

But I did spot two awesome birds today!  We saw our third immature Bald Eagle today (which isn’t very common in these parts) and I spotted a very rare dark morphed Broad Winged Hawk…you normally only see these during migration…and it might be the only one I’ll ever see in my life, unless I do another hawk count…which won’t be for a long while!

Ok, off to catch up on your lives…and my good news can hopefully be presented soon!  So excited!!!!

I Smell Nice Today

So, I took a shower today (you don’t want to know how often I don’t take a shower. LOL.  Hard core baby!) and I used one of my favorite Bath and Body Shower Gels: Black Raspberry Vanilla.  Man, I forgot how much I missed using these smelly things…my other favorite is Japanese Cherry Blossom…seriously, if you want a new shower gel to try, go get those two!  I promise you’ll love them!  I didn’t even realize how nice it smelled when I was showering (in cold water I might add, no hot water again!) until I walked outside into the crazy wind to do my laundry that I smelled myself…delight!

Haha…can we tell that I’m in a more spunky, quirky mood today?  Thank goodness!  I’ve definitely missed it!

Anyhow, my day started off with a flash bang: THUNDER AND LIGHTNING!  I would have gone back to sleep like Jen, but well, when I’m up in the morning, I’m up!  So instead I opened up the shades right next to my bed and watched it rain…for a few hours.  And read.  It was such a nice morning.

I finally got out of bed a little while later (ok, like two hours) and finally had some breakfast!  I was starving at this point, but wanted something simple, and other than yogurt.  Enter: Nature’s Pride 12 Grain bread w/ WF Natural PB, cinnamon and a nanner.  Delish!  Gotta get some potassium to those legs (I’ve been getting Charlie horses early in the morning the past few days; horrible feeling)!

And then I started on this GRE crappiness brain strengthening-ness:

Vocab anyone?  God I hate vocab…

And since breakfast didn’t fill me up at all (maybe next time two pieces of bread and two tablespoons of PB) I had this bowl of about a cup of Cinnamon H2H and some grapes times 2:

And then I tried to remember all my high school math.  I haven’t taken a math course since my Junior Year of High School, and that was Pre-calculus.  How I got away with that in college…I’ll never know. Ok, I do, I took the placement exam and passed w/ flying colors…

Too bad I hardly remember anything now.  Just kidding, but it’s def taking a while to come back though!  Ack!

It rained all morning and around lunch we tried to get out to the tower to watch, but uh, we couldn’t.  The road out was totally flooded!  Which meant that well, I was kinda living on an island at the moment.  Eep!

We came back, and well, dug into lunch since we couldn’t work!  It wasn’t our fault!  I had leftover Mexican Snobby Joes with two carrots and about 1.5 servings of whole grain goldfish.

I worked some more on some prefixes on flashcards and needed brain food.  Enter these fabulous babies provided by Brandi: (oh yeah, and I tried Newman’s Own Organic Dark Chocolate PB cups a bit back…those things have nothing on the real PB cups…Sorry guys; keep trying!)  Great brain food, right?

I tried to make it a bit healthier thereafter:

Ok, I tried.

I did get in a walk though!  After having to sit on my butt-ay all day I was in need of some movement!  So I ventured out to the flooded roads and walked them.  It was pretty fun…I felt kinda adventurous.  Haha.  Around two miles in the water…my toes were a bit cramped afterwards.

 

Like my very soaked butt legs?  Thought so!

And then I did a bunch of ST  moves…boy am I going to be soar tomorrow!  I’m still shaky two hours later!  Hrm…what does that say about my strength…not much huh?  Such a light weight!

      

Now I’m off to finish my novel, start a new one, finish laundry and get in some dinner grub!  May or may not post it tonight seeing as how it’s not going to be very exciting (Eggs?  Really?  I’m sure you know what they look like) but I’ll be reading up on all of you pretties!!!

PS  Did I mention that my Snobby Joes last night qualified for my goal this week (to use lentils in a dish) that Miss hot thang PB and Jenny asks us about every week?  Yeah sunshine, I got mine down!

Much Needed…

Time.  The past few days have been ones of reflections, revelations and thank goodness, realizations.  I’ve gone from feeling completely frustrated, to raging mad, to sobbing so badly I can’t breathe, to ultimately deciding that I was feeling “empty” in a sense, and then back to realizing that I am worth it, all the negative talk I have been running through my mind is temporary, I’ll be home soon with my family and friends and that yes, eventually, I will walk away from this a stronger person. 

So yes, all my awesome friends, I have been listening to all the positive things you have been repeating to me day in and day out (and hopefully aren’t too annoyed with my sappiness/sadness yet!) and am finally realizing them and taking them to heart, imbedding them in my brain and looking up, instead of down…just bear with me as I crawl towards that, hopefully faster than I anticipate at this point!  Mwah!

On a brighter side, I have also gotten some good news, but I can’t reveal it yet as it’s still in the process…just keep your fingers crossed for me!

Lets look some of my awesome eats though, no?  Especially my awesome version of Snobby Joes…cause I’m cool like that, changing things up…a lot.

Anyhow, breakfast was literally thrown together as I rushed out the door to work…and then back again because as I got to the road on my bike, it was FLOODED.  There goes that portion of my workout!  Ergo, return to trailer to get car key and drive.  I hate driving to work when I know I could be riding my bike! 

I eventually got to eat this pretty baby at the tower: Fage 0%, cinnamon, an apple and blackberries.  Are you tired of this combo yet?  I know I am!

I was obviously still hungry afterwards cause well, I won’t explain, but I know why.  So I had this yummy bar…seriously one of my favorites: Berries GoMega Odwalla Bar

I ended up leaving work cause it started pouring and got to come back and catch up on your awesome lives.  What else would I do, right?

I settled down to my lunch a little while later: 1/2 sammie with hummus, tomato, onion and cucumber

and leftover hummus, two carrots and the rest of the cucumber:

I went back to the tower after it stopped raining and had this snack…plus a few more nuts and raisins added after the picture was taken:

I went in my workout clothes with every intention of running 6 miles after work was done…but it started pouring again and didn’t look like it was going to stop anytime soon…and really, should rain stop me from running?  HECK NO!  So out I went…and actually only did 4.35 miles (39.16 min, shorter because my quad was achy), but hey, better than nothing!  I ran without my ipod (of course, ruined my last one like that!) and it was so invigorating! 

It has been a while since I ran without music and it was very calming actually listening to the grass move in the wind, the swallows chirp above my head, the mosquitoes buzz in my ears (!!!), and most of all, feel without distraction, the rain pelting me in the face (which left awesome red marks all over me!).

And I came back home dripping wet, looking like this gorgeous mess:

(Please excuse the horrid pile of laundry you see in the background…I’m going to do it tomorrow Mom!  Promise!)

It took me a while to clean up since I was dripping water everywhere, but after the fact, I got started on my make-shift Snobby Joes from Veganomicon.  I didn’t have half the ingredients it called for, so I improvised. 

• Tomato sauce and paste?  Diced tomato in juice. 
• A bunch of different seasonings, maple syrup and mustard?  Taco seasoning from WF. 
• Diced onion, bell pepper and garlic?  How about all that was left of half my onion in the fridge. 

And how did it taste?  AWESOME.  And SPICEY!  Eep! 

I had a few scoops on a bed of spinach:

And a peach and frozen blackberries afterwards to soothe my burning tongue and throat.

     

I can only imagine how much spicier it’s going to get as it sits there and I try to consume it over the new few days.  Ideas on how else I should eat it???

Ok, off to read my book!  I’ve been calling it a night around 9pm every night to try to calm my brain so I go to bed at a decent hour and get some peaceful sleep…hasn’t quite worked yet, but I think it’s getting there!

Till tomorrow...

This blogging chickadee needs a night off from blogging...my mind has had a rough day, but I'll be back tomorrw with lots of funness! I've got a few fun thing s up my sleeve! Have a great hump day!

I was…

doing so well today, and then those pb m&m’s came out of their hiding place.  Damn their deliciousness.  But I’m not going to focus on my overindulgence, and instead on the healthier things…

Like my breakfast?  Found Fage on SALE this weekend and picked up a few containers.  Mixed it w/ blackberries, grapes and a mini granny smith apple.

Raging hungry by 10.30…really tummy?  I’ve been feeding you…apple zbar and grapes.

Then lunch soon after: two marinated tofu slices on 12 Grain Nature’s Pride w/ tomato, spinach and mustard.  And two carrots.

Snackeroo before run: 1T pb mixed with cinnamon, topped on a banana.  Nom.

Ran for 31 minutes and was supposed to do 45 but my leg was a hurt’n and I don’t want it to fall off before my race in 26 days! 

So I ran 15:45 up the road, and used the poles as start and stop points for my fartleks the 15:15 it took me to run back.  Awesome no?  I know all you runners like fartleks…

Came home to clean up and de-anxietize (didn’t work; boo) and started on a great dinner: sautéed onions, bell pepper, corn and chickpeas with garlic and Italian herbs, topped on spinach, two baby tomatoes and a 1/3 a cucumber. 

and a white peach.

There were some goldfish consumed afterwards for carbs.

And then those unholy pb m&m’s with cashews and raisins mixed in.  open my tummy now and take them all out please.

Beddy bed time.  This girl needs a fresh start for tomorrow.