California Raisins

Check out what I got for my car...

Breakfast fit for an Ultrarunner

I decided to try a quasi-recipe that I read about in "Born to Run." For breakfast the day of the big ultra-marathon (100 miles in scorching heat and over deadly terrain) this Mexican woman made all the runners a special kind of pancake. It included corn meal, goat's milk, overripe bananas, and boiled rice mixed into the batter. I used Trader Joe's whole grain pancake mix, three overripe bananas, boiled rice, half and half (this was last minute so I had to make due with what I had) and skipped the corn meal all together.

They were delicious - but filling!

Father's Day

This morning I was reading one of my favorite NYTimes columnists, Nicholas Kristof. He gave some great ideas for Father's Day Gifts. For Mother's Day I gave a "birthing kit" in honor of my mom so I decided I would do something similar for my dad. (Thanks for reminding me, Kristof.)

I chose to buy my dad a Hero Rat! These rats are trained to find land mines so that children don't. So it's macho and kind at the same time, and very fitting for my dad.

Power Outage

My company sent us home at 1:30pm today because we lost power - Delmarva Power is on strike! Now I have plenty of time to run, pack, and hit the road for another weekend in OCNJ!

Obsessed with Florence

I cannot get enough Florence lately. My favorites songs keep changing. Currently I'm between these too:

She's great for singing along in the car.

B+ 5K

Yesterday I ran the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation for Pediatric Cancer Research's 5K race on SavannahStrong's team. SavannahStrong is an phrase created when Savannah Pauley was diagnosed with bone cancer in August 2008. Savannah passed away last September, but her memory and spirit live on through SavannahStrong. Jill and her family were the ones who introduced me to the group. I did some research and found out that while this little 10 year-old had cancer, she also raised over $6,500 for the Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation and raised $1,000 by asking for donations in lieu of gifts for her 10th birthday. She was quite an impressive little girl.

The race brought in over 2,300 runners and $110,000 for the B+ Foundation! It was perfect weather (sunny but not too hot) and a pretty decent course with a killer hill at about 2.5 miles. I clocked in at 22:36. I haven't run a race since college, and after having so much fun yesterday, I am ready to sign up for many more.

30 Facebook-Free Days

I feel like every few months or so I say that I'm additcted to Facebook and need to stop going on so much. I also feel like that has only lasted 3 days at the longest (not counting the times that I'm out of the country and physically can't get on). SO this time I had my little brother change my password. He's not allowed to tell me the password until July14th.

So how did my first day go?

Gloriously.

After work I went to my kickball game, hung out with the team for dinner, came home to my empty apartement where I took a bath and read, did a yoga DVD on mute with Cat Power playing in the background, and literally just sat on the couch drinking tea. It was relaxing and much needed! Besides the time I wasted checking facebook, I think I also was clogging my head. I was thinking about things I read or people who posted, rather than focusing on what I was doing, or being in the moment. I think this will be a very refreshing 30 days.

I'm now on day four, and I still don't miss it.

Trying New Things

Last week I tried a few new things...

I bought Green Drink (real creative name, huh?) from Trader Joe's.
It's basically just a quick way to get some extra vitamins and minerals.

You can kind of see the consistency in this photo - I usually have to gulp it down all at once, it's pretty grainy. It might just be a placebo affect, but I feel great afterward. I have one serving after AM workouts now.

I also made my first cold green bean salad. I sauteed a little olive oil, garlic, yellow squash, and red peppers while slightly boiling the green beans. Then I threw it all together and added some cucumbers, chick peas, and basil and chilled it in the fridge. Delicious.

And one thing that wasn't really new, but new for me to eat in America anyway....

Lychee Nuts - The girls and I had our fill when we lived in Thailand. Got 8 for $1.25 at Produce Junction!

Books, Sun, and Beach Runs

Down in OCNJ for another relaxing weekend.

Last weekend I finished reading "Born to Run," and tried out the barefoot running idea on the beach. A full week later and my calves are still more sore than ever, but it definitely made it easier to run with a pulled hamstring, so I'll do it again this weekend.

Now I'm on to two other books, switching back and forth between moods (nerdy vs comical). I'm currently reading:

I think it is pretty clear which one is the nerdery and which one is comical... Both were gifts from my brother, by the way. Sedaris was from two Christmas' ago, Bryson was from this year. Both are not disappointing so far!

Have a great weekend.

More things I forgot to blog about: My Smart Sister and Mother's Day

My sister graduated from the University of Pittsburgh, College of Business Administration on May 1st. That in itself is something to be proud of. But, as usual, Barrett went above and beyond to graduate with the highest GPA in her major and to win the Most Outstanding Finance Major award! I am very proud sister. She is currently studying at UVA for her Masters in Accounting, and starts work at Earnst and Young in the Philly office in September. I am thrilled she will be so close. Now if we can just get our brother to stop going to crazy far places like Canada.

Here's a picture of the family (minus Tom) standing with Barrett's Finance flag.

A few weeks later was Mother's Day. Remember the post about food a while back? I tried the zucchini boats! They turned out great, although I realized I don't follow recipes, I look at a picture and then recreate it the way I think they made it. It still works everytime.

We had club sandwiches, grilled asparagus and zucchini boats.

And, of course, mimosas!

Sand in Our Toes, Love in the Air

Jill and Tommy were married on May 22 and I was lucky enough to be there to celebrate with them! It was a ton of fun and Jill looked BEAUTIFUL. This is my favorite picture from the whole day:

At the reception afterwards - Flip flops and sand - I couldn't have been happier!

Travel Buddies

On the day we left Key West from Jill's bachelorette extravaganza Becca and I had some time to bond. The other girls all left for the airport at 8am, but Becca and I didn't fly out until that evening. So we walked down to try to eat at this restaurant "Blue Heaven" that everyone raves about for breakfast. The wait was way too long though, so we settled for a place down the street, "Colombian Grace." It turned out to be delicious, fresh Colombian breakfast food. (They serve lunch and dinner as well.)

Our empty plates:
Deck seating...


And they serve the bill in this cool little box!
After our breakfast we did some shopping, talked about life and the pros and cons of natural childbirth (I'm sold), and had a poolside lunch. Finally we left for the airport, flew to Miami, and got stuck there for what seemed like days. I hate Miami International Airport with a passion. At least, I hated the part we were in. There was nothing worthwhile to eat, nowhere to really sit, and no shops! We settled on Pizza Hut (ew) and made some friends while we ate it. Becca met a couple, and I met this guy:

He works overseas for the government doing top secret stuff.

I loved him and asked him a lot of inappropriate questions that he couldn't answer because it was classified information. It was fun.

Becca and I also held our own airport yoga session to help stop the Pizza Hut grease from forming a death grip around our arteries.

People thought we were crazy.

So did my dad when he called and I said I couldn't talk because I was doing yoga at the gate. Notice I even had my ipod dock and an ipod filled with Yogamazing podcasts!
We finally made it home around 1am the next day.

Bachelorettes, Detour Signs, and Breast Pumps

A little over a month ago my friend Jill (my first real friend in Wilmington)and eight of her closest friends and female family members took a trip to Key West, Florida for her bachelorette party. Boy was it a party. Most of the extended weekend's events cannot (should not) be documented. But there are a few choice stories I would like to share.

1.) Breast Pumps. I was made to promise by Lauren (see her blog on right - Lauren and Julia) that if I did this certain thing, I would blog about it. So here it goes. Now, to really understand why there were even breast pumps involved in a bachelorette I should explain that Becca and Lauren both have new babies. They're both still pumping and apparently if you stop, the milk stops coming. So they had to "pump and dump" multiple times a day. I learned a lot about having kids that weekend. I know that I want a natural birth, and that I am nowhere near ready to actually have a baby yet!

Here's a picture of the moms:

Lauren is on the left, Becca on the right.

So after one of the crazy nights we went back to the room and the moms needed to pump. And then a few of us non-moms decided (after a night of drinking, obviously) that we wanted to try it. Let's just say that I did NOT like it, and I am NOT looking forward to feeding a kid via boob. Or via machine that was once on my boob. It's painful and scary.

I have a newfound respect for Becca and Lauren.

Other weekend activities included a bar scavenger hunt, laying at the pool, pin the junk on the hunk (where we ended up taking fun pictures of the "junk" - not to be posted here), and a nice sunset booze cruise.

Me and Kristen on the boat.

2.) Naked Statues. Right next to our hotel (The Westin) was a museum that had a bunch of giant, naked, dancing statues. Underneath them all was this guy, staring up at them. It was beyond bizarre. We took some great pictures with them, again, not to be posted here.

This is the creeper statue:

3.) Detour Signs. On the last night, most of the girls went to bed and then Jill, Lauren and Kristen ended up in a bar called "Hog's Breath." I thought I was tired and wanted to go to bed, until I decided it was time to dance! I ran out and met up with them where we proceeded to nickname the bartender "Thunderstrike," dance to the cover band, and steal a detour sign.

This is Jill in her Scavenger hunt T-shirt, attempt number one at stealing the sign:

It took all four of us, but we got that thing about 5 blocks back to, you guessed it, the statues:

Definitely one of the most fun bachelorette parties I've had so far!

I love food...

I came across some really great, free rolls last weekend, so on Monday I decided we needed to have cheese steaks. They were delicious. I sauteed some onions and green peppers and we opted out of the cheese this time since we have to put bathing suits on every weekend.

(Amazing how that will help you make healthier eating choices!)

If you know me at all, you know I always need a veggie to go with whatever I'm eating. But I couldn't get excited about the normal choices: spinach, broccoli, green beans... so I had the inspired idea to make a tomato summer salad! Heirloom tomatoes, artichokes, cucumbers and fresh basil dressed with a tiny bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was amazing - and I ended up eating it for lunch the following two days.

Maintenance Men and The Kitchen I Wish I Had.

Yesterday I recieved a note under my door which explained that "Maintenance" would be entering the building to replace the air filters in my air conditioners. I took this opportunity to write out my own little note (on the back of theirs) which listed all the things that need to be fixed, which I have failed to call about. They included an ever-running toilet (I even told them which part needed to be replaced) and a clogged bathroom sink. I put two Peach Snapples out for them (Carl and Tony). Hopefully that will seal the deal.

As I was straigtening up for their arrival, I began thinking how much I don't like my kitchen. Next to the bedroom, I think the kitchen is the most important room for me since I love to cook and bake so much. I want this to be my kitchen:

Life's Too Short For:

Jealousy
Worrying about wrinkles
Miserable people
Fashion magazines
Complaining

This entry inspired by Laura.