IWONIWONIWON!

For the past few months I've gotten progressively more involved blogging-wise. It's become more than just a way for me to vomit up my thoughts and feelings onto a public portal where anyone can read - I now religiously stalk follow quite a few fellow bloggers and have officially experienced what it is like to be surrounded and immersed in a community that has helped to truly push me in terms of physical fitness/running/endurance/health.

What started as a way for me to spy on my friends lives when I was too busy to really be involved has evolved into me checking up on people that I don't even know but feel like I am secretly best friends with. I have even gone so far as to expand my own personal goals based on accomplishments from people that I read (and some that I do know - I'm not a total creep, I promise).

WITH THAT BEING SAID: The ever-so-lovely Britt (who I actually do know, thankyouvermuch) (and who I secretly sometimes feel is one of my long lost BFF's <---- totally not creepy, Britt, I promise...) has awarded me with this lovely little badge:

(squealsss EEEEEEK!!) I never win anything, so I was beyond thrilled when I read her blog and subsequently her comment on my blog notifying me of my awesomeness. So THANK YOU BRITT! As much as I dabble in sarcasm, I truly am honored that she picked me for this!

She had these duties on her blog, so I'm transferring them to mine (totally unoriginal right here <----)

With the awards comes a couple of duties and I’m going to combine both awards into one:

• You must mention the person that nominated you.
• Give 7 random facts about yourself.
• Nominate another blogger for the award and notify them.

As I've already said, Britt is the one who nominated me and you need to go check out her blog rightthisinstantjustclickhername. She is a PHENOMENAL  inspiration and she's cute to boot as well! Here I'll show you (photo borrowed from her blog):

How cute is she??

And because I don't share nearly enough random facts about myself, here's 7 more!

1. I said this before when I first started this blog, but I'll say it again cause I can... Sean and I = AWESOME at washer's. Be prepared if we're on a team together, because we will dominate you. (Not evidenced in this photo, however that is completely beside the point, it's the only photo I found easily of us playing):

If you can't tell, this is when someone (namely, Jason or Nina) made a point that we were confident would not happen and by some stroke of fate did happen. I imagine we both are going "NOOOO" right now :) But we're awesome, don't let this deter you.

2. I am obsessed with shoe shopping. I love any kind - flats, heels, casual, dressy, you  name it, I love it!

3. I frequently buy way too much fruit at the grocery store and then end up eating it all day long to ensure that it won't go bad. YUM.

4. My best friend doubles as my life partner/partner in crime/husband. He's pretty darn cute, if you ask me, and I'll gladly tell you that we are absolute soul mates. As mushy-gushy as it is, marrying him was the best thing I've ever done. And I know that everyone thinks they have the greatest husband in the world, but mine is the best in the world for me and I truly believe that no one else would get him like I get him nor would he make anyone else as happy as he makes me and vice verse (just call me conceited)

5. I despise being locked up in an office all day. DESPISE IT. I love my coworkers and hate being confined to the indoors.

6. I love cleaning my house. Why? Cause it's mine. It stresses me out when Sean wants to help because I like things done a certain way and am slightly neurotic about things being where I want them.

7. My husband is AMAZING at wakeboarding. Which makes me terrified of it. Because he is super intimidating sometimes. However I can stand up on a wakeboard (briefly), I just can't do all the fancy-schmancy tricks that he can do (pshhh back flip? so amateur.)

As far as nominations go - you all need to run over and check out Heidi's blog, she was my best friend in high school and she just got married this past weekend!! Go show her some love, she's adorable!

Have a spectacular day! I have some exciting things coming up :)

Spin, spin

1. As much as I did not want to run when I got home last night, I did. This was solved by eating Clif shot blocks on the drive home so that I was literally BURSTING with energy when I hop-skip-jumped through the front door, and the fact that it was IDEAL running weather

2. Best.Run.EVER.

'Nuff said about that. I was flying the entire 52 minutes I ran. It was a beautiful thing. I floated through the front door afterwards high on endorphins and glee at having such a good run.

Has anyone ever been to Bullritos? That's where we went for dinner last night. I gotta say, it's like Chipotle with the food and Which Wich with the bags where you mark off what you want, which means I think it's delectable because I love both of the aforementioned places. Sean ate way too much and I, being the responsible and mature one of the two of us, portioned off my bowl and saved half for lunch one day this week ;)

In keeping with last week, I shot out of bed at 4:30 this morning, though this time it was to get to spin class. I gave myself two options last night - 1. I could go to the 5am spin class at the gym I preferred or 2. I could go to the 5:30am spin class at the gym I hated (that's the beauty of having the 24 hr gym membership that allows you to go to any 24 hr location). I made it to my fav gym and had a MAGNIFICENT time. Bear in mind, by magnificent I mean that for the entire 7 minute drive to the gym I was wondering what the heck I was doing up already and for the entire hour spin class I was realizing that I was close to death. However the instructor told me that I "had some legs on me", which (whatever she may have actually meant) I took to mean I had nice, muscular legs thankyouverymuch and after she flooded me with flattery I decided I will come back next Tuesday.

That being said, it's now 9:30, I've been up for 5 hours, had way too much coffee and am quite ready for a nap!

Sunflower Seeds Gross Me OUT

This is what I'm doing right now:

GROOOOSSSSS:

:)

I haven't worked out yet today :-/ The question is - will I??

Motivation = seriously lacking right now.

This is what I intend on looking like when I get home:

This is what I intend on looking like after:

This is what I looked like yesterday:

(you're welcome for sharing such a deliciously horrendous picture of myself)

no no no.

I'm chugging coffee like my life depended on it right now and I still don't really have the energy to post.

So I'll do some bullet points and come back later for a better post:

1. Got up at 4am on Friday so I could run like an idiot. Spent most of it terrified that one of the goblins that appears on Criminal Minds would capture me (it was a pretty speedy run, needless to say)

2. Convinced myself that I am AWESOME because I worked out. Promptly coffeed-up and drove over to my parents to have a garage sale

3. Mid-morning realized my legs felt like lead. DEFINITELY time to take some time off working out.

4. Grocery shopped after garage-selling. (<---dumb)

5. Drank pretty much an entire bottle of champagne coupled with orange juice. (By pretty much, I mean the whole thing) mmmm mimosas. They gave me the energy to clean my entire house Friday night (<---------------------EXTRADUMB) so Sean and I could have some friends over Saturday night.

6. Was terrified that due to the abovementioned over-mimosaing that I would sleep through my alarm, so instead I woke up at 2am and then again at 3:45am before finally just getting up, over-coffeeing again, and driving over to my parents house to round out garage sale (no work out Saturday, legs commence rejoicing)

7. Garage sale.

8. Crawfish boil with my family and Sean's parents. Glorious weather, fantastic company, and more crawfish then is reasonable (though yes, I ate it all, Crawfish season is my fave).

9. Ride to parents house on motorcycle with husband. Upon arrival, eye begins burning. Suddenly it is red, swollen shut, and tears are pouring out of one eye like I just had the biggest fight of my life. Oh, crap.

10. Reminisce about the last time this happened and I went to the hospital. Sigh. Parents are convinced I can't drive myself home (they're right) so they drive me and my truck and deposit me safely at my house.

11. Spend the rest of the night trying to manage. No people come over ('cept Jason and Nina who I hadn't seen in FOREVER and was a miserable hostess too cause of said eye... feel bad and need an immediate redo).

12. Hate Sean because he doesn't get it.

13. Cry like a baby because my eye sucks, making it swell even more, then sleep.

14. Wake up today, catch up on blogging world and facebook because I haven't seen either since Thursday.

15. Pretend looking like Quasimodo is normal and drink coffee like my life depended on it.

16. SIGH.

A little off

This whole week has been a little off for me. Luckily, I do know and understand why it's been off, I just am an idiot haven't done anything about it yet.

I diligently track my workouts so that I can see what I'm doing/how I'm feeling during and after/etc. This does not necessarily mean that I pay attention to when my last rest day occurred. And let me tell you: rest days are just as important than every other workout day you have. Because you can do strength training and cardio til you're blue in the face (which I have) but your body definitely needs to play catch up sometimes.

I know this.

I preach this.

I have blatantly ignored this.

See, somewhere in there I knew that my last 'rest day' was the Friday before the Clover 5k. Seems like that was pretty recent right? Yeah we're at day 12 of not having taken a day off. Am I an idiot? Possibly.

I was going to take Monday off. Except it was so gosh darn pretty outside that I ran anyway. And I didn't run easy either, I ran fast. Like I said, I am an idiot sometimes.

So when I got up yesterday I didn't work out. But traffic got the better of me so I bee-lined for Pilates after work. I mean, it's just stretching, that shouldn't be bad, right? And then I got up and ran this morning. And I'll be going to yoga tomorrow night. And I'll be running Friday. And Saturday will be a glorious day. Heck, I might take Sunday off too. Let's not get too ahead of ourselves there though.

Suffice it to say, I'm tired. My legs are tired, my whole body is tired. I haven't done one ounce of strength training this week and I don't feel bad about it at all. But I am looking forward to tomorrow being my Friday, our house (finally!) being cleared out of garage sale stuff, and this weekend quickly approaching.

Til next time.

"Official" Warrior Dash Recap

http://www.examiner.com/fitness-trends-in-houston/warrior-dash-debuts-houston-review

You can go click the link above for my "official" race review.

My own personal one is still in the works :)

Hum Ho

I am out of it today. Not really sure what that's all about.

Thursday hubs and I went and saw Zac Brown Band at the rodeo (they were awesome!) and had a really nutritious meal of pizza & beer for dinner. Nutritious, delicious - those can be interchangeable sometimes, right?

Hubs also showed up at my office with this:

Wine in a bag? Literally. He makes me laugh.

Friday was dumb at work. I couldn't seem to get my desk cleared off, evidenced here:

Friday evening was pretty uneventful. Sean and I did nothing. I fell asleep reading a book, woke up and moved to the couch with Sean and pretended to 'watch' the first Wall Street movie. By pretended to watch, I mean that I literally was asleep within 8 minutes of it playing (and yes, that is an exact number).

Saturday I woke up really early because Louie, my sweet, sweet Louie, would not leave me alone. He spent most of 5am-6am meowing in my face and head-butting me. He's such a good kitty.

And just because Louie can't be the only one with a picture... Here's Leo

And here they are:

At least they are cute, right?

After my bike ride I came home and cleaned and then did some yoga. Sean worked on a project he is currently extremely engrossed in, and I grocery shopped and did house-wifey things. This is a really boring post. We went to Trader's Village for a bit and then finally came home and I made honey-glazed pork, sauteed onions and kale, and long grain wild rice for dinner. If you were wondering if I am a magnificent wife, I am. Haha.

Then we re-watched Wall Street. It was while we were trying to figure out where to start the movie that I found out that I fell asleep 8 minutes in on Friday night.

I made it through most of the movie the second time around. And by most of the movie, I mean I was asleep an hour into it and woke up intermittently throughout the second half. Oh well, I know generally what happened.

Sunday was Warrior Dash (it shall get its own post later) and then we went to Candice and Mike's apartment so that we could all go to Jason Aldean. He was spectacular! We hung out with Candice and Mike for a bit after before we went home and Sean tried to entice me into watching Supercross by making us make bets on who would win. I was asleep within 20 minutes of that one, even with Sean picking my people for me and yelling about which one of us was winning. Sigh.

And now I'm here. :-/ Feeling a little off and out of sorts today, but I think I am just really tired. At least I only have a four day work-week this week, my mom and I are (finally) having a garage sale this weekend!

Short and Sweet

Hello lovelies,

This is going to be short&sweet. I'm writing for Examiner.com now and I'd LOVE if you'd pass on my page to others so that they can read me too. The more page views, etc that I have, the better. :)

You can find me HERE

So please, read it, pass it on, give me feedback, etc.

ZBB tonight @ rodeo and I can't wait!

First things first.

How cute and St. Patricksy is this?? Definitely one of my favorite shirts from a race thus far! And it totally makes up for how sucky the actual run was. I promise, if you shower me with cute things I will love you.

DSW was kind enough to send me a $20 off a $50 purchase coupon because I hadn't bought anything from them in so long. (Coupons work on me as well, gimme gimme and I'll give to you too), so naturally I went on my lunch break today.

I was debating between some ridiculously cute wedges that I have no immediate function for but am positive if given the time and means I could build an outfit around, however when I wandered into the Clearance section I found the shoes that stole my heart. $70 Sperry's that are 30% off and then an additional $20 off? Done annnnnd done.

Those bad boys and I made it to the checkout line as quick as we possibly could without looking completely ridiculous.

I don't know how you (yes, YOU) feel about fruit in your salad, but I'm a bit of a skeptic. Being the skeptic that I am, I was thinking about how gross I thought it was Sunday, which is how I ended up with this:

Yeah I got nothin'. It was delicious. Spring mix, sunburst tomatoes, avocado, strawberries and blueberries with olive oil vinaigrette? New fav. I'll never doubt fruit in salad again. And look how pretty it is!

I know that I've raved about my phone ENOUGH, especially because I was living in the Dark Ages far longer than anyone else in the U.S., but having FM radio on my phone has been the biggest blessing. It makes work so much more enjoyable now that I can listen to 94.5. ALL.DAY.LONG. I <3.

Oh and I did promise to talk about my awesome Sunday run, so now seems as good a time as any. I had a pretty busy Sunday full of super important things (you know, new hair color, new hair cut, outlet shopping with my good friend Allison... I told you - SUPER important), but I did get up early and lace up for a run.

I drove over to Bridgeland (which has my heart, I love that neighborhood) and ran for about 7 miles. It was glorious. About the time I was thinking of quitting Eminem called me up started rapping on my iPod about how failure wasn't an option, so instead of quitting I picked up the pace and ran 10 minutes longer than I was originally going to. You tell 'em Slim.

On that note, everyone should add some Eminem to their play list and I'm going back to work.

OH and I totally had my first real brush with temptation last night per eating at Chuy's with Sean's fam and am proud to say I didn't eat a single chip. Take THAT chips, I take my lent give-ups seriously!

Race Recap

Let's just say I had an exceptionally sucktastic run on Saturday.

They can't all be good ones, right? My husband willingly (read: forced) came with me on Saturday morning to the Woodlands for the Clover 5k at The Goose's Acre pub. Due to my extreme fear of being late anywhere we got there around 8:30. IN MY DEFENSE packet pick-up was from 8-10 and then the race was at 10. Packet pick up took up all of 10.5 seconds and then we had an hour and a half to kill (whoops).

Pre-race I felt good (ok, I actually felt jittery. I woke up at 5 to my old phone dying and doing some horrendous beeping noise and then I couldn't go back to sleep. So I had coffee. Biggest.mistake.EVER.)

This was the first race that I listened to my iPod during. The verdict is still out on whether I will be doing this again or not.

Here we all are pre-race waiting to run. See if you can find me in that blurriness... Haha no don't. You can't see me.

Here I am stopping my iPod after the race.

I am worn out (more on that later) but he sure is cute!

Happy to be done. Worst run ever.

Post run beer. Duh.

I don't know why all those pictures are so small, but whatev. Things I learned from this race:

1. I can't drink coffee pre-race. It makes me cramp up IMMEDIATELY. And by immediately I mean the first step I took I had a stitch in my side. This alternated the entire race making it the longest run ever.

2. Signage is everything. There were slim to none in regards to the course. You know what that means? We all took a wrong turn somewhere, turning a 5k into a 4 mile run. Horrible. When you check your watch and see you're breaking 30 minutes on a "5k" when the last one you ran in 25 it doesn't do wonders for the self esteem. It wasn't til later that I learned we ran too far.

3. Wind sucks. I felt like I was running backwards at points.

They did, however, give us the cutest shirts ever. I'll have to take a pic and show you later.

In other news, I got my hair cut! I went in yesterday to get it re-highlighted and trimmed and then I just cut it off. I can't really explain what got into me, but I'm glad that I did because I LOVE IT. And normally I am adverse to me having short(er) hair, but I just really like it this time around!

Check out my ridiculously good office lighting that is totally going to do my hair justice.

OK you really can't even see, but I cut about 4 inches off. Gone! Just like that! It was very liberating.

That's all I have in me to post right now. I'll explain my awesome Sunday run later.



A little bit of Friday randomness

Since Lent seems to be the hot topic right now (can't imagine why, considering it started on Wednesday) I should just go ahead and get out of the way what I am sacrificing for Lent. Sigh.

1. Liquor (Disclaimer #1: these days I don't really drink a lot at all but I do love a good vodka tonic, margarita, or blood mary here and there, so this is my baby give-up... As in, the one that I think I can do no sweat)

2. Chocolate (Disclaimer #2: I am not a huge chocolate fan as is, BUT I did somehow get into the habit of eating a hershey kiss (or two or three) after lunch every.single.day so this is my intermediate give-up)

3. Chips and salsa (Disclaimer #3: I am dying. I have been thinking about chips and salsa nonstop since I decided that I should go without these. This is my huge give-up).

Another disclaimer: These are my own personal views. I am doing this just to see if I can do it, not really for my religious affiliations. I keep typing out a lot more to say about why I am or am not doing this, but the bottom line is this is just what I'm doing this time around. Done.

In other news, as I've already babbled on about how March is National Nutrition Month and I am trying to eat tons of fruits and veggies, I thought I'd show you how good I'm doing just with breakfast alone...

BAM:

How's that for a health smoothie of (half) a banana, spinach, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries??

I think I covered a good amount of colors in that one. How's that for being super healthy??

Oh and new favorite pre-yoga snack:

Delicious.

I haven't run once this week which kind of scares me as far as tomorrow is concerned. I've progressively gotten faster and faster at running 5ks but now that I've taken almost an entire week off running I'm not sure how that's going to fare.

Hopefully I'll run fast? I've tried to lure Sean into going with me with the promise of beer afterwards (it's at a pub) but then I got to thinking that I don't want to sit around the bar all day (this girls got things to do!) so now I'm betting he won't go.

Oh and I made the MASSIVE mistake of telling Sean how I still couldn't do a pull up and he tried to "coach" me into being able to do one yesterday when I got home from yoga. Hello, I already have no limbs now, and you want me to try to do a pull up? Needless to say we both spent a lot of time laughing. Him because I am the worlds worst at pull ups and me because I was embarrassed as I watched him do one-handed pull ups.

Give me a break.

So about that run...

Well, I definitely pulled a hamstring after my magnicificent run on Sunday (figures). So I've been laying off running this week (especially cause I have a 5k this weekend, sigh). I did some YOGA (no reason for the all caps) on Monday morning and then yesterday I biked, did an ab circuit and then went to Pilates last night.

Since I have no good pool to go swim laps in right now it makes working out without running rather difficult. I did an arm circuit this morning and then was at a loss. So I busted out my jump rope. I got through 10 30 second intervals (yeah, sounds impressive right? it's only 5 minutes). I think I should jump rope more, it's NO JOKE.

Then I read an article about being the girl who can do pull-ups. So as soon as Sean hopped in the shower (yes, I wait for him to be gone to try pull-ups, it's embarassing to me that I can't do one) I hustled over to our pull-up bar and tried. I gave it my all. And? All I did was hang, hahaha. I can't for the life of me eek out a pull-up. YET. I've made it a new goal. I WILL be able to do a pull-up at some point :-/

In other news, because I have my nifty new phone, I do have a few pictures to share :)

What is this grossness deliciousness, you ask? Sweet potato mash AKA breakfast :) MMMM... It's a baked sweet potato all mashed up with fresh raspberries, chopped walnuts, a little bit of butter, some cinnamon, some vanilla, and some dried cranberries. DELISH.

And, as promised, wedding collage:

Thank you, Michaels, for putting that huge frame on clearance.

And, newly stained kitchen table (with the addition of my purse as the centerpiece... oops):

Teehee, see cute Leo back there also making an appearance?? He's a picture lover :)

Now, what to do with the chairs? Paint them a lovely bright color? Sean refuses to stain them Stain them? Thoughts?

Get excited.

Why you ask?

Because today's post is coming full-blown with pictures courtesy of my awesome new phone! I can not even begin to contain my excitement.

Side note: I am not a person that buys the up and coming phones. Until now, my phone has served two purposes: 1. To make and receive phone calls 2. To text. UNTIL NOW!

Friday night was my sweet, sweet friend Jenn's 26th birthday! How do you celebrate someone so awesome? By going to play Bingo of course. (These two photos I stole from her ;) no new phone at that point in the weekend):

Please ignore how tired I am looking. I was very tired at this point. Half of my office was out sick last week and I was desperately fighting being sick as well.

After bingo Sean and I went home and I promptly went to bed. I am so lame these days. 24 going on 65, that's me!

Saturday morning I woke up bright and earlyish and went for a nice interval run before coming home and pulling my sweet husband out of bed to run errands (good thing he loves me!)

That's when we went to Verizon and I became the proud new owner of the Droid X. I am so hip now, it's unbelievable. ;)

Then we went and took care of some bank things, I put together a big photo collage of our wedding that is now hanging in our living room (picture tomorrow), Sean stained our kitchen table (picture tomorrow), I grocery shopped, and by 7pm was ready for bed. Just kidding. But really... we watched a couple episodes of 24 and I went to bed (I told you - party animal, right here).

Sunday I woke up and decided to make blueberry pancakes.

Ingredients:

Batter:



Extras:

Cooking:

Finished:

DELICIOUS:

We devoured them. And they.were.AWESOME.

Then we went and saw The Adjustment Bureau - we both liked it, and I love me some Matt Damon.

It was SUCH a beautiful day out that when I got home I laced up and drove over to the neighborhood I ran my first 5k in (and the neighborhood I plan to live in one day... but that's beside the point...) and proceeded to run a (slow) 6-7 miles. It was gorgeous.

This is me quite happy after running that long:

Sean and I made burgers for dinner. Good, honest-to-goodness, beef burgers. This might not sound like a big deal, but for those of you that don't know:

1. I never eat burgers

2. I am a turkey-burger girl through and through

But sometimes you just need a good burger. Well, kind of. I made mine into a salad :)

Divine.

How much better are posts full of pictures?!?! I agree :)