Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Twitter?

I kind of feel about Twitter the same way I feel about the massive vampire craze. Which is to say that maybe these are the first things that I am supposed to be "old" about. You know? "Those new-fangled things are just for kids!"

Except, I don't think I want to have that old attitude yet. I mean, I don't even have kids so how can I already be uncool and not on top of the times? (And no, I am not going to get into the vampire thing!)

So, is Twitter cool? I think I would enjoy following *some* celebrities. But is it like a big popularity contest where you have to try to get eleventy billion followers? I don't even know how many people that I know have Twitter accounts.

What's the dealy yo?

Monday, February 15, 2010

What's been going on?

Man, I have sucked royally at blogging the other day and the sad part is that I just haven't felt inspired or motivated to write (which for someone who is constantly thinking and mouthing off about said thoughts, it's been kind of odd).

It's not that things aren't happening because life has been moving at record pace. I even had a thought last week about not blogging anymore period, which I have never really considered before.

But that's neither here nor there, really, so here are some small updates in case you care about what's been going on for me.

WW: yeah. I have been royally sucking it up in the whole "living on plan" concept lately. I gained .2 two weeks ago, .4 last week and I am going back and forth about even weighing in this week because I ate lots of Mexican food, pizza, buffalo flavored everything and did not spend a wink of time in the gym last week. Eh. I hate to say something as clique or b.s.-y as "it was bound to happen" but seriously, it really was bound to happen and I know what kind of work I need to do to get back into the swing of things.

Wedding stuff: Last week, I got a cake (actually two cakes: one for the wedding and one for the rehearsal dinner because we aren't huge fans of the dessert at our rehearsal dinner restaurant). And I did not resist eating a ton of sample cake. OMG it was delicious. I also met with a girl who is going to do our day of coordination (my church hasn't had a wedding in 15 years or so, so yes, I need someone to run the show). She's also doing our invitation order and flowers. Wedding flowers = mad hella annoying so I am glad to have that done. I gave her pretty much free license to do whatever she wants because I am the anti-flower person. The moral of this story is please don't ask me what kinds of flowers I'm having (because I don't know or care) and please don't tell me technical things about said flowers (because again, I don't know or care). Flowers to me are the bottom-feeders of my wedding. We found a DJ, which oddly enough, was kind of like the flowers part for me and I wasn't looking forward to the process of finding one. But I'm happy with it and like basically everything else associated with the nuptials, I'm glad to have it done so I don't have to think about it anymore. My mom and I also went shopping and found her dress in about 20 minutes. Like I told her at the time, this is just how my wedding rolls. We find things that work and we make decisions. It's really fun because it seriously freaks out all our vendors. Her dress is beautiful on her and I'm excited to see it post-alterations.

Valentine's Day: We woke up and walked to get the most delicious coffee drink ever (Caribou Coffee's Mint Condition- go get you some) before heading to Michigan Ave to register at Chicago's only Williams-Sonoma. It was about 10 billion times better than our obnoxious experience at Macy's (which btw, I deleted every item off that registry this morning, there were way too many annoyances involved to want to use them anymore). I seriously want to work at Williams-Sonoma someday. They had a chick there that was baking the whole time. We had some Chocolate Chip Quick Bread (bought the mix, it was that good) and I think Adam may have pilfered a Valentine's Day sugar cookie or two. For most of the hour before they opened, we were the only couple in the store, which made it so nice. The sun was shining and I could actually feel it's warmth so we kept walking and accomplishing things. We stopped in at Sunglasses Hut so I could redeem my Valentine's gift from Adam (a coupon for my first ever nice pair of shades). I ended up with some sweet aviators that make me feel (and hopefully look) cool. We then headed down to Men's Wearhouse and did all the selections for the men in our wedding party. It's just become expected that whomever is working with us will make at least 3 comments about how easy we are to work with or how fast we make decisions. It's tux selection, not rocket science, right? We also had ideas of what we wanted before we even walked in. There were about 11,000 choices but luckily Adam is like me and knows what he likes. Without giving everything away, we ended up with some lovely tuxes and Adam looked really nice in the jacket style he chose. After that, we had a quick brunch/lunch and headed down to Bed, Bath and Beyond (my replacement for Macy's) to register and for Adam to use his V Day gift card on some new fancy pillows. I'm not going to lie, we were basically exhausted after that but managed to trek down to Greektown for a really nice dinner. All in all, it was a busy day but it was fun to spend the day together focused on our big day in October!

So for the most part, we have the biggest stuff wrapped up for the wedding! In my mind, the sooner the better because I hope to not have tons left to do as the time sneaks up on me. As of tomorrow, we are only 8 months away.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

From the mailman

I've been enjoying warmer weather in Texas all week and look what was in my gigantic pile of mail waiting for me at home:


I was totally unaware that I would be getting a results book from the marathon. COOL!
Just in case you were interested, there was no one else with my exact time (5:44:00) although I finished one second after a 24 year old woman from Mississippi and a 21 year old woman from Kansas was two seconds after me (there were also two men with times of 5:44:02).
The last finisher was actually only 97th in her division as she is a 64 year old woman from Illinois. She finished with a time of 7:46:33. Which means she ran for over two hours longer than me and I was getting pretty darn sick of running myself. And 64 years old? YOU GO GIRL! If I can run a marathon at 64 years old, I will consider myself to be a baller.
There are also more detailed stories of lots of people, including the man who runs in the banana suit, who I think is a friend of my hairdresser.

Overall, it was a cool surprise for my homecoming. Oh and I ran outside for the first time since the marathon while I was in San Antonio. I only ran for about 40 minutes but it was still SO NICE to be able to do that. Here in Chi-city? Not so much. There is a foot of snow on the ground so it'll be another couple of months before I can hit up the lakefront path again.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Have I ruined it for myself?

I totally meant to have pictures of our awesome CSA box that we got yesterday but I didn't go and pick it up and my sweet Adam had everything put away into the fridge by the time I got home from yoga (which by the way was hard, but great last night). What is a CSA box, you ask? If you were to google the term, you'd find that CSA is Community Supported Agriculture and the basic premise of most programs is that you (and a group of other people that are into local foods) will make a payment to a farmer before the harvest season (usually June-Oct) to fund their growing season and in return you'll receive a box of that week's harvest each week during those months. I read about it in Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food and decided to see what was available in our area. Turns out quite a lot. Anyhoo, I signed us up for a much less money intensive program and we can get a box (or half box like we got this week) when we need it and we just mail a check each week. We get our stuff from a cooperative of farms in Wisconsin and they do their program year round, which is pretty cool in CSA land. It's easy, you sign up, mail a check and pick up at a local hippie coffee shop.

For the good... the box, or really paper bag, we got was full of goodness. Mushrooms, oranges, bananas, a large melon (not sure if it's cantaloupe or honeydew), apples, potatoes, onions, broccoli and some other assortments. I was surprised of the quantity. I also purchased a dozen eggs and they look GLORIOUS, all different colors of browns. And they are supposedly laid by happy chickens in Wisconsin. Cute.

For the bad... ok. My main reason for doing this was to hopefully educate myself on things that are in season and I know that the bananas and melon did not come from Wisconsin in the dead of winter. I realize they are just trying to give us our money's worth during the off-season but I would have rather seen beets (which would have required some research for me to cook with and some bravery since I'm not sure I've ever had any interest in eating them). So, I'm not sure how I feel about getting more of it although it was kind of nice to get a large quantity of produce for $9 and some sweet eggs that won't make me feel insanely guilty about the chickens.


Now, for the sad news. I think I may be on the path to ruining one of my greatest pleasures in life. The worst part about making major commitments to eating as much of your daily diet in healthful, whole foods is that you start not being able to tolerate the not so healthful things you mix in there. The last couple of times we've gone out drinking, I've had a rip-roaring headache in the morning, which is not something that has ever happened to me before. Last night I had a Miller Lite and two hard ciders and my head is bumpin! What is that about? Please don't let this new lifestyle ruin beer for me! Not cool, body. I have been trying to treat you as well as I can so don't let me down.

It's mornings like this that make me so irritated that I don't have an endless supply of real (not Americanized) German beer here. Why do we put sulfites and other crap (that ultimately turns into formaldehyde in your body... yes, the same stuff they soak the pigs and frogs you dissected in school in) in our alcohol here? Grrr.

Enough ranting. Must eat oatmeal and go to the gym to sweat off the beer and hopefully rid myself of the headache.