Thankful Thursday

This week...

1. I'm thankful for good books and good discussions - this is where big dreams come from!
2. I'm thankful for my rest day today from CrossFit. Ouch. Getting up early to do yoga this morning was well worth it, and needed!
3. I'm thankful for great colleagues. My boss came over for dinner last night and it was so great to spend time with her outside of work, and introduce her to Nolan (and Milo, haha). Plus she brought her adorable dog!
4. I'm thankful for checklists. I'd be totally lost without them. That is the only thing helping me feel like I'm ready for a week of vacation after tomorrow!
5. I'm thankful for hard decisions, and big decisions. There's no better way to learn more about yourself and your partner than puzzling through tough choices! I guess we'll be learning a lot this year!

What are you thankful for?

Thankful Thursday

Today, my lunch was courtesy of two of my favourite things: CrossFit and Pinterest. The turkey meatballs were a (paleo) recipe from a CrossFit blog I was reading. The delicious veggie "pasta" was from a pinner on Pinterest who pointed out that you can buy a pre-shredded mix of broccoli, cabbage, and carrot. You just steam it for 5 min and voila! The sauce is basically just tomatoes and herbs, haha. I had this lunch a couple weeks ago and had to re-make it because it was so delicious. New fave!

But you didn't come here to see pictures of my lunch, did you? This week has been busy with transitional pieces of having new team members at work. One of which is my new boss, which is super exciting. At risk of putting too much information about work on here (which is never a good idea - just ask Dooce), I'll just say that the new situation is fabulous and I couldn't be more pleased. w00t for even more reason to enjoy my job!

That seems to be a good segue into my list for the week...

1. I'm thankful for a great new boss and new opportunities! Let's be honest - my old boss was pretty fantastic, but so far I'm loving the new situation and all that comes with it! I've been pretty dang blessed to have such supportive, kind, and encouraging bosses who push me to be the best I can, and genuinely care about not only my career, but also me as a person.

2. I'm thankful for great food. Do I even have to explain this one?

3. I'm thankful for new perspective. I'm reading a book that is encouraging me to change my view of God, the world, and especially my role in all of it.

4. I'm thankful for little shopping excursions with research study monies! Fun!

5. I'm thankful for good conversations with old friends :)

What are you thankful for?

chiefly, things.

Friday morning was our new wafflemaker's maiden voyage, and it was a smashing success! There is NOTHING like fresh waffles, I tell you what. Here's a picture of the beauty:

Professional-quality!



And the end-product. I found a recipe for healthy waffles, and they turned out divine. Except I forgot to take a picture until after I'd already started decorating and eating mine. Yum!

Complete with berries, sugar-free powdered sugar, a little Kerry's light Irish butter, and my favourite Joseph's sugar-free maple syrup. I tell you, Whole Foods keeps me as a customer despite their ridiculous prices almost solely for Joseph's.



Just when I thought Friday couldn't improve because of the tasty waffles, I got to celebrate with Nolan and his colleagues, as he officially became a chief resident and entered his last year of residency. I love that they pass the chieftain hats (okay, maybe not quite PC) from chief to chief each year.

Returning to our table as a chief! Oh, the power. Haha.

I was, and am SO PROUD of him for many reasons. But it's nice to celebrate it publicly and loudly.

Nolan with his co-chief. They're going to run the town!

Saturday morning I got to catch up on sleep a little, and then picked up my friend Bridget and went up to Montebello Preserve for some mountain biking! We went to the top of Black Mountain again and enjoyed the view of the glorious Santa Cruz mountains on a lovely June morning. Oh and the biking was awesome, too. We tried to capture action shots of us bombing down the mountain, but most of them ended up being taken along relatively flat parts. You'll just have to take our word for it that it was amazing! And definitely not all gentle hill like in these pictures! Here's one of me:

And one of Bridget:

And another of me, a little closer. I was going fast, but I know it doesn't look like it here. Hmm.

Last night I continued my pain research study participation with Stanford. This time I only got burnt once (hah!) and spent the rest of the session in an MRI, laying still and doing cognitive testing. SUPER interesting! Here's my view of my super cool MRI outfit and nifty socks:

They knew how curious I was about the whole study, so they went ahead and printed out some pictures of my brain for me to take home. Proof I have a brain, after all. Nolan admired my pictures when he got home after work :)

And now I have lots of some shopping monies! Conclusion: research studies are awesome.

Thankful Thursday

Due in part to the fact that we've been craving waffles, and in part to the fact that a huge box is pretty hard to hide in a home our size, Nolan let me open my birthday present (2 and a half weeks) early last night! YAY for our new Belgian waffle-maker! I have some seriously tasty, healthy recipes I've been dying to try. And what beats fresh Belgian waffles for breakfast? Go ahead, tell me.

Since I'm working from home tomorrow, it means instead of getting up way early to get to the office, I can instead get up a little bit early and have breakfast with N before both of us start work. Guess what's on the menu?

I love Amazon. Seriously, you can get anything there. This morning I broke Nolan's nice jumprope while doing (or trying, anyway) double-unders. Whoops. To Amazon we go! Oh and while I'm at it, I'll get a big bag or xylitol, and whatever else is on my shopping list. Fantastisch!

Last week we went mini-golfing for our date night. Did I already talk about this? No? Okay - we went to the course in Sunnyvale, which IMO was ridiculously hard. Like, they had skee-ball style holes. For mini-golf. Anyway - we bet dessert on the winner...and I lost miserably, and was almost forced to get a slice of cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory (healthy eaters' hell!), but then we came to the bonus 19th hole. The one where you have to hit the ball up a ramp and into a tiny little pvc tube that is barely as big as the golf ball. Impossible. And my friends, just as I was ramping up for my shot, Nolan stood behind me and said, "Yeah, I give this a 10,000-to-one chance that you'll..." and then I hit it in. And the alarm went off. And I won a free round of golf for next time...and the best part was Nolan's face. Best look of shock ever.

So along with avoiding the Cheesecake Factory, I have a lot of other things that have really brightened up my week. Hopefully you have too - June is a magical month!

1. I'm thankful I get to have a breakfast date tomorrow with my incredible husband.
2. I'm thankful for CrossFit! It's totally kicking my butt arms whole body.
3. I'm thankful for good friends. Sometimes it's just so nice that friends invite you to crash their family dinner so you aren't eating alone while S/O is at work.
4. I'm thankful for hot showers. Nothing soothes sore, tired muscles like a steaming hot shower. Or foam-rolling - yeah, that too.
5. I'm thankful for long days and cool summer mornings. I was running for my warm-up at 5:15 this morning, and was just so cheered by the fresh, cold air and the sun slowly starting to rise over the Santa Cruz mountains. Beautiful!

What are you thankful for?

an afternoon with my friend pain

Almost a week into CrossFit, and I'm...sore. So sore. Tomorrow is a rest day and I cannot tell you how excited I am for it. Big change from my past attitude towards rest days, eh? I'm also realizing that none of these workouts are easy. You may be thinking "duh", but okay, here is an example:

1. One arm hang - I used to do this as a kid all the time, so when I saw it on the WOD I was thinking there was no way I'd work up a sweat with something like that. Wrong. I managed MAYBE 1 second before I had to support with a second arm.

2. Double unders. Who didn't do these with a jump rope growing up? Guess who kept shamefully whipping her ankles trying to do more than 1 in a row this weekend at the gym?

3. Rope climb. Yeah. I used to rock at this. But I subbed towel pull-ups for it yesterday since I couldn't get to the gym at a decent time, and my body is still aching from the effort.

CF, I will never underestimate your WODs again.

I count it as a major win that I cooked Nolan a vegetarian meal this weekend, and he actually liked it. Twice! We had it twice. And it was tasty both times. So now that recipe for spicy black-bean and butternut squash burgers with peanut slaw (wrapped in lettuce instead of a roll) is going into my perma-files.

Sorry the picture makes it look crappy and dry - I swear it was the opposite!

So good!


So other than baking weird burgers and sucking it up at CrossFit, my excitement for the weekend was this:

 A pain study at Stanford that I signed up for. Yes - it means they inflicted pain on me for money. Hah! But guys...it was so worth it. That little picture above is the heat testing. They basically burned my hand over and over until I slid the rating scale to unbearable...and then inspected my hand to find there were no burns whatsoever. Technology is amazing! The purpose of the study is to find out how the brain processes and deals with pain. I did several rounds of different heat testing and rating, and a round of cold (that was the worst by far! I hate cold!), and lots of boring questionnaires. But now I have shopping money, and more to come next week when I go in for round 2: laying in an MRI for over an hour. Here's hoping I don't doze off.

Before you judge...think of how much fun shopping will be! I totally earned it!

For a random girls' night last night, I decided I wanted something light and lemony for dessert. So I found this delicious recipe for lemon pudding cake - considering my sweetener was my homemade sugar-free powdered sugar, the recipe ended up being really low cal too. Bonus! What came out of me pouring a gloppy mess into ramekins, was super-cute little treats, with an airy cake-like texture on bottom, and a layer of pudding on the top (after inverting). Hence the name.

I decided to dress up the final product a bit with some of the delicious blackberries I happened to have. So tasty!

Last week, while reading Moby Dick on the BART on my way home, a tender young chap asked if he could take my picture. He was a budding photographer, and apparently the lighting was good that day. Who knew I looked so angry while reading?

The perils of having a weave: random chunky hair loss in public places.

True story. I sit on a floor at work where at least 1 (I suspect another, though) woman has a weave, and I've seen big chunks that have fallen off just sitting in places like our hallway, the bathroom, by someone's desk that she's been lingering at. Today it was the bathroom floor, and I *almost* took a picture...but I firmly believe the bathroom is the one place where phones should be taboo. I don't want to know what else you're taking pictures of in there.

Anyway.

Today I made the decision to really start doing CrossFit. Since I can't afford to join an official CrossFit gym right now (on top of the gym my work subsidizes), it means doing it solo at my gym or at home, depending on the WOD (workout of the day). I've been waffling on this, because it means a lot of self-education on technique, lots of time practicing, and most likely...just plain working really hard. We already both decided to join a CF gym together next year when we settle in an area and get to pick a new gym, but today when I was checking out the WOD on the official site, I thought: why not just jump right in? So I have. See, they post all the WODs online for each day here, as well as a bunch of other useful material, including videos of technique, etc. It's pretty awesome.

Since I like to plan out my days/week life in advance, I decided to start myself a week behind the postings, so I can know what the workouts are for a whole week in advance. So today I did the May 29 WOD, and tomorrow I'm doing the May 30 WOD. Make sense? I thought today's was going to be really easy - back squats? No problem! So I did the official warmup they've developed...which took longer than I anticipated...and then jumped right in. I did a few practice sets with light weight, and then went to what I "should" be squatting. Apparently I'm weaker than I thought, and failed out and had to drop weight during the sets of 2 :( Here are my results today:

WOD: 3-2-2-2-1-1-1-1-1 back squats
95 lbs
95 lbs
95 lbs (FAIL)
85 lbs
85 lbs
85 lbs
85 lbs
85 lbs
85 lbs

Sorry if this is boring reading material, but hey - I haven't been this excited about a new challenge in a long time!

Keep Tahoe Blue

Last week, we hosted Harley at our place again for 10 days. Generally it takes a day or two for the two of them to stop terrorizing each other and settle down, but this time it was just a few hours before they decided they were BFFs again.

This past weekend, we went up to the ranch for some R&R. We went mountain biking with my dad and a few of his friends (and another daughter) Saturday morning, then cleaned ourselves up for a family reunion at my great-uncle's ranch on the other side of the road. It feels a little bit like Akin-ville driving down that road sometimes.

Nolan found a clever way to advertise his family link/free ticket to the BBQ while avoiding questions of how he's related:

And of course the rest of the day we spent either at Peet's playing chess, eating dinner, or sipping wine in the hot tub and enjoying the fantastic sunset.

And dessert, of course.

Sunday morning we got up early and drove up to Reno to see what we thought of it. While Nolan was taking care of some business, I found a quiet corner in a Starbucks and skyped with Jennie and her new baby boy. Please ignore my lazy eye and focus on the cute mother and baby in the picture.

After that, we decided to check out a local church. We'll probably keep looking if we go back to the area. But it was fun to spend a Sunday morning in a new place! 

 On our way back from Reno, we stopped for lunch in Incline Village and had lunch with some dear friends and their daughter, and ambled along the shores of North Lake Tahoe for awhile. So beautiful up there - especially when it's hot and clear!

Monday was back to our usual capers in Placerville - me working from home, sushi for lunch, etc. Even though it's a long drive up there for what is almost always too short a time, it's always so worth it. Already counting down to our next little getaway!