Success!

I successfully completed 10 days of real food! It wasn’t hard at all, but it also wasn’t that different than how I was eating before. It was a little more expensive (only fresh produce, bakery bread) and a tad more inconvenient (no deli meat? Ah!), but it felt good to munch on carrot sticks instead of wheat thins. I’m going to continue what I’m doing, and hopefully introduce some new foods into the mix. A girl from work suggested spiced chickpeas , which sound delicious. (ooo or kale chips?) I’d also like to find some more ways to introduce more veggies into my diet, and eat less fruit. Fruit is so good – but a little too sugary and fibery (stomach pains!).

(ugh I just noticed that the rotisserie chicken I picked up at HEB has some additives, sugars, and milk. I’ll eat it anyway… but I didn’t even think to check the label! Dumb!)

On a completely different note, I just got done reading an entire blog about running. I spent every night last week curled up with my iphone and that blog instead of a book. It made me want to run! I’ve had a little cabin fever ever since I got baby Prim. She hasn’t had all of her shots so she isn’t allowed out and about too much yet. (Not that she will be able to run with me while she is still young anyway. I can’t be messing up her puppy joints!) But I’ve been spending every evening with her making sure she is getting plenty of mental and physical stimulation. I would just feel bad sticking her in her crate for another hour since she is in it all day. I’ve gotten a short run in about every other weekend, but I’m starting to consider waking up extra early (5:30! eep!) to get in a workout. I think it will be better once Prim has had all of her shots, and I can tire her out with a long hike/run/dog park play session after work.

But anyway, back to running. I need new running shoes. I messed up my foot last summer, which was the reason I toned down the running in the first place. It kills me to have to spend a bunch of money on shoes, but I think it will be worth the investment if it helps my feet. I’m planning to visit a running store and do that gait analysis thing to see what kind of shoes I need.

So that’s my life right now: dog, food, work, dog, work, dog, dog, food, dreams of running

Oh wait! I also wanted to share my puppy playschool story with you! I was ranting about it to my friend Casey in an email, and it went something like this:

“I was at puppy socialization class when you called. Prim got stuck playing alone with this one other dog that was being a nutcase. Prim was the only one that wasn't intimidated so she got paired with him. But the other dog was too busy barking his little corgi head off to play so Prim was just begging for treats from everyone. Eventually they moved a little pit puppy in with her (I think the pit was being a butt with the other puppies) and they played well for about 3 minutes, then class was over! Why is my dog the social worker dog?? I wanted her to be pooped out with playing. The good thing is that we get to move to the real dog classes earlier because the instructor said she was mature for her age, an old soul (I don't know how much I believe that!).”

Aren’t you glad you don’t get emails from me? I just blab and blab and blab. Actually… now that I think about it… it’s not too different from this blog.

Are you still here?

Real Food for Realz

I did my grocery shopping today and I’m officially eating real food, and only real food. I think I will take on the 10 day challenge.

Today I had oatmeal for breakfast with Stevia instead of sugar. I like Stevia better than any other alternative sweeteners I have tried. I also had a spoonful (or two…) of peanut butter, because there is no way a bowl of oatmeal would be enough to fill me up. Right now I am finishing up Skippy Natural peanut butter which has less than 5 ingredients, but I bought some (expensive) peanut butter today that is 100% peanuts and nothing else.

For lunch I had Triscuits Thin Crisps (3 ingredients), with fruits – strawberries, grapes, and an apple, baby carrots, celery, and some more peanut butter. It was like a party plate all for myself. For dinner I cooked some chicken tenders, which turned out pretty tasty. I marinated them in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic salt and thyme, then cooked them on the stove for about 5 minutes. I fixed some broccoli to go with it, and had an orange and grapes for desert. Now I’m eating grapes and blueberries as my nighttime snack because I can’t help myself.

I love fresh foods, and I think the only challenge will making my food last the week. I love snacking on fruits and nuts (and now peanut butter) so hopefully I can control myself so I won’t have to go shopping again. I’m also trying to stay away from dairy and sugar… all of this mostly to see if I can get my skin to clear up. I’ve been battling this acne on my face for way too long, and I’m getting sick of it.

In other news, Prim and I went to visit Pyro and Casey today. We had so much fun! Prim and Pyro played the entire time, and I got to see Casey who I haven’t seen for a few weeks (how do we let that happen?). I can’t wait until Prim is older so we can all go hiking and running and she will be better suited to Pyro as a playmate. He was good with her, they just got a little carried away at some moments and he is so much bigger than her that we had to break them up every now and then. But we shouldn’t let her size fool us, that little booger was constantly back at him trying to start a new game.


Good food, good weather, good friends, and a tired puppy. Today gets a thumbs up.

Food and Books. Typical.

Thursday the BFFs came over and we baked! We made the Chocolate Biscoff Cheesecake Bars that I've made before. I've had 3 slices in the last day and a half. (They are really good.)


Other than that I haven't been doing much. I've poked around my room, adding stuff to my Goodwill box. I also finished a few books, which makes my 2010 book list look like this:

1. The Other End of the Leash by Patricia McConnell, Ph.D.
2. Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal
3. The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon
4. Food Rules by Michael Pollan
5. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
6. The Introvert Advantage by Marti Olsen Laney, Psy.D.
7. Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan
8. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
9. A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
10. An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon
11. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
12. Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
13. Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins
14. Don't Shoot the Dog! by Karen Pryor
15. The Road by Cormac McCarthy

I know I have lots of things I could do today but I can't seem to think of a single thing. Nap time?

Long Overdue, eh?

Well aren't I just a horrible little blogger? I must make a new entry now before it becomes *gasp* a month since I last posted. I'm sorry Mr. Blog, I promise I haven't forgotten about you; actually I think about you every day. Nothing seems extremely blog-worthy (you know... like taking down my bulletin board... *sigh*), but I'm afraid that if I don't write in you soon I will stop writing completely!

Things that are new:

- I am no longer a lowly intern, now I'm a lowly samples receiving employee! I got hired full time and I have things like a salary and benefits! I even got my little insurance card today, and it doesn't have my parents name on it or anything.

- Due to an unfortunate storm that rolled through Austin a few weeks ago I have decided to start looking for an apartment closer to where I work. It took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get to work that day. Without traffic I could get to work in 20 minutes, most days it takes 40-45 minutes, but I couldn't wrap my head around an hour and forty-five minutes to drive 17.5 miles. It also takes me about an hour to get home everyday, and I don't want that to be my life.

- I finished The Hunger Games the weekend I got it, and have since bought and finished the rest of the series. Casey has read the first one and I'm trying to get the others to her. It is so fun sharing books!

- My Grandmommy fell and broke her arm. :( I went to Katy to visit her, but mostly I spent my time with Jane running around everywhere. I don't know how she was upright at the end of the weekend... she had to take care of Grandmommy, baby Dylon, help paint my cousin's house, cook for everyone, and she didn't even get to go to her scrapbooking class she had planned. Grandmommy seemed to be doing well, she worked on a puzzle all weekend and kept forgetting not to move her arm.


- I gave my final presentation for school, which means I have completed my advanced certification in Biotechnology! I was a little shaky at the beginning (there is nothing worse than when your voice gets shaky!) but got more comfortable near the end. Everyone asked lots of questions, and I was able to answer most of them without looking like a complete idiot. (Success!)

- I went out with my BFFs and had some Thai food at Blue Bamboo. Stephanie got some pineapple curry that she tried to convince us was really good, but it mostly tasted like a flowery candle.

- I went to happy hour at The Dig Pub with some school friends who I haven't seen since summer school. There was a lot of laughing, I miss them.

- I saw a bug on the bathroom floor at work (I think that's the definition of riveting, don't you?).


- I walked with work peoples in a Mental Awareness 5K hosted by NAMI. I brought Toast and she was a hit! Everyone was obsessed with her, and now people are always asking about her at work. (My dog has a better social life than me. :D)

- I also worked at a Rabies Clinic for TLAC. I love love love Rabies Clinics; they are so fun. The shelter sets the clinic up at a park in a low income neighborhood and give free rabies shots to dogs and cats. I'm always at the tagging station where we clip rabies tags onto collars. It's so much fun hanging out with the volunteers who are so passionate about their animals; they are involved in rally and agility and I love the atmosphere.

And tomorrow I am heading off to Katy to go to Melissa's baby shower!

That's about it... kind of. I didn't want to make this post any longer or duller (google told me that was a word). I apologize! I need to dust off the cobwebs from my camera and become a more diligent blogger. Until then, happy Friday!!

Baby Shower Baking

My friend Casey's sister (follow me?) had a baby shower last Saturday. About a month ago her mom asked me to make cupcakes for the shower. My gut response was "oh no, no, no." I mean, I like baking for fun; I can mess up and no one would care. But this would be like... real baking. I eventually warmed up to the request (I usually need to sleep on an idea. I think it's an introvert thing.) and started asking about themes and colors and what they wanted. I learned that the theme was "baby" and the color scheme was "pink." Apparently they weren't picky.


So I set out on Friday to make 24 cupcakes, which was all that was asked of me. I wanted to go with a pink and brown theme since I was told those were the colors of the nursery. I made chocolate cupcakes and homemade buttercream icing. There were 5 different cupcake decorations:

1. My favorite, pink icing with white pearl sprinkles
2. A simple frosted cupcake rolled in chocolate sprinkles
3. Pink frosting with chocolate chips - didn't turn out as cute as I imagined
4. White frosting with candy melt shavings
5. White frosting with a candy melt pacifier


I had never worked with candy melts before, but I've wanted to try something with them for a while. I bought the "baby" candy mold and made pink pacifiers one at a time. It was pretty simple to do, though the candies turned out to be rather thick. If I did it again I wouldn't fill the mold all the way.


Then I was on a baking roll. While I was waiting for the cupcakes to bake I decided to whip up some cake balls. Cake balls are delicious and really easy to make. Just bake a cake, crumble it up, add a tub of frosting, roll them into balls, then dip them in melted chocolate. Viola, cake balls. I made the cake pink, but I don't think I made it pink enough. I wish they had been as pink as my "fourth of July" cake balls. Oh well. I don't think anyone cared.



I also converted a box I had in my room into a cute, pink cake ball holder.


Then I realized I had cookie dough left over from when I made my mom's birthday cake. I got that out and it made a surprisingly large number of onesies cookies. I decorated each one a little differently, and even made some baby stroller cookies with the baby-to-be's name.




I started baking the cupcakes at about 8:00 PM Friday night. I finished baking at about 7:00 AM Saturday morning. I didn't plan to stay up all night, nor did I need to. I know they would have been perfectly happy with just cupcakes. But I kept making stuff and just never went to bed. I think all the sugar kept me up. (Taste testing is important!) By the time I delivered all the goodies (around 9:00 AM) I had the shakes. Casey's family probably thought I was crazy; coming in with too many sweets, all hyped up on sugar. It all turned out well in the end, Casey emailed me later and said that everyone loved everything.

Want to know the best part of all? I slept for 8 hours straight on Saturday, woke up and read for a few hours, then got to jump back in bed for another 8 hours. Sleep is wonderful; I think I'm going to go have some. Good night!


p.s. I apologize for the quality of the pictures. I wasn't too happy with any of them. I had been up for more than 24 hours and I just didn't care.

First Thursday & New Space

Why do I always decide to wash my sheets/pillow cases/comforter at 9:00 at night? Do I not realize that it takes 2 + hours for them to be washed and dried? Apparently not, because I'm horribly tired and my bed is in the drier.

Yesterday, my two BFFs and I went to First Thursday. There were a bunch of little vendors selling crafty things, a duet of clarinets playing on the street corner, a whole bunch of doggies to "aww" at, a really cool costume store, and live music. The live music was actually provided by Stephanie's boyfriend Trey, so we snacked at the Snack Bar and watched him play. The Snack Bar served water in really cool Erlenmeyer flasks (what's even cooler is I didn't have to look that name up), but apparently their chips taste like cereal. All in all it was good times, mainly because I have the best friends ever.


Today was exciting because I got my very own desk/cubicle at work! I sit in the corner, which is totally the best spot because no one is passing you by all day and I only have one neighbor. It's kind of dark back there though. My hole:

(I made sure no one was around while I was taking this. That would have been weird, right?)

Just wanted to make a quick update. I will be a lot more interesting when school is out (she says). I have to go to school tomorrow morning to work on a group project. lllaaammee. Hope everyone has a good weekend!

p.s. I got a little link happy up there. I apologize.

Kayaking Down the Colorado and Puppy Alert!

mrrph. so tired.


I went kayaking with Casey and her crew today! We drove over to Webberville to a place called Cook's Canoes. The place was like a tiny, broken down house. It was a little sketchy at first, but the man (Mr. Cook I'm guessing) who met with us was very nice. It turns out he is an Aggie - class of '67. He even gave us a discount! After the initial scare the place was pretty interesting. The front of the house was bordered with a bunch of deflated soccer balls as if they were some type of flower arrangement and there was a big, huge - like 3 inches huge - spider on the mail box. (It was possibly a yellow argiope; it looked like this.)


It was scorching hot, which isn't really surprising for Texas in July at 2:00 in the afternoon. We couldn't get into the water fast enough. Casey's mom & dad were in one canoe, and her sister (her very pregnant sister) and her sister's husband had the other. The rest of us - Casey, myself, and Casey's friends, Alyssa, Joel, and Fro - were in kayaks.


There was a little mishap starting out as Joel seemed to be too big for his kayak. He immediately flipped over, lost his glasses, then his paddle, and was then swiftly pulled under a tree where he lost his kayak too. Casey grabbed the paddle, I rescued the kayak, and Fro rescued Joel. We mourned his glasses. Alyssa switched kayaks with Joel and we were good to go.


It felt so much better in the water and we paddled a relaxing five miles down the Colorado. At one point we stopped and did some swimming and had some snacks. Alyssa gathered some sea shells and I flung mud around using my paddle (I'm very mature). We also bypassed some very loud cows and an army of little, chirping birds. At the end of the trip we were picked up by Mr. Cook and his gang, wherein it immediately started raining. Good timing! Fun was had by all and I got a funny souvenir.


It's for when someone says, "I'll get around to it." And then I guess you hand them the token to show how clever you are. :D

As soon as a got home I got a text from my cousin Dana that read, "Just had the first born!" with this picture attached:

I didn't even know Maia (momma) was pregnant until a few days ago. My uncle asked me to visit tomorrow while he is at work to check on the pups. (Me, "okay!") As of now I am watching facebook updates. So far there are 8 pups. Grabbed this picture from Dana's facebook photos:

I need some aloe!

What was yesterday? Wednesday? Geez, it felt like a weekend!

My two BFFs and I drove over to Hamilton pool to go swimming, but it was closed due to high bacteria levels. (eww!) It's a shame because the place looks really pretty. Fortunately there was a river close by at Milton Reimers Ranch Park where we could swim. We had lunch on the river bank and then spent a couple of hours swimming and hanging out. It felt so good in the water, but it was so hot when we got out! I think we all got sunburned. :( But it was worth it, I had a lot of fun.




Group Picture! (I had the camera timer on - it was set to take 3 pictures. Good thing too!)



We hung out at Casey's house that evening, ordered in some pizza, and watched Juno since Stephanie had never seen it. Casey is dog sitting two Bernese mountain dogs this week for her neighbor so we watched the movie with them. They were soooo pretty! And big! We played a little in the backyard before it got dark.

Stephanie making friends with Casey's dog Pyro on the stairs:

Gretchen and Anja, the two beautiful puppies:

I love summer.

Kayaking with Casey

Is it already Sunday night? Why must the weekends go by so fast? It's been a pretty good one, though admittedly pretty lazy.

Yesterday I went kayaking with Casey. See, she bought a kayak but none of her friends have one and the kayak rental place isn't anywhere near the convenient kayak drop off place. This resulted in both of us sitting crosslegged in her kayak facing each other as we took turns rowing to the rental place. Hah, good fun, though we had a few people staring at us. (We also had a scare when I sat on the back and it started sinking.) We saw tons of turtles, two snakes, heard the bats under the bridge, and at one point got stuck in a really shallow spot. I filmed it for your (okay, really for my) entertainment. My arms were burning by the end; I had to have Casey row us all the way back from the rental place, hee hee.

Afterwards we ate at Chuy's (I love their "Mexi-Cobb" salad) and then went and donated blood. Because that's what Casey and I do for fun. I came home tired and determined not to do anything for the rest of the day. I rented Remember Me from RedBox (yes, that movie with Robert Pattinson) and it was actually really good. I napped after the movie then read my book (I'm currently reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes) with the dogs curled around me for the rest of the night. Life is tough.

Today I woke up early and took the dogs around Town Lake. I felt bad keeping them cooped up inside yesterday. Tinker pooped out about a third of the way through, but they had fun playing in the water and getting out. The rest of the day was spent eating and sleeping and playing with the rats (who are currently sleeping somewhere in my closet). I had all of these plans to study today, but I guess I'll do a cram session tomorrow for my Tuesday test. It's hard to get motivated on lazy, summer days.