Category Archives: favorite things

www – week 4

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Another week down…and it was a good one!

First, a few little tidbits about the things I am learning and loving.

1. Skinny Cow Cookies and Cream Ice Cream Sandwiches. I am loving these. They are three points, which may seem like a lot. But, for a girl who LOVES ice cream, I think these are fantastic.

2. My salad spinner is my new best friend. Oh, how I miss the days of my Williams-Sonoma discount. And yes, it is just Williams-Sonoma, not Williams and Sonoma. The salad spinner makes washing all types of lettuce (or herb) über convenient and ensures that you won’t have water logged produce. Every household in Europe has one, so I’m not sure why they haven’t caught on here…although I have a few theories, most of which include fast food.

3. Good knives are also hi on my friends list. Seriously, they make such a big difference. Since I’m cooking a lot more than I have in the past year, and cutting up lots of vegetables, herbs, etc., having good knives is key. Even if you can only afford one, do it. And then guard it with your life and whatever you do, do not wash it in the dishwasher. No. Matter. What. As a first (and possible only) good knife, I highly recommend a santoku. The link takes you to a particular one, but really, Henkels, Wustof, or Global are all good brands. I also recommending purchasing that knife at Williams-Sonoma, not just because I worked there. Their customer service is amazing. I’ve had two knives that had some rust issues, and they exchanged them, no questions asked. And it wasn’t at the store where I had worked, either.

4. Cold Stone makes me happy. I went twice this week. How can I go to Cold Stone twice in one week and think that I’m going to lose weight? I just adjusted. Cold Stone has these Healthy Indulgences, as they call them. I love the Sinless Sweet Cream ice cream with strawberries and coconut. It’s absolutely delicious. And now I get a “Like it!”, instead of a “Love it!”. It’s amazing how the little drops in the bucket add up…or, in this case, taking the little drops out, helps.

5. I tried really hard to stop eating at least two hours before going to bed and that seemed to work well. Plus, I don’t like going to sleep with food in my stomach.

6. Instead of making caramel corn when I was craving it, I made some light microwave popcorn and put a little (very little) butter on it (spray butter would probably have been ideal) and then tossed a couple Tbsp’s of brown sugar on it. I got the salty and sweet without all of the calories.

7. When I got home from the grocery store on Saturday, I went Sharpie happy. What does that mean? I went through every packaged food item and wrote the serving size and the point value on the package. That way, I don’t have to mess with my calculator every time I want to eat something. I can just look at the package. Very, very helpful.

8. I have learned that planning to eat out with friends is essential to my success. I think part of the reason I have failed in the past is that I have altered my lifestyle to the point that I am miserable. Not only am I an emotional eater, I am a social eater (pretty much, I just really enjoy food) and I love that social interaction. I love sharing a good meal with good friends. So, I make sure to plan at least one meal out with friends during the week. This helps both my waistline and my budget. How can eating out help my budget? I’m only doing it once a week (okay, sometimes it’s twice) instead of daily, or sometimes twice a day. And by making sure I have that experience, I don’t feel deprived at all.

9. Buying good ingredients and planning good meals has also been very important. Part of the reason I often like to eat out is that a meal at a restaurant is often more appealing than a tortilla and cheese, or whatever I can throw together. If I actually have meals planned and I make something from a recipe (I’m a good cook, but I struggle without a recipe), I get excited about them, which totally minimizes my desire to eat out. I actually look forward to the cooking experience, because I know my food will taste good.

10. Which leads me to my last tidbit before the reveal…Tandoori-Spiced Grilled Shrimp with Mint-Cilantro Chutney*. This was my favorite meal of the week, which I ended up eating on two separate occasions because it was so good. I just added some grilled tortillas (because I don’t keep a supply of naan on hand) and my meal was complete. It was delicious! As both an Indian and seafood fan, I loved this. And the chutney tastes just like what you get at the restaurants. So, so, so good. And yes, cooking is time consuming, and it feels even more so when cooking for one (which is what I am often doing), but it’s totally worth it when you make good food. Plus, all that time spent in the kitchen makes me feel like I’m doing more eating than I actually am and it allows me to construct new posts in my head and contemplate the meaning of life.

Okay, so now to the good stuff (although I think I lost this much partially because of the puking episode on Wednesday)…I lost 3.6 lbs this week! Bringing the total to…13 lbs in four weeks. I have to say that I am feeling pretty good about things and have not felt deprived at all…but maybe that’s because when the World Class Chocolate was calling out to me last week, I just gave in.

*If you decide to make the shrimp, don’t be intimidated by the whole toasting/grind of the spices. I substituted pre-ground spices for their freshly ground and it still tasted great. I like to cook, but I’m not crazy.

The Hotel

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The Hotel is a nightclub in Salt Lake. My friend, Jean-Louis, told me about it after Sarah, Rachel, Catherine and I discovered that the club we had chosen off the internet was having an after-party for the derby and they (the derby people) provided their own crap d.j. Yes, derby, as in roller-derby. Who knew? I don’t know why I didn’t ask Jean-Louis when he had called me earlier that evening, but I didn’t. Whatever. Seriously, the sight of all of those derby girls in their outfits almost made the $5 cover charge worth it.

I had no idea such a club existed in Salt Lake. It was fantastic. It reminded of my days in Europe when my host sister and I hit the discotechs every weekend (at the ripe age of 15). I don’t know what my parents were thinking letting me head to Europe on my own at that age, but that’s a story for another day. Back to my point. Had I known such a club existed in Salt Lake I would not have waited a whole year to go.

I have not had that much crazy, let my hair down, “party likes it’s 1999” (which, incidentally, was a song that playing at the crap club) fun in a long time. The music was fabulous (great hip-hop remixes with a little bit of a techno vibe), the room was huge, the lighting was incredible and the crowd was so diverse, something I have missed since moving back to Happy Valley. And when Jean-Louis ended up meeting us there, it got even better. Apparently, when four women are dancing together, without any men in the circle, other men in the room feel it’s okay to bug them. And by bug, I mean touch, grope, leer, etc.

I cannot believe that I have waited so long to do that. I can tell this is going to become a relatively regular activity this summer, especially because Rachel leaves for Argentina in August and needs to get her fill , now that she knows what she’s been missing. And let me tell you, that girl can move! Seriously!

9 miles

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This is what I looked like after the nine miles…see, still smiling!

Warning: this is an extremely long and self-indulgent post…more for myself and my future running than anything else. It’s not particularly funny, so if you aren’t actually interested in running, you may just want to skip the read. (See, I try to be considerate.)

According to my training schedule, today my long run should have been five miles. Yes, should have been. However, because I will be in Las Vegas next weekend, I decided that, after the wonderful experiences I had running in Arizona, nine miles (what I should have done next Saturday) did not sound like a good time. So, I flip-flopped my two long runs and did the nine miler today. And I’m still alive to tell about it.

Preparations began yesterday, when I went to Runner’s Corner to purchase the hydration belt I’ve been eying, along with some BodyGlide and some GU Energy Gel. They were out of the first two and I decided that I didn’t really want GU. I have never tried it, but I couldn’t manage to imagine GU being anything but disgusting. I mean, it’s called GU. While I was disappointed about the belt and the Body Glide, the one high point was the discovery of these fabulous little gummy things called Shot Block Energy Chews. Apparently, three blocks give you the same energy/fuel/whatever as one thing of GU. I still wasn’t sure I would like them, but gummy beats gooey any day of the week in my book, so I purchased two little packs of those.

I got home last night at about 10:30 pm. I needed to get to bed, but I also needed to put a new playlist on my iPod for my run. I have this thing about long runs and new playlists. So, I sat down and started to prepare the list. I put on enough songs to cover the length of the run, plus a few extra at the end, just in case. The songs at the end were not songs I necessarily like while running, however, I thought that would be motivation for not getting to them, i.e. running faster.

And now, to this morning. First of all, after running with Dianne and shuttling cars, I have decided that one-way runs are the only way to go. But Dianne was not available for running this weekend, so I had to find another alternative. Thankfully, I have a great dad who was happy to drive me up the canyon at 6:30 am. I drove my car to the mouth of the canyon and parked it (my dad was shocked to see just how full the little parking lot was at 6:30 am on a Saturday – he thinks we’re all crazy). And then Nev (aka “my dad”) drove me up the canyon, clocking nine miles on his odometer, all the while chatting about how runners never look happy. Thanks, Nev. Just what I need to hear before setting out to run nine miles.

I watched my dad drive away, holding my iPod, water bottle and little ziplock bag containing six energy chews, feeling a little nervous about the run ahead of me and wondering, once again, what the hell I was thinking when I signed up for the St. George Marathon. I stretched a little and then set out on my run.

The running was FANTASTIC! Yes, I know I put that in all caps and ended with an exclamation point, but it’s true. And I attribute the sheer joy of my run (okay, it wasn’t all joy, but it was really, really good), to the planning I did ahead of time and a couple of little changes I made in my routine.


First, I did not put my goal into my iPod like I usually do, thereby eliminating the little voice that normally tells me when I’ve completed one mile, then two miles, etc. which also made it so I had absolutely no idea how fast (or slow, as it were) I was running. Running is definitely as much a mental thing as it is a physical one and I thought that perhaps by not waiting and longing to hear that voice every mile and not worrying about how not fast I run, the run might not feel so tedious. I was right.

The next thing; I incorporated walk breaks. When doing long runs, especially for the novice runner like myself, there are several different schools of thought, but one tip that seems to be pretty common is to take walk breaks every so many minutes. Well, I didn’t want to look at my iPod (my only source of time) at all for all of the previously mentioned reasons, so I decided, rather than timing my breaks, I would just walk every fifth song (four minutes walking for every 16 running).

And, while we’re on the music subject, I also made sure to mix the playlist up a bit, both the songs and the order, without paying much attention to where I was putting different songs. This way I didn’t know which songs were coming when or where the songs fell (which would also give me an indication of how far I’d gone). This kept things interesting, especially since, as you will see in the list below, I put some pretty random stuff on there.

Energy chews were a new thing for me. I have run farther than nine miles three other times in my life, never using any type of energy booster. Once again, reading came in handy here. The advice that seemed most logical to me was a little bit of fuel regularly throughout my run, rather than a lot in the middle (which is how some people do it). Not wanting time to be involved in any aspect of my run, as stated previously, I decided that every time I took a walking break, I would consume one block. I estimated that I would take about five walking breaks, so I would have one extra block. That block I ate just before starting my run, at which point I was happy to discover that I am a fan of that particular flavor (Cran Razz) and the texture didn’t make me gag at all.

The last thing I decided to do was a little more spontaneous. After my dad’s comments about runners being angry, I decided to make a conscious effort to smile and say “Good Morning” to every person I saw along the way, whether walking, running or biking. I was not going to be one of those runners who was angry she had to run nine miles. I have to admit that, even with all of the “power of positive thinking” stuff I’ve read over the last ten years of my life, I was surprised at how much this seemingly small and insignificant act affected my attitude.

All of those little things combined made for a very enjoyable run! So enjoyable, in fact, that I ran 9.4 miles before checking my iPod for stats. I was still half a mile away from my car. It turns out nine miles on the road is almost ten on the trail. And, upon completing, Lance Armstrong informed that I had set a new PR for my one mile time. How great is that! And I wasn’t even trying.

Here’s the playlist. Copying Anne’s idea, I’m going to put some little notes by the songs so that I can refer to them later.

1. Freedom 90 / George Michael 6:30 – good as a starter song because of the length and tempo.
2. i wanna have your babies / Natasha Bedingfield 3:34 – as this song always makes me laugh, i love running to it. It may have been better a little later in the run.
3. Dance Dance / Fall Out Boy 5:02 – great song, good tempo.
4. Forever / Vertical Horizon 4:27 – I associate happy running memories with this song, so it worked well.
5. the doorbell encore / White stripes vs. jay-z vs. queen 4:16 – this was a perfect walk break song…a little on the slower side.
6. Here (In Your Arms) – remix / Hellogoodbye 3:54 – I like the remix much better than the original.
7. SexyBack / Justin Timberlake 4:02 – this was a great place for the first of the SexyBack installments. I was settling into, what felt like, a slower pace and this helped me pick it up.
8. Simply Being Loved / BT 4:21 – would have been a good walk break song…a little mellow for running.
9. Porcelain / Moby 3:58 – I just love this song. That’s all there is to it.
10. Too Much Heaven / Eiffel 65 5:19 – not a good walking song at all, so I didn’t walk to it. This was right just before I got to Vivian Park.
11. Open Your Heart / Madonna 4:13 – I really wanted to run to this song, so I only took a partial walk break. I should always have at least one old school Madonna song in the mix.
12. Hot ‘n’ Cold Pussycat / Basement Jaxx vs. The Pussycat Dolls 4:11 – Such a great song! Slow, but the words were totally inspirational. Ha ha ha!
13. Makes Me Wonder / Maroon 5 3:31 – I didn’t enjoy this song on the long run nearly as much as I liked it on my short runs earlier in the week, but it’s still good.
14. Twilight Back / Justin Timberlake vs. 2 Unlimited 4:00 – 2 unlimited and JT…fantastic and totally distracting, in a good way.
15. Can I Kick It Like That? / Pharrell vs. A Tribe Called Quest 4:08 – would have been a great walking song, but I wasn’t on schedule anymore, so I ran to it. A little slow, but definitely happy. 16. Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth With Money In My Hand … 5:39 – another personal favorite and while slower, I prefer running to this one.
17. My Console / Eiffel 65 4:17 – Great song. It played somewhere between Bridal Veil and Nunns.
18. Living in a Bubble / Eiffel 65 5:05 – while I love me some Eiffel 65 (a mission discovery as Blue played in every Metro station regularly), two in a row of any artist is not my favorite thing. Also, I think I’m sick of this song.
19. No Apagues la Luz / Enrique Iglesias 3:49 – guilty pleasure. Enrique should always be in the mix, as well. And the Spanish version of this song was definitely the way to go.
20. Rush (New York City Club Version) / Big Audio Dynamite II 3:55 – Oldie but goody! Happy memories that definitely got me through a little lack of energy.
21. The Call / Backstreet Boys 3:26 – another guilty pleasure…absolutely fabulous!
22. Escape / Enrique Iglesias 3:30 – Should have been a little farther away from the other Enrique. Good walk length at the end. Had it been longer, it might have been too much. “You can run, you can hide…but you can’t escape my love.”
23. When You Were a Starlight / Team9 vs. The Killers vs. Muse 4:11 – Totally got my energy back up after walking and the mash-up was fantastic.
24. When You Cry / Vertical Horizon 3:30 – I like the song, but not towards the end of a run.
25. SexyBack / Justin Timberlake 4:02 – perfect timing for a second play. Right at the end, when I needed a little more.
26. The Sweet Escape (Konvict Remix) / Gwen Stefani featuring Akon 4:01 – I was still about half a mile from my car and I didn’t know where this song feel, but I finally decided to look at my iPod in the middle of it. 9.41 miles! Done.

tuesday tidbits

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1. I woke up this morning from a horrific nightmare; kissing someone who a) I never want to kiss and b) is married. It was a horrible way to start the day. How come the only kissing dreams I ever have are nightmares? It’s so not fair! Not to mention the fact that I got very little sleep due to this horrendous cough that I have that will not go away.

2. Both my receptionist and I were in bad moods…and somehow we played off each other to the point of feeling better. Don’t ask me, but something about the emails we sent back and forth…emails that are totally unnecessary since we sit across from each other, made the day much, much better.

3. I had J-Dawg’s for lunch…for the second day in a row. Of course, I didn’t tell any of the people I met there that I had eaten there yesterday. Where’s the fun in that? And for those of you who have yet to eat there, you should really try it. The dawgs are delicious and a great value, I think. I like mine with special sauce, a little bit of mayo (which normally I find kind of repulsive) and kraut. I know, it’s weird, but sooo good.

4. I “met” two very cool bloggers (Cropstar and Annie) today. They are both training for different races, so we got to exchange some running tips. You should check out their sites. I love the way the blogging world works. I get to “meet” and interact with people I might otherwise never meet. I love it!

5. I hired someone today for an open, part-time position, which is nice since I will be down two employees come Tuesday. But then I had to call the other five people I interviewed and tell them they didn’t get the job. That part sucked. There two of the “rejects” that I wish I could have hired. The other three? Well, they were all good. I just wish I could have said to them, “remember when you told me that you have a problem with this or that? Yeah, that’s why you didn’t get hired.” Or, “You know how you didn’t make eye contact with me through the entire interview? That’s why you didn’t get hired.” Not only that, but most of their resumes were turned in on plain white paper and the formatting was pretty bad. Why don’t they teach interviewing and resume writing in high school as a required class? I think that would be a lot more useful than several of the classes I took, like calculus, for instance.

6. I couldn’t wait until work was over so that I could head up the canyon and take some pictures before going on my run. Taking pictures was the motivation to get me up the canyon so that I would go running…and even then, I almost didn’t.

7. While I have almost no control when it comes to spending money, I really enjoy my “toys”, so I guess I’m okay being out of money all the time (even if it does keep me up at night on occasion). Today I was all about my camera and my iPod, although, technically I didn’t spend any money on the latter since I used points from my credit card to get it (I guess I did spend a lot of money to get the points)…but the Nike+ I did purchase, which is 90% of the reason I love my nano.

8. My dad emailed me to give me the confirmation on my motel room in St. George for Friday night (I have an extended family reunion). My dad is hilarious. He listed the info, and the price and then he put in the discount, the “Good Ol’ Dad” discount. Basically, I pay nothing. I then emailed him back and whined about being broke and asked if G.O.D. (yes, that’s the acronym) might want to give his daughter some money for gas. And, surprisingly, he said ‘yes’. I don’t know what his deal is lately, but I’m definitely appreciating his generosity. And, while you all may be thinking about pathetic is for a 29-year-old to ask for gas money from her dad, I have no problem with it.
9. Today, I was loving that fact that I live in Utah. I know, weird. While I wasn’t necessarily loving the “happy valley” aspect, I was loving the fact that I can drive 10 minutes and be in a beautiful canyon with a river and waterfalls and a great biking/running trail . It’s amazing!

10. I attended a forum today on campus. The lecture was entitled “Coaxing the Muse: Thoughts on the Creative Process.” It was fantastic. I love working for a University that offers devotionals and forums and I love that I get paid to go to them. The lecturer gave several pieces of advice for writing, but the two that stuck with me are that you need to read voraciously and write regularly. I wish I had the lecture recorded. It was just that good. He also shared a quote from Picasso that I absolutely love, “I don’t know what inspiration is, but when it comes, I hope it finds me working.” Part of why I love blogging is that it gives me an opportunity to write almost daily.

11. Veronica Mars is now over and I now have no reason to ever watch the CW again. And, while I did enjoy the episode last night, because the CW just decided to cancel it, there was absolutely no closure, zero, zilch, nada. Seriously disappointing. And I loved that they were just calling it the “season finale” and not the “series finale”. Who are they kidding? I loathe the CW. The CW is dead to me.

"so what?" she says

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Tyra Banks is not exaclty someone I idolize. While, I will admit that I did enjoy the season finale of “America’s Top Model” last night, I didn’t live and die by it. I have never watched the Tyra Banks show…or whatever it’s called. But the other day, Shape magazine came in the mail (free subscription for registering through Active.com for a 5k) and Tyra was on the cover, with an article about body confidence and her So What? campaign. The actual title of the article was “why I love my body…just the way it is”.

I read the article and it made me a fan (still no idolizing). She has some great “love-your-body tips” and, while I haven’t felt the need to incorporate them all into my life, since I read the article, I keep having these “so what?” moments. And let me tell you, it feels good.

I was in Nordstrom last Friday, shopping, which I mentioned in here. What I didn’t say…because I really do have issues…is that not only did I buy two pairs of shoes, but I also found a dress. I found this great dress and grabbed the size that I thought would fit, and it did, not that I was happy about it. But then, I looked in the mirror and it looked great and I thought to myself, “I don’t love this size, but so what? It looks fantastic!” One of Tyra’s tips is to buy an article of clothing/outfit that makes you feel fabulous, so I went ahead and purchased the dress.

Another moment, the one that acted as a catalyst for this post, happened today. I finally sucked it up and went for a run. I haven’t been running for a few weeks. I went walking a couple of times last week, but no running and with a 5k to run on Saturday, I thought now might be a good time to make sure that I was not going to die.

I got in my car and headed to the canyon. I was proud of myself for finally going, but I was not looking forward to the run…and there began the negative self-talk. “You know, three months ago you could run ten miles. Three months ago you weighed ten pounds less,” etc. Well, it was in that moment that this voice piped up (a voice I am still getting used to) and screamed, “So what?”

I got out of my car, put my headphones in, turned on my nano, got my nike+ rolling and I was off. It felt so good. I just ran…and then walked…and then ran some more. Normally, I become very frustrated when I start walking, mainly because I have a very hard time running again due to my somewhat obsessive “all or nothing” tendencies which tell me that, once I start walking, I have failed. But yesterday was different. Before I even set off, I decided that I wanted to do five miles, and if that meant walking, “so what?” I was outside, moving my body, enjoying nature. I ran a mile, walked a mile, ran a mile, walked a mile and finished out running the last mile. I wasn’t frustrated or upset. I didn’t feel like a failure at all. For an hour yesterday, I just loved my body and what it was capable of. It was amazing!