Holidaze

As we are all busy, we try to be organized/efficient and do things like use lists.

So here’s a list of things.

They are listed in no particular order.

I just really like lists.

1. I have found this week to be more relaxing than my last weekend. Please don’t get me wrong- the weekend was great. This can sum it up:

Marathon baking on Friday night. With wine. Duh.

Chicago running bloggers meetup. More wine. Don’t worry- it was noon. Almost.

We’re a total party.

Date night! Just us and thousands of strangers…

A bloody mary to kick off Sunday Funday for the Bears/Packers game. I can barely look at this photo… ugh

2. My roommate texted on Saturday night that she was dvring Cinderella for us.  After the Bears/Packers game (please refer to the bloody mary picture above), we fell asleep on the couch watching it. And then she accidentally deleted it. Worst. Thing. Ever.

3. I’m back into the gym routine now that my old woman back is feeling better. At least for this week as I am heading home at the crack of dawn on Saturday (that is, if the world does not end as it originally was supposed to). Run 2 miles and do 20 minutes on the elliptical or stairs seems to be my chillaxed routine at the moment.

4. My work holiday party was Tuesday. Several things to be noted:
- My boss quoted Beevis and Butthead Do America. This seems so wrong, but was sooooo amazing.
- I tried duck pâté for the first time ever and didn’t hate it.
- Snuck out early so I would still have energy for the gym the next morning and wouldn’t smell like liquor at work. More people chose the other option and looked miserable. I may have been a little smug about it.

5. The roommate and I exchanged gifts.
Socks with a cape. This means I am now a super hero. BAM.

The dude and I exchanged gifts, too. But I like to be more discreet about such things. No matter how much I love them.

6. In order to not enter this mentality:

I’ve been doing this for every time I’ve gone out/drank/celebrated the holidays:

We call this “let’s throw all the vegetables in the refrigerator onto some lettuce and see what we end up with”.

It’s a half-win.

7. Convicts escaped the correctional facility in downtown Chicago on Tuesday and only one has been caught. I honestly had no idea my place of employment was so close to a prison, but it has made going out for lunch seem that much more thrilling. I like to live on the edge.

8. So I guess the world is supposed to end at some point today? Isn’t that what all this crazy buzz is about?  Just in case, the roommate and I decided to make a “one last roomie date” by staying in and watching a movie with some drinks last night. She got a sweet bottle of cabernet from a vendor at work and it seemed to be a shame to potentially waste it. So we drank nice wine and watched Home Alone. Naturally.

This list is getting too long. I should end it now. And because this is probably the last day of work before Christmas for a lot of people, I just want to say enjoy your holiday and travel safe! xoxo

Weekend Blurs

Welcome back to the grind, my friends!

Over lunch yesterday, my mom made the comment, after discussing my upcoming month or two, that I don’t get much downtime.

This could not be more true.

Would I have it any other way?

You caught me on a good day. So I’d say no.

Memorial Day Weekend could be considered yet another blur to add to the long string of blurs that is my life.

It included, but was not limited to:

1. Running late to catch the train due to issues with the el, turning me into a starving, anxiety-ridden fool before finally collapsing into my seat. And forcing me to purchase food on the train.

Some may say the $5 beer was unnecessary. I would say it was the tastiest part of the meal.

Anywhere else, I should have been able to get a steak dinner. On amtrak? Turkey sub with cheese. No lettuce.

At least they offered to zap it in the microwave for me. What service!

2. Having the friend with the least sense of direction pick me up from the train station in downtown St. Louis. She knows who she is.

3. Good food lovingly barbecued by my friend Mary’s hubby.Considering he has a strict policy of not eating anything green, he was very considerate of our attempts to be healthy before shimmying into our summer dresses for the first time of the season.Actually, considering how we revert to our giggly college selves, the time we take to get ready, and our squealing demands for fourth meal drive thru, I am quite convinced she must pay him off before our arrivals.

3. A trip to the pool cut short because the triple digit temps made us sure we started to cook on the inside.

4. Two trips to Panera for “morning after reenergizing”.

Chocolate chip bagels. On a lazy weekend morning, they’re the best thing created since sliced bread. Wait…

Excuse me- I forgot where I was for a moment. It’s St. Louis Bread Company there, still. Duh.

5. Family time on Sunday with my parents who were gracious enough to drive up to meet up during my days in St. Louis.

And feed me.

The salmon was served with wasabi aioli sauce. Best idea of all time.

They’re the bestest. That, or they just really like having an excuse to visit their version of a vacation house:I don’t personally enjoy gambling. But yet I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time hanging out in casinos.

Can’t hate on comped rooms. Or the buffets. Or the breakfast.

The Falcon is a diner within the casino that has the “breakfast quesadilla” on their menu. The green chilis involved in the scrambled eggs were legendary.

6. My only workout was spending 30ish minutes in the sad excuse of a workout room at said casino (I get it- they’d rather have us gamble), but being ok about it because my parents and I walked for miles and miles.

6. Enjoying the not-so-melty weather on monday by spending some chill time downtown St. Louis at Union Station.I even fed the fishies with the rest of the kids!

- “Delay” was the favorite word of the conductors on the amtrak train home. Seems to be all my trips end in cancellations, delays, bad traffic, and, of course, a stabby Amy. I guess every awesome weekend comes with a price.

And every awesome weekend sadly had to end. Considering this one was thrown together on a whim (“holy crap guys, it’s a $40 round trip, are you gonna be around?!?! I’m booking this!), it was one for the books.

And besides- I’ll spend time resting up next weekend…

That sound you hear is everyone who know me laughing as hard as they possibly can.

Lazy Black Friday

Happy Friday everyone!

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. If you hadn’t figured out from yesterday, I didn’t go back to see the family in Mid-Missouri for the holiday.

Don’t worry. It’s ok. This is the third year I’ve spent Thanksgiving in Chicago and I’m kind of ok with it. Makes the holiday seem much less rushed. I get all those pesky things done around the house that are normally ignored (ahem- cleaning and laundry). Even a few Christmas things are getting taken care of (locating the Christmas tree in our storage area, starting the Christmas card list, etc.). Productivity is the name of the game.

And I still get some quality time in with the fam:My aunt snuck this pic of my mom as the rest of the family was playing “pass the phone” when I called yesterday afternoon. It makes me laugh.

But don’t you think that doesn’t mean I didn’t have places to go and people to see on Thanksgiving.

My lovely friend Annie has a family that has been wonderful about taking me in the past few years. Her in-laws have been so good to me from helping me move to asking me over for dinner to generally being my home away from home.

Where else would I spend Thanksgiving?

And they give me my own name plate at the table! Pretty sure her in-laws need to be careful. They may be stuck with me permanently if they keep this up.

Plus, Anne’s mother-in-law make a mean corn casserole.

Yes, mean. It’s deliciously evil. Last year, she tried to show me the recipe. I closed my eyes and covered my ears and started singing.

I really don’t want to know.

Good thing I did my own lil’ Turkey Trot in the gym before the chowing down. A quick 5k and another half hour of incline walking during the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. So festive of me.

I also did No More Trouble Zones with Jillian and am not sure if I’m sore due to that or the unusual amount of extra walking I did after my run. Oh well.

Now excuse me. I have some online shopping to do as I watch the Black Friday coverage on the news this morning.

And probably another Turkey Trot at the gym.

I did go for seconds of that corn casserole and stuffing…

Laters!

An Alternative Holiday Weekend

Memorial Day weekend.

It’s usually one for sun, summer weather and grilling season.

Usually.

Sometimes things get in the way. In this case, mostly the weather:This is definitely not one of those things.

The whole weekend was actually not quite any of those things.

But you know what? We still had fun.

And who really wants to spend their whole life going along with the crowd?

As I mentioned before, I spent part of this weekend celebrating the holiday with Megan.

Originally, we planned on going to a BBQ/house party.

Well. as I got in on the metra, the rain started coming down. Decently hard. The grilling ended up not happening. But Megan and I luckily were visiting her friend who bartends and were hooked up with some preparty munchies:Close enough.

The party was a lot of fun (what party that hires their own bartender wouldn’t be?).

I personally enjoyed the decor:However, the napkins were a little old school being as how the Bieber bangs no longer exist. Hmmm… does that mean these are a collector’s item? Maybe I should have stashed one…

I would also like to thank Subway for making this night happen… being open for 24 hours a day and dealing with Megan’s 10-minutes of indecisive ordering really saved us in the weee hours of the morning.

The next day, we ended up going to Flat Top Grill for brunch.This was my first time trying out Flat Top- and got extreme excitement out of a restaurant where I was able to build my own omelet and pancake…How did that ham get in there? Wasn’t me…

As we were finishing our breakfast, the rain started coming down. So we decided to try and wait it out.And wait… and wait… Funny thing is, the longer we waited, the worse the weather got.

Did I mention we were waiting to leave for the Cubs game?

So we got ready. It kept raining. We weighed our options. The lightning struck. We decided to go up to Wrigleyville anyway to see what would happen. The thunder rolled. We gave up on our hopes of seeing a good ol’ fashioned baseball game and chalked it up to a regular ol’ Sunday Funday (not a bad thing by any means!).

Then, as we were hanging out at one of the bars across from the field, the sun peeked out. And started shining.After a 2.5-hour rain delay, we got this show on the road! Everyone was excited to see the sun shine for one of the first times of the weekend. Even the birds came out to play:Even the birds came out for the party. The poor dude in right field- you could tell he was just standing there awkwardly because he didn’t really know what to do. They were big birds.

We celebrated with a well-balanced meal at the game:Look at all those veggies! As Megan pointed out, nachos are really like a salad. Just with tortilla chips instead of lettuce. So yeah.

The Cubs ended up winning. This was good/bad for me. Good because I love watching a game and the whole crowd being excited and happy. But as a Cardinals fan at heart, I couldn’t cheer to the greatest extent. Gotta keep that Missouri loyalty somehow…

So yes. The BBQ didn’t happen. The weather was less than desirable. Our baseball game had a rain delay.

But you know what? We had a fantastic time. And if that doesn’t make a holiday weekend great, what else would?

Enjoy the rest of your Memorial Day, everyone! I’m off to be productive. For at least an hour or two…

A Typical Easter

Hello all! As you read this, I am most likely on a highway somewhere between Mid-Missouri and Chicago. Again.

I could probably drive the route with my eyes closed. Which may or may not be any different than driving it in thunderstorms and tornado warnings…

Anyhoo, it was a great couple days back in my humble little hometown.

There were workouts with Jillian (The Shred was picked both times over Yoga Meltdown and No More Trouble Zones- mostly because I wanted the cardio factor). There was an afternoon walk with my mom. The sun did decide to peek around the clouds for a couple of hours and we jumped on the chance to get a little vitamin D in our otherwise cloudy weekend. And then there was the workout of lifting the Easter basket.Over and over again.

And yes, my contribution to the Easter festivities was Goose Island. Typical.

At least my dad enjoyed it.

There was also the food.

Oh my goodness the food.

Have I ever mentioned how I don’t like ham? It’s weird- I’m a fan of everything pork (hellooooo bacon!) but ham is not my thing. So my mom decided it also made sense to make a full turkey. With the ham.It’s like Thanksgiving and Easter all rolled into one!

No complaints. Except from my stomach when it was about to burst at the seams after dessert.Remember how we talked about our dessert “go-to”? These are my mom’s. Coconut Cream Crunch and Almond Joy Cake. Obviously I needed multiple servings of both this weekend.

Screw the candy. This is where it’s at…

Actually, I take that back. I’ll take the candy, too. 

Don’t think I just sat back and let my mom feed me the ENTIRE time. For Easter brunch, we all seem to join in on the fun.

My brother didn’t really lend a hand to the cooking like everyone else did, but someone needed to take the blurry pictures. Typical.

Anyhoo, after three solid days of catching up with various hometown friends and family, I’m a happy girl. With a happy tummy. And happy yoga pants. Happy yoga pants that should probably be worn for the next few days.

Can we classify them as business casual?

I’m not just being sent home with candy (weeeee!) and leftovers (yay!), either. As a product of a farming family, I’m also being sent home with a couple of pounds of sausage, ground beef, steak and pork loin.

Typical.

This is why there is a cooler in the trunk of my car 24/7.

And also why I’ll be firing up the Google in the next few weeks to find recipes and, um, how to properly cook a pork loin.

What? I think this is why I end up having so many meatless days- not only am I too cheap to buy meat, I’m also too lazy to learn how to prepare it…

Whoops. What a dapper bunch we are.

I insisted on taking pictures outside this time. My brother and I never stop to make fun of how many pictures we have in front of the family room entertainment center. I could create an album. It would be a hundred pictures of various outfits and slow height growth (or in my brother’s case, rapid height growth).

But then it started to rain. Again.Typical.

Have a great Monday! Wish me luck that this drive back to the Chi isn’t nearly as treacherous as the drive out…

And Then…

You guys didn’t really think I’d leave you hanging with no pictures of Ugly Sweater Day, did you?Sassy, yes? It’s all about accessorizing.  Oh and I have no answer as to why we have formal tea cups and saucers in our break room.

A big thank you goes out to my friend Annie for hooking me up this year with this awesomely bad ensemble!

Sadly, I took third.  No matter how hard a girl tries, boys in women’s Christmas sweaters are just unbeatable.  Gah!

At least I had plenty of comfort food to make me feel better.  It seems all the gifts staff (aka Jaime and I) received yesterday came in edible form.

It included boy scout caramel corn:Yessss! Caramel corn  love.  Nothing like starting your day with it, in my opinion. (kidding… sorta)

My brother and I used to LOVE the big tins of popcorn (cheddar was my fav!) for Christmas and never understood why our parents refused to buy them.  Then I grew older and realized how gross it actually was.

But this stuff?  You boy scouts are A-ok in my book.

And then… AND THEN this came:Toffee has quickly been my most recent obsession.  And it showed up in a big box with a bow.  All 2 pounds of it.  Seriously… who really needs 2 pounds of english toffee?

Oh… my stomach will answer that question.  By saying “I do!”

I plan on taking a lot of it home to freeze.  By firing up “the google”, I found out it’s ok to do that.  In case you were wondering, too.

Expect toffee-infused baking in my future.And then our building management dropped off my afternoon snack.  They brought a really nice gift set.  And I ended up with one of these bags of chocolate-covered mixed nuts.

AND THEN (seriously, does anyone remember this movie?  And then… And NO AND THEN!), I came home to a package from Ashlee- one of my lovely best friends from my hometown.  We decided to do a cookie swap.  So she got some of the baked goods from my baking extravaganza a little bit ago and I got this:Sugar cookies!  And the cutest cupcake tin keepsake ornament!  I think a gift like this deserves a shout out – Go Team Baxhoff! For those of you who are curious, that’s our team name for when we get together and combine our forces of awesomeness.

I never said I was normal.

As you can imagine, a day like this also requires some balance.

That came in the form of a long sweat session.  And a huge bowl of broccoli as part of my dinner.

But I’d rather talk about the sweating.  Broccoli sometimes gets old.

I came home and immediately started up The Shred.  Nevermind this was directly after I tasted a sugar cookie from Ashlee. 

It was the perfect warm up for my treadmill session.

Totally mean that.  Once I got to the gym, I jumped on that thing and WENT.  Mile repeats.  Five of them at 8:34 each. 

Do you prefer the long runs or intervals?  Granted, I wasn’t really doing speedwork, but this was a good way to keep me from getting too bored (it hardly ever happens, but half of the run was spent all by my lonesome, so I had no people to “people watch”).

Over the holidays, I hope to finalize what my next big race will be.  A few are being considered, but they require some planning around things that aren’t finalized yet.  And after thinking about it, I realized that another 12-week training plan for a possible spring race would require me to get on it.  Like now.

Paige mentioned this in her post yesterday, and I didn’t realize I had been doing the same thing.  My typical oatmeal mornings have been replaced all week.  With all the Christmas candy/cookies being passed around, it’s left me with serious cravings for “savory”. Who would have ever thought??? (This is a recycled pic because I was lazy this morning and um… we all like to see pics of Jake G.)

And with that, I am signing off.  Have a good morning, everyone!