Footsteps Through Life... 39.3 miles at a time

Blogging

2010-06-10T09:14:00.001-05:00

Well, I think my time as a quasi-blogger has come to an end.

I have no idea what my next major physical goal will be, possibly a half marathon at the end of the summer or in the fall if I can squeeze it in with that little wedding thing we have going on. But either way, at this point, it will be a little old hat for me and not really worth blogging on about. I never really got into blogging about the Avon Walk the same way I did about the marathon.

Part of this is simply related to technical difficulties. Since I got rid of my old Dell last fall, I've been doing all of my photos on our Macbook Pro but I use my Dell mini for my daily computer usage. When I blog, I have to figure out which computer to use (usually the mini because I'm already on it) and I hardly ever post pictures anymore. We have cheap internet but do we ever get what we pay for! Our internet frequently will just go out in the middle of what I'm doing. If I'm in the middle of a post, usually most of it is lost. I have probably lost 25 posts over the course of this year and I've mentioned it before but things never come out as good the second time for me.

I enjoyed having a place to vent my frustrations when training didn't go well and having a place to celebrate when things were over. So, if you are reading, thanks for that!

At least I'm honest...

2010-06-07T08:34:00.004-05:00

*sorry I did not mean for this to post today but our internet is evil and cut out on me halfway through and it lost half of the post (I cannot stand rewriting, it never comes out as good the second time!) and apparently the date that I wanted it to post on. I'm so sorry that the first thing you'll read about the walk today is a Debbie Downer moment!*

Before I get to the good stuff tomorrow, I have to get some stuff off my chest. There were several things about the Avon Walk that disappointed me. I learned a valuable lesson through all of this and I can say that I definitely will not be one of those people next year wearing an alumnae button. I didn't realize it until this weekend but (somewhat understandably) our fundraising was valued far, far more than the physicality of the challenge we endured. I realize that their main goal is to fundraise for the cause and I am completely behind that, however, the physical nature of walking the 39.3 miles in a weekend is what inspires our donors to give money to the cause. I felt that my accomplishment should have been acknowledged a bit better than it was.

I cannot even describe the disappointment I had in the finish line. It's just a blown up thing that says FINISH and it was so crowded with spectators that we struggled to get a picture taken. It was utter chaos. There was no 39.3 milestone anywhere to take a picture. The first thing you came to when you crossed the "line" was the Avon Walk Shop and a booth where you could sign up for next year. Another quarter mile away was the medical tents, food and water. At that point, I felt a little hustled. I had absolutely zero interest in signing up for next year or spending my money on their product because they don't value what I did enough to provide necessary things for me after the physical exertion I did all weekend. (For those in the audience, when I ran the marathon and at most other races I've done, you cross a finish line in an organized manner, are handed a bottle of water and some food immediately. I didn't appreciate not being able to find those items and having to ask someone after crossing the finish line cluster of insanity.)

The mile markers, oh, the mile markers. I cannot even begin to explain how awful they were. A good portion of the 39.3 (probably about 15 miles over the two days) were on the lakeshore path. The path has mile markers that were done by the park service and a local running group. My sources with Garmin watches told me that they are pretty darn accurate. After spending a great deal of my summer and early fall training on the path, I know it well enough to know when mile markers are off. There was one part in Sunday's walk that was so blatantly wrong that the organizers should be embarrassed. It's too long of a story to tell but I know there was only half a mile between two mile markers and then supposedly the next "mile" took us 40 minutes, which there is no way. I think they just arbitrarily put rest stops and mile markers wherever they could, which is fine, but don't tell me they are at a certain mark when they actually aren't there. In my book, no mile markers are better than obscenely wrong mile markers. (I also can't count on one hand the number of times that someone told us, "Just around the corner and you'll hit mile XX." We'd assume we missed the mile marker until about half a mile later we'd come to it. Not cool when you are exhausted and your mind is messing with you enough already. Trust me you don't need a volunteer to mess with you about mileage.)

I even google mapped walking the end of the course. What they told us was 1.2 was really much closer to 2 miles. What all of this means is that I have no idea how much we really walked! I'd like to think that we did walk at least 39.3!

They were so secretive about the route during this entire time! We didn't know it until the actual morning of and even then, the map I have looks like a squiggly line and there are 2 roads drawn in. It was impossible to tell Adam where to be to meet us on the route. I was a bit irritated when I found out that it was the same route as the year before. As a first time walker, they made it extremely hard for me to have any sort of support. We could have had Brooke's friends come meet us along the way but we had no idea where to tell them to be! I personally hypothesize that they give us such a bad route map so we can't go home and check them up on the mileage. At first we thought they wouldn't have known the route until the last minute because of street closures. However, not a single street was closed for the entire 39.3 miles. You read that correctly, we did the entire thing on trails and sidewalks. (In case you were wondering, that's why it took us 11 hours the first day. We had lots of intersections to cross and cross walks back up really quickly with hundreds of people.) I was completely caught off card by this. I had no idea how the day was really going to have such a stop/start/stop/start nature. If you had been doing the walk for years and years, it would have been much easier to tell someone where to be if they wanted to come and sit and have lunch with you. They did give several "cheering station" locations but those were never good places to sit and rest and I would have liked to have known where lunch was going to be (especially the first day in the pouring rain, we could have sat in the car, haha!).

I hate feeling like I potentially come off as a jerk in this post but if anything, I always try to be honest. In this case, I honestly felt like my physical accomplishment was devalued by the Avon Walk organizers. It's not something that I will ever consider doing again or recommend to anyone because of the poor organization. With that being said, I have absolutely no regrets in doing it. I enjoyed spending the weekend with a friend who challenged herself in a completely new way and became a marathon finisher on Saturday! The fundraising was important and I completely understand that, but at least in my case, I felt that my family and friends donated because I was doing something big. Something that they wouldn't or couldn't do themselves. I would have liked to feel like that was as important as the money to the organizers.

26.2 = 26.2

2010-06-07T08:28:00.002-05:00

I have so many thoughts on the walk that I want to get down on this virtual paper. I took probably 100 pictures or more, which is a great benefit of walking. I had time to literally stop and smell the roses. We weren't "racing" or really concerned about time except for to get off the route before it closed at dusk so I enjoyed taking lots of pictures, talking to people, not being out of breath, etc.

I'll get to lots of the other stuff later but I just wanted to say that after having done both running and walking a full marathon, I can tell you that 26.2 miles is hard no matter what you do. It took us close to 11 hours to walk it. We ate our lunch barely "sitting" on cardboard boxes in the mud under a tree in the pouring rain. On that first day, we hardly rested because the rain showers rendered most of the ground too wet to really want to sit on it. So that means that we were upright and involved in some kind of motor locomotion for truly 11 hours. I dare anyone who has ran a marathon to attempt that and try to tell me it's easier. At the end of the day, my body felt exactly the same as it did after running last October, only this time there was a catch. I had to get up and do a half marathon the next day!

Random Stuff

2010-05-25T08:54:00.003-05:00

I'm waiting on a couple packages. First off, the highly-anticipated heart rate monitor is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. This afternoon, my new blackberry should arrive to Adam's office. I had it shipped there because I'm horrified that I'd be out of the house when it came and someone in his building's mail room will be there to accept it.

Yep, I lost my blackberry on Sunday. We started our morning by playing beach volleyball for a couple of hours, it's been a heatwave here in Chicity. We even have the A/C on... in May! Adam says I have improved 200% since last year. I think it's my stronger body that makes it easier to play. I still have my Daria moments (think watching ball fall near me when I totally should have had it) but I'll take 200% improvement any day. After v-ball we rode our bikes back home, showered and headed off to watch the Blackhawks game. We had a few too many pitchers of beer because they were only $3.75 (A PITCHER!) and my phone somehow got lost at some point during our transfer from one bar to another. I think I probably left it on the train and seeing as how our group was totally decked out in Blackhawks gear, including a playoffs broom (we swept the Sharks) and singing the "after goal song", I think we sufficiently annoyed everyone on the train car and if anyone saw me leave my phone behind they probably thought I deserved it. Which I probably did.

Moral of the story... take it easy on the pitchers, Big Jen. It was a valuable experience because we'll be getting iPhones in the fall when I move onto Adam's plan and I realized that I seriously suck at keeping a phone (this is the same Blackberry that fell out of my bag on the floor of a hotel in Montana and had to get mailed back to me) and I'll be taking Adam's old iPhone and he can get the new model instead of the other way around. And if you don't already have phone insurance, you should consider getting it. They are overnighting me the phone for $100. Which is way less than the $400 or so a new Blackberry costs. There was no way that I could carry on with my old flip phone for the next 4.5 months until my contract was over. I need the internet for so many things (CTA bus tracker being the most important).

Tonight I'll have to figure out how to do Sprint's at home phone activation for the first time. Oy vey. But on the brightside, my lost Blackberry was having more and more frequent meltdowns and for some reason the back was stuck on so I couldn't remove the battery for the hard reset that they are so fond of for fixing said phones. Hopefully the new-to-me (I am expecting it to be a re-ferb) will be able to hold on until October.

We only have a week and a half until the Avon Walk! I'm so excited and ready for it to be here. Brooke and I are mapping out our weekend plans and we've decided on our pre-walk meal of pasta at Mia Francesca's and our post-walk meal at Tango Sur (aka the best BYOB Argentinian steak house ever). I try not to think about the overwhelming emotions that will be running through me. At the introduction meeting, I was tearing up at the video. There are so many survivors that walk and many who have lost mothers, sisters, friends, daughters, etc. I'm thankful that it is a walk so we'll be able to chat with so many different people and hear their stories (as opposed to me asthmatically running and not able to talk as easily). But because I am an emotional basket case I'm not looking forward to the sheer sadness of it all. Luckily, I'll have Brooker next to me to hold my hand and walk me through it (literally, haha).

Negative Nelly

2010-05-22T12:41:00.000-05:00

I'm going to totally be a jerk and use this opportunity to vent. We've had the amazon.com gift certificate for a week but it was mailed to Adam and he chose this week to decide that opening mail addressed to him was not important. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

On the bright side, I ordered my HRM. It will probably be shipped when we are in San Diego next weekend and I'll have to pick it up from UPS. See, I am so cranky right now! I can't even be happy that it's ordered.

I also wasted $50 on signing us up for a 5K that we didn't run this morning. To be fair, I could have gone alone but I chose to sleep in and Adam is not-so-recovering from bronchitis so there was no reason to push him into running. But I'm mad at myself for registering and wasting money on it.

So in short, I am having a not so good Saturday. But it's all stupid in the grand scheme of things and nothing that a good sesh at the gym can't fix.

Impatience

2010-05-20T18:03:00.003-05:00

Do you believe that your (future or otherwise) children will haunt you in similar ways that you drove your parents mad? Adam and I talk about that sometimes. I am determined that my children are going to be so demanding and impatient because that is exactly how I am.

As I previously mentioned, we used CC rewards on two different cards to get gift cards. Adam's Sports Authority is already here and it's an actual gift card so he can have merchandise in hand as soon as he's willing to go there. My amazon card? NOT HERE YET. I'm going insane. I've needed a heart rate monitor for about a year or so now but I'm too cheap. I also will have to wait for shipping and as I mentioned, I'm too cheap to do anything but the free super saver shipping that takes twice as long.

Ok, rant off.

Lately, I've been finding that I'll glance down at my watch now and then during workouts (even, gasp, yoga, so much for the mental benefits). I imagine that I was just getting bored with my routine and classes and needed a new challenge or two. Hot yoga has been one of them but at the hot yoga studio I signed up for an introductory set of private lessons on the Pilates reformer machines so I can take group classes if I want. They are a little more expensive but we save a lot of money by using the YMCA as our private gym so I figure I can handle it.

When my hour was over, I could have cried. I definitely checked to make sure that she wasn't gypping me out of some time because it felt that fast. I don't think I've ever had a 1:1 workout/instructor ratio before and HOLY MOLY I cannot wait for June and personal training sessions. It was the best ever! And the reformer machines? Awesome, awesome, awesome!

Credit Card Rewards

2010-05-13T09:45:00.003-05:00

We did some redeeming of our credit card rewards last week and believe me, it was hard to convince the old man around here that we should but I prevailed.

He obviously needs to replace his entire golf club set, golf bag and the oodles of things he kept in said golf bag (a nice windbreaker pullover, etc.). So I used my card rewards to get him a gift card to Sports Authority. Combining that with the $25 off of $100 purchase coupons they come out with frequently, he'll be able to get a lot for a little.

We also got an amazon.com gift card from our joint card rewards because that is the best price that I've seen for the Polar F6 heart rate monitor, which is what I have decided I need for my latest fitness purchase. I am so impatiently waiting for that stupid certificate to get here so I can buy it. Which brings up a huge pet peeve... it's a gift certificate for amazon.com, which basically means it's going to come with a little code that I can enter on their website. Why do they feel the need to waste the postage (and my time) to mail that to me? An email wouldn't have worked? Grr.

At any rate, I'll be rocking this on my wrist soon enough and I am SO intrigued to see how many calories I'm burning.

P.S. There will be some money left on the amazon card so Adam is replacing his prized hokie bird golf club cover. And I am still royally pissed at the dude who stole the clubs.

25 Days

2010-05-12T08:40:00.002-05:00

We got an email yesterday from Avon Walk... only 25 days until it's here! I'm excited but I'm not going to lie, a little freaked out.

I'm a researcher, I looked up and had an idea of the marathon course about six months before the race. The Avon Walk is slightly more, well, loose in their planning. I don't think they have the actual course decided yet. I don't even know where it starts or ends. They keep saying that they will send a detailed email as the walk gets closer but I have this innate need to have a better understanding of what I'm up against. I must continue to suppress my Type A obsessions and get over it.

In other related news, I had my serious legs class with Mondale yesterday for the first time in three weeks and oh the pain!! I know I am making serious strides but I still have a long way to go. I would just like to be able to do the three minutes of jumping jacks with 8 lb dumbells!!!

Hot Yoga

2010-05-05T18:25:00.003-05:00

Holy wow.

That's pretty much it.

I tried a hot yoga class for the first time on Monday night. They don't offer it at our Y but I have been wanting to try it for quite awhile now. Oh yeah, and this did not fit into my no-spending plan, oops, but I decided to bite because it was health and fitness related and I figure that is important stuff. They changed a couple of yoga classes around at the YMCA and I found myself not going as much as I would like to.

Anyhoo, it was nothing short of amazing. I went to a small studio and I am pretty sure that it was the first time I've ever done yoga outside of a traditional gym setting. It was from 8:00-9:15 pm so they had the lights off in the room and the only illumination was the street lights (the studio is on a pretty busy corner right next to the L train so we weren't completely in the dark). I found the setting to be extremely relaxing. The heat was already turned up when we started but the yogi turned on several extra heaters all around the room. I was sweating within just a couple of minutes.

I realized that the yoga I am used to practicing at the YMCA is very, very beginner. It was good to be exposed to a new instructor and new positions. Some of the stuff was insanely hard but for other positions I was the only person in class that could do them! Yoga is strange that way, I feel like I learn so much about my body each time I go.

When I got home and saw myself in the mirror, I cracked up. I had sweat stains everywhere! I was afraid that I would be really sore on Tuesday but I surprisingly wasn't! I think the heat helped with that because I know I really pushed myself. I have nine more sessions to use at the studio and I'm looking forward to it.

It was just a regular Vinyassa class so I will still have to try Bikram one of these days!

Holy guacamole!

2010-05-03T08:26:00.003-05:00

It's been kind of a big couple of days in my life. Some of our besties are getting married, one of my longest friends is having a baby and my sometime-employer, United, is merging with Continental Airlines. I won't comment on the friend news, not sure if all the news is out yet but I am SOOOOO happy for everyone involved and I love it when life works in great ways for my nearest and dearest. So I'll tell you more about the big merger.

Nothing really changes for any United employees at first, most especially me. I am still on my 30 month furlough. I'll still send my $10 check every month and keep all my health bennies. The company isn't expected to officially, legally "merge" until the end of 2010 and even that legal merge is only the very first step. After the legal merge, the company will start working on getting a combined certificate of airworthiness and begin the combining of operations. In an email I read today from CO's management to their employees, they think they can have this done by some time in 2012. If you look at new Delta (Delta and former Northwestern), they announced their merge two years ago and nothing major has happened except I think that the old Northwestern planes have been painted and I assume they make announcements as Delta.

As you can only imagine, merging two Fortune 500 companies with tons of employees and different unions on the premises will be mad complicated. I am not even scheduled to return to work until March 2012 so I can just sit at home and wait to see what happens. I have other plans for myself in the meantime that may ultimately affect my situation but we'll have to wait and see (that was kind of cryptic, sorry).

It's going to be a wild ride, that may be the only thing that's certain but I am really looking forward to hopefully having more options within my homestate (Continental's biggest hub is Houston). I'll be sitting here and counting the days until we can pass-ride on Continental!

Clearly, I suck at this

2010-04-29T21:15:00.003-05:00

I really suck at not spending money. It's so hard, y'all!

Last night we dined at a new restaurant I have been dying to try and it happens to be a brewery so it wasn't like I couldn't drink a housemade beer. Adam *technically* paid but give me a break, it was on our joint credit card. Blast! But the beer was so worth it and felt amazing on my allergy-stricken sore throat.

Tomorrow, scheduling is going to necessitate that I have Subway for dinner. Dammit. I realize it's a $5 footlong we're talking about but I am seriously saddened that I'm going to screw up my plan again. And my dad is talking of coming to visit this weekend so we all know that the no spending rule will get completely thrown out due to the "company in town clause".

I am failing at this and I'm on Day 4!

Tiny Kink in the Plans

2010-04-27T11:20:00.002-05:00

I forgot one detail and need to update that spending is allowed, of course, for Mother's Day. Luckily, I already purchased cards last month because I am trying to be ahead of the game as an adult but gifts for my mom and future mother-in-law still need to be procured.

Other than that, my allergies are so bad that I haven't even left the condo since we returned from St. Louis, which makes non-spending super easy! Tomorrow when I return to reality we'll see how well this experiment goes, haha!

Competition and Challenges

2010-04-26T14:21:00.005-05:00

I've decided that there is no way I'd ever be able to go to the personal trainer alone. Not that I'm afraid of working out by myself, it's purely from a competitive perspective. I have an innate need for someone else to compare myself to and work towards being better than. Is that a bad thing? Depending on circumstance, I suppose, but it also is extremely motivating! I hope that we'll be able to start personal training in June after my Avon Walk is over. Because I want to go with Adam to have someone to "compete" against (and presumably discover that I am not as strong as a man and never will be), we'll be paying for two personal training sessions at once. Awesome for the body and not for the wallet.

I have so many stupid wants (a body bugg, thanks to Biggest Loser; new running shoes; new summer clothing and shoes) that I need to quit thinking about and researching to death so I'm going to challenge myself by doing a month of not buying anything (within reason).

For me this is going to mean:

-only groceries will be purchased
-no alcoholic beverages purchased (making an exception when we have company in town in May)
-no takeout/to go food, pizza-I will miss you
-no clothes, shoes, etc.
-minimal to no purchases earmarked for the wedding

It's only until May 26th but it's going to be insanely mega-hard to do! If I can manage, I think I will definitely have saved enough for quite a few of those personal training sessions!

(the reason why I say minimal purchases for the wedding is because we might have to start looking at plane tickets and jump on them if the fares are inexpensive!)

A RANT

2010-04-21T18:10:00.004-05:00

I realize that Ben Franklin was absolutely correct when he said that there are only two certainties in life, death and taxes. I've been paying taxes for over 20 years if you consider using my parents money to buy candy and what-nots as a child and I know I have a lot more dollars to put toward taxes for the rest of my life. But right now, I get so beyond annoyed with my current state and city because I swear they may just tax us all to death and then still claim that the damn state is still broke as a joke!

I also understand that I am massively biased toward that because I was blessed to grow up in the best state ever and never had to pay state income tax until I was 24. (I know, I know, I am extremely ethnocentric but seriously, go to Texas, check out some real estate prices and cost-of-living stuff, coupled with awesome winters and then you'll understand. I feel like I have been enough places to know that it's something special down there.)

So yeah, I have a real problem with state income tax. I have an extreme problem with the fact that HR Block charges me about $10 to e-file my federal taxes and a WHOPPING $36 to file my stupid Illinois taxes. Last year the refund I got from the state was less than that! But what I have a bigger problem with is all the stupid state taxes (and don't even get me started about the city taxes) on EVERY DAMN THING. They are nickle and diming us to death around here and the state is still so "broke" that they are firing a bajillion teachers, already cut all the train and bus service in Chicago and every day the news is full of new things that have to be cut or start being charged for. If they are charging me out the wazoo for everything, where exactly is that money going? (Amen to the fact that neither of us smokes, I think the going rate per pack is around $10 these days after all the taxes.)

Case in point: our moron replacement-for-the-corrupt-idiot-Blago governor wants to start charging 6.5% tax on iTunes. As if the new $1.29 price tag wasn't enough. I like my music and I don't want to have to pay any more anything to Illinois than I already do! I am so irritated and obviously, this is such a small thing to rant about but COME ON! Enough is seriously enough! Get me out of here!

Reality Check

2010-04-19T17:05:00.002-05:00

I have an app on my Facebook page that tells everyone how much money I've raised towards the Avon Walk. If you were curious, I've hit my goal of $2000!!

It also has a ticker that reminded me we have 48 days until the walk. EEEKS!

48 days until I walk a marathon.

Gym, Tan, Laundry

2010-04-03T18:02:00.005-05:00

Shout out to Jersey Shore (which I do not watch and have never seen, actually)!

GYM: I've been really enjoying my renaissance at the gym. After a couple of lazy weeks at the beginning of March, I've been back and really hitting it. I worked out with Adam today and it was nice to see how far I've come in a relatively short time! We were talking on the way home and I think my ultimate goal is just to be always able to say, "I'm in the best shape of my life!". I thought I was after the marathon, but I know I am in WAY better condition now. If I did marathon training again this summer, I probably could shave about 45 minutes off last year's time. We ran into my favorite gym instructor (and hopefully soon to be personal trainer), Mondale, and I had a brief discussion with him about protein powders. I'm just concerned about my protein intake, or lack thereof, with my aggressive workout schedule. He recommended a powder that I can put in my green monster smoothies and we got some after our workout. I felt like such a mega-tool walking down the street with a huge jug of protein stuff. I promise, I'm not becoming a meathead though!

TAN: We actually had nice weather this week and I did a ton of Avon Walk training outside. Which is awesome, except for the awesome tan that I end up with. Last year I had a total farmers tan and watch tan lines because of all my running on the lakeshore path and it seems I'm doomed for that fate again. Plus, when I run, I find my legs never get tanned to match my arms. I'm not going to lie, I was about 10 seconds away from walking into a tanning salon but for some reason, I didn't want to. I ended up at Walgreen's instead and accidentally bought real self-tanner instead of that tanning lotion that I've used in the past. SELF TANNER IS SCARY. Then I started having all these crazy thoughts about how I was actually dying my skin with chemicals and how could that be any worse than fake'n'baking? I'm in a wedding next weekend in a strapless dress so I guess I'll keep on with the self-tanner and see what happens. It's pretty funny because it makes me insanely glittery when I put it on!

LAUNDRY: I have extra laundry to do this week because we are finally PACKING AWAY OUR WINTER CLOTHES! So happy and thankful for that! There were days that I thought we'd never get here but it is so glorious to sit in the living room with all the windows open. I love it! The really craptastic part is that we keep the off-season clothes in our storage locker in the basement. We went downstairs to retrieve our summer stuff and discovered our lock had been cut and Adam's golf clubs (hopefully that's all) were stolen. I WAS SO MAD because we are 99% sure it was a former tenant that came back to vandalize and burglarize after he was booted out of his property by the bank. What a jerk!

Race Report: Shamrock Shuffle

2010-03-27T11:05:00.008-05:00

Last Sunday, Adam and I woke up bright and early, met our friend Heather at the train and made our way downtown for the Shamrock Shuffle. I would describe it as a kick-off of sorts of the outdoor racing season here in Chicago and it's sponsored and run by the same people as the marathon and the course is basically the downtown portions of the marathon, except you never leave downtown and it's only 8K (thank goodness!!).

I'm telling you it's basically the Chicago Marathon when it comes to crowds as well! And 35,000ish people is fine when you are running 26.2 miles and there is time for the crowd to finally thin out but much more challenging when you are running only 4.97 miles. Plus, this is probably the first time in several months that many of the people were running outside (other than my 5K in San Antonio in Feb, it was my first time too) but FOR REAL, if you are not conditioned and cannot run from the start line, please start yourself in the back!

Anyhoo, it was crowded, which made me semi-cranky and my bladder was making me mega-cranky because I kept having to pee! Adam and I ran together until sometime after the 2 mile marker in which case I decided that I wasn't going to finish and I'd just meet him at the beer tent. Easier said than done, apparently, because I got yelled at by a course official to get back on the course and at that moment, I turned a corner and spotted the 3 mile and 5K markers. At that point, I figured I'd quit being a chump and get my full bladder back out there. I actually ended up running a much faster second half. The last bit of the race is exactly like the marathon, up "Mount Roosevelt" and around a corner to the finish. Mount Roosevelt is the closest thing we have to a hill in Chicago and while it's pathetic, it's still a hill and at the very end of the race. The whole time I was moving up the hill, I was cursing the people that were walking in the middle of the street (grrr!) and wondering just how on earth I'd conquered it after more than 25 miles in October!

Heather and Adam finished a few minutes before me due to my unfortunate almost wimp out and we all met up at the beer tent for the trademark Shamrock Shuffle debauchery.

Oh and I almost forgot to mention, it was SO FREEZING COLD and kinda rainy/misty. Blech! It was especially sad when you consider that it was in the 60's and sunny on Thursday and Friday but at least it wasn't dumpy snowing like Saturday so we can be thankful for that.

***AVON WALK UPDATE***

I decided to try and add about 10 miles of extra walking a week, in addition to the gratuitous amounts of walking I do just getting around the city and to my regular gym schedule (that I am actually trying to follow again). Adding 10 miles sounds so easy but I forgot that walking just takes a long time! Last night I had 48 minutes on the treadmill before my yoga class and only managed about 3.5 miles. UG! So this week I'm at about 5.5 but my schedule was a little crazy at times so I'm going to work really hard to get all 10 miles in next week.

If you are a reader in San Antonio, please come and join Brooke and me at Taco Cabana on Blanco and 1604 for dinner on April 11th (6-8 p.m.)! They are donating 20% of all receipts from people that come in for us to our walk funds. I need less than $200 at this point so every little bit will help me reach my goal!

Change In Plans

2010-03-16T17:08:00.000-05:00

This past weekend I had this great idea that I'd go home (standby pass travel, of course) to San Antonio for a couple of wedding details and to see my grandmother, who started chemotherapy yesterday. I just forgot one important detail. It's spring break! I'm pretty sure the kids are out of school here in Chicago but I know it's break down in Texas. All the flights were mega-full and there were tons of other people trying to stand by as well. Getting on a flight is based on several things, the first being if there are any empty seats that have not been paid for and your seniority with the airline. Being that most people at United have been with the company since well before I was born, I always assume that I will be the absolute last person on the stand by list to get on the flight (very rarely am I wrong). So, seeing all that, I'm not going to spend my day in misery at O'Hare when there are 64 people booked for 60 seats with 6 other people trying to stand by. That is a recipe for a CRANKY Jen.

There was just one teeny little problem with me not going. Adam had scheduled the cleaning lady to come on Saturday morning since he had a review class for his big exam and wouldn't be home either. *now before you go all banana sandwich and think we are little princesses around here for having a cleaning lady, there are several reasons for this and the main one is that we literally have NO closet space for any sort of significant cleaning supplies. seriously. and she only comes about 4 times a year since I moved in, I can handle the light stuff. oh and she is worth every darn penny and more. she stays about 5-6 hours and gets totally jiggy with cleaning this dump up*

Anyhoo. I needed somewhere to be starting at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning. LUCKILY, it was Chi-rish Day and they were dying the river green. Adam goes to class with his buddy, Joe, and it so happened that Joe's wife was making a full Irish breakfast and going down to see the river and parade so I got to tag along with her and two buddies. It was rainy, which was so perfect considering that I have these phenomenal lime green wellie rain boots! I could kick myself for not getting a full-length picture with them!

We ate great and I started my day with some coffee and Bailey's (heavenly) but we missed the river dying by a few minutes, which was not a big tragedy to me after the coffee drinks. We went to a really crowded bar and drank some overpriced green beer and got some SWEET Chi-rish beads before moving on to Morton's (which, sidenote, is called Morton's: The Steakhouse, when you are actually in Chicago instead of Morton's of Chicago). Ironically, it was the cheapest place downtown to drink. They were also doing an all-you-can-eat corn beef buffet which looked like boiled dinner, one of my worst food nightmares. But they had some killer bagpipers and we watched a few NCAA games.

After Adam finished his class and a little time at the office (yes, he worked on what was essentially a holiday, not to mention Saturday), he came and met me at Morton's for awhile before we met some friends at a bar further north. That bar was ridiculously crowded and we didn't stay for long. Our friend Heather's birthday was the next day so we went to her bf's house for pizza and cake. Saturday night was a really big night for me because I finally saw the Hangover for the first (and maybe last?) time. I have only two things to say: I kinda wish now that Adam was not going to Vegas for his bachelor party and if my brother roofies everyone, he's dead meat. Ok, three things to say: the Andy Bernard character was my favorite. That guy is so funny!

Sometimes the best-laid plans don't always work out but I'm glad I got to be here for Saturday at least!

39.3 update!!

2010-03-15T21:10:00.001-05:00

I haven't talked about the Avon Walk in forever (well, to be fair, I haven't talked about much of anything lately)! But we're less than 3 months away, WOO HOO!

The snow is completely melted, I didn't even see any of the big residual piles in parking lots over the weekend so I will begin walking in earnest now as the weather allows. I'm not sure how time consuming it will be but I'm going to try to average about 10 miles of dedicated walking a week. When I say dedicated, I mean not counting trips to the train, grocery store, gym, etc. Given how marathon training worked for me, I know that some weeks I'll be able to get more in and some weeks it just won't happen. I hope to not have to do too much of it on the treadmill so let's all cross our fingers now for sunny days (and about 65 degrees if I might be so picky).

My fundraising has been going rather swimmingly, I must say. I'm at $1605 of the mandatory $1800 right now. The only sucky part is that I kind of feel like I have exhausted every person I know at least once and I hate badgering people over and over (although I know that is a cardinal rule of fundraising, that you must ask people eleventy billion times). I do it myself, I have to read something probably three times before I donate. Which at least this experience has taught me to be better about that!

I'm walking with my VERY BRAVE friend Brooke (who is going to rock this walk, btw) and she bought each of us some super fab bright pink Texas A&M hats. I'm so excited to sport the pink and rock our school support. Speaking of, I CAN'T WAIT TIL FRIDAY FOR OUR TOURNEY GAME! GIG 'EM! Brooke has been battling plantar fascitis, which foot injuries are awesome if you are attempting mega-walks, but she's been slowly rehabbing it and logged a killer 7 miles over the weekend. I logged a killer 7 green beers so I am clearly behind in training.

My immediate plans for the extra odd $195 are to do two things. I'll be in San Antonio for my dear friend Charlotte's wedding in April and Brooke and I are trying to get a dinner organized. I know for sure that our local (and very pink) restaurant, Taco Cabana, does charity nights where everyone you bring in can drop their receipt in a bucket and they will donate 10% of the grand total. But, I'm trying to think bigger (and better food) and trying to work something out with Willie's. I figure people will probably be more likely to come and the overall receipt totals would be a little higher at Willie's (plus, they have Linie's Sunset Wheat beer and I could sit there and drink it all evening). In short, SA people, mark your calendars for April 11th because I plan on having something together by then to raise a little moolah! You can see our cute hats and Avon Walk t-shirts. I even plan on getting some pink balloons for our tables. It'll be a rowdy time if they still have Sunset Wheat (because clearly cutting out beer is NOT a part of my training program this time around).

I also want to do a happy hour fundraiser in Chicago for our local peeps. I know of a couple bars that will do all you can drink packages with a portion donated so I need to get my research on and make some phone calls. I figure with having two events I can probably get that last teeny tiny little bit I need to get my thermometer overflowing on my personal webpage. My personal goal all along has always been $2,000 but I'd love to be able to destroy that amount.

Either way, as always, you can donate at:

www.avonwalk.org/goto/jenbreda

Thank you Thank you Thank you!

2010-03-15T21:01:00.003-05:00

A big THANK YOU to all my awesome donors (so far):

Brett Albright
Catherine Austin
Brian Bazan
Adam
The Boyds
Grandpa and Grandmother
Dad
Mikey (and there's a blog shout out for you, brother)
Mom
The Carmeans
The Daughertys
Brian Demeyer
Christiana Earle
The Earles
Kristin Geiger (and James)
Booker T
Nancy Hester
The Kruses
Katie Kummer
Sara McD
James Palmer
The Pawasarats
Sherry Pederson
Bev Poe
Lynn Renner (and Jerry)
Angel Suhor (and RJ)
Sherril Theis

With the help of all these amazing people, I have raised over $1600!! Thank you for donating to a great cause!

Dividing Line

2010-03-08T11:50:00.003-06:00

My brother has this theory that all women are bi-polar. Naturally, in most cases I completely disagree with him. Obviously there are the few women that are literally diagnosed with bi-polar disorder but I think that his blanket statement is pretty much ludicrous.

Although, in my own strange way, I'm feeling so completely divided lately that it's almost bi-polar to a certain degree. It's almost as if you could draw a line down the center of my mind and body and have two completely opposite feelings and opinions. Half of me is relaxed and feeling so prepared for the wedding and the other half is scared out of my mind and completely overwhelmed by the details. I go from day to day on this as sometimes I am able to see the big picture and other times I just end up feeling totally bogged down.

I have so many goals and reasons for wanting to work out and eat healthy but then my devil half craves only pizza and fried buffalo flavored things. I like to believe that part of my lack of motivation is coming from the fact that the top of my left foot has been in bit of nagging pain for awhile and my shin/ankle discomfort from my fall down the stairs has only exacerbated that. I know I need to take it easy (especially in those barefoot dance classes where I believe the pain originates from).

I want to leave the city and some moments I cannot imagine one more day of it but I also want to stay in this place forever. Some days I love being in our little place and other days I feel so suffocated by it's size (or lack there of). I have moments where I cannot imagine someday having to drive everywhere and times when I would give my left arm to no longer have to ride the buses and trains. Why can't I just pick a side and figure some of this stuff out?

One the one hand, I am completely ok with the way that everything just is right now. On the other, I am freaking out about the future and what changes might be coming my way, whether they are under my control or not. There are so many things coming my way, big life-changing things, the least of which involves changing my last name, that I am not looking forward to having to face.

I guess I have never really been an indecisive person so the fact that I am swaying or wavering between feeling one way or the other about several different big life things is sort of stressful. And it's all stress I am essentially bringing on myself for no apparent reason!

In the book I'm currently reading (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver), the author argues that springtime makes people crazy. When I was reading it on the plane last weekend, I identified with what she was saying immediately. I am filled with so much promise and hope when I think of the upcoming warmer weather but yet deep down I know that I will tire of being too hot when the time comes.

Part of life is dealing with changes no matter how big or small they are and maybe the changing of the seasons is Mother Earth's way of constantly keeping us on our toes and prepared for the other things that life will bring us. The seasons always remind me that like all things, this too shall pass, and for me, the this that needs to pass is the way I am feeling divided.

Leave it to Africa

2010-03-03T18:30:00.003-06:00

Not the continent, the song, "Africa", by the band, Tutu, circa my childhood. I've loved it pretty much forever and just finally last week got around to downloading it (thanks for those iTunes gift cards at Christmas). I have a bunch of new stuff (you should get the new Dave, it's good) on shuffle play on my iPod and during my train ride home this evening it happened to come on. It broke me from my Blackberry-Facebook-app-induced stupor to look up and catch what must have unequivocally been the best sunset so far of 2010. Yeah, isn't that just a revelation? The sun has decided to bless us here in Chicago with something other than below 10 degree temperatures (you know that whole clouds are a blanket theory, it's true, so the sun is my mortal enemy during Chicity winters and the sun sets at oh, around 3:30 p.m. so sunsets just plain suck).

But back to tonight, it was beautiful and I am so glad that Africa awoke my senses and I was able to enjoy it. I wish I had a picture for you but do a mental one of the brightest pink color reflecting on the high rises. On the elevated train, I had a pretty sweet bird's eye view. It was enough to fill my heart and soul and at that moment I needed it. Today has been a roller coaster. After a long weekend, I had a couple of pieces of mail that upset me a bit and also got some other not-bad-just-kind-of-annoying-and-out-of-my-control news that had me in a bit of a tizzy. I got a couple of pieces of great news too, so don't think it was all doom and gloom but the day was crazy in that it culminated in me falling down half a flight of stairs. Not to worry, I fell on my butt and mostly slid. My left side wrist and shin aren't feeling 100% but I think my pride was hurt more than any body part. Ug. It was just one of those days, you know? So to stop it all and take a moment to enjoy the city, enjoy the hope of spring, and just be filled with that bright pink sunset was just what I needed.

Twitter?

2010-02-17T08:35:00.002-06:00

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?

What's been going on?

2010-02-15T09:48:00.005-06:00

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.

From the mailman

2010-02-13T10:47:00.002-06:00

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.

Have I ruined it for myself?

2010-02-06T08:25:00.003-06:00

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.

Clearly we are freaks of the registry!

2010-01-30T07:43:00.004-06:00

Adam and I went to a registry event last night at Macy's. First of all, they call it a "Sip and Scan" and advertise it as "have a drink in one hand and a registry scanner in the other...". When you hear that, what do you think they mean by drink? If you're like me, you pictured a cheap Chardonnay. If you're like Macy's you'll have bottled water (for Jen to carry in her purse and develop a shoulder problem) and warm fruit juice. And really crappy appetizers, which is so sad considering we were at the multi-story flagship Macy's on State Street and they have several awesome restaurants inside. The food and drink was such a let down! But we got our scanning gun (Adam was so excited) and carried on.

The event started on the sixth floor that only has bedding (not interested, our city bed is a full size so there is no way we are registering for good stuff until we move to a master bedroom that is not smaller than a baby's nursery in most houses) and fine china (again a not need for us because of again, the space issues and the fact that my family has tons of fine china that no one ever uses, not even on holidays, thank you very much). And on the fine china subject, I am just not a fan of the idea that I need my "own Jen and Adam pattern" to sit in boxes for 364 days of the year and be wasteful. I fought my inner "overpriced demons" and against my better judgement registered for some Waterford stuff before we got the hell out of dodge and went to the basement where they keep all the good stuff.

We visit the basement of this particular Macy's kind of on the regular because they have a giant section of Marshall Field's Frango Chocolates and they make a great gift for our guests to take home for family and friends as souvenirs. They also have a Starbucks so you can grab a quick drink and take a respite from touristing. But everytime I'm down in the basement, I basically go hogwild because it's a Martha Stewart cooking extravaganza!!

We took our gun and went to town. There were several points when I got ahead of Adam (meaning I could grab fancy utensils off the wall before he could get them all scanned) and had to slow down my excitement. I cannot wait to have decent kitchen things and I'm going to spend many hours figuring out places for all of them in my three (seriously people, I mean three) cabinets in the kitchen.

I loved every second of it (well, except when I was battling my overpriced demons but is Le Creuset really overpriced? or a Dyson? they just happen to be expensive nice things, right?)! We found lots of things that I'm not sure I'll keep on the registry. We still have an event at Crate and Barrel and our registry at Bed, Bath and Beyond to work on. And if I don't feel satisfied then, I might have to consider William-Sonoma and nix one of the others. Registry madness!

At one point, when we were winding down and starting the "ok, we should really call it quits before we end up with some totally random stuff like plastic picnic wine glasses" phase of the registry process, Adam looked around at all the other couples that were apparently in deep and dramatic discussions about the merits of pastry brushes and the like and remarked how great it was that we were so decisive about things. Which really means that I am so decisive about things since he himself said that this whole process was more about me handing him a large serving plate and him imagining all the lovely foods I'll make and serve on it. What can I say, I am a decisive person. I'm not sure that things will go so quick at Crate and Barrel because I haven't been there quite as many times as I have the downtown Macy's. But wait, who are we kidding. I am the kind of person that knows what I like and I don't need to sit there and debate it for half an hour. The Dyson? I had only heard from people that they are obsessed with them so it took me one test run and listening to the lady who reps them for about 30 seconds to tell Adam to hit it with the gun. For me, the hardest part about shopping is price and price comparison. Well, in case you didn't already figure that out, a registry completely takes that out of the equation. And if you really think about it, kind of flips my normal price woes completely upside down. People don't want to buy you cheap crap for your wedding! They want to buy you nice things that will last you through your marriage. Am I right? (Before you think I'm insane and snobby, according to our report over 80% of our items were under $50,)

Either way, we headed back to the sixth floor to return our gun and go through the obligatory Macy's card schpeel again. The lady who met us was so shocked that we were done already and asked if it was our first time opening the registry or if we were just adding things. This was my first sign that we were registry freaks! We told her it was our first time but that we did have plenty of things on there, not to worry (and a couple of duplicate things like seeing a pizza cutter and then finding a better one a little while later, oops). She was borderline giving us a hard time that we wouldn't have very many things on our registry until she printed it out. She came back and said, "you did all this tonight? seriously?" to which we said yes. Apparently it was four legal sized pages of stuff in a little under two hours. What can I say? Maybe it was my hunger because of the crap appetizers and the fact that I didn't have a fat glass of wine in my hand or maybe it's the fact that I don't have to debate the merits of blenders with my fiance for ten minutes before we scan something. It's not rocket science and it's all online for your editing pleasure!

So I guess the moral of this story is that we (potentially this is more me since I was the primary decision-maker) are, apparently in the eyes of Macy's, freaks for being able to walk into a store and know what we want. How crazy is that?

The Disappearing Middle Class

2010-01-26T08:25:00.004-06:00

I don't usually go all politico on you but with the State of the Union address to be taking over the airwaves (that is, if you watch network TV) tomorrow night, I figure this is the one time to go rogue and get on my little soapbox.

We happened to catch a few minutes of the news last night and apparently President Obama is going to discuss his middle class tax breaks plan during the State of the Union.

**disclaimer** It might help if I explain a bit about myself. I feel completely and totally alienated by both political parties. I guess I lean a little bit more toward being a Democrat (I voted for Kerry and Obama in the last two elections) but at the same time, I read an article written by Ron Paul about everything that is wrong with today's GOP and I adore his ideas and wholeheartedly agree that if the Republican party can go back toward it's roots (i.e. small government, not so pro-big business), I'd probably swing slightly more to the right. In other words, I'm a political mess! I want more green, meaning that I want the government to care about the environment and I want to pay less for that so I can have more green in my pocket! **

The only thing they really outlined that is part of the middle class tax plan is a big credit on childcare for families that make less than $85,000 combined. When I heard that, I practically felt my aforementioned low blood pressure skyrocket! Let's examine this further.

If you are using childcare (enough to get a tax credit) you are probably a dual-income family. I can tell you already that there is almost no way that Adam and I would ever be able to qualify for that tax credit (not that we particularly would want to need full-time daycare) at this point in our "careers" (haha, career, that's funny in reference to me). Most people in our generation are choosing to wait to have children until their late 20's/early 30's. By that time, you are usually relatively established in your career and you aren't making the standard just-out-of-college-$20000-to-40000 a year job. If you have two people that each earn, say $44,000 annually, you are already out of the running for this tax benefit.

You have to remember that at my current (and I use that word very loosely) job that I can barely hope to ever gross more than $45,000 annually due to our labor contract and the fact that your income tops out at 14 years of service and we are limited in the hours we can work in a month. But in a more mainstream career, in the grand scheme of things, isn't $45,000 a number on the lower end of the spectrum for a person in their early 30's? Are doctors and lawyers not considered middle class anymore? What about teachers or engineers? Lots of school districts pay up to $40,000 if you have a masters degree and that is for teachers just starting out. According to this tax credit, if you had a lawyer and a teacher dual-income family, they are no longer considered middle class. Don't forget, this $85,000 number is almost certainly pre-tax! Say an ER doctor and a nurse are married with two kids. They work crazy hours and probably need childcare. They almost certainly make above $100,000 but are they not middle class? What about the probably hundreds of thousands in student loans that they are working to pay off? Why can't they get a childcare tax credit too?

It's not that I'm saying that $85,000 is at the poverty line or anything but I really feel that that is a number for a dual-income-therefore-childcare-necessary family is pretty low. You can read in a multitude of sources that our salaries here in the U.S. of A. have not kept up with inflation and I think this is a perfect example of that. $85,000 might have been closer the top of the middle class back in the day, not when gas was more than $2.50 a gallon on the regular.

Ok, now I'm off my soapbox. Maybe I'm completely out of touch with reality on this one but maybe I'm actually on to something!

**disclaimer number 2** I hope to be in a position someday to not necessarily need childcare but I still feel strongly about the issue for a number of reasons. First of all, if a woman wants to go back to work after having babies, she should be able to go back without having to worry about if she makes enough to justify the childcare expense. Plus, many families need that second income just to maintain their quality of life. And I'm not talking an extravagant quality of life. Isn't the American Dream to own a home? That's expensive!**

three things I learned about myself today...

2010-01-25T15:34:00.003-06:00

I had a doctor's appointment this afternoon but seeing as how I have been to the doctor/hospital more in the last month than probably in the previous 27 years of my life, I have gained some new insights about myself.

I have a "normal" body temperature that is not at the regular human 98.6 degrees. This doesn't really surprise me because my mom is the same way. I hover closer to 98.0 or 98.2. So when I have a 101 degree fever like I did with the H1N1 in May, it's extra brutal.

I also have wicked low blood pressure. Today I was 90/56. Which according to some (probably horrible) online research I just did means that I actually sit in the "hypotension" range and they think I should be constantly feeling dizzy or fainting. HA!

These two factoids go a long way to explain why I am constantly (during winter or extreme A/C conditions) freezing and why my extremities turn into popsicles, or as Adam calls them, my ice talons. If only it could also explain why I sweat like a monster and basically live summer in an uncomfortable state of overheat. I think I might just be a freak of nature because I have the world's worst internal temperature regulation. Can I get in the Guinness book for that, you think?

The third fun fact about Jen for the day is that I asked the doctor to measure me for height at the end. Have you ever noticed that once you past a certain age (18 maybe?) they stop measuring you and only weigh you? Like you want or need to be reminded of your weight, thanks. I decided to take matters in my own hands and make her measure me because I tried to figure out myself at the gym last week but measuring your own height is a futile effort. I currently measure at 62 1/4 inches. HAHA! I've been thinking forever that I'm only 5'1! So apparently I've grown a whopping 1.25 inches since I was 18. Good times! Again, this isn't really a surprise to me because I'm pretty sure that my mom did some growing after she turned 18 too.

How excited are you to know these things about me? My doctor is doing a bunch of bloodwork since it was essentially my "annual physical" (which is kind of funny because I'm not sure if I've ever had a physical, let alone an annual one, I don't count the stupid stuff I had to do to get hired by United as the work of real doctors). I'm interested to see my cholesterol and lipid levels because again, I've historically had freaky low levels of that too. It's been probably 4 years since I had any of that stuff checked because I kind of gave up giving blood after the third time that I thought I was going to faint and/or not be able to finish the bag. Not fun times.

So yeah, I guess this makes me officially an old person that has to go get physical exams and bloodwork done. When did this happen?

This week was kind of boring...

2010-01-23T12:28:00.004-06:00

I had some great idea for a post the other day but it slipped my mind and I have not been able to think of it since then. Other than that, my week was rather routine. I managed to stay up for Conan's monologue for both of the last two nights, which is a pretty big deal considering all the gym time I put in this week and the fact that I go to bed at old people time (10:00 p.m. usually). I think I sit more in the Leno camp because it's all I can really remember from being a kid. I only think I stayed up for Johnny Carson maybe one time. Didn't he have a ton of curtains behind him or was I hallucinating? I do feel bad for Conan though and I hope he gets another opportunity because I think he is funny in a kind of different (college stoner) kind of way and has a niche market of people (college stoners).

Yoga is going so well. I could kick myself for not going sooner. It's one of the best things I think I've ever done for myself. I usually try to do another class or a little bit of cardio so last night I rode the bike for a few minutes and had a weird encounter with my evil nemesis trainer, Mondale, who was on the elliptical. Out of all the classes I do, he's the only instructor that doesn't actually do the work out with us (and his is SO INSANELY HARD that I will never be able to complete it) so it was kind of outer worldly to see him on the pansy elliptical machine.

I made a really easy WW recipe this week (well, it was a WW recipe before I gutted it to suit my tastes) but it came out well.

Green Chili Stew (modified from Hit the Spot, WW Cookbook), ~6 points per 1 1/2 cup serving
3 large red potatoes, quartered
3 chicken breasts
2 cans (4.5 oz) diced green chiles
1 package of reduced-sodium vegetable broth (I used one of the cardboard packs from Whole Foods, it was about 3 cups, if doing cans, I'd get two of them)
1/4 onion, finely chopped
2 tsp olive oil
2 tsp minced garlic
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro leaves
salt and black pepper to taste

Cook the chicken breasts and shred meat. I opted to bake for about 20 min at 350 degrees. I put just a touch of olive oil on each breast so they wouldn't stick to my cookie sheet and sprinkled them with Adobo seasoning. You could also marinate them for a few hours.

In a large stockpot over medium-high heat, saute onion and garlic in the olive oil until onion is softened (about 5 minutes). Add the shredded chicken saute for another minute or so.

Add the broth, potatoes and chiles to the pot and increase heat to high. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes or until potatoes are fork-tender. Stir in the cilantro and add salt and pepper.

I made this on Monday night but saved it to eat on Tuesday. It kept really well in the fridge and was great warmed up. I made three huge pots of stew (2 kinds of chili and this one) and we still have plenty of leftovers and it's so easy to come home from the gym and throw some of this in a saucepan and let it heat up. I have been eating all three soups with a little bit of Garden of Eatin' Baked Blue Corn Chips (still the only baked chips I've found that are tolerable and these are pretty good) and a little bit of fresh grated sharp cheddar. It made meals so easy this week and really delicious.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I could take one of the leftovers but it wouldn't do it justice to show you cold. Trust me, it's yummy and doesn't require a plethora of crazy ingredients. Despite the two cans of green chiles, it's not killer spicy.

Bon appetite!

WORK OUT!

2010-01-19T09:08:00.003-06:00

I discovered recently that I am just not a huge fan of being a "gym rat". Meaning that I am not one of those awesome people that can go and spend 30 minutes on the treadmill/elliptical, 30 minutes on the bike, 30 minutes on the weight machines and then doing public crunches on the mat or with the ball (the public crunches part is my personal nightmare, for some reason I just feel like a total freak). If I had a dedicated gym buddy, all of that might be tolerable but still not my idea of fun. Luckily, at the Y we have a really great group class schedule, which was one of the reasons that I wanted to join.

So, I made a commitment to myself, which was facilitated by my recent rental of my own personal locker at the gym, to start going to more classes. Like I mentioned last week, my latest obsession is yoga but I am trying to mix it up a little more.

This is an example of how my "perfect" week at the gym would play out:

Monday: Ultimate Toning, followed by Yoga
Tuesday: my usual Ultimate Power (aka destroying myself) with Mondale, followed by Abs
Wednesday: Vinyassa Yoga, followed by Mat Pilates
Thursday: Off Day
Friday: a few minutes on the bike, followed by Hatha Yoga (because Adam is taking classes for his big test on Friday nights)
Saturday: Off Day
Sunday: Turbo Kick, followed by Yoga

I'll probably lose some of the classes as warmer weather rolls in. I really miss my jam sessions with my iPod on the Lakeshore path. And I'll probably switch to a Spin class closer to the summer to get my booty ready to be in the saddle for the triathlon in August. Last week, I missed a couple of those classes but I know that my hard work at the gym helped me with my big WW weight loss.

(and before you start to think that is a pretty ambitious schedule, it is, but you have to remember my body was used to doing about 26 miles a week and yoga is seriously such an awesome workout that you don't even feel like you're working out, until you wake up the next morning and realize you're sore)

things that are NOT working...

2010-01-18T20:53:00.004-06:00

*I had a cavity filled this afternoon. I'm annoyed on so many levels. First of all it cost $175 because I needed a white filling and my insurance doesn't cover the extra cost. Second, the filling was worse than my dentist previously thought so after about 30-45 minutes of straight drilling, my mouth is not feeling so great now that the anesthesia has worn off. It was my first cavity/filling in probably about 15 years and only my third ever so I'm mad that I let it happen (even though my dentist claims that it's not totally my fault as it was between two teeth). A huge ug to that.

*I may be the only person in the world who can attend a cooking class entitled "Knife Skills" in the morning and then chop the hell out of her finger in the evening. So much for my new technique, huh? GRRRR!

***edit... I forgot to mention (because wonky things are always better when they hopefully bring laughs to my 3 blog readers) that I wrote down the wrong start time for the Knife Skills class and ended up being 20 minutes late instead of 10 minutes early. If you know me, I cannot stand to be late so it was horribly embarrassing. And, the entire purpose of me taking the class was to learn about knives for when we register later in the month for wedding gifts. I missed the entire part about good knives to own and then after class, I started looking at the knives they sold at the cooking school when I realized they were all about $140 each. Yes, for ONE KNIFE. I'm a huge believer in quality kitchen products but that is just insane. I'll be registering for a Faberware set at Macy's thankyouverymuch. So, in short, Knife Skills was an utter waste of my time and money because I missed the parts I wanted to hear and ended up learning a new technique that caused me to nearly chop my left index finger off. GOOD TIMES!!! (thank goodness I own a Slap Chop!)

things that ARE working...

2010-01-18T20:48:00.002-06:00

*Weight Watchers. Tonight I hit my 10% goal, which was pretty exciting. I'm not a huge fan of the celebration time in meeting but I agreed to celebrate tonight and I got a sweet keychain. We also set my next goal after the meeting and I am excited to keep going. We also had a friend start a weight loss challenge and there is money involved in that so hopefully I can win it and have new money to go towards new clothes.

*Frontera Chili Starters. If your grocery store has these (they come in big jars, I got mine at Whole Foods), I highly recommend. I got one tonight and added shredded chicken and an extra can of beans and it made a rockin' chili and it was quick. I'm a huge fan of Frontera's chef/owner, Rick Bayless, and expecially his eating local/organic philosophy. Adam wants to go to his local restaurant for his birthday dinner so I am excited about trying more. I've always liked their salsas but the chili starter is baller.

*My fundraising. So far so good but I have a long way to go. www.avonwalk.org/goto/jenbreda

I've been inadvertantly MIA

2010-01-17T18:29:00.003-06:00

Sorry about that!! I started a post on Thursday about probably the most annoying thing in the world to me, ignorance, and I haven't gotten it quite where I want it yet. My dad called and distracted me from finishing and posting it and it never got done.

Then we had a funeral to attend yesterday that was about a four hour drive away. And, you already know this, but funerals really suck. For a basket case like me, who literally cannot stand to see other people crying, funerals are an exercise in attempted holding in of emotions. Which is something I completely suck at. So basically, all you need to know to picture the scene is me, with watery eyes and a lump in my throat the size of Manhattan, trying not to cry myself as that would make me look like a tool. I am struggling with a few things in my non-bloggy personal life that made the funeral particularly difficult to bear but I got through it and feel like I am a better person for getting to spend the weekend with Adam's family. They are a really great bunch and I ended up having about 100 times more fun than I was expecting. I truly feel blessed to be gaining good people in my life at a time when I feel that I really need them.

Yoga is going well, except for the fact that I almost puked about 16 times during my class tonight because we had a little too much fun watching the Cowboys game this afternoon. I was irritated that they didn't win, more so because I cannot stand Brett Favre.

I am still reading freaky food books related to my viewing of Food, Inc. last month but am completely struggling with my diet and attempts to change my way of life. Eating "well" is an expensive endeavour. I'm learning more and more why they call Whole Foods, "Whole Paycheck" but I keep telling myself over and over a quote I read, "Eat less. Pay More.", meaning to spend a little more money on better quality food and the body will adjust and be able to eat less while still getting all the nutrients it needs. I will probably have to get a lot more of my thoughts on paper (and by paper, I mean keyboard and this blog) when I finish a couple more books and have a better idea what I'm talking about. And please don't worry, I haven't gone completely off the deep end here. I'm just attempting to make better choices and it doesn't happen all the time (case in point: Wendy's on our road trip this weekend). My favorite things about the two authors that I happen to be devoting most of my time to (Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan) is that they are real people with a realistic message. Schlosser orders a hamburger in Food, Inc. Why? Because they taste good. A huge part of Pollan's message is about enjoying the foods you eat because we Americans have such a nutrient-obsessed society that we often forget about just eating well and enjoying the experience. Enough about that, more to come later.

So... in short, life is pretty much at the status quo around here. Still cold. Still rocking out at the gym. Still attempting to eat less crap.

But I did go to a funeral this weekend so I only have one message to leave you with, hug your loved ones tonight before you go to bed and appreciate every moment.

WW and Biggest Loser Tuesday...

2010-01-12T17:50:00.002-06:00

I am so happy that Biggest Loser is back on, although none of the contestants have so far grabbed my heartstrings the way Abby did or played the game to annoy like Tracey did. They lost mad weight last week though!

On my own weight loss (and I promise, I am faithfully documenting in pictures every week, I'm just not at a point where I'd like to show them yet), things are still going ok, just slowing down a bit. Which is totally normal for this point. Christmas was harder than I thought it was going be and I broke down more than I wanted to and being sick helped in the weight loss efforts but not in the "right" way. I know I was losing lots of muscle weight instead of fat weight. I got totally rocked at my Tuesday class at the gym today :(

Weekends are tough when it comes to sticking to "the plan" but I do really well on most weekday by making and packing lunches and cooking point friendly dinners. I thought I had found an illusive 1 Point oatmeal and today I re-did the math and found out that each packet is actually 3 Points, which really made me sad since I bought two boxes last week. Blast! So even though the eating continues to be a big battle for me, I know I'm making progress and making better choices at restaurants. Most of all, I am feeling better about myself every time I get dressed and clothing fits!

I went to a yoga class yesterday and I seriously cannot recommend it enough. I'm usually so exhausted on Wednesdays but I am bound and determined to go to class tomorrow evening just because it was so relaxing. My upper body is sore and there were a couple of things that I wasn't able to do as well as I wanted but overall, the class felt so good and was an hour well spent. I hadn't been to yoga in years and I don't remember it being as great as yesterday. So, I think I'll be a yogi for the time being, at least until the weather is nice enough for outdoor activities. If you go to a gym that offers it, consider going.

Big Goals...

2010-01-11T10:25:00.003-06:00

**I have given up on being in good health for the month of January. I am still at only about 90% and today Adam is home sick. I am getting by with chanting over and over in my head that winter will be over soon enough and reminding myself how lovely summer is.**

So last week, I decided that Christmas had been over long enough and it was time to get my butt in gear and actually start fundraising the minimum $1,800 I need to be able to particiapte in the Avon Breast Cancer walk that I reference in my blog header. First, I started with my family because I have a little self-pride and couldn't start harassing everyone else in my life without having at least a couple of donations. Adam was first to the plate and then he got uber-excited and emailed a ton of his work buddies and most of our Chicago friends. Today, I figured I should probably send out an email of my own so to those of you who got the email and also read this blog, DO IT DO IT! I would love to hit my fundraising goal, like, tomorrow, because I'll feel really bad if I have to repeatedly email people and become a donation-stalker. I promise, I don't think I'll be doing this again so this is probably the only time you'll have to donate to me. Love you long time.

So for those of you bleaders (from Julie and Julia ~the book, not the movie~ blog + readers = bleaders), who may not be on my email list, I'd love to give you the opportunity to donate as well! My personal webpage is www.avonwalk.org/goto/jenbreda and there is a sweet DONATE NOW button and I pinky promise, it's easier than online shopping on amazon.com. You can also donate through my Facebook page... how cool is that? Any donation, big or small, is appreciated and I LOVE YOUR SUPPORT. Because seriously, if you can find me a person who doesn't have a friend or family member that has been diagnosed with breast cancer, I will be shocked and impressed. This disease does not discriminate and as of right now, 1 in every 8 women will be diagnosed in her lifetime. That is sick and depressing!

Unfortunately, I know the timing sucks because everyone is probably maxed out from the holidays but I have until June 5th to raise the money and you can donate anytime between now and then! And I ordered pretty thank you cards today so you should really aim to get one in your mailbox because who doesn't love mail (that's not bills or junk!). So carry on with your Monday and please consider donating!

MAD SHOUTOUTS TO PEEPS THAT HAVE ALREADY DONATED!!!
Brian Bazan, just got the email about 3 seconds ago
my Dad
Adam
James Palmer
Andrew, Rose and Amber Carmean
(lots of dude support for boobs, very cool!)

YOU GUYS ROCK!

And let's SAVE LOTS OF BOOBS!!!

It's like the Energizer bunny... keeps on going and going and going and going....

2010-01-07T21:47:00.005-06:00

I am still feeling some aftershocks from last weeks horrible disease(s) and the resulting medications, which really ticks me off. I'm so over it but I am thankful that I can sleep at night and as of tomorrow, I should be off all medications and back to normal (?) (!). It's been almost 14 days of varying, and often confusing, pills and eyedrops.

Things I learned from it all:

-Never go to the ER unless you are straight up dying. They are chintzy with the drugas there!
-Write down your meds schedule if you've been told to alternate Tylenol and Motrin every three hours. It's mindboggling, I promise.
-Cherry 7up. Awesome when you are sick. Tastes terrible when you are not.
-Lipton Noodle Soup. See above.
-I always know when I'm rounding the corner to feeling better when I start massively craving pizza. And I've been that way since pretty much the age of 5.
-I love Househunters International and am greatly indebted to HGTV for having a marathon on NYE.
-Pink eye is DISGUSTING!
-Being a cheapo and ordering make up brushes from an online store that only charges $1 each is great in theory but not when you literally have nothing to put your new eyeshadow on with and it takes 90 years to get your online order shipped (and I paid $6.95 for shipping and ordered this stuff on the 30th... what the hell!).
-Vick's throat spray tastes grody.
-If I get sick again this winter, I may also have an accompanying mental breakdown.
-I should have bought stock in Walgreens.

SO... let's all cross our fingers together now and hope that tomorrow is the end of my pain and suffering. I'm tired of living it and writing about it and I just KNOW you have got to be sick of hearing about it!

Grabbag!

2010-01-05T09:49:00.003-06:00

Upon venturing out yesterday, I discovered that our friendly neighborhood train station has nearly been completed. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it but they are doing an overhaul of the Brown Line and making it totally handicapped accessible. It's been a complete cluster of an operation and they spent years closing down the smaller stations to completely overhaul them. Since our local station also serves the Red Line and is a main transfer point, they couldn't feasibly close it down and the construction has been dragging on FOREVER. I'm sure they are still working on it (like the elevators) but all I needed to see was that the side of the station on my side of the street and nearest to the car that I want to be in was DONE and OPEN!! I was about to be that scary random person and do a jump for joy on the street. It's probably going to shave about 5 minutes from my day both in the morning and afternoon. It's the little things in life that really get me jazzed!

I had a good weigh in at WW, which is hilarious considering I probably gained 3-6 lbs during Christmas week. Being so sick had one benefit! On the bad side, I tried to do 30 Day Shred yesterday and it was a huge FAIL. I made it a little more than half way through. Why does being sick take away all your strength? I was feeling so strong before. It's sad because I probably only lost muscle weight for my weigh in. Grrr. But I'm down 11 lbs so far so I think that is something to be excited about. I'm enjoying the way that my clothes are starting to actually fit me.

Today I can finally wear my contacts again, no more eyedrops and no more glasses! I'm heading down to the MAC store later to begin the process of getting new eye makeup. I only have a few more days of the strep antibiotics and then I'll be back to being medicine free. For awhile there, I was thinking I needed one of those pill holders to remind me what I was supposed to take and when. My meds were confusing!

We signed up for our first 2010 run yesterday. It's the 8K Shamrock Shuffle at the end of March. We missed it last year for a wedding so I am pretty excited. The past couple of years, the weather has been awful, snowy awful so I will be keeping my fingers crossed between now and then that it ends up being a nice day. Now, to get back in fighting shape for the run!

We are hosting two students from my alma mater, Texas A&M, over the weekend. The Student Center sponsors a really awesome trip for students that are interested in local grad schools. I'm a really bad member of the local Aggie group so hopefully this will kickstart me into being more involved. And it'll be a fun experiment having two extra females in our teeny condo for the weekend. Hopefully they will enjoy our fine city and our fresh and new neighborhood train station :)

Worst Monday of the Year!

2010-01-04T09:04:00.002-06:00

Even though I don't have anything major to do today (can't get new eyeshadow until tomorrow), it's just so dreary without any holidays to look forward to. The holiday season is such a blowout for me with Thanksgiving kicking it off, my birthday, Christmas and New Year's that January just feels like such a letdown. The bowl season is almost over, football Sundays are over (for the Bears at least) and it's still a long way til baseball and the beginning of spring and loosening of winter's lock on my soul. This time of the year is anti-inspiring for me.

I don't really "do" the whole New Year's resolution thing but you probably already know that, seriously, who starts Weight Watchers for the first time in their life right before Christmas (btw, I had a major fail of two weeks starting with Christmas Eve and ending with McDonald's last night). But I do have some things that I would like to accomplish this year and I think of my goals as more of a running list rather than resolutions that I'll probably break.

-obviously, keep working on my struggle with non-nutritious foods
-try some new fitness classes and not being so lazy about going to the gym even though it's a long cold walk
-cooking classes at Williams-Sonoma
-registry and the myriad of other wedding things I need to get done
-find a half marathon to run in 2010
-get over my freakish "fear" of the indoor pool at the YMCA and start swimming

I put fear in quotation marks because it's not that I am literally afraid of the pool, I just usually have residual childhood fear issues when it comes to getting familiar with a new pool. I used to be deathly afraid of pool drains and I still carry some of that with me until I get to know a pool. Plus, there is something slightly creepy about indoor pools or maybe I've just seen too many weird pool scenes in movies.

Plus, I have the Avon Walk and I really need to get on the fundraising bandwagon with that and all of my furlough goals to accomplish. At least I have some things to accomplish that will help me get through dreary January and February.

2009 by the months

2009-12-31T14:54:00.018-06:00

So I have a little spare time since I'm confined to the house (well, no big loss there, it's supposed to be uber-cold the rest of the week), so I figured I'd do a little recap of 2009. Even though it's ending in a completely below average way, it was still a pretty darn awesome year for me. We've had our ups and downs but I've enjoyed myself, seen some sweet new places and accomplished a ton of goals along the way.

JANUARY:

I ran the first of my 3 half marathons in Austin and had a huge cheering section waiting for me at the finish. Thanks to all the family and friends who braved the cold-for-TX temperatures to cheer me on. It was also my first time to take Adam home to Texas and he got to meet my brother and grandparents. It, as always, was a really fun trip and we had a blast. In Chicago, it was cold. I don't really remember much about the month other than that, maybe I like to block it out? I was reading in my favorite WGN weather blog that we set a bunch of snow records last Jan so I must have been just LOVIN that :)

FEBRUARY:

OMG... one of the best months of the year. My dear friend Amy and I had been planning our trip to Sydney for months and at the last minute my boyfriend and his best friend horned their way in to our girls vacay. I'll still always wonder just what it was that made Amy say yes. Methinks there was more than a little crush a'brewin on her end. Either way, we had a megablast of a trip, celebrated Adam's birthday while we were there and all rode home together in the new layflat business class seats. It was a trip that will be so hard to top but I think the four of us are going to try one of these days! Luckily, we were able to work on our sweet tans and forget about the cold seeing as how they were setting heatwave records and having horrific brush fires while we were in Australia. Loved every minute of it!

MARCH:

In March, I toted around the pictured above Flat Stanley for my friend Sally's class in Ft. Worth. He was a pretty sweet good luck charm because I definitely had my best ever San Francisco layover while I had him. See, I even treated the guy to Starbucks before I walked him to death (all in the name of training, of course). We also took him to a wedding in Virginia and Adam got to visit DC for the first time and we had lovely times with Amy, including one of the best stories of the year. It involves Carmax and $5. My friend Meredith and her mom also visited Chicago and we had fun showing them our very cold city!

APRIL:

I ran my second half of the year with Amy in St. Louis. It rained the whole race and I wanted to punch her for probably half of it. I did not do well with her attempts at motivation. Sorry, Amo! Perhaps the pasta from the night before really didn't do it for me. We had a fun weekend though, despite the rather dreary weather. We did the Budweiser brewery so that makes up for the fact that I had a totally wankster race. I think this was also right around the time that I started this blog to help document my preparation for the Chicago Marathon. My, how the time flies!

MAY:

I got the swine flu, which was immediately followed by my only international trip of the year to Narita, Japan. I had to lie to the scary Outbreak quarantine people when they asked if I'd been sick recently and I lived in petrified fear for the hour that they inspected everyone on our plane. It was worth it for the sushi though! I also ran a 10 mile race at Soldier Field, which I'll have to put on the calendar for 2010, it was pretty fun. We also did 2 weddings in 2 days in May, followed immediately by Adam getting sick. We had my dad and brother up for a Cubs game and lots of fun around town.

JUNE:

We went to Texas for a week again, this time for my friend Tracee's wedding. My friend, Charlotte (pictured above), and I got to take our then-boyfriends to a real Texas Honky Tonk bar in Victoria and we had a blast. I also moved into Adam's condo in June and my mom and I painted the bedroom in our semi-pro way. We spent way too much money on new (but needed) furniture at IKEA and began the process of becoming settled cohabitants.

JULY:

We'd been waiting months for it but it was finally time for our trip to Boston. My dad's family lives all over the area so we had fun carting Adam around and introducing him to everyone. We got to go to a Red Sox game, which was hugely awesome for both of us! The weather back home wasn't too bad also (slightly colder than we'd have liked but nice enough to ride bikes and get out on the beach). I started settling into my serious marathon training and we also had two local weddings.

AUGUST:

I lost a boyfriend but gained a fiance. Adam proposed at the beginning of the month and I went home to San Antonio at the end of August and got a ton of wedding planning done. I remember August as being a really fun time for us, the weather was nice and we did a lot of outdoor activities. Since I was in TX for two weeks, Adam came down for the weekend in between and we got to do lots of engagement celebrating. Lots of good times were had by all!

SEPTEMBER:

I had my last half marathon scheduled for Labor Day weekend in Virginia Beach, which is also Amy's hometown. Kind of like the Sydney trip, Adam and Brian also decided to run with us. I really wanted to beat Adam but we ended up running together as I had a mega overheat episode toward the end of the race. We had a great time with our favorite couple in VB and I finished about 12 minutes faster than I'd ever run a half before so it was a good day. It was also Adam's longest race to date and I think he enjoyed it. At the end of the month, I went home to SA to just start the dress finding process and ended up finding my perfect dress at the third store. HUGE check off the list!

OCTOBER:

We took engagement pictures with the fabulous Steve Koo all over downtown Chicago....

oh yeah, and I ran the Chicago Marathon!! It only took me 17 million minutes but I finished and managed to only walk for a few minutes of the entire race. My family, Adam's family and several friends were out there to support me and I was so humbled and appreciative of the entire experience.

NOVEMBER:

I hosted Thanksgiving in Chicago for the second year in a row, hopefully this will become an annual thing! My dad and brother flew up from San Antonio and Adam's brother drove in from the suburbs to eat with us. We had quite a spread and I gained about ten billion pounds, which in turn drove me to start Weight Watchers on the last day of the month. We were blessed with some decent weather during the month and my friend Brooke came up so we could sign up for the Avon Breast Cancer walk for next June.

DECEMBER:

I celebrated the big 2-8 and we went to finally see Jersey Boys (AWESOME SHOW, btw). We traveled (on paid tickets for the first time in some three-odd years) to San Antonio for Christmas week. And as you know, I got to spend the last week of 2009 bedridden being sicker than I've ever been in my life with double pink eyes, the regular flu (that's 2 flus for '09 if you were counting) and strep throat. Oh well, at least because I was half-dying the whole week, I had the time to write this and to relive some of my favorite memories from the year.

Here's to 2010... we're getting married and planning a rockin' honeymoon so I know it will most certainly be a year to remember.

SERIOUSLY?!?!?!?!

2009-12-30T12:38:00.002-06:00

To add insult to my already injured body and soul, I woke up at 3:00 a.m. (again) in a lot of pain. My throat was hurting so bad and I know throataches, I had strep throat probably about 6 times between first and second grade. Anyhoo, it was the third night in a row that I woke up my saint of a fiance and we called the nurse hotline for the second time this week to schedule a doctors appointment for this morning. Basically, I was unable to be comfortable laying down because I had so much drainage in my throat. I used to think I was a healthy person but after this week, WTF, mate?

On the brightside, we went to the grocery store to fill my new prescriptions and it was so nice to be able to go through the store to pick out things I wanted to eat and drink. And to breathe some fresh air, even if it was snowy :)

I did get some sweet Vicadin so I can hopefully get a full night's rest tonight. Either way, I'll be ringing in the New Year with Digiorno pizza and a Vicadin. Good times, good times. Happy 2010!

Like I mentioned before

2009-12-29T16:36:00.002-06:00

I got wicked sick over the weekend. On Sunday morning, we had an early morning flight back to Chicago from San Antonio. The night before, we went to dinner with friends (and ironically one of them got sick during dinner- hope you fared better than I, Kev) and out to a bar to have one last hurrah with a bunch of old friends, which was really fun. I was mega-excited at the time because there was no smoking in the bar we were at, which is a hard commodity to come by in SA. We had to have last minute breakfast tacos at midnight because at some point during the week I kind of said suck it to my WW goals for the rest of the trip.

At some point in the middle of the night, Adam woke up and wasn't feeling all that well and he was pretty yucky when we left. I was also pretty nauseous but figured it was just due to staying up late, eating super late, and getting up so early. I don't do too well on no sleep and I wasn't sleeping much for our entire visit, really. But by the time we landed in Chicago, I was definitely the worst between the two of us. I seriously considered taking a cab all the way from O'Hare to home and if you know how insanely cheap I am about taking cabs, that should tell you right there that I was not feeling well at all. When we got to the condo, I made Lipton Noodle Soup and we both got a second wind and managed to unpack and wait for my mom to land from her delayed flight. Her birthday was Sunday and we'd planned to go to Maggianos but kind of nixed the idea because it was freezing and they had no reservations left. We watched a movie when she came in but I fell asleep during it and woke up feeling something foul. I remember saying at one point that I felt exactly the same way that I did when I had what we suspect was H1N1 in May.

Adam's mom and brother came in to the city for awhile and we ended up ordering in Chinese because I was in no position to go anywhere. I ate some rice and green beans because I really couldn't stomach any of the meats. Took Nyquil at about 8 p.m. and went right to sleep. I woke up at some point in the night and I was feeling absolutely terrible. I woke Adam and we called the nurse hotline which is the best way to get a last minute drs appointment with my HMO. I should also mention that on Christmas Eve my eye was incredibly itchy before we went to sleep but I took out my contacts and didn't give it much more thought until Sunday night when I woke up and it was all crusted over. Pink Eye! But that was nothing compared to my fever and body aches. I felt about 15 times worse than my flu in May. I couldn't even get comfortable and back to sleep. We made my drs appointment for the next morning and I continued to toss and turn for another hour or so before we woke my mom. At some point, I finally decided to bundle myself up like the kids in a Christmas Story and go to the Emergency Room. I think I've adopted a policy that if I am too sick to even sleep it's time to seek immediate help. I also was having some pretty bad nausea issues.

I have to say that our experience at the ER was pretty seamless. We got right in (into a nice little Negative Pressure Quarantine room) where I was diagnosed with Pink Eye and the flu. They hooked me up to an IV and gave me some super strong ibuprofen and I was feeling better after about 30-45 minutes.

*note, at the present time I want to kill our crappy internet provider because I was done with this post but our internet went out and this was all it had saved but it will probably end up being less long winded so that may or may not be a good thing, you decide*

Anyway, they made me feel better at the ER, which lasted for about 5 hours after I got home. Yesterday almost every bad symptom was back, only worse. I was also unable to keep any sort of liquids down. Sometime during the third quarter of the A&M bowl game, we decided to head back to the ER. Another day, another prick in the arm for an IV. At least I have matching arms now and so far, the bruising has been shockingly benign. They gave me fluids and more strong Motrin and decided to do bloodwork instead of chest xrays like the night before. All the stuff came back indicating I had the flu instead of meningitis or something more serious, phew. I was not excited hearing words like "spinal tap" being floated about. After that, they gave me the choice to go home or be admitted as observation. Obviously, I chose to go home because I have major issues getting comfortable and sleeping in hospitals. Who doesn't, right? I also have mega IV issues, both night I was feeling like they were leaking and made multiple people check them because I could have sworn I felt it dripping, on both arms.

I also managed to give myself pink eye in the other eye. I'm telling you, I was a complete (and still am a partial) disaster. Today, I'm at a normal sick person level and can function enough to type all this so I feel a vast improvement. However, I have to throw out all my eye make-up, which is SUPER annoying because I just bought some expensive mascara from Sephora 2 weeks ago. Luckily, I had already earmarked a significant bit of Christmas money towards new eyeshadow at the MAC counter, as I was completely out of my favorite color. Que sera, sera.

I am also missing the Addams Family musical tonight with Adam and Mom and a nice dinner. Plus, this also means no New Year's Eve party for me so it's looking like we'll be watching the VT bowl game and Dick Clark from home, which is probably better so I don't infect the world with my diseases. That's been basically my post-Christmas ER extravaganza of experiences. Hopefully your post-Christmas has been better!

Sick Day(s)

2009-12-29T08:01:00.002-06:00

I have pink eye (got it in one eye and managed to pass it to my other eye myself.... lovely) and the flu. And apparently they are stingy with the TamiFlu in Chicago unless you are dying (and my two emergency room visits must not qualify as dying).

So here I sit, pretty miserable, but at least it's a major improvement from yesterday and the day before when my entire body ached so bad that I couldn't get comfortable enough to sleep.

And I think I'll be investing in the flu shot next year!

Our Christmas.... and I'm going off the reservation

2009-12-20T08:22:00.000-06:00

Yesterday we left for San Antonio for almost 8 days of what will hopefully be glorious weather. Considering that it really doesn't ever snow there, it will feel glorious to us no matter what. Plus, we don't really have to walk anywhere even if it rains every single day. I'm going to soak it up because we'll have a long winter awaiting us when we return home.

Enough about all that! The past two years, I've been flying over the Christmas holidays. My first year, I was SO BLESSED to actually get my Christmas wish list trip (we were allowed to preference our top three layover locations during xmas week) and I got to go to Beijing. I was packing the night before we left and realized that I'd be arriving home late in the evening on Christmas Eve and be guaranteed a few days rest when I got in. I would have about 1 hour to wait for everyone to deplane, clear customs and race to the gate of the last flight home to San Antonio from DC. It was a pretty tall order but I figured I'd give it a try. The first thing I did when we landed was run into the lavatory and called the hotline to see the flight status. Luckily, it was delayed about an hour so I knew I'd have enough time. After a brief snafu with a cranky customs man (hey bro, it's not my fault you're working Christmas Eve), I made it to the gate and on the flight, in first class no less and seated next to one of my co-workers. Even though I was jet-lagged to the max and had hardly slept a wink over the entire 4 day trip to China, I enjoyed chatting and drinking wine almost the whole way home. I got in to SA around midnight and enjoyed a surprise Christmas Eve with my mom and brother and got to be at the big Christmas dinner at my grandmother's house. I think that will always go down as one of my favorite Christmases, partially because I got to be home as a last minute surprise but also because I think Christmas Eve is my favorite day of the year and considering that my Christmas Eve began around noon the day before when I was still in China and ended up being about 36 hours long was so cool. I was buying last minute gifts at the markets (the Chinese don't really celebrate the holiday but they kept saying to all of us, "Oh, today is your special day!") when everyone back home was still sleeping. The whole thing was so exciting that I didn't have any time to think about how exhausted I was.

So... last year, I knew it was going to be pretty darn hard to top that and sure enough, all hell broke loose weather-wise so pretty much no one got their wish list trips. I spent my favorite day of the year (Christmas Eve) sitting for hours in the Denver airport waiting for a flight to Newark with a ton of extremely cranky New Yorkers. Our trip fell apart and instead of making a ton of money for flying Christmas day, I only got a little bit of holiday pay (because it's based on flight time) and ended up home in Chicago on Christmas night. I remember calling Adam and just being so upset. I told myself that I'd do whatever possible to have Christmas off in the future because it was such a bummer the way things turned out. On the lucky side, similar things ended up happening to one of my roommates and another one of our training classmates so we went and had dinner at a Chinese restaurant that was open. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but it just didn't have that Christmas feel to it. Plus, I had to work the next day and it began a string of the worst four days I had ever experienced while flying. But that's neither here nor there. :)

I'm determined to make up for last year by really taking the time to appreciate being home this year. It's been a long time since I was able to go to Christmas Eve church and do the candle-lit rendition of Silent Night. We have family friends that always have a party after church and it is definitely one of the highlights of Christmas Eve for me. I'm so excited to be able to share all of our traditions with Adam this year too. I hope that last year is the last time we ever have to be apart at Christmas because it SUCKED! We're having Italian food on Christmas day (my pick- YES!) and I'm sure there will be desserts and cookies all week.

So, I'll probably be MIA unless anything absolutely hilarious happens while on our trip. I hope everyone out there in the blogosphere has a fantastic holiday week and I can't wait to see my SA friends who happen to read!

Spotted on the Train...

2009-12-19T08:06:00.009-06:00

Yesterday I made it my personal mission to ride the CTA Holiday Train. Basically, it's this train that is totally tricked out and only used for a few rides during the holidays. It was making a round trip run during the afternoon rush yesterday. I looked up the schedule and made sure I was in the right place.

I mention that the train was tricked out but I must explain further. Imagine if the TV show Pimp My Ride got ahold of a train with one mission and one mission only: to make it crazy with Christmas. This thing is floor to ceiling INSANE! The poles are wrapped like candy canes! The seats are not upholstered in regular CTA blah, rather in Christmas fabrics! The ceiling is lit in red and green! There is an entire car replaced by a flatbed that Santa rides on (and mind you, it was 34 degrees at the time yesterday meaning that the precipitation we were getting was a fantastic mix of rain, sleet and snow) out in the elements (on the line we were on, there are about 10 subway stops going through downtown so I guess dear Santa gets a small reprieve)! They have people coming through handing out candy canes! The thing was full of kids having a total blast!

It was pretty darn cool. Although, I must tell you that I more enjoy accidentally seeing it go by or at a stop that when I'm not prepared for it. The sight of all the lights, music and general hoopla is enough to warm my soul when I come across it unexpectedly. When I looked up the schedule and chased it down, I think I lost a little bit of that feeling. And no matter how awesome the inside of the cars looks, it's nothing compared to the sight of that beast from the outside...

Holy lights, CTA! And that is just part of one out of seven cars (and don't forget the flatbed trailer with Santa). It's like a mini-parade in the middle of the commute.

Heading away from us in the tunnel... off to make some other people smile!

Tis Da Season, Indeed!

2009-12-17T21:27:00.007-06:00

I walk by this decorated door quite frequently and I always think to myself, "Tis da season, indeed!" I adore whoever a) decided to decorate the door in the first place and b) decided to get all ghetto with the holidays. The odd thing is that it's actually a decently nice apartment building so I smile a little on the inside every time I see it and I've been meaning to take a picture of it to share with you, dear internet.

I took this outside the 7 story Macy's downtown (aka the original Marshall Field's... RIP to the best store ever). They always do it up nice for Christmas and it makes me feel really festive to walk down State Street. Plus, all the trees are lit with blue lights all up and down State and it's strikingly beautiful. I'll have to remember blue lights when I have a yard to decorate.

This was at the Hokie Holiday Party last weekend and I have to say, it's making me question my desire for pot lights for the ceiling in our future house. They're really cool and modern (especially the ones that have fading switches) but the lighting is gawdawful for pictures! I really thought I looked better when I walked out the door. Maybe the freak rain/sleet storm we got caught in on the way to the party (that resulted in a 5 block cab ride and me almost throwing down with a Lakeshore high rise jerkface that thought he was too cool to wait outside for a cab) had something to do with it?

A successful weigh in

2009-12-15T08:39:00.003-06:00

I had my weekly WW meeting last night and it went well. I tortured myself all day because I weighed in on the Wii Fit in the morning and it didn't read what I wanted it to. Then I remembered the so-called curse of Week 2 on the Biggest Losers and started to freak out that I'd suffer the same fate and have a gain. At my real weigh in, things were right where they needed to be. In fact, I got in trouble with WW Online when I came home and put my weigh in results on the tracker. It says that I'm losing too fast but the computer can't take things into account like the fact that the first week my Thanksgiving weight literally fell off. My loss this past week was much more to standards and it's more like what I'll be expecting on a regular basis.

Part of this is hard because the people that sit in meetings that I "look up to", meaning the ones that are in control of their weight, are often lifetime members that have hit their goal and just come each week to maintain. I realize that for me, this may not be a thing to do for a few months, and more like something I will have to do at least part-time forever. I am not blessed with a high metabolism. If anything, my genes work against me. I also think that a lot of the foods that we put in our bodies now have been processed to make them more inexpensive in monetary cost but they are extremely expensive in cost of the weight they put on our bodies. I am lucky that I have an literal obsession with tracking my points on the computer everyday. I think if I can keep that up to a certain degree over time, that I'll be ultimately successful enough to not put the weight back on. I never want to feel the way I did when I went to my first weigh in and saw that awful number on the screen. For someone at my height, it was not a good number.

I am a little worried about handling everything when we go home to Texas but I set a goal for myself to not have any bean and cheese tacos while I'm there. For those of you who know me, you know that I usually set the exact opposite goal to see how many bean and cheese tacos I can have while I'm home. It's going to be a tough one but those buggers are worth almost 1/3 of my daily points value for just ONE TACO! My mom is going to take me to a meeting on Monday so I can have my regular weigh in while I'm there and I know I can stay on track if I work at it. Since I'll be missing my regular Tuesday butt-kicking at the gym, I'm thinking about bringing the 30 Day Shred home with me.

(just FYI, I am still only on Level 1 because I refuse to move on until I can do the whole thing just like the advanced girl and I still suck at the pushups)

Food, Inc.

2009-12-14T08:26:00.007-06:00

After holing ourselves up in the condo all day yesterday (dreary weather and Adam has a cold), we finally watched a movie I'd been wanting to see for awhile last night, Food, Inc.

I'm so conflicted as to how I really feel about the movie. There were so many parts that were difficult to watch and I had to turn my head several times because some of the animal scenes were so bad! I remember in high school history discussing Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, and hearing the horrors that happened in the early 1900's meat packing plants. Unbeknownst to most of us, we have the same things going on now in our meat industry but most of the workers are undocumented, illegal immigrants so it's happening in our country and right under our noses and nobody seems to care about it.

They did a scene with a Latino family from California that bothered the hell out of me. They were at the Burger King drive thru because they were trying to make the case that they can only afford to eat off the dollar menu. Later they tell you that the father has Type 2 diabetes and needs two medicines that were upwards of $130 a month each. They show you how inexpensive it is for the entire family of four to eat off the dollar menu, rather than buying "expensive veggies" at the market. I believe this to be extremely unfortunate but only partially true. First of all, if what happens on the Biggest Loser is true, we've seen several contestants completely reverse their Type 2 diabetes and come off all of their medications. If that family had the extra $260 to spend on food, they'd be better equipped to afford what is truly nutritious. Plus, their bill at Burger King was $11 and some change, almost $4 of that was toward two Sprites and a large Dr. Pepper. Instead of drinking the sodas, they could have had water for free and bought quite a few pounds of veggies instead of the burgers and chicken sandwiches. I do see the filmmaker's point (to a point) that the food industry has figured out a way to manipulate everything so that processed foods are cheaper than buying most nutrient-high foods. Just look at bottled water for example, in most places it's more expensive than buying a coke.

As far as personal changes that I want to make, I was horrified seeing the parts about our meat supply. It's easy to see why obesity is an epidemic in this country after seeing Food, Inc. It's not always the quantity of the foods we eat, it's sometimes about the fact that almost everything we eat has been genetically or hormonally engineered to be bigger. I know that we can afford to buy organic. And in reality, Whole Foods is far and away the closest grocery store to our house. I want to start making better choices not only to make my "vote" for our food supply count but also because I feel like I'll be putting better things in my body. It's hard though because so many of the things that are great for the WW Plan are heavily processed. A case in point is the Fiber One bars that many of my fellow meeting participants are in to. Look at the ingredient list on the box of one of those bad boys... I'll stick with the Kashi bar equivalent, thank you! In order to keep the processed foods down, I try to eat lots of veggies. To go back to the Latino family I mentioned above, the mother tried to make the case that the burger filled them up better than eating an apple. I counter with it's all what your body is used to. My first week on WW, I was ravenous all day every day. The second day, we went to a restaurant and I ordered a salad to stay on points and I wanted to punch everyone else at the table for ordering things that I wanted (lasagna, french fries, etc.). I remember feeling SO CRANKY that night because all these veggies that WW considers to be "filling foods" were not filling the hole in my stomach at all. Fast forward two weeks, I can eat the apple instead of the burger and still feel satisfied. My body took some time to get used to this new regime that I forced upon it but now I'm feeling filled up by the so-called filling foods. If that family gave it some time, I know they could live a healthier lifestyle.

This post has really been all over the place but I really struggle with food and how I feel about it on a regular basis. I went all out veg for awhile after reading the vegan-Bible, Skinny Bitch (not vegan though, I love cheese and milk too much and raw food diets, uh, no). I feel off the vegetarian wagon after a trip to Argentina. I had to have the steak!! And it was the best meat I've ever tasted in my life, most likely because it wasn't all jacked up like our beef supply. Movies like Food, Inc. make me want to run away to Europe, where the food and alcohol hasn't been completely processed and tainted with preservatives! I want to buy my eggs non-refrigerated. I want to eat lots of butter and cheese and be skinny like the French. I want to be able to go to a market like this:

In my next life, can I come back as a Parisian?

I want to re-evaluate the choices that I'm making on a regular basis. There are farmer's markets even here in the city and I want to commit to going to them more. I want to start buying organic dairy products for sure and look at the meat choices I'm making. We'll see how it all works out.

Just in case you were wondering...

2009-12-10T18:54:00.002-06:00

We only made it to 9 degrees, not the 16 that the crappy weather people predicted. I walked about 6 blocks home from the gym tonight, freezing my touchie off, and wondered who chooses to be homeless in Chicago? I mean, it's a lovely place, but if I were homeless, I'd only summer here and then I'd hitchhike to Mexico or something for the winter. I know why all the old retired people get the hell out of dodge and move to the Rio Grande Valley now.

I think I almost had Adam convinced to let me get a dog after our TX Christmas trip until I realized that I'd have to do the lion's share of taking him/her outside in this type of weather. So sad day... dogs will have to wait until we get a yard, whenever that may be.

And the high for Thursday is 16...

2009-12-08T09:00:00.001-06:00

That's what the world looked like outside my front window yesterday morning. Cute, no? Yesterday's snow was not so bad. In fact, it was almost enjoyable (except for the time that I got a Zipcar that couldn't drive in it, I had no idea how awesome my AWD SUV was until I was driving a Mazda 3 that was skidding all over the place). But most of it melted during the day off of the sidewalks and there was just a cute little dusting around.

I woke up this morning and had a bad feeling based on the fact that it was extremely dark in the bedroom. I pulled open a shade in the living room to find more snow and non-shoveled sidewalks. Blast! The weather man just said that we should think of today as a "marathon, not a sprint", meaning snow all day long with the heaviest stuff to come overnight and into tomorrow. Craptastic. We'll do the same thing I did last year and keep a tally of how many times I slip and fall on ice. So far, we're at:

Winter, 0

Jen, 0

Last year, I never figured out how to tally points for myself but I think that I will give myself a point for every time that I start to slip and manage to hold on. We'll see what the score ends up in May when we can safely assume that the snow and ice is done. Yes, I said May, the winter never ends up here.

When I moved here in Summer '08, we had a get together with some close friends and my two roomies where we discussed things we were looking forward to about our move to Chicago. My big thing was the winter: surviving it and becoming a true Chicagoan. I'd lived in St Louis and Northern VA for winters before but this would be my true initiation into a "real" winter. That was before we had the worst winter in 39 years.

This year, I'm so over it and it hasn't even started. I just want to fast forward to the end of winter and be done with it. I'm considering registering for the half marathon in Austin in January just so I have another excuse to go home to TX. I will never understand how people can be natives of this place (well, until next summer rolls around and then my love affair with Chicago can pick up where it left off).

I'll try not to be so cranky about winter but I can't promise anything. I have a slight problem with my extremeties. Adam likes to call my hands and feet "ice talons" during the winter because they get so cold and I like to grab him on the neck to warm them. But I think I just might have the worst internal temperature regulation of any human being because I also sweat buckets when it's about 80 degrees. I just need to shut up and embrace the fact that I am a freak.

This picture is from the train station nearest our house, I'm not sure if you can see it but whomever decided that it would be cute to decorate the streetlights with SNOWFLAKES should be punched. Dude, rub it in much? Were they out of cute bells or wreaths or Christmas trees? Snowflakes would be far more appropriate in a place like San Antonio, where they don't actually have to deal with feet of snow every year.

Now, that I've sufficiently wasted a ton of your time with my winter rants, on to more postive things. I had my first big WW weigh in last night. I pretended that I was on Biggest Loser (finale tonight, go Amanda!) and went to the gym and made myself do a "last chance workout". Good times! I won't go into specifics about my loss but we can say that I lost all I gained during Thanksgiving weekend and a little bit more! WOO HOO! I have a long way to go to get to my personal goal, but when I get there I'll be in a place I never thought I could go.

I know that not every week will be as big as this first one, but not every week includes birthday cookie cake. I'm sure just cutting my alcohol portions made a huge difference. My love for drinking pints of wheat beer is not a good thing for weight loss and I'm learning to treat those types of things as treats and not daily life. Plus, the portion control issue is where I was having the most trouble. Every bar/restaurant here serves delicious tater tots and they usually serve you a portion that looks like 3 Super Sonic Sized portions and I usually eat quite a big amount of them. So, re-learning how to go out to eat has and will be my biggest battle. I'm encouraged and ready. I'm pretty sure that at my weight right now, I wouldn't be able to fit in my wedding dress and my mom would maybe kill me for that, not to mention how embarrassed I'd be. SO... gotta keep working!!

Thanksgiving Weekend

2009-12-08T08:18:00.009-06:00

OK... Whenever I post pictures to Blogger, I manage to royally mess it up. I had a whole thing written for this post but as soon as I put in the pictures, I can't find the words and all the pictures are in opposite order. And in my previous post, Blogger likes to ignore the places where I have pressed enter and would like spacing. GRRRRRRRR! Any tips would be appreciated because I am apparently not a genius at this.

Without further adu, here is my Thanksgiving weekend in Rewind mode!

Black Friday, we decided to be on crack and go to Michigan Avenue. The weather was nice so it was PACKED! But Dad took us on a North Face shopping spree so it was totally worth it because I got an awesome new jacket. After braving the crowds we waited in a huge line to have a drink at the Signature Lounge on the 95th floor of the Hancock Tower. Lovely!

On Thanksgiving night, we walked over to the Aggie bar to watch A&M vs. t.u. Now... I'll probably take some flack for this but just hear me out people. I enjoyed the game SO MUCH because our Aggies actually gave them a good game but I had already resigned myself to the fact that we were probably going to lose and I was ok with that. Mostly because I do cheer for UT. I have reasons! My mom graduated from there and I grew up kind of assuming that I'd go there (until Mom took me and I saw maybe 3 people with blue hair running around campus, not my kind of place, sorry). But secondly, I live in Big 10 country up here and there is really no other conference in the country that gets hyped up more and for NO REASON! The Big 10 sucks! I am a huge Big 10 hater so anything that makes the Big 12 better is great in my book. I think I developed this when I was in St. Louis and they were showing a crappy game during the NCAA tournament (Big 10 Chumps vs. Some other Chumps) and I had to watch the A&M vs. Syracuse awesome game on my computer. From then on, I hold a serious grudge and LOVE all things Big 12, especially when someone from our conference plays in the National Championship. Thirdly, I have a friendly thing going with Adam where I constantly talk about how inferior the ACC is to the Big 12. Sorry... that was long but long story short is that I was glad that we gave Texas a good game but also glad to see UT marching on to the National Championship (where they will inevitably be crushed by Bama, but whatever. Big 10 sucks!).

Spotted on Belmont Avenue on the way to the Aggie game. HOW DISTURBING IS THAT!?!?!

Our Turkey day meal set up. We had to borrow a table from one of Adam's work buddies and set it up in our living room. City shoebox living at it's finest!

Me, rocking out while cooking on Thanksgiving. And yes, I ate the meal in my pajamas. Which is probably why I went back for the second plate. DANG IT! Next year, I'm wearing my tightest jeans so I have a reason to stop! :)

Beerfest, the night before Thanksgiving. Mikey and Adam. My brother makes hilarious faces in pictures but I will spare you the montage we took of all of us making crazy faces.

My dad showed up for Thanksgiving and gave me my early birthday present about 10 minutes after walking through the door. It was a new Canon Elph! And in a beautiful turquoise color. It takes way better pictures than my old and falling apart Kodak. Anyone need an old digital camera that has the faceplate taped onto the rest of it? I will ship it free of charge to anyone who needs an old digital camera!

I didn't get any pictures of us at Chicago's Kristkindl Mart which makes me sad. But I guess it was raining and I wasn't really in the mood after I saw the city Christmas Tree. It was so pathetic that I can't believe Bonnie Hunt came out for the tree lighting. I guess the City of Chicago decided they didn't have enough money for a proper tree this year (probably because of the failed Olympic bid... BLAST! and the fact that there is no one to impress anymore). A family from the Southside was kind enough to donate one but it's literally a tree from someone's yard and the city totally halfassed the decor. It looked terrible and not fitting of a world-class city. So, no pictures. Sorry! But we did enjoy the heck out of some stuffed bavarian pretzels. I LOVE Kristkindl.

But either way, I like the tradition that we've started of my family coming to see me at Thanksgiving. It's fun to plan and cook the meal and we had a blast running all over town!

A Great Day!

2009-12-06T15:41:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was wonderful. It was exactly the way that I've always dreamed of spending my birthday. I woke up and started getting phone calls and text messages from all of my family and friends. As soon as Adam woke up, he started bugging me about opening my presents (technically, he started bugging me on Friday night). He got me almost everything I wanted and truthfully, I've already received for my birthday most of the stuff I wanted for the whole "birthmas" season so Christmas is just going to be an exciting bonus! One of my presents (and I have been asking for this all year) was a mini cookie cake and OMG was it ever delicious!!!!!

We went to Subway to pick up lunch, and yes, I realize I am sort of a weirdo for wanting Subway for lunch but just go with it. We have two locations that are probably within 4 blocks from our house. Basically, there is a major L station in our neighborhood and there is one location on each side. So we go to the closest one and they don't have Honey Oat bread. I ordered the wheat but while I was waiting for someone to start loading the veggies on, I realize two things. The wheat bread is the same points as the Honey Oat only not nearly as good and gosh darn it, it's my birthday and I want Honey Oat. So I tell the sandwich artist that I no longer want the sandwich (and the guy behind us in line thought I was probably the biggest B in the universe but who cares?) and we walked to the second location, which had what I wanted. Glorious!

We were kind of lazy watching some of the college football games and didn't accomplish an outing to the gym but that was ok because I did the 30 Day Shred and let Jillian kick my butt instead. It felt nice to get a little sweat in after eating cookie cake :)

After showering and getting a little more dressed up than normal, we set out to find a craft fair that I wanted to go to. We never ended up getting there because we walked almost a mile and it was FREEZING! We did get some nice shopping time in on our way back from our long walk.

We had a fantastic dinner at PF Chang's. I felt a little silly going to a chain restaurant when we have so many fantastic smaller places here but it's been almost a year since I'd had Chang's Chinese goodness and dinner was everything I wanted it to be. I can feel my mouthwatering now just thinking about it. It was worth every last point as I ate it.

The best part of the day was going to see the musical Jersey Boys. It's the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and it was up there with Wicked as one of my very favorites of all times. I had no idea The Four Seasons had so many hits! My favorite song is "Oh What A Night (1963)!" and the cast came out and sang it one more time as an encore. It's been on an open run here in Chicago for more than two years but the final performance will be in January. I'm so sad about that! I wish I had seen it earlier because now I want to see it again before it leaves town.

Grab Bag on this Wednesday

2009-12-02T16:15:00.002-06:00

I promise I don't really plan on talking about Weight Watchers constantly around here. I am going to try to limit the discussion to Tuesdays only, which is the day after my meetings and hopefully big losses. I wish I would be getting to see Biggest Loser type numbers but in reality, I just don't have that much to lose. I would like those five Thanksgiving weekend pounds to come off though, please!

I went to the gym for my weekly butt kicking yesterday. I wish that I could go to the upper body class on Thursdays but alas, my present scheduling does not allow for that. Maybe I can sweet talk the teacher into switching upper body to Tuesdays next session? Doubtful, considering I am just about the worst student in class. Today was the best I felt during the lower body class and I finished abs with one sock on so that's progress (we start losing shoes and socks when we suck at abs class). You gotta start somewhere, right?

Tonight I plan on catching up on Biggest Loser since we went to the Weezer concert and missed the episode last night and last week's "Where are they now" special. Let's see how many Kleenexs I need. UG. I'm a crybaby. Thanks, Mom.

It's officially cold around these parts. I don't think we're still in the November mode of being above average temps anymore. The worst part about it is that I go through these weird phases where I literally believe that I will never get warm again. It starts when I go somewhere indoors and never fully warm up while I'm inside (btw, I always take my jacket off even if I can't warm up because it's always SO MUCH colder outside). Then when I do go outside, it never fails that I'll miss a bus and end up deciding to walk and freezing my butt off. That happened to me on Monday night and I spent the rest of the evening under a million blankets and still not ever feeling warm! I end up going to sleep with the top sheet, down comforter and an extra blanket and pull everything up to my ears. The days that I feel like I'll never not be cold are when I start cursing the winter gods that bring this torture to what is otherwise a lovely city. But as Adam says, it's population control for Chicago. If it was summer all the time, we'd have a bunch of wimpy chumps taking up living space in what is already a pretty crowded place.

It's my birthday on Saturday and I'm wicked pumped because we're going to see Jersey Boys! It's finishing it's Chicago run in about a month so I am so glad we'll be able to see it before it leaves town. Woo hoo!

Day 2 of being on "The Plan"

2009-12-01T09:27:00.003-06:00

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store and pretty much filled my basket with goodies from the produce section. I can't stand trying to navigate the place with the rolling cart so I always go the hand-held route and I have to tell you, my basket was HEAVY!

I regret jumping the gun a little bit because I went to my first WW meeting last night and the topic was all the different products that everyone has found at the grocery store that are good for snacking and low in points. If that's how every meeting goes, I like it so far! It was kind of elementary on the encouragement level with the stickers and what not but I can roll with it. It was almost exactly how I thought it would be, lots of people with different reasons to be there.

One thing I forgot was about how all the leaders are actually following the plan themselves. I stayed after the regular meeting for a getting started session and she showed us her before picture. During the meeting, I was staring at this (pardon my french) skinny bitch and thinking, "what does she know about battling weight?". Um, open mouth, insert foot.

So, I just finished figuring out what I'm going to eat today to earn my points. I went a little bit over, but I figure I need a bigger breakfast than normal because I have my mega-hard gym class today and I don't want to pass out. I feel like if I make the healthy choices that I know I should have been making all along that I can have some success with this.

I'm glad I'm making the choice to start now but OHMYGOODNESS is Christmas ever gonna be HARD HARD HARD!!! Thank goodness we are having Italian food as our main meal at my Grandmother's house on Christmas Day because I can just make a huge gigantic salad with all sorts of point free goodies and fill my plate with that and eat the pastas as sides. UG UG UG! But people, I just want you to know that right now there is an almost entire Oreo Cheesecake, 2 chocolate donuts, ample Oreo balls and other chocolate dipped goodies and an almost entire pack of Double Stuffed Oreos in my fridge and pantry. It's taking all the willpower that I have to not tear into the leftovers from Thanksgiving. But neverfear, I have all the willpower I need just by pulling up that mental picture of my muffin top from the weekend. Obviously, I remember it as being about 10 times worse than it is, so I ain't going near the junk food this week. I have to save all my extra points because I have cookie cake coming this way on Saturday!!!

Muffin Top

2009-11-30T10:46:00.004-06:00

I had one of those horrifying lightbulb moments this weekend. And by one of those moments, I mean several. Starting with eating that second plate of almost exclusively carbs on Thanksgiving and ending with buying jeans in what is an unholy size yesterday. The new jeans were primarily because I looked in the mirror on Saturday night while putting on makeup and since I wasn't doing the "traditional full-length mirror pose" of sucking in to look good, I saw it. I had/have a HUGE MUFFIN TOP! and I was in jeans that I thought fit me pretty well when I was in one of my fatter phases about 2 years ago. As much as I'd like to attempt to justify this, I don't really believe that jeans slowly shrink over time of washing and drying them. I think, in fact, that I have actually been expanding over time. OH and I broke the belt loop on another pair of jeans on Friday when I was yanking them over my slightly larger bum (maybe because of all those muscles?) and the new muffin top. I'm having some wardrobe malfunctions that are just not acceptable, ok?

Generally, I try to eat healthy but I know my portion sizes need work. Well, portion sizes and the fact that I routinely eat a couple (or few) meals a week at bars. And while bar food may be the most wonderful food taste-wise, it's generally fried and has little to no nutritional value. Ug. Luckily, I like a few vegtables and currently have a mega-obsession with Subway's veggie delite. I know that if I make a few swaps, I can work on this muffin top problem. The problem is that I feel like I am constantly fighting this battle with myself of about 15 flex pounds that are constantly creeping back on. My biggest problem is that the easiest way for me to lose weight is to never work out and just not eat very much which is an unhealthy and not very successful for the long term way to lose weight. SO... I blogged about it weeks ago and after seeing myself in that mirror I realize that I must take action and that action is going to be Weight Watchers.

It sucks but I feel like I need a way to better control my weight. I enjoy going to the gym and working out, I just don't enjoy the way that I constantly feel starvation when I do. And it's unhealthy to yo-yo about with 15 lbs. I would like to lose them and begin to believe that they are gone forever. So, here's your chance to hold me to it. I want to do this and I want to feel like I gave it a good effort and really enjoy looking back at the upcoming onslaught of wedding year photos. And I got a new digital camera as an early birthday present so I'd like to feel really good about the way I look in the new pictures.

Things I'm Thankful For

2009-11-26T14:26:00.002-06:00

*My dad and brother are here to celebrate the holiday with me
*That this year has turned out better than I ever could have imagined
*Getting to marry my favorite person in the world in 2010
*That God blessed me with a body that can run 26.2 miles
*How many supporters (both family and friends) I have in life even if they are all over the country and not as close as I would like
*I'm thankful that even though I am more than 1,000 miles from them, I feel closer to my mom, dad and brother all the time
*All the opportunities that I had in 2009 to see different parts of the country and world
*That Adam and I have the means to live the kind of life we want to

I could probably go on forever but I want to enjoy this day and especially the food. I think if I had to pick, Thanksgiving would be my favorite holiday. Not only is it the "kickoff to Christmas", the message of taking time with family and friends to celebrate the good things we have in life is very meaningful to me. Enjoy your day and be thankful!

Manana...

2009-11-24T09:07:00.004-06:00

My Thanksgiving officially starts tomorrow. I will wake up and start on the pumpkin pie and Oreo cheesecake I have planned, pull the turkey out of the freezer and plot what I'm going to do to season the bird, and make a few other goodies for snacking. My dad and brother are due to arrive in Chicago in the late morning and Adam is off of work so I'm sure he'll be enjoying time on the couch and playing his dorky video games. I'm so excited.

The only thing that puts a damper on my holidays is that my family isn't all together anymore since my parents are divorced. Even though this is either our fifth or sixth (lost count) holidays doing this, I'm not sure that I'll ever fully get used to it. Don't get me wrong, I think that I have a much closer relationship with each member of my nuclear family since the divorce but there is just something about this time of year that always brings me just the tiniest pang of sadness. Mom, I will really miss you this Thanksgiving.

Luckily, in my world, Christmas is easier (sorry, must pause for a moment to wipe tears from writing the last paragraph) to "divide" our time because Christmas Eve has always been a huge day for us. I AM SO GLAD that we'll be in San Antonio for Christmas Eve, it's been way too long since I got to be there for it. But anyway, last year, my dad came up for Thanksgiving which was hilarious because it was the first time he got to meet Adam. Just thinking about that makes me laugh inside because we had some serious adventures that weekend.

Thanksgiving in the city

2009-11-23T08:16:00.004-06:00

I may be completely wrong here in my theory but I love Thanksgiving week in Chicago! I would deign to say that most of the people that live in our general neighborhood and the surrounding areas are similar to us (i.e. mid-twenties, young professionals, no kids, parents are either in the suburbs or somewhere else). What does that have to do with anything? Well, most of them leave! In our closer group of friends, the vast majority are going to be out of town for the week/weekend. And it sure seems like everyone else does the same thing! The city clears out! Traffic is next to nothing. Obviously, this theory does not apply to downtown, like Michigan Ave, which will be mad packed all weekend. But here, a couple of miles north, our neighborhood is at it's calmest all year. I LOVE IT!

Just to illustrate my point, there are only a couple of Targets in our near vicinity. And there is only one Wal-Mart in the city limits and it's in the mad ghetto so Target is usually insanely packed. On weekends, it's a nightmare to find parking (and I'm not even going to talk about Costco, that's a whole 'nother ball game of insanity) and the place is a sea of red carts and crazy shoppers. And that is YEAR ROUND every weekend. Frankly, I can't remember a random Monday afternoon or Thursday evening that the place isn't obscenely packed. So last year, my dad was in town and after our Thanksgiving meal, he decided that I needed a few kitchen items (mainly knifes so we don't kill ourselves carving meat this year) so we headed over to Target. On Black Friday. How was it? Quite manageable if you ask me. I didn't even realize it was Black Friday that's how emptied out the city gets! When you have the kind of lifestyle that we live and being in a huge crowd of people is the norm, it's so nice to have some respite from that. I have a feeling that we'll probably be celebrating Thanksgiving here in Chicago for as long as we live here. Plus, at least last year, it was really the last nice weekend we had before Old Man Winter came to attempt to kill us.

So, I'm going to enjoy the next couple of days as every time I walk down the street, I'll see other young city dwellers, lugging their suitcases and hailing cabs to the airport. Happy travels everyone and do I have any takers to hit up the Target sale at 5 a.m. on Friday? No? Ok.

(and I'm sorry for the utter lack of pictures lately. Dang this place is boring! I'm just totally over my crappy camera and hoping for a new one for the b-day (SO SOON!) or Christmas)

I don't really get this whole vampire thing!

2009-11-20T17:51:00.004-06:00

Two posts in one day? Done and done.

Currently watching NBC Nightly News, which I could write an entire post about, why do I torture myself by watching the world's problems for 30 minutes everyday? It's depressing! But I digress, they are doing a story on the "New Moon" phenomenon. It made a cool $26 million in only the midnight showings last night that people waited in line for. When I was flying, tons of co-workers were reading the Twilight series. More recently, lots of my friends have picked it up as evidenced by the constant discussion over Facebook statuses. The Twilight kids are all over every tabloid. And that series is really just scratching the surface. I feel like every book and TV show that has come out lately has something to do with vampires (with the exception of Going Rogue by Sarah Palin, although I haven't read it so there may actually be vampires involved, she's crazy).

Am I alone here or are there others that just don't get it? Those teeth are NOT HOT! And all the waify kids in the Twilight movies are just not that attractive. I'm so sick of seeing them that I almost wish that Octomom would have another 10 kids (almost, but not quite, I can't stand her).

No I didn't fall off the face of the earth...

2009-11-20T15:42:00.003-06:00

I've just been in Save the Date hell all week! Doing anything 100 times sucks, especially when it involves addressing, stamping, cutting, printing, folding, stuffing and sealing. It was a bigger project than I anticipated but they were mailed yesterday! GLORIOUS!

Spotted on the train...

2009-11-13T17:47:00.002-06:00

I think I need to start talking about the hilarious things that I see sometimes on my daily train and bus excursions.

Today during the morning rush hour this man was wearing these phenomenal suede camel-colored cowboy boots. The real deal cowboy boots. They even made clip clop sounds like women's high heels. He was taking casual Friday to a whole new level. I loved it.

On a slightly sadder note, two seats across the aisle from me this afternoon had been splattered with white paint. Some people are SUCH JERKS!!!

just FYI

2009-11-11T22:09:00.003-06:00

Thanksgiving grocery update- the total was only $156.31, which is totally skewed because Adam tagged along with me and threw in his expensive Old Spice deoderant, body wash and a brand new Sonicare toothbrush to the tune of about $40. So, I did pretty well I think. BUT SERIOUSLY, Jewel-Osco, $3.99 for your own brand of whipping cream? That's crap.

My Thanksgiving Grocery List

2009-11-10T18:28:00.002-06:00

...is about a mile long. I am just going to make a quick prediction that the final bill at Dominick's will end up being $167.32. Groceries are EXPENSIVE in the city AND we pay 10.25% sales tax. Oh and that is just the non-perishables. I'll still have to make a run to the produce market that week. So, I'll let you know how much it ends up being after I go (which may end up being tomorrow night. I'm starting to get stressed about being able to find a turkey). Thankfully this year I will have access to a ZipCar to get everything home. Last year, I hand carried probably 4-5 of those reusable grocery bags that were full of enough canned goods to stock a food bank. And that was walking a couple of blocks from the grocery to the bus stop and another block and a half home. My arms were sore for a couple of days. Seriously. This year I may end up being sore just from carrying them up the stairs to the condo!

New Goal and New Blog Title

2009-11-08T21:54:00.002-06:00

My URL is still runbigjenrun.blogspot.com but I have been feeling a bit sheepish lately because it's been almost a month (Oct. 11th to be exact) since I've done any sort of running besides trying to make it across the street without getting hit by cars.

For the next seven months, I'll be talking a lot about my newest endeavor, the Avon Breast Cancer Walk. It will be June 5-6 here in Chicago and I have at least 2 friends planning to walk with me (more on these fantastic gals later). I felt like it was important to do for two reasons: I like having a large overall fitness goal to work towards but also breast cancer has touched several women in my life and I wanted to be able to give back through this run. I need to raise $1800 but I'm going to try to do it creatively and I'll get into more details about that later. In this economy, that's a scary large number but I know of at least four people, survivors actually, that I want to donate in honor of. How many do you know? 1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with this disease unless we can find a cure. In the meantime, the money I'll raise will go to help women (and men) with their cancer treatments. It's awesome and I feel really blessed that God has blessed me with two legs that have the ability to walk such a daunting distance. I know it's going to be an amazing journey. I got all choked up watching the video at the informational meeting.

So... in honor of all that, I figured I'd shake things up here at Run, Big Jen, Run and now I'm going to be telling you about my footsteps because I estimate it's going to take about 41,501 of them to make it those 39.3 miles.

My own personal Jillian Michaels

2009-11-04T08:35:00.004-06:00

I bought the Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred DVD on sale from Amazon about a month ago and have yet to use it, although I have lots of fabulous excuses like the marathon, my IT band, post-marathon recovery, etc. But this week, I seriously can't use it. I have met the male version of Jillian and his name is Mondale. And my body is going to need about a week to recover from his beatdown.

Let me set the scene for you. After a lengthy process (about six months) of gym searching (but who needs a gym in Chicago's summer?), we finally settled on the YMCA. I was leaning that way after reading lots about it on yelp.com and it's only about a 10 minute walk from here. I also read about a particular class instructor, Mondale, and how awesome his classes were. Now, it took me a long time to attend the first one. There is something a tiny bit intimidating about group exercise and I'm not sure I've ever been to a class without a friend. I was acutely feeling the loss of having gym buddies, which never affected me at our old gym because I always went with either Adam, his brother, or at a completely off-peak time when there were only 2 or 3 other people there. The Y, not so much, there are always quite a few people milling around.

I finally bite the bullet and quit being a little pansy and decide that my first group class would be Mondale's Ultimate Toning for Lower Body. I figure I just ran a marathon so my lower body is in pretty good shape. On the way to the aerobics studio, I see this guy trainer in the hallway yelling at a woman who was relatively fit. It was eerily similar to a scene from the Biggest Loser. This dude was kicking her ass and she was saying things like, "No, I can't do it any more!" and getting really whiny. It reminded me of Jillian and Amanda's dramatic treadmill scene and I even told him that he was going all Jillian Michaels on her and he just laughed at me. Probably because he saw me going upstairs to the studio and knew the pain I was about to face.

I get to the studio like a good little student 15 minutes before class. No one was there yet so I just sat down with my water bottle (THANK GOODNESS I HAD THAT!) on the floor and waited. The first lady walks in, takes one look at me, and says, "Oh honey, is this your first time? You're going to need some equipment." We went all around the room grabbing a step aerobics thing, a couple sets of free dumbbells, a big barbell and a padded weighted bar. Maybe that was it, frankly, I can't remember all the stuff we got our butts kicked with. The room fills up and we wait for Mondale.

Turns out he's the Jillian Michaels I saw beating down the woman in the hallway. Nice. He turns on the music and we start by doing about 500 lunges. My ass was kicked by just that and then he wanted us to do another 10 million lunges only with the various weights and using the stepper. My legs were shaking so bad and Mondale would come over and yell various things at me such as, "Rookie, get your legs UP" or "LOWER, LOWER, bend your knee". I'm about 99% sure (and I can say this now that it's the day after and I'm sorer than after the marathon) that I've never used about half of the muscles that I worked yesterday. When Adam was asking me last night about what we did, I really couldn't remember all the things. I just remembered that they hurt. The 45 minutes of class are like a black hole in my memory, probably because my brain couldn't be bothered to use it's memory function while it was concentrating on mere survival.

I've never felt like I was going to puke or pass out during a workout before. At one point, I had to sit down and drink some water because I just couldn't do it. WHAT? I just ran a marathon! I thought, despite my injury, that I was in pretty decent shape! Apparently not. As the 45 minutes of Lower Body wore on, people started dropping like flies. A couple of people packed it in and left. No one, not even the skinny badasses, could finish the work out completely. It was truly insane. I was completely embarrassed of my performance or lack thereof. I can't wait to redeem myself next week. My original plan was to go to his early a.m. class tomorrow but there's no way. I'll be lucky if I can walk to the gym tomorrow.

I am proud of the fact that I stayed the whole time and didn't die. I even stayed for his ab workout afterward but I kinda halfassed it because my legs were like jello. I have a LOT of work to do. The best thing was that all the regular girls in the class (and there were no men in the lower body class, WIMPS!) said that if I keep going, I'll get results really quick. It was nice too because I felt a little bit of camaraderie with my classmates. Maybe I'll end up with some gym buddies after all!

I just had to write about this...

2009-11-03T08:51:00.003-06:00

Adam and I have a friend that is a dietician and a religious watcher of the Biggest Loser. She talks about it all the time so somehow we found ourselves watching the finale of last season. We were totally hooked. Not that we need another television show to watch, but seriously, what happens on that show is nothing short of miracles.

I set up the DVR to record this season and we've been watching every episode (the only thing that sucks about having a DVR is that you literally become addicted to your favorite shows because you never miss them). The theme of this season is "second chances". They have the guy from last season that was, at the time, the biggest contestant ever on the show, a girl that was the child of a heroin addict that self-medicated with food, the girl that was voted onto the show during last season's finale, etc. But my favorite contestant is the one I want to tell you about. I literally cannot see Abby's story without bursting into tears. Adam was catching up on the show on Saturday and I wasn't even in the room but I could hear her talking and I spontaneously started crying.

Basically, Abby was married and had a five year old daughter and a newborn son in small town Texas. She wasn't feeling well so she had gone to the emergency room while her husband took the kids out. The three of them were hit by a driver going more than 100 MPH and all were killed instantly. Her entire life... gone in a split second. I can't imagine from any angle what she's been through. It hurts my soul to think about losing my parents and brother or losing Adam and our hypothetical kids. I can't hear her talking about it without feeling physical pain for her. If it had happened to me, I probably would have self-medicated with a hell of a lot more things than just food. I don't think that I'd have the heart to go on!

She was doing a workout with Jillian Michaels on the show last week and if you don't watch the show, Jillian is famous for "breaking" the contestants by getting to the root of their issues during their workouts. Her philosophy is that if she can force them to be uncomfortable enough to deal with what's behind their over-eating that they will better be able to deal with it when they leave the show and go out into the real world. Obviously, with Abby, Jillian was about 10,000 times more sensitive than normal. It's not like Abby has issues, per say, she had a mega-tragedy strike her and dealt with it better than many of us could have. It's not like she used alcohol or drugs to deal with her pain. Her situation was different than the other contestants in that she came to the show to lose weight and find a reason to live again. When Jillian was asking her what it's like to lose everything, I was runny nosed and just short of sobbing. It was so sad! But you know someone is amazing when Jillian Michaels is inspired by them.

Abby's team lost at the weigh-in, meaning that they had to vote for a team member to be sent home. Since their team had been sent home to be without Jillian as their trainer in the previous week, Abby asked to be the one voted off because she felt like that visit showed her that she had made progress and she could learn be alive again. Of course, I was screaming at the tv the whole time she was volunteering because she's my favorite, but after watching her talking about it to Al Roker this morning, I realized she was right to go home. After all, she felt like she had completed her journey toward the real reason she was on the show, to find purpose again. She said this morning that she wanted Shay, Amanda and Daniel to stay because they had never known the joy and happiness that she had with her family and wanted them to continue on the ranch to be able to feel the things she already had in life. How great a person is that? How unselfish and awesome is she? Shay, who is the one I mentioned above that was a child of a heroin addict, said on the show that her entire life she had been fighting to try to get her mother to love her and then she came on the Biggest Loser and the one person who gave her love the most freely was Abby.

I'm going to have to stop telling you about her or I'll start crying again! I can't write well enough to even scratch the surface of doing Abby justice. And cheesy or not, the Biggest Loser is really one of the best shows on television right now. I'm kind of mad that I never discovered it before!

We can be found here...

2009-11-02T07:50:00.003-06:00

http://stevekoophotography.com/wordpress

Our engagement pictures are out! YAY!

Now, I just have to spend endless hours pouring over the 128 picture gallery deciding which ones I like best and who is going to get what in a frame for Christmas. Good times! I am so glad we did it, not only because I did want some professional pictures of us in some of our favorite places in the city we call home, but because it was good practice for wedding pictures. And now I know that it is possible for us to not look like freakazoids in photos together.

On a completely unrelated note, it got dark, and I mean pitch black, at 5:00 p.m. last night. I was ready for bed at about 6:30. The jury is still out as to whether this is a good or bad thing :)

I'm a homesick Texan...

2009-10-30T17:42:00.002-05:00

To be honest, I don't get homesick all that often but I am really feeling the loss of my homeland this month. I got up to pouring rain this morning and turned on the Weather Channel. It rained a total of 23 days in the month of October. And I can tell you, most of that was not just idle showers here and there. When it rains in Chicago, it rains steadily for most of the day and it's just downright dreary.

Winter is on its way and I am so anti-happy about that! We never even had a summer. In mid-July we were wearing long-sleeves at the beach! UG!! The next six months are so hard because every time I talk to someone from home, it will probably be about 70 degrees warmer there and perfect weather. I can remember when I used to love cold fronts, now, HA!

So I'm baking more Chex Mix and drowning my sorrows in some of the best beer in the world, the Linie's late fall seasonal, Fireside Nut Brown. Delicious!

things that have been going down in my little part of the world...

2009-10-26T16:27:00.002-05:00

Over the weekend we dogsat for Adam's friend. His dog is a pit bull and before you think he's anything like a normal pit bull, this dog is the biggest sissy in the universe. He takes anxiety meds because he has mega issues with separation. We already had plans to go out to dinner with friends on Friday night but we figured the little guy would be fine for a couple of hours. He has to be zip-tied into his crate because he has figured out a way to get it open and I learned a valuable lesson that night: I don't know how to use zip-ties. Whoops.

We got home from dinner and were greeted by Dodger (the dog) at the door. I immediately started surveying the condo for damage. Finding nothing, I was pretty pleased. We sat down on the couch to unwind before going to bed and we both looked at the center window in the living room and wondered why the shade was open. But it wasn't open, it was completely and totally destroyed. I think Dodger may have eaten half of it. But all that was left was the housing that was still drilled into the wall and the two strings that used to hold all of the bamboo to the housing. The rest of it was kind of all over the window sill and behind the couch.

All of this ended up being fine, if a $12.99 shade from Target was all that happened, I'm pretty pleased! I needed to get behind the couch and sweep up anyway, I don't think our cleaning lady that deep cleans this place (because seriously, I have no room to store more than the absolute basic cleaning products) ever goes behind there. And also, we have a floor lamp that I recently broke the string that turns it on and off. At first there was just enough string left that you could fight with it to turn it on but eventually even that got sucked into the base and we were left with having to crawl over the couch and reach into the inch or two of space to plug it in and unplug it to turn it on and off. Not very functional and I think that Dodger may have done something to the lamp too because it the shade wouldn't stay on all the way. Thanks, boy. I needed to get rid of that $10 piece of IKEA crap anyway.

I've been meaning to de-maroon-and-orangify the living room since I moved in but this gave me the jumpstart I needed. Well that and the huge Target gift card that my dear friend Amy sent me over the weekend. I don't think she ever reads my blog but if you do, thanks so much! I'm not sure if we've gone over it but Adam has a little bit of an obsession with Virginia Tech, which is a lovely school with absolutely hideous school colors. Maybe it's because I come from a place (the promised land as I've become so fond of calling it lately) where orange and maroon don't mix (University of Texas vs. Texas A&M) but I have a real problem accepting that color combo all over my entire home. Before you think I'm a total hater, I'm actually in the process of turning our guest room into a maroon and orange mecca, but it's long been a goal of mine to tone down the living room. When I moved in, the place had a VT football jersey framed on the wall, a framed collage of VT stuff from the Sugar Bowl, a huge orange couch and ottoman and a downright disgusting orange, maroon and khaki rug. Where he found that nasty rug, I'll never know.

After my makeover, we have a lamp that is chocolate brown, blue and green, a couple of blue and brown couch pillows and a green throw blanket. Next Monday on my weekly-spend-way-too-much-at-Target expedition, I'll get a rug that will tie it all together. They had some really great rugs today but I figured I'd be nice and get the man's opinion on design and price point because they have quite a few different options with my color scheme. Even the small changes I've already made excite me greatly and I can't wait to see the new rug. I've entitled this my evil make-over project because I didn't really tell Adam before my Target run today what I was doing. Oh well, I'm making Rice Krispie Treats so hopefully he won't be too mad. He is colorblind after all so how much of a difference could it possibly make? (and I totally believe that the fact that he's colorblind is what has allowed him to believe that maroon and orange is an acceptable color combination all these years)

As I just mentioned, I have decided to embrace fall and start cooking some fun fall foods. I made the Pioneer Woman's version of Chex Mix today with a few differences: I use olive oil instead of butter, Cheez-Its instead of mixed nuts and Frank's Red Hot instead of Tabasco. The smell of it baking has completely taken over the house. I think about $35 of my Target bill this afternoon was solely in the purchase of cereals since I also had to get Rice Krispies for the aforementioned Treats. I woke up with those two foods in my mind and knew I had to make them today. Yummy.

I think our photographer is working on our engagement photos because one of them was previewed on his blog today... www.stevekoophotography.com and in the post called "There's Some Good Stuff Coming... we are one of the nine photos. I can't wait to see the rest.

And another aside, I'm thinking about changing the title and format of the blog. I feel kind of strange now because I'm definitely taking a long break from running to let my IT band heal and although I have other physical goals they aren't related to running right now. I'm playing with several ideas in my head so look forward to some differences around here soon.

Happy Monday!

My new MINI!!!

2009-10-21T20:51:00.004-05:00

not a Mini Cooper... I can only wish.

But I did get my new Dell Mini late last night!! It's so small. I had it in my bag this morning and at the last second decided to trade it out for my hard cover version of The Time Traveler's Wife (which I've owned for about 5 years and have yet to start). Just so you know, the Mini was way lighter and that was including my fancy case. It's teeny.

See how large my hand looks?

We probably seem like psychos, getting two new computers in a week, but I think this solution will work best for us and we are getting rid of two VERY old and rinky-dink laptops. This tiny mini has probably 5 times the memory that my top of the line swanky laptop had back when I got it still in college... a looooong time ago.

As another random sidenote, we had our engagement session last night. I'll post links to our photographer's blog when they are posted. I can't wait to see them. We started on the Chicago River and moved our way down State Street, into the Loop, down some super urban alleys and finished up in Millenium Park where the trees are starting to change colors. Despite feeling extremely awkward at various points (slow kissing at rush hour downtown a bazillion times), it was really fun and not as difficult as I was expecting. It helps that I had a cute face to be staring at for most of the pictures! In the second part of the session, I represented A&M and Texas by wearing a pair of cowboy boots with a maroon dress. Adam wore his VT polo and his world-famous orange and maroon shoes. I think Steve took about 100 pictures of just our hilarious shoes. It was fun to show a little personality!

The Big Fat Polish Wedding...

2009-10-20T12:21:00.003-05:00

So I got a really interesting education in the ways of the Polish culture this past weekend. Frankly, I had little knowledge about them except for two things: it's really hard to understand priests that have recently immigrated from Poland that are trying to do wedding mass in English (and I feel qualified to say that because I've seen three different priests do this now including one who kept calling my cousin by our shared last name instead of her first name, hilarious!) and that there are a lot of Polish immigrants in Chicago as evidenced by the fact that when I call my doctor's office you press 1 for English, 2 for espanol, 3 for polska or however you spell that.

I'm not totally sure of the circumstances surrounding this wedding but I think it goes a little something like this. Adam's co-worker, the groom, was actually born in Poland and moved over here when he was 10 or so. I think the story for the bride is pretty similar. Apparently they speak almost exclusively Polish at home. We get to the church and the priest does everyone a favor by not butchering the English language and doing the mass in Polish. We think that he said "welcome" at some point in English but we're not entirely sure. It was actually quite lovely since I've seen about 15 wedding masses in the past couple of years and hearing it in another language was quite the change of pace. There were only about 50-75 people at the mass so I was kind of skeptical about what we might find at the wedding. The only thing Adam could promise was Vodka (which confused me, but more on that later).

There was about 2 hours between the wedding and the reception but the two locations were almost an hour away so we got a head start getting down there. I forgot to mention that we ALMOST missed the ceremony because the traffic was so bad! On a Saturday afternoon! How in the hell do people that live in the Chicago suburbs stand it?!?! Gosh, I am a smug city dweller, but I digress. We got to the reception a tad early but since another blasted cold front was blowing in we decided to go into the hall, which I read on the sign is owned and operated by a Polish family. These people are loyal, folks. I'm not entirely sure that any of the wait staff spoke any English beyond, "Are you done with this? May I take it?". We walk in. The first thing I see is a ridiculous dessert display to the left that was reminiscent of a captain's dinner on a fine cruise ship. I think there might have been a pirate's ship made out of fruit with a Polish flag on it but I was too distracted by the rest of the dessert and the waiter that was busy filling the champagne fountain (!) to further investigate. We grab our place cards and realize that we are at table 26. What are these? 2 person tables? There were only 50 people at the church but this hall was set up for more than 250!!! (I found out later that this is commonplace for people to not come to the church part but show up for the party. Smart.)

We sat at our table to watch the entertainment that was the band. Apparently the band is the most sought-after Polish wedding band in Chicago and you have to book them more than a year out. Seriously, for your music? I am the queen of booking things early and I haven't even given a thought to a DJ or band yet! Pioter, the head of the band (and I know this because he shamelessly brought us his business card but truthfully, I'd consider hiring him just because of the entertainment value), was basically the Polish version of Adam Sandler in the Wedding Singer. Except that he had the Polish version of Angelina Jolie doing most of the singing in a full-length gold sequined dress. I can't even fully put into words just how fabulously wonderful they were. There was unintentional comedy every time you looked at them but they were actually really, really good. Pioter and the other dude in the band were sporting tuxes with fantastic red bow ties. I loved it!

In keeping with the theme from the church, pretty much everything all night except for one sentence was in Polish. I kid you not when I say I felt like I'd actually left the States and gone to Poland. It was easy to forget that we were only about an hour away from home because the whole thing was so insane. I want to kick myself for not bringing a camera! IDIOT!

Before I get into the food, I must mention the scene on the table when we sat down. There were 1 liter bottles of 7Up and RC Cola, a carafe of something reddish and a bottle of Finlandia Vodka... on every table. A waiter brought over some ice at some point and about 20 minutes after we sat down we found the shot glasses on the table. I think I realized then that things were about to get crazy and the first thing that crossed my mind was the scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when John Corbett and his parents go to meet her family and they all start doing shots of grappa. Good times. Good times. The best moment before dinner was when we realized that the red stuff in the carafe was actually white zinfandel, not cranberry juice, after Adam's other co-worker made what we thought was a Cape Cod. Oops.

After the introduction of the wedding party and the first dance (which they totally took lessons for and was awesome... now the wheels in my head are turning, where is the nearest Arthur Murray's?), they started bringing out food. First soup, then salad and then they brought out these huge trays of stuff and put an entree or side in pretty much every one's hand and told us to pass them around. I'm thinking there were about three kinds of meats and several kinds of potatoes. But you know me, I was already kind of full from the rolls I'd been gorging on before dinner so I am pretty much worthless for a main course recap. Oh and most of the toasting was in Polish, but you already were expecting that, weren't you?

After dinner, the real crazy stuff started. The place pretty much turned into a Warsaw Discotheque. It was INSANITY. Everyone knew every song except for us, the weird table of Americans. And I'm not kidding when I say that the grandmas were doing techno polkas with the teenagers and they were all singing together. It was a fantastic show. The bride and groom also spent a lot of time greeting all the tables and doing the obligatory vodka shots with everyone. I have no idea how they did it. Seeing as how the groom did three shots with our table alone (and we were the reluctant table), I have no idea how he made it through the evening. What a champ!

They did the bouquet and garter tosses and then they busted into some random traditions that I can only assume come from Poland. First they got these accordion pumps and hooked them to balloons. They had two guys sit down on chairs and put the pumps on their laps. Then two girls from the wedding party came over and sat on the guys laps, bouncing up and down until the balloons filled with air and popped. We're not really sure what happened there but I can assure you, my words do not do it justice. It was hilarious. Then they sat the bride and groom down and they brought out a sheet for two of the groomsmen to hold. From the front all you could see was the groom's head and the bride's arms and the sheet had a bonnet and diaper on it that made it look like the groom's head on a baby. I'm not sure what exactly happened since the commentary was not in a language that I can understand (and seriously, every word in Polish sounds the same!) but I think they were making him drink Vodka out of a baby bottle at one point.

We come to find out that this party may go all night long but our group was getting a little tired around 11:30 and we started to prepare to leave. The waitstaff (that had pretty much been working continuously all night long) came around with some cups and a teapot. Adam was all over it and wanted some tea since he had a bit of a sore throat (oops, I gave him my headcold). I start to pour it and the liquid comes out blood red. Turns out it was beet soup. Then they bring over a platter of fried stuff, which we found out was roll ups of chicken and mushrooms.

Just before midnight when we were getting ready to walk out the door, they started setting up a table at the corner of the dance floor. First they brought out a basket of bread, which I had to hold myself back from, then a huge bowl of steaming stuff that looked like sauerkraut and then a roasted pig. Seriously, they brought out a ROASTED PIG that was decorated like a Hawaiian luau. After we picked up our jaws off the floor, we went to say goodnight and thank you to the groom, who informed us that feeding everyone again at this point is necessary so they aren't insanely hung over from the copious amounts of Vodka they'd been drinking. I also forgot to mention that the bride came over during dinner and informed us that we shouldn't worry about drinking too much Vodka because if we ran out of that bottle (not a chance!) all we had to do was take it to the bar and they'd bring us a fresh one. WHAT?!?!?! Insanity!

The next morning, I called my dad to inform him of all the amazing things I witnessed when I found out that all of this is normal in the Polish culture and that he's been to several similar Polish weddings. I had no idea! What I'd like though, would be a copy of the wedding video only with English subtitles. We've been to a lot of weddings in 2009 but this was definitely a new experience for me and I feel like I got some interesting ideas. I can't wait for my big fat San Antonio wedding!

I'm a Mac... sort of

2009-10-18T18:37:00.002-05:00

Coming to you live from our new MacBook Pro!!

I guess it's the main computer for me and Adam to share but since I am still a PC person, I'm impatiently awaiting my Dell Mini to be shipped this week. I imagine I'll do a little blogging on here since it has iPhoto but we have a fancy new huge hard drive to store all of our pictures and music on.

This computer is AMAZING! Our former computers were dinosaurs in the computer world so I can't even begin to explain how much faster this one is. It's not a Mac Air but honestly, it's not much bigger or weightier! I love it. My mini is going to be white and I got this super cute red case with a handle for it so I can take it out and about with me if I want to. I can't wait for my big box to arrive and it was shipped today so hopefully soon. I'll be stalking ups.com all week.

HORRAY for new computers! Tomorrow I'm going to attempt to recap for you what was seriously the most amazingly insane wedding I've ever been to. Let's just say I felt more like I was in a foreign country (and we were only an hour away from the city) than I've ever felt when actually in a foreign country. It was phenomenal.

So you want to run a marathon (or half marathon, or 5K, I don't discriminate)...

2009-10-17T09:04:00.004-05:00

My advice (and take it all with a grain of salt, I'm no professional) if you are planning on racing:

1. Subscribe to Runner's World magazine. My friend, Brooke, gave me a subscription last Christmas. It's a great magazine with lots of tips but mainly just inspiring stories. I usually well up with tears at least once during each issue.

2. Get professionally fitted for running shoes. Seriously, spend the money and do your feet (and frankly, the rest of your body) a favor.

3. Don't skimp on training. There are tons of training plans out there for every distance of race. Pick one or make your own blend. But get out there and run because if you don't you'll be much more sore and being sore is not cool. Before my Austin half in January, I did my "training" on the elliptical machine at the gym. On race day, my legs and feet took such a pounding that I was sore for a week. You train for a reason and that reason is so that when it's all over you don't want to amputate your legs.

4. Listen to your body. This was the most important thing I did during my marathon journey. During the last month, when my IT band and shin were bothering me, I had to pay attention to what things helped the pain. In my case, it was really cutting my mileage and resting my leg. It paid off since my leg didn't fall off and I was able to finish.

5. Enjoy yourself. I run slow. Seriously slow. But I can have a conversation while I'm running and I am generally not in any kind of pain. When I ran on the lakefront path, it made me laugh sometimes to see the looks on people's faces like they wanted to die. Slow down and smile. You should enjoy your running!

6. Celebrate your accomplishments. I think you should reward yourself for your hard work and effort. Eat that burger, drink that beer, devour that dessert. You earned it!

7. Wear a shirt with your name on it. And I'll holler at you if I'm watching. Which I totally plan to be doing at Chicago 2010, if you are shopping for a marathon :)

finally,

8. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE! I'm not trying to go all Kevin Garnett or Jillian Michaels on you but I truly believe that you can do anything you put your mind to. I was the kid that had a doctor's note to not have to run if I didn't want to in high school. I had an amazing step aerobics instructor in college (and I realize how dorky that makes me sound but yes, Phys Ed was a required course and yes, I took it for a grade) that expected us to run 1.5 miles in 15 minutes as part of our final. It was an impossible feat for me at the time but instead of getting a doctor's note, I made up my mind to actually train for it and do it. And I got an A. I decided I wanted to do this marathon thing and I never allowed myself to think it an impossible goal. You may be sitting on your at your computer and thinking I'm insane but I believe that your mind is stronger than your body and trust me, a marathon is 95% a mind game. If you believe that you can, you can. That goes for life, not just running. Believe in yourself and others will believe in you too.

365 days... the countdown begins!

2009-10-16T09:22:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note... today is our "pre-iversary" meaning that in exactly one year, I'll be saying my vows to Adam. Hey buddy, you'll be legally stuck with me then!

The 2009 Chicago Marathon

2009-10-16T07:56:00.012-05:00

Sunday, October 11th, finally arrived. That date had been etched in my brain for a year as I worked my way toward being able to run the 26.2 mile course. I'd been resting A LOT for the past two weeks so my nagging right shin felt fine. It was freezing (about 27 or 28 degrees) and I woke up around 5:30 to start getting ready. Since I'm really the anti morning person, I like to lay out all the things I'll need for race day the night before. It only took about 10 minutes to get dressed and get my morning coffee ready. My friend Amy came with me to the start with my "support backpack" that had all the things you could imagine: bottled water, my inhaler, Clif gels, my hoodie, Body Glide and other assorted things that I can't remember or didn't use. Haha.

We rode downtown with some other friends who were running and started our morning at the Chicago Area Runners room at the Congress Hotel. I'm not going to get into it, but it was one of the clutchest moves of the weekend to have access to the indoor bathrooms there not only for warmth but for hygiene and gagging reasons. Marathon port-a-potties are SICK!

Amy hung out with me at the start line, or more like the half mile to the start line point that I was standing at. It was hilarious because everyone had about 10 extra layers on that they were stripping off and throwing. I gave Amy my sweatshirt and my pack started the long walk to the start line. Sometimes I get super annoyed because some people will run or jog to the start line which is SUPER ANNOYING because we're about to get all the running we'll need for the day, plus it tends to make the pack start and stop a lot. Luckily for me, everyone around me had a brain and realized that we were about to run a whole load of miles so everyone just kind of walked until we got to the line. I heard my Champion Chip beep and we were off!

Almost immediately after the start, we ran underneath the main streets on Lower Wacker Drive (if you've seen the Dark Knight, you've seen where we ran) and it's almost like a tunnel so everyone started "WOOOing". It was pretty cool. I had so much adrenaline pumping at this point and I could feel my usual race-day tears coming. It's hard to imagine it, but being in the middle of a blob of 45,000 people is truly amazing. As far as you can see in either direction, that blob stretches for miles and miles. Everyone has a common goal (there is no half marathon going at the same time) and we were running through what I consider to be the coolest city in America. The first few miles we just snaked through downtown. There were so many spectators and everyone was in high spirits. I felt like the first 13 miles just ticked away faster than I was expecting them to be.

Yeah, y'all. There were a ton of people running. It was really cool.

This was the first time I met up with my spectator group for an inhaler/gel stop around mile 6. I can't imagine running the race with out "Team Run, Big Jen, Run" because knowing that I only had a few minutes and miles more to go to see them again really kept me going. Plus, I didn't have to use my evil chafing fuel belt to hold anything since they had everything I could possibly need with them. Between my stops to see them at mile 6 and mile 9, we ran through our neighborhood, Lakeview. It was BY FAR the best part of the course. Lakeview has two smaller "sub-neighborhoods", if you will, Boystown (the biggest gay area in Chicago) and Wrigleyville. I knew from my spectator experience watching Amy that Boystown was going to be super fun and they did not disappoint! There was a set of lovely cheerleaders and my personal favorite, a stage with several drag queens that were dressed up as bridesmaids. The streets were a little bit narrower so it was so crowded with runners and spectators. ***If you ever run a marathon, make damn sure your name is somewhere on your shirt.*** So many people actually took the time to read my shirt and yell out a "Go Big Jen" or "Big Jen, you aren't very big but go girl!". It was a blast to get personal shout outs from people I didn't even know.

This was just after the halfway point. I asked my brother to come with me for a little while, I figure he probably stayed with me for a half mile. We walked for a couple of minutes there too so I could catch my breath. Cold air and my lungs don't really mix well. I'm so glad he ran with me for a few minutes just because it was hard knowing I was only halfway done. I was also waaaaay off of my usual pace so the reality that this was going to take FOREVER was setting in.

Brooke; my brother, Michael; and Adam waiting for me near mile 17.

This picture is classic, I'm eating a gel and it looks like I am about to gag, which usually happens at least once when I eat one. Truly, they don't taste that bad but I am not a huge fan of eating during strenuous exercise (or even right after) so they usually are hard to take down. I had about 5 miles between seeing them at this point until I was going to meet up with them again in Chinatown. Those five miles were tough but we ran through Pilsen, which is a predominately Hispanic neighborhood and the spectators were awesome there. There was a lot of Tejano music being blasted in the streets by DJ's and a couple of mariachi bands too. I was pacing with a team of guys that had shirts on proclaiming that they were from Mexico so the crowd always got a bit rowdier when our group came through.

Chinatown, almost to mile 22! They say you hit a wall around mile 20 and for me, it was a little bit after that, which I attribute to overshooting my 20 mile training run. I passed the 21 mile sign and realized that I only had 5 more to go, or hopefully only an hour more of running. I'd asked Adam to run with me from Chinatown until close to the finish line to help me through the last few miles. I made a crucial error and forgot to take a puff of my inhaler when I saw the group, UG! I think I had the fact that I needed to pee on my mind. (OH and I forgot to mention one of the more funny parts of the race. At mile 6 when I saw the group, I told them that I needed to pee and for them to have someone ready at mile 9 when we ran by their hotel to take me inside to use the facilities. You should have seen the funny looks I got when I ran off the course and back on. Oh and the couple in the elevator who looked at me like I was crazy for having a short-sleeved shirt on even though I was dripping with sweat.) So we stopped at the next set of port-a-potties (tragically gross!) and carried on. For the next three miles, I was miserable. I kept telling Adam to NEVER LET ME SIGN UP FOR ANOTHER ONE OF THESE no matter how much I begged. I was moving like a snail because I would run for 45 seconds or so and then have to walk for 15 seconds because I felt like I could get only 10% of the air I needed in my lungs. It was totally frustrating but at some point some man gave my delirious self a little shot glass of beer. It was delicious and amazing.

We saw the group one last time at the 40K mark, which is just a couple hundred feet before the mile 25 marker. I had some inhaler and carried on. I was able to run the last 1.2 miles at decent pace despite the fact that my feet and legs felt like mush. I was so lucky that my right shin didn't bother me too much during the race because I think it was so numb at the start from the cold and by the time I warmed up, everything was already hurting! HA!

I crossed the finish line with the utterly exhausting time of 5:44:00. I think it's awesome that I ended up with an even time. Adam had stayed with me until the big hill at the end that we "marathoners" refer to as Mount Roosevelt. I found him after crossing the finish line and after about 30 minutes of debacle we met up with our group.

Team Run, Big Jen, Run! Mikey, Adam, Dad, Adam's mom, me, Adam's dad, Mom, Mrs. Bazan, Amy and Brooke!!! Many, many thanks to them who completed their own version of a marathon. Chasing me around the city was hard work!

I'm back!

2009-10-16T07:49:00.002-05:00

Sorry I've been M.I.A. this week. I gave my computer to my brother on Monday to take home to San Antonio because his apartment was broken into last week and they took all of their HD tvs and computers and video game systems (note to everyone: renter's insurance!!). We were planning on getting new computers here anyway so this was a nice little jump start. Starting on Saturday, I'll be writing from a new Dell Mini or our new and fancy Mac. I'm pumped!

I've also had a bit of a head cold but running 26.2 miles in a race that started at 27 degree temperatures can do that to you. Nyquil and Dayquil have been my constant companions this week. Needless to say, the crappy rainy weather and below-average-temperatures have been angering me. Just to forewarn you, we're entering into the six or seven month period where I will probably be cranky about the extremely low temperatures and otherwise junky Chicago winter. But enough with my terrible excuses and on to the good stuff.

It actually ended up being fun!

2009-10-12T08:53:00.002-05:00

The marathon was great. I finished- which was all I was trying to do. My shin held up fine. The weather was cold but it was a really nice day for racing. I passed by more than a million spectators. I ran 26.2 miles. It took what seemed like forever but I had a blast. I have so much more to tell you...

This Journey, Part II

2009-10-10T17:24:00.000-05:00

So after hearing about my previous exposures to distance running and marathons, you are probably wondering how I decided to make this goal my own. Truth be told, I don't have a really good reason other than maybe a little medal envy. Last year I was just doing my thing, walking to the train station at O'Hare Airport after a trip and I noticed that it was a lot more crowded than normal. I had forgotten that it was the day of the marathon until I saw several people in their finisher medals. I guess I just thought to myself, "I could do that." It also probably helps that I had just started dating a guy who plays league sports like it's his job and I might have been feeling like a sloth. I'd also been living in Chicago for a couple of months and the weather was turning cool enough to feel like getting out of the house for a run. It must have been a combination of everything but I told Adam that I was going to train and run the 2009 Chicago Marathon.

Later that week, I registered for my first half marathon "preparation run" in Austin in January. It's funny to think about that because Adam and I had only been dating for a month but I told him that I wanted him to fly down with me so I'd have someone to cheer me on at the finish line. Luckily, he liked me enough to say yes without hesitation and my marathon dream was officially born.

I somehow conned my dad to sponsor me through his company so I was able to register for two more half marathons and the biggie for free. He also got on board and had t-shirts made. Thus, Run, Big Jen, Run became reality. There was no turning back, although I haven't really wanted to.

In January, I ran the 3M Half Marathon in Austin, Texas. To this day, that was still my favorite half because the weather was perfect (very cool), it was a small race and it felt so good to finish. I was such an amateur then! I don't think I even had my beloved Balaga socks but I didn't end up with too many blisters. I had never experienced the joy that is Body Glide and I wore a cotton sports bra. Let's just say there was some chafing and leave it at that. I was so sore for about a week because the race had so many hills and I wasn't used to it (it doesn't help that I did most of my training in the gym because it was so cold and snowy here in Chicago). It was awesome though because I got to have my favorite bean and cheese tacos as my post-race meal.

In April, I started writing here on Run, Big Jen, Run, just before my infamous and anti-fun experience at the Go St. Louis Half Marathon. It was good for me to experience running in the rain but not good to feel as crummy as I did for most of the race.

In May, I ran the Soldier Field 10 Miler, which was really fun. I plan on doing this race again next year. Adam and I also started running 5Ks together, which has turned out to be a really fun activity that we can do together (and that works out well since I like to participate in exactly zero other sports things he likes to do. If it involves a ball, count me out, please).

June was when my real marathon training started. Now that I'm on the tail end (and this is probably due to my IT band issues) I'm just ready for it to be over. Marathon training is four months of intense running. When I was still flying, it was incredibly difficult to squeeze in runs. I despise running on treadmills and I was never too keen on running in unfamiliar layover spots for very long distances. It was hard for me to find the time at the beginning but eventually I was able to fit running in as my mileage increased. One of the hardest things about increasing your mileage is the fatigue. There were days that I'd fall asleep on the couch at 8:30. I could pound down 12 hours of sleep easily because I was running for such long amounts of time since I run like a turtle.

Over Labor Day weekend, we ran the Virginia Beach Half Marathon. I was able to better my time and I learned a lot about pushing myself in hot weather. Thankfully tomorrow's race is not in September in humidity because I don't think I could have gone another mile, let alone double the distance.

Now, seeing things from this perspective, it's funny. I have run short distances and longer than I ever thought I could. I have stopped, turned around and gone home because I just couldn't finish. I have run in pouring rain. I have run on snow and ice, I have run in heat that has made me run out of sweat. I have run in cold where I could see my breath through the entire run. I have run in clothing that has chafed me so bad that it will probably leave scars. I have run on the lakefront path countless times; I have run in several different cities and countries. I have run until I could no longer breathe. I have done more miles than I care to count or remember but mostly, I have been running for me. I set this goal to prove to myself that I could do it and I haven't backed down. I have fought through pain. I have schleped my sore body all over the place. I have cried. I have laughed. I have seen some inspiring things and met some crazy people. I have been on what has seemed like the longest journey, but in the morning my journey begins again. Tomorrow I will see things that will bring tears to my eyes. I will feel blessed that I have two legs that are strong enough to do this. I will pray to God to give me the mental strength to carry on. I will be fighting the adrenaline surge and trying to bottle that energy to get through the finish. I will see my family and friends along the way that have sacrificed to be here to support me. I will be counting down the miles until my fiance meets me to finish the last few. We will count down until the end together.

And I will cross the finish line. This 26.2 mile long journey is just beginning.

This Journey... Part I

2009-10-10T09:54:00.001-05:00

In case you were wondering how it has come to be that I will be doing what I once believed to be impossible (running 26.2 miles) tomorrow morning, I thought I'd give you a little history and background about how I began this crazy journey to complete a marathon.

To most accurately tell it, I'd have to start back in 2005. At the time I was living in St. Louis and was probably the most miserable person in the world. Just ask my dad, he LOVES to tell the stories of how I supposedly called home every day (maybe just every other day, ok?) to cry and talk about how awful my job was (it seriously sucked) and how much I hated living there (as a person from Texas, I never came close to finding a niche in a town where so many people are lifelong residents and grew up with each other). My friends Kristen and Amy had signed up to run a half marathon in Indianapolis (only about a 3 hour drive away) months before but they convinced me to come along and I signed up for the 5K. I figured I'd make life easier for myself and started "training". The "training" was also to kind of help with the fact that I was getting really fat. I was so poor from the aforementioned crappy job that I really only ate terrible food like $1 frozen pizzas, peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches and on days when I was really homesick for Mexican food, I'd splurge and eat Taco Bell. Wow... I was totally pathetic.

Anyway, I lived next to a really great park that had about a 6 mile loop around it so I started running for the first time since freshman/sophomore years in college. I don't think I ever actually ran the entire 6 miles but a couple of Sundays I'd do the entire loop in a run/walk combo. I felt ready for that 5K and I was gonna try to get a great time. At the last second, Kristen had work commitments so she ended up not coming. Almost as soon as I got to Indy, Amy and her brother started the assault to convince me to run the half marathon like they were. Since I can be utterly spineless sometimes and after all, it's only 13 miles, I agreed to it.

Looking back... what the hell was I thinking? I have come such a long way but back to that day. I was wearing some hideous New Balance kids tennis shoes that I'd probably had for 3 years and regular socks. Needless to say, I ended up with some fabulous blisters. I think I limped from mile 9 to the finish line with in all my torn foot glory. Somehow along the way, I was doing something weird with my right foot to compensate for one of the blisters and I ended up very sore. For about a week I was Limpy McGimperton. I have no idea what my finish time was but I'm sure it was well over three hours. I was proud of myself but had absolutely zero interest in getting into the distance racing game.

Two years later, I had just started working for United and I was ever-eager to show off my brand spankin' new flight benefits. Amy and her brother ran the Chicago Marathon that year and I decided to fly out for the day to cheer them on at the race.

For those who may not know, that was one of the hottest days in all of 2007 in Chicago. The high was something ridiculous in the 90's and several people died on the course before they ultimately shut it down. I was sweating out of my mind just standing and watching! After that day, I was in no big hurry to sign up for the '08 marathon, trust me.

Either way, I still had fun riding the CTA all over town. I ended up in Boystown (the gay area of Chicago) because I was relatively familiar with the area after my summer at flight attendant training (ah, good times in Boystown). I'm so looking forward to running through there tomorrow because those gays know how to cheer for marathon runners! It's notorious for being a blast to run through and after being on the other side last time, I can't wait.

Later on, I'll tell you more about how I decided to make this a goal for myself.

Officially Nervous...

2009-10-10T09:18:00.004-05:00

I have a couple of pre-scheduled posts that I wrote earlier in the week for today but I just wanted to come here "live" to say that I am so excited, but a little, ok, a lot, nervous for tomorrow morning. We went to the expo yesterday and it was so fun. I now have all of my official marathon gear that I have to make last forever because I AM NEVER DOING ANOTHER ONE OF THESE THINGS!

Ohmygoodness... I can't believe that this time tomorrow I'll be well into the race. Wow.

Weight Watchers?

2009-10-07T17:32:00.003-05:00

I'm semi-embarrassed to admit it but I'm contemplating joining Weight Watchers. I've gained a lot of weight in the past year (or at least I sure feel like it, please tell me that I wasn't always this much of a chunky monkey) which I like to attribute to two things, the marathon and my extra being in love weight. I might have said it before but don't set out to do a marathon if you think it's going to result in massive weight loss because the results are, for most people, quite the opposite. Picture this: you've just run 10 miles (like you do on a regular basis) so obviously you are starving, like African child distended belly starving, so you eat a crap ton and you eat a crap ton of bad food because you're telling yourself "I just ran 10 miles so I literally NEED this bloody mary, buffalo chicken sandwich, mound of tater tots and two beers." Yes, that was me after the Soldier Field 10 Miler and on too many other occasions to count. Like Sunday morning. I had Chicken and Waffles with a Paula Dean-sized dollop of strawberry butter after the 5K.

Back to my original point. I want to fit in my skinny clothes again and fit in them well. In reality, I feel like I have kind of always been battling with my weight. I like to say that I never lost my baby fat, because seriously, I never did! I have always had a pudgy tummy. I've dabbled in several diets and I'd like to say that I generally eat healthy (mostly at home) but when you are a really picky eater and your favorite foods include hamburgers, hot dogs, and fried anything... wait, those are really the only ways I like to eat meat... it's easy to pack on and keep extra poundage. Plus, I am a Carboholic. I could destroy an entire loaf of yesterday's beer bread if I were hungry enough.

I'm not excited about the price of WW. The meetings aren't really in a convenient spot for me either. I'm also contemplating the online version because I am an internet fiend and I figure I can spend less time reading blogs and devote some time to food tracking. I just get freaked out because I feel like on WW I'll be forced to eat a ton of food just to meet my point levels and there are only so many fruits and veggies that I can tolerate. I really just want to gorge on breads and potatoes and other crappy foods that I know are high in points.

Plus, it's so much easier to lose weight by not eating than to eat healthy. Ug.

I accept any and all opinions about WW and really need advice here.

Beer Bread... Num Num Num

2009-10-06T17:56:00.006-05:00

I don't think I'm planning on becoming a food blogger or anything but I just had to share this recipe (and my crappy low-res pics) because it's insanely easy and REALLY yummy.

I first tried it last week and made it according to the original recipe but tonight was Round 2 and I changed it up a little bit.

Here's my beer bread almost at the end of the hour of baking. As you can see, I don't have a bread pan so I put it in this freaky pan we got at IKEA that I thought was going to be a funky bundt pan but it's actually too small for an entire cake mix but the perfect size for beer bread.

Fresh out of the oven. As you can see, tonight I added some sharp cheddar cheese and a little bit of garlic salt. I was also making a potato/corn chowder and I felt like something a little more savory. The original beer bread has more of a sweeter taste.

Here's the aforementioned freaky pan from IKEA. It's incredibly disappointing because it doesn't make the bottom of the bread (or cake) have the cool shape you think it will have. Oh well, it makes an excellent octagonal beer bread.

This is how it looks from the side. DEEEEEEEELISH.

I wish you could see the steam that was rising. I threw some Brummel and Brown on that piece and chowed down.

Here's the recipe courtesy of Gerald Norman, via Recipezaar:

3 cups flour (sifted)

3 teaspoons baking powder (omit if using Self-rising flour)

1 teaspoon salt (omit if using Self-rising flour)

1/4 cup sugar

1 can/bottle (12 oz) beer

1/4 cup melted butter (you can even go with less than that... Gerald's original recipe calls for 1/2 cup which would be totally excessive)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Sift flour into medium sized bowl. If you don't have a sifter (like me!), carefully spoon the flour into your measuring cup. Make sure not to pack.

Mix dry ingredients and beer.

Pour into greased loaf (or freaky IKEA) pan.

Pour melted butter over mixture.

Bake for 1 hour.

Remove from pan, cool for 15 minutes, slice and serve!

That's it!!

Tonight, I added garlic salt to the dry ingredients (with only a pinch of sugar) and stirred a little sharp cheddar into the wet mixture. I grated a little extra cheese on top before pouring melted garlic butter on the top. I loved the original version for it's sweeter taste but my version tonight almost tasted like Red Lobster's Cheesy Garlic Biscuits.

I can't get over how easy it is, it literally took me 5 minutes to prepare. Plus, using beer in place of yeast makes it kind of idiot-proof. Both times I used Carlsberg beer but next time I may go full sugar and use a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat along with some whole wheat flour. It sure beats paying almost $5 a loaf for an artisan bread at the grocery store! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Bucktown 5K

2009-10-05T07:13:00.003-05:00

1905 349 916 3379 JENNIFER BREDA 27 F CHICAGO IL 29:33 9:31

Yesterday morning we got up bright and early to run in the Bucktown 5K. It was a really nice morning, cool and crisp, and just perfect for a short run. My shin was kind to me during the race (not feeling quite as fabulous now, haha) but I was in the mood to run fast and I was really hoping to get a PR of under 30 minutes. Adam didn't enjoy the run nearly as much as I did, unfortunately everybody has those days now and then but he ran with me for most of it and did a great job, despite his very stuffy nose. As you can see by the results above, I hit my goal with a time of 29:33, which is 9:31 minute miles. Whoa! I ran under 10 minute miles? I can guarantee that's not going to happen for the marathon, just in case you were wondering.

I'm planning to rest my legs for the rest of the week, which goes against conventional wisdom but I'm listening to my body. It felt really nice to not run for five days last week and yesterday morning my legs felt so fresh and the shin felt good for the first time in about a month. I'm confident that a month or so of NO RUNNING after the marathon will give me the time to recover. I'm looking forward to fun times on the Wii Fit and actually doing my Jillian 30 day shred DVD. Maybe we'll actually get off our bums and join a new gym? That's going to become more and more necessary as the temperature drops.

Speaking of temperature, this is the forecast for the rest of the week:

TodayOct 5
Mostly Sunny
63°51°
10%

63°F
TueOct 6
Rain
58°47°
80%

58°F
Check Flight Delays
WedOct 7
Partly Cloudy / Wind
57°47°
10%

57°F
ThuOct 8
Showers
59°47°
40%

59°F
FriOct 9
Few Showers
55°41°
30%

55°F
Check Flight Delays
SatOct 10
Partly Cloudy
49°40°
20%

49°F
SunOct 11
Partly Cloudy
51°41°
20%

Oh please please please let it be 51/41 on Sunday!! That's perrrrrrfect running weather for me! Friends and family start arriving on Thursday, I can't believe my big weekend is almost here!

What a day...

2009-10-02T17:51:00.006-05:00

Wow... I've been all over this blog thing this week but it's been so exciting with the Olympic bidding and my inside of ten day countdown to the marathon. I will probably go back to being boring pretty soon.

So this morning I had a bit of a mini-crisis when I lost my wallet (if you will recall, I've already lost my Blackberry once this year when I dropped it in the hallway of a hotel in Bozeman, MT). I lost my wallet a little more closer to home, actually it was found 2 houses north of me. The weird thing is that this morning I actually walked south (as I do everyday toward the L stop). Not sure how all of that transpired but if someone grabbed out of my very easily accessible pocket of my bag (and it's easily accessible so I can get on the train stat) they didn't take anything including the rarity of 20 bucks in it (I never carry cash). Odd but a happy ending.

I'm so bummed about the Olympics but there were so many wanksters here in Chicago that were vehemently against it that it's probably better this way. I'm not a fan of protests or pompus close-minded Republicans bitching about tax money going towards something AWESOME like the Olympics. I could seriously rant about that because there are only two things for certain in life, people. Death and taxes. Don't forget that, certain Republicans who are so fond of incessantly complaining about where their tax money goes as if taxes are the greatest travesty in the world.

I do have a recommendation for any of you who do venture to Rio for the 2016 games. It's pretty much the only fun thing I did because Rio is an unsafe hellhole of crime and badness.

Yeah dawg, that's me hangliding! Peace and good luck to you, Rio de Janiero.

(and I guess I'm going to miss writing about my travels. I used to be more entertaining than dropped wallets)

Full Steam Ahead... Winter.

2009-10-01T18:23:00.003-05:00

Wow... it's amazing how much earlier the sun goes down each day. I feel like it didn't get dark until 8:00 about two weeks ago. It's 6:24 tonight and it's pitch black (the nasty weather is probably not helping matters) and I swear it was after 7:00 last night that it got dark.

October is extra sad around here because the Cubs didn't make the playoffs this year. At least last year we had a week full of playoff fun (well, if you want to call some of the worst games ever fun) to kind of ease things into fall... ahem, winter. It's going to be so cold so soon! Right now I might be the only person in Chicago with the windows cracked but I just can't bear to shut them just yet even though I sit here in flannel pj bottoms and a hoodie. I'll be damned if I give up just yet.

Wait... I'm probably jinxing myself and this year will end up being the third year in a row that we have a freak warm front just in time for the marathon. In which case I will cry profusely because if there's one thing I don't tolerate well, it's running in heat. Ug. 10 days!

Sad Day... RIP to the Vue.

2009-10-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

This is a picture of my old Saturn VUE that my mom now drives in San Antonio. Shockingly enough, this picture was actually taken by me in SA a couple of years ago during a freak ice storm (one would have expected this to be in the frozen hell that I now live in, no?).

Sadly, the deal to buy Saturn from GM fell apart yesterday and they are getting rid of the brand. TRAGIC, I tell you. We have been a Saturn family for a long-ass time. My mom got her first one way back in the day when the brand was only a couple of years old. It was her first ever "non-used" car and when my dad bought it, he told me that it would be mine when I turned 16 (lies, I tell you because my mom loved it so much that she wouldn't give it to me). That car went through hell and back because my mom very near totalled it a couple of times. It was like a cat with nine lives.

When I was in college, my mom got an upgraded and bigger Saturn that ironically was maroon HAHAHA! My college is her college's rival and maroon was our color so I liked to make fun of this fact. She stuck a big fat silver longhorn on the back of it to spite me, I swear. And one on my old VUE, which reminds me that I need to flip that bad boy over or figure out how to "saw the horns off" next time I'm home.

When my brother started driving he got a little red 2 door Saturn coupe stick shift. I was without a car one Christmas break and he'd gotten into a little trouble that involved him not being able to drive so I learned how to drive a stick on that bad boy. I think he called it Red Rover if I remember correctly. Learning how to drive that thing was such a project that involved lots of my dad and brother yelling at me because I sucked royally at it at first.

When the VUE (SUV) came out, my mom and I practically drooled over the thing in the showroom. It was a lovely little car for driving challenged people like us because it's an SUV that sits on a car chassis so it's not a land yacht to struggle to park. After this evil man totalled my jalopy one year (STAY IN YOUR OWN LANE, IDIOT SAN ANTONIO DRIVERS!), I made my first ever car purchase of a used Saturn VUE (the one pictured above). Last year when I moved to Chicago and decided I didn't need a car anymore, my mom took over the loan for me and she gets to drive it now. It makes me a little sad and forlorn when I visit home sometimes because I dearly adored my little dream car.

Needless to say, I'm slightly crushed by today's sad news. What the heck is GM thinking? Saturn is one of the most unique and cool brands of American made cars. They run like little champions too! I'm disappointed and frankly shocked that they aren't going to try to save Saturn because I assume it's a decent seller. Those cute (and powerful) Sky convertibles supposedly have a couple year waiting list. Oh well, I'll have to find a new car brand to be loyal to and I guess it works out seeing as how my fiance despises American made cars.

*on a completely unrelated note, tomorrow is a mega-huge day here in Chi-city. The International Olympic Committee makes their 2016 Olympics decision sometime in the morning. Check out my ethnocentric mini-rant about the other bid cities for reasons why Chicago should totally win. And seriously, if Oprah can't convince them, I don't know what else the city could have done.

Ouchtown. Population: 1

2009-09-30T15:57:00.008-05:00

Edit: the images below are kind of sick. I normally don't have these types of "issues"

So I'm suffering through my first marathon-related injury. My shin has been bothering me for a couple of weeks now and after our three mile "Taste of the Marathon" run on Monday night, it's been really really nagging me. Like every step I take until I get in a "rhythm" nagging me. I can't even describe the thoughts that are running through my head and the mega frustration that I'm feeling. I refuse to go to a doctor because I am going to run this race! I don't care if I have to drag my right leg behind me like an idiot across the finish line because it's happening. I'm running a marathon and I cannot be stopped. My mind is stronger than any pain that I'm feeling and I still believe that it's related to my IT band because it really doesn't hurt as bad when I'm in a good running rhythm.

Enough about that... so Adam decides that I probably just need to ice it. He's the king of icing anything down from his days playing soccer obsessively. And when I say he's the king, I'm not playin'... the guy is maybe the only person on earth that actually LIKES ICE BATHS! What?!?!

So Monday after the run, we iced it, no problems. I should use this opportunity to mention that he uses this giant blue frozen ice pack thingy and we already had one leak in the freezer this year. Last night, we decide to ice it again only with two packs, one on each side. The exact same pack that I used on Monday night, we just switch sides and put it on my calf muscle where I'm having a little tightness. As soon as he put it on, I start complaining. It was hurting so bad!! Burning is probably a more correct word. Literally burning. I keep whining about this and Adam basically tells me to quit being so wimpy and to get over my deep angry hatred over being iced down. Fast forward to 20 minutes later and we pull off the ace bandage and ice packs to reveal this:

mmmmm.... yummy. BURN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As you can see below, the burn (not sure if it's a frostbite burn or a chemical burn.... nice) runs the entire length of my calf. It's pretty anti-comfortable. I'm probably not going to be able to shave for awhile. GGGGRRRRRRROOOOOOOSSSS! Is it Sunday, the 11th yet? I am ready to run this race and quit with the training and injuries, mkay?

The Countdown has begun...

2009-09-29T16:10:00.005-05:00

I'm only 12 days from the marathon. Wow...

I got the weekend plans finalized for the family and friends we are hosting that include a clutch free happy hour on Sunday night to celebrate (thank goodness the Bears are having a bye week or they wouldn't have done it)! I'm working on some out of town goodie bags... seriously this is excellent practice for the wedding. Mainly, I am just looking forward to drinking ice cold beer again.

Last night we went to a fun run sponsored by our local running store and they had an awesome sampling of all the foods from the various neighborhoods, called Taste of the Marathon. We had a really nice time and ate some really good food, especially some cheese tamales with some very hot salsa. The run was nice because I didn't feel any pressure to run a certain amout of mileage. It will be so nice to just run for fun again! Tonight I have a marathon clinic at REI and I'm hoping to learn some good stuff to help me during the race. We have a 5K on Sunday morning so it's shaping up to be a really busy week and I know that next week is just going to fly by. Before I know it, I'll be lacing up my shoes early morning on the 11th and getting ready to fight the mental battle that will be 26.2 miles!

it's so unfair :(

2009-09-29T10:16:00.000-05:00

Why is it so easy for guys to drop like 10 pounds without even thinking about it or trying?

Seriously. That is CRAP!

I found my dress!

2009-09-28T07:56:00.004-05:00

I went home to TX last week to start what I thought was going to be a long and drawn out process of trying on wedding dresses. Luckily, I surprised myself and the process was actually not only easy but extremely fun. I was telling anyone and everyone how dress shopping was the part of wedding planning that I was least looking forward to. I went into it as open minded as I could and ended up having a blast!

Our day started at a smaller boutique. I wasn't overly impressed with their selection, but ironically, my favorite dress there was by the designer of the dress that I ultimately chose, Maggie Sottero. We laughed a lot because all of the dresses at this particular shop were just plain too big for me. They weren't big enough to grab and pin yards of fabric or anything but they just kind of sat weird on me and made me feel (and look) like a beached whale. I was a little frustrated and freaked out because it is so hard to imagine yourself in an altered version of what you are trying on. I had my mom and my friend Brooke with me all day but Meredith and Sara (two of my bridesmaids) were there for this appointment. We laughed a lot becuase it's pretty hysterical to come out of the dressing room in an already HUGE garment that you are just swimming in. Like I said before, their selection was smaller so we ended up picking a couple of "possibilities" and moving on.

I had scheduled my next appointment for a couple of hours later so we ended up going to a large bridal chain across the highway unannounced. I had originally seen this dress in their catalog that I loved and one of the girls on the San Antonio board of theknot.com had recently worn it in her wedding. We share the same photographer so I saw lots of her pictures and she looked gorgeous in it. I reaffirmed my belief by going to the large bridal chain just how much I really valued the service and fun that a smaller salon can offer. I kept saying under my breath to Mom and Brooke that I didn't want to buy a dress there. We did get to see a new bridal phenomenon, "Sisterzilla", in action when these people started getting all bitchy with the staff when they didn't even have an appointment!! I tried on four dresses there, including the one that I thought I wanted. When I came out in that one, my mother was making faces like it was literally causing her pain to see me in the dress. OK... that one's out! I checked out a couple of other ones and we ultimately decided that we'd move on and have some lunch.

At this point, I was semi-frustrated because I hadn't had that "moment". You know, the one that everyone talks about when you put on "the one" and really feel like a bride. So far, I had just gotten sick of seeing myself in the mirror and assessing what I believe to be my problem areas to work on in the gym over this year.

After lunch, we went to a shop that I'm already familiar with because it's where my good friend Sally got her dress and all of the bridesmaids dresses. Which is a hilarious story because without going into dramatic detail, I had a minor (major) surgical procedure after being measured for and ordering my dress that caused them to have to basically cut it in half. Haha. When having our dresses altered there, they refer to the tatas as "bubbies". All of Sally's bridesmaids had a blast joking about all of our bubbies and how they fit into our dresses. Point being, I was familiar with this place and felt comfortable walking in. It's a tiny place and they told us to start by picking eight dresses. Brooke and I literally jumped into piles of dresses and started grabbing the ones we thought were pretty. It took us about one rack and five seconds to come up with eight. Into the fitting room I went! I think I felt instantly more comfortable at this shop because the dresses were all much closer to my size or even a little bit too small. It's so much easier to feel normal if you are wearing something that more closely fits your body.

Each dress I tried on was better than the last, but when I put on the third dress, I just felt like a princess. At first, I don't know if I had that moment but I knew that it was going into the "in consideration" pile. I tried on TONS of dresses but kept going back to that one. The second time I put it on, the consultant put a veil on me and I almost started to cry. There was just something about it.

Without giving it all away, it's completely different than what I started out thinking I wanted. It's very unique and looks nothing like what you'd expect me in. I love it and I wish I didn't have to wait an entire year to wear it!

20+ miles of beat down

2009-09-23T17:26:00.003-05:00

I did my 20 mile run on Wednesday morning in Chicago before I left to come home to TX (where it is actually cooler than Chicago... weird?!). For those of you who may not be as intimately acquainted with marathon training programs, many of them include long runs that peak with 20 miles. It takes the average, or beginner in my case, body some time to recover from running that many miles so you do the 20 mile run about three weeks before the race and then "taper" your mileage down leading up to the race to allow for fresh legs and recovery.

I wanted to make sure that I was running a full 20 miles so I overshot what I was running by just a little bit and got lost blazing a new part of the trail and missed a mile marker. Either way, I think I was somewhere between 20 and 21 miles... a.k.a. a super long way to run! We live on the Northside of Chicago, a little more than a mile to the lakefront so I ran all the way there, through Lincoln Park, past the Nature Museum and Zoo, down past Streeterville and the Navy Pier, Millenium Park, through the Museum Campus, past Soldier field and the McCormick Place, all the way down the Southside. I figure I was probably at 40th-50th streets when I finally reached my turnaround point.

It was a LONG WAY!!!

During the run, it was truly agonizing. It took me a little bit more than 4 hours and it was so humid that I was just dripping from the start. I now am the proud owner of a temporary tramp stamp where my fuel belt rubbed my skin raw (note: I will not be wearing the same shorts in the race now because I think it was the tag coming in contact with the belt... hello tagless shorts!). I was so lucky that it stayed mostly cloudy for the vast majority of my run. It made the humidity almost bearable.

Now looking back, I'm feeling a little sore and creaky but not feeling too bad considering what I put my body through. During the run, I felt really in control for most of it. When I wanted to stop, I simply told myself that it hurt less to run than it did to walk (totally true... that is the good thing about my IT band issues, it really doesn't hurt once I get into my gait and feel the rhythm of running). I also told myself that I'm mentally strong enough to push through and run the marathon. I'm hoping with the adrenaline and my family and friends being there to cheer me on that I'll have enough left in the tank to feel really good on race day. It feels so nice to know that the longest I have to run until race day is only 12 miles. 12 miles? Not too tough!

It's crazy to think that my journey in this is coming to an end. I set this goal for myself almost a year ago when I saw everyone at the airport in their marathon medals. I guess I had a little hardware envy? I have never attempted anything even remotely this physically draining but the journey has been so fulfilling. Each race that I've done has been such a cool experience and I have learned that I can really do anything physically that I set my mind to. I know that during the race it's going to be a struggle, running 20 miles surely was! But I did that and I did it by myself, with no coaching, at my own pace and it feels really satisfying.

Breaking my movie theater hiatus?

2009-09-23T07:51:00.005-05:00

So I'm sitting here, getting ready for my 20 miler (and I'll fully report on that from TX tomorrow) and watching my morning standby, the Today Show. They just had a preview for a movie that I potentially would be interested in seeing in the theater. In case you missed my previous post about the theater, I've gone about 14 months without a movie at the "movies". The preview caught my eye, or really caught my ear in this case, because the background music was one of my favorite songs, by M.I.A. It's the one that goes, "All I wanna do is... (POW POW POW POW... you know the song with all the gunshots?) called Paper Airplanes (download it, you won't regret it). I could probably do an entire blogpost on that song alone because it's so mainstream and yet so weird but that's really neither here nor there. So I hear that song pumping out of our gawdy speakers and I look up and it's Michael Moore yelling with a megaphone at the A.I.G. building in NYC. It's called Capitalism: A Love Story, or something like that, maybe don't quote me on this one.

I know this won't win me any fans of my more conservative audience (or frankly anyone from TX) but I actually enjoy watching his movies. He's seriously one of the craziest fat men in America and by no means to I agree with all of what he's saying. I do, however, believe in listening to things from all viewpoints and I don't believe that the mainstream media (especially my hated Fox News) give people an accurate picture of what's really going on in our country. It seems like I'll be waiting forever to watch it on Netflix so maybe, just maybe, I'll venture out one of these days and shell out my $12-15 to see it. Maybe I'll get a job first to afford it. I think the preview reached out and grabbed me, not only because of M.I.A's music but because I've seen so many of my friends, and even myself to a certain degree, become casualties of this economic crisis, I'm interested in what Mr. Moore has to say about it. And I hope the movie is laced with anti-W. Bush stuff, because I really can't get enough of that.

Sorry blogland, I promise I'll get back to running posting tomorrow and much lighter things :)

*Edited to add: Just caught Ann Curry's (FAV!) news report. I missed about half of the story but apparently that dumb broad Sarah Palin was running her mouth about China. Can she see that from Alaska too? Didn't she retire? Can she just shut up and go away? *

Busy Beaver...

2009-09-22T18:26:00.003-05:00

Since we got back from Tennessee (which happened to be on Monday morning... love standby travel), I've been super busy. I've had 2 phone interviews and 4 actual real interviews in 2 days. EEKS! I've never been so sick of answering stupid questions about myself.

I get to go back to Texas tomorrow night (after my postponed for 2 days 20 miler.... AHHH!) for some wedding dress shopping and to see lots of my friends. It's also Brooke's big 29th birthday weekend and we're planning on sending her into her last year of the 2o's with a bang. I'll be toasting with my iced tea glass since I've given up drinking alcohol until the marathon. Come October 11th, that post race bloody mary is going to be so delicious.

Kickin' it in the Montanas...

2009-09-18T10:34:00.001-05:00

By the time this posts, we will have enjoyed an evening in Nashvegas (or Cashville if you are Adam and dorky) and will be on our way to the Great Smoky Mountains!! I hope that we don't have any major issues getting down there although our pass travel record on Southwest has been pretty darn good.

I need to do a shorty five mile run over the weekend and want to get some nice hiking in while we're there. Hopefully the weather is gorgeous! I'll be back to my full unemployed and blogging glory on Monday... enjoy your weekend!

Monday is my 20 miler- eeks... I'm praying for cool weather and easy breathing.

and Happy Birthday to my grandmother (this past Tuesday) and Adam's mom, Tracy (tomorrow)!

A confession to make...

2009-09-17T10:26:00.001-05:00

I didn't go to my Photography Class on Sunday!!! :(

I woke up STARVING on Sunday morning, like crazy not eaten in months starving because we basically ate lunch on Sat, started drinking beer, and had a PBJ and a few Cheetos for dinner at our U2 tailgate. And drank a lot of beer. I don't think we drank any at the actual concert... oh wait, I think we did have one. But after, we started tailgating again until they kicked us out. And then we took a cab to a little dive bar near our house and drank some more. I think we stayed out until almost 3 a.m. which is the latest Adam and I have ever stayed out together, by probably an hour. We are usually super lame and go home between midnight and 1 a.m. so we overextended ourselves a little bit. And it warrants saying that my dumbass would have stayed out even later but Adam had a splitting headache.

Either way, I woke up literally starving so I ate some awesome taquitos from Trader Joe's (which is seriously the best grocery store ever and when will they ever expand to TX?). It was only about 10 a.m. and I figured I had an hour and a half before I needed to leave. So I laid down on the couch and fell back asleep and woke up at pretty close to noon. The class started at noon and I hadn't looked up how to get there yet. Ooops.

So yeah, I suck and I'll have to go another Sunday. If they let me in. Blast!

the Metra and other city musings

2009-09-16T09:51:00.003-05:00

So we're pretty sure that we don't want to have kids for at least five more years. I have always wanted to enjoy just being married and Adam and I have way too much fun just being "the two of us" to want to give that up right now (yikes, I just used the words "give that up" in reference to having children... see, I'm totally not ready yet).

While it has been an absolute dream come true for me to truly live an urban life in the city (completely carless for more than a year!), when I imagine having a family, I keep thinking back to what I grew up with. Which is a big house, a big yard, lots of swimming pools (that aren't above ground), having a car to tote the childrens in, etc... or in other words, the dreaded suburbia. AHHHHHHH!!! I realize that so much in our lives is going to change in the next five years, friends will get married, have babies and start their own migration to the suburbs. I'm hoping that the idea won't be so completely upsetting by then.

All this has especially been on my mind because last night we rode a Metra train to Naperville to have a farewell dinner with a close friend of ours that's leaving Chicago. We left right around five, also known as the scariest time ever at Union Station. It really hit home for me just how many people ride the train in from the "far away" suburbs to work in the city everyday. It was insane and kind of traumatizing to me. When I think of commuting, I think of sitting in your car in traffic, not fighting your way to a board a train that will leave you if you aren't right on time. To put it another way: I feel that if you're going to work in the city and fight the other 86 billion people also doing so, that you should be living in the city and enjoying all that it has to offer, not worrying about catching the last train home for the night at exactly 8:13 p.m. I can't imagine living here and not being in the city. What would be the point then to putting up with the mega-crappy winters? I like to tell Adam that the suburbs here are Anywhereville, America. If we're going to live in Anywhereville, we might as well be closer to our families or in a place with a semi-decent climate (although if TX has another summer like this one next year, I may be changing my tune a little bit about wanting to go back).

There are days that I feel like I could handle having "city kids" but then I remember the tragedy that is Chicago Public Schools (sidenote: I will never send my kids to private school, I went when I was little and I absolutely do not believe in them). Then I remember the 20 muggings in and around our neighborhood in the past month. Then I look outside and realize there'd be no yard for the golden retreiver that Adam wants someday. Then I think about the pool I have always wanted to have in my backyard and I think about wanting my kids to have easily accessible grandparents someday. We're kind of alone in our own little world here in Chicago and while it's good for us for now, it's going to be very interesting to see where we end up in another five years.

P.S. If Chicago wins the Olympic bid, I might be having a city baby for a couple of years because there's no way I'm leaving before the Olympics!

How Jen Got Her Groove Back

2009-09-16T09:48:00.002-05:00

except... I don't know how I got my groove back, but I sure feel better. My 8 mile run on Monday night was the best I had felt running since my 16 miler and that was in San Antonio about three weeks ago. I have done a lot of running (and resting) in between there and none of it felt very good.

Either way, it's a cooler day and even though my shin has been bothering me for a couple of weeks, I'm going to get back out there and hopefully have a nice mid-day run.

Best. Concert. Ever.

2009-09-14T12:11:00.008-05:00

I have no voice today because I spent so many hours yelling and screaming (especially the wooo-oooo-oooo parts in Elevation) at U2. Run, don't walk, if they come to your town. They played every song you would have wanted to hear, including that Joshua Tree stuff that I loved in elementary school.

The view of the skyline (funny, I don't remember it being cloudy...) during Snow Patrol. Who were also awesome, by the way. I had no idea they were Irish too!

The Field Museum during the concert... yeah, we were kinda far so no close ups of Bono, sorry ladies.

I wish the pictures came out better because the stage was phenomenal. It looked like a gigantic alien.

See, scary alien tentacles!

The highlight of our tailgating experience was when we got to meet the Guiness beer bottle and draft man. I chased after them and brought them back to our area with promises of beer and Cheetos. Yes, Mr. Bottleman reached his hand down his bottle/skirt and I fed him Cheetos. Because I know what it's like to be hot in a giant mascot suit.

"So happy I just ate some Cheetos!"

This just in...

2009-09-12T12:47:00.003-05:00

So the word on the street (and by street I mean NBC Channel 5 and Brian Williams on the national news) is that my homegirl, Michelle Obama, will be repping my adopted town's bid for the 2016 Olympic Games in Copenhagen next month for the big vote. In Brian's words, it's a "last ditch effort" to "go all out" before the Olympic Committee makes it's decision next month.

As a world traveler, I'd like to share with you my theory on why Chicago should (and BETTER!) win the 2016 Olympic Bid.

The competition:

Rio de Janiero: seriously, of all places I ever visited, this one was the biggest disappointment, by far. I felt HUMONGOR sadness during my trip. Brazil is straight up unsafe, y'all. The country features, among huge disparity between the rich and poor, these lovely things called favelas, that are worse than a Detroit ghetto. And there was one that I could look out upon from my hotel room balcony. And could hear gun shots from. Favelas are everywhere. The travesty that is the sewage dumping into Ipanema beach is a whole 'nother story, but if they win the games, maybe they'll work on cleaning that up? Either way, generally, the Olympics need to be held in a place where people feel that it's safe to walk on the streets. That kind of safety does not so much exist in Rio. I was strictly instructed by the senior mamas and papas (flight attendants that regularly fly the trip) not to go anywhere alone, not wear any jewelry, not to go in the water, and most definitely not to go anywhere alone at night. This was the only city in the world where anyone told me anything remotely like that. *and I did also go to Buenos Aires, so it's not just a Latin America thing. It's a Brazil thing. Wikipedia favelas and read up if you don't believe me.* But back to my point. If there's one thing the Olympics trips out about, it's safety and after the Beijing volleyball coach family incident, I can only assume that the committee is even more conscientious about it.

Tokyo: didn't we just have an Olympics in Nagano, like 10 minutes ago? And the last Olympics were in China (Asia representation)... NEXT!

Madrid: ok, this is probably Chicago's only competition. But Spain is a small country with smallish representation at the Olympics and they had a recent Olympics in Barcelona. I realize that we had the summer games in Atlanta since then, but we're talking powerhouse-medal-front-running USA vs. Spain (did they win any medals in Beijing?) here. Plus, the Olympics between now and then is in London so that is the Euro representation.

See, it's a no-brainer. Go Chicago 2016!

*wow, I am a little more ethnocentric than I thought, eh? Of course Spain won some medals in Beijing. The Olympics brings out a little patriotic snarkyness in me, I guess.*

Extra Meaningful Day...

2009-09-11T17:27:00.003-05:00

Today is a huge day... Only one month until October 11th!!!!!!!

Scheduled runs I have left to do:
8 mile
9 mile
10 mile
5 mile
20 miler!!!!!!
8 mile
12 mile
6 mile
8 mile
5 mile
2 mile...

and then the biggie! 26.2!

I'll probably have a few extra 3-4 milers thrown in there as well if I can ever get caught up with training again. I've been keeping up with the long stuff but throwing in that half marathon that I added to the program has me behind on some of the pesky shorter runs.

At any rate, there isn't much running (or time) left until the big day!!

(attempting to not be scared of what I've committed to)