Run girl, run!

After doing a little bit of this last night, I felt like today was a good day to really indulge in the "holiday eating" spirit:

I'm in disbelief at what I'm about to do....

What a way to celebrate my first minutes of freedom, huh?? All 16 of our Division I sports have wrapped up until the fall so you're now looking at a girl who DOESN'T HAVE TO WORK WEEKENDS!! I've pretty much been working games (sometimes two a day) every single weekend since August. I got three days off for Christmas break and Easter, then my boss gave me last weekend off.

About an hour after the last out had been recorded at our final baseball game, J.D. came by and we laced up our sneakers to tackle some hills! Our old football stadium is loaded with stairs and has a very hilly track around the stadium. I figured this would be the best way to prepare for this weekend's 5K race we'll be running. All of that was in anticipation of a big hilly section at the end of the race. After officially signing up today -- surprise, last day until the registration fee spiked -- I learned that the course is entirely flat!! What a waste of perfectly good energy ;) I ran about 2.5 miles of hills, then did the bleachers five times up and down, including sprints on the football field grass in between. All in all, a good effort, just not a useful way of training for this weekend's 5K.

Hellooooo, Stagg Memorial Stadium!

Given my gigantic use of energy last night, we hosted a "morning drinks party" at the condo this morning in celebration of a.) a day off from work! and b.) the first day of summer in our athletics department!!!!

So a few friends and co-workers stopped by for mimosas, tequila sunrises (my new favorite drink, btw!) and screwdrivers. Being the happy hostess that I am, I made 12 berry muffins to serve and a huge fruit platter - that no one other than yours truly sampled. Our guests brought over cinnamon rolls and oatmeal cookies while J.D. scrambled up some eggs and fried a little bacon. I ended up with a heaping plate of fruit, an egg white, piece of bacon, half a cinnamon roll and a muffin to go with my four morning drinks.... haha oops.

The brunch spread + my mimosa!

And by about 2 p.m. I conked out for an hour and a half. Great holiday if you ask me!

I didn't really eat lunch, so I don't think I went too far over my caloric intake goals. But it's ok, because I plan on timing a 5K simulation tomorrow, running three miles slowly on Wednesday and then a 1.5-2 mile run for Friday with lots of rest on Saturday the day before my race!

And now I am thoroughly exhausted. Talk to you all next time xx.

Question: How'd you spend your holiday?? Do you go crazy for special days during the year??

Happy Pi Day

Today is J.D.'s favorite "holiday" and I say that in quotes because celebrating this day never, ever occurred to me. Today, March 14 (3-14), is Π Day, the Greek mathematical symbol that roughly rounds to 3.14.

So weird. But in honor of today, I suggested that we frequent the establishment a few blocks from our house - Marie Calendar's. Because who doesn't want a slice of pie on Pi Day?! And we've only eaten there once the 10 months we've lived here ;)

I have no idea what kind of pie I want! Fruity, chocolate-y, creamy, who knows?

We're such dorks, it's awesome. What weird/different holidays/festivals do YOU celebrate??

San Francisco Trip!

I'm going to keep this short on words and let the photos do the talking. So here are some highlights of our Valentine's Day/Presidents'Day weekend trip to San Francisco!

Included in our trip were the SF Exploratorium (like a please touch museum), wine/chocolate tasting near Haight and Ashbury (birth of the Grateful Dead and hippie rock), complimentary wine tasting hour at the hotel, Valentine's Day three course prix fixe dinner which included champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries, Alcatraz and an awesome assorted shellfish lunch at Pier 39 and strolls around Fisherman's Wharf. All-in-all, a really amazing weekend! Too bad my weekends are going to be jam-packed from here until Memorial Day weekend :-\

Welcome to the Rock

I've been living in or near the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly my entire life. And for some reason, I've never been to Alcatraz. I've missed out on elementary school field trips there or something, don't know. It's something I've always noticed and have known about my whole life, but figured it was touristy and I am not a tourist.

Well not anymore kids. This weekend, I am going to be a San Francisco tourist!

With the exception of a group of 10 of us after prom - I'm going to be staying in my first hotel in The City. For Valentine's Day/President's Weekend we're leaving for SF on Sunday morning and staying until Monday afternoon.

We're probably going to the SF Exploratorium since they have two things that we think are neat: an exhibit on the science of baseball (!!!) and a special Valentine's Day "Ultimate Date Tour" where you learn about science and love, emotion tracers to the brain and even whether or not you and your "date" create finger "sparks." It's totally dorky and right up our alley. (Or is that just me?). Then we're trying to find a place to eat dinner - so far we have reservations at a sushi/seafood place in the Nob Hill district, but I'm still trying to see what's out there. And we might close out the night at a wine bar! But the best part about our hotel is that they provide a complimentary wine tasting hour with our reservation, so that's always an idea :)

Then once we grab some breakfast and check out Monday morning (can't believe I actually get a day off!) we're going to take an early boat out to Alcatraz and then head back to the pier or Fisherman's Wharf for some clam chowder in bread bowls :)

And with any luck, our puppy viewing on Saturday night goes well and we can take one home when they're ready to leave mommy on Feb. 22.

Enjoy the long weekend, everyone!

What's a girl to do with a three-day weekend??

After we play Sac State at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Feb. 13 (and don't forget seeing another puppy after), I get two days work-free in honor of past presidents!

I mentioned to the boy yesterday that I wanted to go out and do something fun with our days off! So the only realistic two-day weekend trip was something like San Francisco or Monterey.

Turns out there's lots of neat things going on in SF on Valentine's Day, so I'm hoping something works out! The California Academy of Sciences has a "late night closed doors tour" that involves a candlelight dinner and wine tasting. I found a place that does couples cooking classes and wine and there's even some funky lingerie fashion show that sounds super modern and bizarre and awesome.

But the best part (which, I'm 99 percent sure I won't be at) is Pillow Fight 2010 - a flash mob in San Francisco that takes place at 5:45 p.m.

Description (taken right from the website)

1) Tell everyone you know about Pillow Fight!
2) Tell EVERYONE YOU KNOW about Pillow Fight!!!
3) Nothing in your pillow but pillow.
4) Don’t hit anyone without a pillow.
5) Don’t hit anyone operating a camera.

Feathers will fly at this fun, flash-mob type event. Leave it to a place like San Francisco to host the most visible incarnation of the Pillow Fight's flash-mob-esque gathering, and subsequent public pillow fight. I would say that a safe thousand people were milling around Justin Herman Plaza at Embarcadero and Market Streets in Downtown San Francisco.

"1,000 people freezing their butts off to worship a rat"

Groundhog's Day. A very strange American tradition on this day. Even weirder is France's La Chandeleur, jour des crêpes, celebrating today's Catholic holiday (note: I am not Catholic, so I don't know a whole lot about this one).

But the saying goes in France on crêpe day, people should start the morning holding a coin in their writing hand and with the opposite hand, flip a crêpe into the air (in a pan, obviously). If you can successfully manage to flip the crêpe back into the pan, opposite side up, you will have great luck and prosperity throughout the new year. Unfortunately, I never actually was able to celebrate this tradition when I was living in France a few years back. But I did get to partake in a lot of neat festivities.

What's your tradition today?

Apparently I'll be celebrating Groundhog Day by checking out.... wait for it...... a "groundhound" as they're affectionately called. (Get it, because dachshunds have such stumpy legs and are hound dogs?)

Dog breeder lady finally got back to me last night!! Apparently some other couple wanted the female, Gracie, and they went to go meet with her yesterday. But now they aren't sure which they prefer - the female or the male. We had our sites set on the male, Walker, but honestly, I think both are super adorable and would be quite happy (UNDERSTATEMENT) with either! So today we're just going up for the scouting report.

Honestly though, this couldn't have been any better timing. I had given up the thought of hearing back last night, so I started sorting through adoption websites, farther breeders, foster homes, kennels, anything I could find in this area. The other breeders are asking for MUCH higher prices, almost more than anyone else I've looked at across the country. And most of the adoption/foster clubs pretty much find new homes as soon as they place ads up online. That route is extremely competitive too, as every dog needed to be applied for before even seeing it or talking to its current "owner." I was getting so disheartened in my search since J.D.'s now finally ready for a dog..... I couldn't find one we liked!

But now, maybe the road's downhill from here? I'll let you know after tonight! Not to get ahead of myself, but in taking some good advice, if we like what we see tonight we're heading straight to Target to get the place ready in anticipation for a new little friend early next week :)

Final post of 2009

The countdown begins....

Wow. It's almost 2010. That sounds insane. Like super futuristic and crap. Like way older than the Jetsons. Like.... I'm going to turn 25 this upcoming year...... (pause several months for quarter-life crisis, kids. I'm getting that two year itch again, like usual, telling me to up and leave out of the country again. Will it happen? Stay tuned to find out)

Anyways, 2010. It's been TEN YEARS since the whole Y2K debacle. Yeah, seriously. I get a French channel here in Stockton, TV5 Monde Etats-Unis, and I was watching the journal télévisé (again, snooty way of me saying French newscast) and they were looking at the past decade in review. BTW, happy new year for those of you on the other side of the planet! Anyways, they were showing a side-by-side video comparison of cell phones from now and 2000, computers, Internet user stats (users have increased 6x since 2000 - I blame it on all the 10 year olds who were born in 2000 and came out of the womb texting and myspacing.) Even the picture quality from the video of last decade is unbelievable.

So with that, here's what I've been thinking about lately. I've never been one for resolutions, so let's just call these my goals for 2010, shall we?

a.) write more often ... not blogging, per se, but creative writing. Short stories, long stories, poems, crap, it doesn't matter. I want to write more. I always have.

b.) exercise more ... if not daily, then every other day. I used to be super good about this over the summer, but the lack of sunlight when I get home really puts a damper on my willingness to run. So that's where Wii Fit and my new EA Sports Active Wii video games come into play. I hate to sound lame, but those games really give you a frickin workout. And hey, whatever gets you moving, right?

c.) read more ... starting up that book club means I have to finish at least one book a month. That's usually never been a problem for me, but I'll get back into it.

d.) travel ... It's been over two years since I left the country. I want out again! I'm currently planning a D.C. (I realize that's still in the U.S., just bear with my random tangents) trip to visit my college roommate in June. Free Delta miles and a place to crash? What the heck would be stopping me???

And those are four things I'd love to see myself accomplish over the next 365 days. Wish me luck.

For now, I have a lot of shit to do before the year's even over. I've been slaving away at my basketball notes because we leave for our first conference road trip tomorrow. Flying down to Los Angeles so we can play Cal State Northridge on Saturday and Cal State Fullerton Monday.

That means Monique has a lot of laundry/cleaning/Christmas deconstructing/book shelf assembling/NYE dinner cooking to do. (I'm making a shrimp, bacon and spinach quiche for dinner tonight and splitting a bottle of champagne with J.D. for the end of the year meal. He works tonight and I have to leave at 10 a.m. for work tomorrow. What a pair we are).

Which reminds me.... another goal I've set for myself is NOT TO DRINK TOO MUCH (hmmm, can you imagine what over the past few days has brought this on?)!!! Unless I'm going wine tasting, which doesn't happen too often these days, I'm trying to stick to about a drink a month or less. I don't need alcohol. It messes me up all the time :)

Happy New Year, everone. If you're going out, please drive safe. If not, have a little extra for me ;)

What I made off with yesterday

After breaking it this summer.... a new Chi flat iron for my hair!!!

Gift cards! (Origins, Barnes & Noble, Target, Jamba Juice, Walmart)

Williams-Sonoma pizza stick pan and cutter

Berry desserts cookbook

Fruit and vegetable mandolin

Stem-less martini glasses

Cocktail and bar food cookbooks



...And last, but not least - Wii Fit!

There were some more items not listed, but you get the idea. Thanks everyone for the awesome gifts :)

I hope you got what you wanted this holiday season!

....Now about that puppy......

Visions of Sugar Plums Dance In My Head

With this whole Vegas trip coming up and my basketball trips sprinkled in, J.D. and I decided to plan out our Christmas plans.

And that got me thinking that I wanted to make/bring a dessert when we go to his family's shindig!

So with that, may I present you all the fabulous ideas I'm considering making for Christmas dessert. Anyone want to help me pare this down and figure out what to bring?? I'm taking votes! Each of the following dessert names are also links to their recipes.... that's my Christmas gift to you :)

Sunset's Peppermint-Topped Brownies


Hot Chocolate Meringue Cake


Gingerbread Pear Cake


Upside-Down Pear Tartlettes


Chocolate Caramel Cream Pie

And for the French girl in me:

French Chocolate Macarons

Chocolate Yule Log (Bûche de Noël)

Double Chocolate Bombe Cake

Life keeps getting in the way

Despite my efforts, for the life of me I can't commit to blogging/writing each day. At least the intention's there....

In the upcoming weeks, I've got a lot on my plate. Tonight marks our athletic department's fourth game in a row. Friday and Saturday night we had women's volleyball, yesterday I did a (sub-par) radio broadcast for our women's basketball game, tonight is men's basketball and we close out the "weekend" with women's basketball on Tuesday night. Generally I'm needed to be at as many home games as possible since I'm one of only three or four people who know how to run the stats program on our official computer. If I'm not running stats, then I'm calling for someone else who is or, better yet - on air.

But that's just the start. After the rush of this five-straight, I get to hit the road with women's basketball (WBB from here on out) for the first time this season. We're headed towards Oakland to board a non-stop JetBlue flight to NYC at.... get this.... 4:30 a.m. Need I remind you that we have a WBB game the night before that probably will wrap up entirely around 10 p.m.?

I get the feeling that I'm going to attempt to stay up all night and sleep on the plane. Otherwise, I might not wake up from a three/four-hour "nap" at 3:30 a.m.

But after our New York/New Jersey trip this weekend, we arrive back in California Monday night-Tuesday morning. Wednesday night I'm headed back home for the ENTIRE Thanksgiving weekend off - free - no work. It's amazing.

However, once I return to Stockton, I get to turn right back around and trek out to Portland, Ore., with WBB.

Then maybe I can take a breather! ...Or write on all my plane trips. At the very least, I hope to catch up on some reading/sleep.

Well, with all said and done, I realized I won't have much time to start decorating for Christmas.

So, J.D. and I put up our tree last night. It's still fairly bare, just has three strands of lights. The ornaments can be hung later, but for now, at least we got the labor-intensive part out of the way.

Does that mean I'm allowed to start listening to Christmas music now?!? :)

Just Kidding

Just kidding about the whole blogging each day thing. I guess my life got in the way of that.

Well, partially. Work is getting busy, especially with basketball season starting up and me getting to travel every other weekend!

But because of that, in addition to crappy daylight savings time making it dark by the time I get to my car at night, I've decided to flip-flop my schedule. I've been trying to run for at least 30 minutes every day, but with it being so dark by 5 p.m., this morning I decided to do it in the morning.

So I woke up at 7:20 this morning, did a bit of yoga stretching before I left then made my way out to the Delta levy for a good 2.75-mile run. Some of it was street running, under the freeway, past schools, but half of it was on the Delta levy that comes in from the ocean!

So I got back at 8ish this morning and had breakfast at home for the first time in a very long while. Usually, I'll grab something quickly and bring it to work with me once I stumble in the door around 9:30 a.m. But this whole waking up early thing is wonderful! I feel so refreshed and busy this morning and the day seems to be flying.

Maybe it's because I bought this new peppermint syrup and have been making peppermint mochas or peppermint soy lattes each morning :)


I ♥ fall/winter!

(Oh and I already want to put up my tree this weekend!! Is that wrong? I mean, I'll be in New York/New Jersey next weekend and home for Thanksgiving the weekend after. Then the first week of December, I'll be in Portland, so really, the only time to decorate before December is this weekend. It's not worth it to put a tree up a couple of days before Christmas. So now or never!)

More wishes!

Here are some amendments to my holiday wish list! (Even if no one's getting me this stuff, it's so fun to make wishlists and look up fun big kid toys online).

Oh it's also National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) so I'm trying to be proactive and post every day this month. Whether or not that happens is a different story, but it's worth a shot!

So things I'm really liking/wanting right now:

-New flat iron, since mine broke, RIP buddy. Preferably of the brands Solia, Hana or CHI.

-Learn language tapes/books/aids! I'm still trying to listen to French podcasts and watch the news online on a regular basis, but now I'm ready to dive into another language. I'm really interested in both Spanish and German right now. Though, I still have my study book and exercise book from my one quarter of Spanish at UC Santa Barbara my senior year.

Though I've not yet used them, I like the initial look of the Teach Yourself and Living Languages programs, from what I saw at Barnes & Noble earlier this week.


-And finally, Mitch Albom's (author of Tuesdays With Morrie) new book, Have A Little Faith. He's such a talented writer. I may actually purchase this book on my Sony eReader later this week.... We'll see :)

-I would also be open to money to insert into my savings account, for future travel plans! :)

Home sick for a second day

I think I tried to get back into the eating game too quickly last night. My stomach was feeling much better, so I resumed my eating habits as if I'd never been sick before and as if I wasn't on an empty stomach.

Waking up this morning was a nightmare, I felt like I'd be throwing up all over again. So I slept it off. And then I slept it off. And then I slept it off again, and I'm feeling sluggishly better now. I'm easing my way into soups and snacks. I'm not going to go overboard this time.

But being in bed for the past two days has given way to a lot of television and a lot of Internet searching.

Without further ado, I present to you my holiday wish list! (Too soon?)

A real, digital camera. With an actual lens. I'm over my little point-and-shoot cameras. These are much higher quality. Doesn't even have to be a Cannon!


New running shoes (and also shoes I can wear to outdoor events like soccer and baseball, since heels aren't so good on muddy and gravel surfaces). I really want some Nike Shox, in black :) These are the Navina +4 series.


Diesel Fuel for Life (Her). I bought this when I was in France and trying to blow through all my leftover Euros on hand. I bought this at a cute little fragrance boutique in Vieux Antibes. But now I've run out. I'm ready for a restock!


Wii Fit. Duh. I have a Wii. All I need is the Fit board and software :)


The HP dv3t series. I've spec-ed one out already for my cousin who works there. It's about $700... a bit pricey for a Christmas present. Maybe Christmas and birthday?! :) Or maybe I'll charge it to my credit card at the end of the year and make a purchase like this all on my own.


Maybe Baby fragrance. Aimee got this for Christmas one year and I love it! It smells like roses. If I get one, you can use a bunch of it Aims, to take back what I've used from yours :)

That's about it for my holiday wishlist. Maybe when I'm bored at home all day again, I'll think of some amendments to the list!