St. Pat’s Day, Race Swag and the Most Random Meal

Last weekend it rained. And I ran.

And my ponytail legitimately multiplied. I wish my hair had that much volume on a normal day… but without the frizz, sweat and flyaways.

I had to get in my last good run before this Saturday’s half marathon because I when I opened the fridge I realized that no running would be happening on St. Patrick’s Day.

I drank one of those Harps but it was kind of nasty. I also had two green Bud Lights at a local sports bar. One was free. I was with this guy so I don’t even know how that happened:

He had a little more beer than I did

He also cooked a jammin’ corned beef while Jennifer and I whipped up the mashed potatoes and cabbage. It’s all about teamwork.

Jennifer and her husband Mat

Tiffany and Aaron – Tiff walked out of the sports bar with beads. I don’t how that happened either (FYI it’s a family style sports bar and children were there so I am totally kidding).

This week has been crazy busy. We went to see NEEDTOBREATHE at Club Nokia on Tuesday (amazeballs of course), Wednesday I got my hair trimmed, and today I went to the Great Race of Agoura expo to pick up my race packet for Saturday’s Pacific Half Marathon. The expo was surprisingly packed considering I went on my lunch hour. It also looked like a Real Housewives of Calabasas convention.

I know Taylor, I make me laugh too.

So I picked up my swag and checked out a couple of the booths, snagged some free bottle of FRS energy drinks and had to jet back to work pretty fast. Check out my loot:

The technical shirts are really cute and I LOVE the bag everything came in. I have one of those drawstring bags I got for free in college that I carry my gym clothes in and it’s definitely seen better days. This one is much bigger, thicker fabric and has the Great Race of Agoura logo embroidered on it. Welcome to your new home gym clothes.

And now, without further ado, I present to you the most random (yet totally delicious) meal of the week:

Clockwise from the top, we have homemade pizza with pepperoni and ricotta cheese, leftover mashed potatoes and corned beef and cabbage, and the best brussels sprouts (and my first successful cooking attempt) ever. All topped off with a delicious glass of pulpy orange juice. But really, it hit the spot. I think J and I are going to start these traditional “clear the fridge” nights because when you’re paying for all your own food it makes it hard to throw out anything. (Don’t tell but I think J was using the milk like 4 days past expiration).

So Saturday is Half Mary #2 and next Sunday is #3. Hopefully it all pans out well, but one thing I can guarantee is that I’ll have a great chance to review my new Pro Compression socks on Saturday afternoon!

Anyone running any races this weekend? Which ones?

What’s the most random meal you’ve eaten recently?

Twice is Nice

Ran 1.25 miles yesterday + a ridiculous leg workout. I’m 99% sure I’ll be running the Great Race of Agoura Pacific Half Marathon so it’s going to be back to squeezing in weekend long runs for me. I’m determined to beat my 2:18 time now!

This week was full of swanky holiday partying at work. On Thursday, we headed up north to the Four Seasons Biltmore Santa Barbara for a holiday lunch with our whole company. Jodi drove and provided the necessary road trip snacks:

When you’re about to go have a fancy free lunch at the Four Seasons, it’s only proper to make sure there are 762g of sugar coursing through your bloodstream when you arrive.

Needless to say, it was gorgeous, the food was amazing and we had a blast.

The massive tree in the lobby couldn’t fit in a picture.

That butternut squash soup was the best soup I’ve ever had. It was topped with cinnamon creme fraiche and little bits of heaven. (Please note that I embarrassed all my coworkers by taking constant food pictures. I was shameless for the sake of this blog.)

The lunch was really fun even though I didn’t win an iPad.

On Friday, I actually had to get up and blow dry my hair for the second day in a row. I made the smart decision of working for a company that is headquartered in SB, but I work out of the parent company office near LA. The perk of this set-up – 2 holiday parties for me.

Friday’s holiday lunch was at the INCREDIBLE Sherwood Country Club in Westlake Village. Work on the street is that Britney Spears just bought a new house there and Sean Connery was kicked out because the other members didn’t like him.

Just because I want to name drop some more – they filmed the engagement party scene in Bridesmaids here.

See that plate of desserts in the back? I practically licked it clean.

Everyone in the company received a lucky $2. I still didn’t win an iPad at this part either, but Jodi’s $2 gave her a bit of luck and she went home of a with a bottle of wine!

After lunch, we took some more pictures then went to look at real estate. I am having trouble deciding which house I want so I might have to buy them all.

If you could live anywhere and money was no object, where would you live?

I would either live in Lake Sherwood or in Cameron Diaz’s house in The Holiday.

Random house fact of the day:

The Spelling Manor has a 17,000 sq. ft. basement that Candy Spelling has filled to the brim with Halloween and Christmas decorations purchased at Costco. She literally drove around to every Costco in the greater LA area to purchase every single Nutcracker that they sold one year.

Double Surprises

After our fun-filled day at the zoo, we had plans to go to dinner with my parents and oldest little sister Alli. My youngest sister Maddi had left that morning for the CIF XC Championships in Fresno and my brother Michael traveled up there with his old coach and teammates to cheer on the girls. My parents had planned to go up on Friday as well, but changed their plans at the last minute to enjoy a nice birthday dinner with Jason and I.

No one would tell me where we were going. They only told me to dress nice and take off my Garmin:

Alli has mastered the art of not standing up to take a picture and create Awkward Camera Angle Issue (ACAI).

I was so surprised when we pulled up at Fleming’s Steakhouse! I’d never been before and always wanted to go. Let me tell you – it DID NOT disappoint. Everything we had was so stinking good! The bread they brought out was amazing! It had cheese baked into the crust and two types of butter – a sundried tomato/lemony butter and one that tasted slightly garlicky with some other herds. Delish!

For dinner I had the lobster cob salad with tarragon ranch. I need a tub  of that ranch dressing. It was SO good! I also had tastes of my mom’s spicy risotto, Jason’s filet and Fleming’s potatoes (cheesy potatoes with jalapenos ) and Alli’s spicy calamari. Everything was superb!

I was so happy my parents were able to change their plans to have dinner with us! With 4 kids in the family, it’s not often that they get to relax and have a nice dinner with us “adult” kids 🙂

Dinner was, of course, followed by dessert. I’m not sure how it happened but the kitchen apparently mixed up who was bringing out our creme brulee so we ended up with 2 of them – not that I was going to complain about that mistake.

It was easily the best creme brulee I’ve ever had and it came with an entire bowl of chantilly cream on the side.The only proper way to eat it was to eat a spoonful of the brulee followed by a spoonful of the cream. Here is the aftermath:

Then, as I was full of dessert and thinking the night couldn’t get any better, they brought me this to take home:

That beauty is a gigantic (like 3 lbs!) slice of chocolate fudge cake with fudge frosting and chocolate shavings. UHHmazing!

I went to bed full and happy on my 25th birthday, totally not expecting the surprise I had coming the next day.

Saturday was spent testing out my Garmin, watching ridiculous amounts on NCIS on tv, and hitting up target for thank you notes and a box to store all my accumulated running accessories. I got to Jason’s in the late afternoon and we hung around and caught up on The League and Workaholics. By the time we ate dinner, I felt so tired and lazy I was ready to call it a night, but he insisted that we shouldn’t be so lame and go grab some late night happy hour drinks at Elephant Bar. I was so tired, but I agreed and we headed to E-Bar with Tiff around 9.

I was so surprised when we walked in and my friends were there waiting! Jason had planned the whole thing as a surprise birthday party for me. He even reorganized it multiple times – once when he found out my parents would be home on Friday so he moved the surprise to Saturday, and again when he had planned it for a place that I later mentioned I didn’t like… oops!

The Girls

Jr. High Friends!

I was so surprised and it was totally unexpected! I’m so grateful to everyone who came out to celebrate my birthday. I keep saying that I hope the whole year of 25 turns out to be as good as the first 2 days!

Side note question – has anyone found any incredible Cyber Monday deals? Express has 30% off everything online as do all the Gap property stores. Steve Madden has 30% too!

10 Things for Tuesday

1. Catching up on workouts – I ran 3 miles on Saturday followed by 30 minutes on the elliptical and a legs workout. I wanted to do a long run but when I woke up to the rain I decided to hit the gym and save the 10-miler for this weekend. So unhardcore I know… Sunday I was lazy and yesterday’s workout consisted of a 50-minute elliptical session that was intense.

2. I love the holidays and everything about them, and I am listening to Christmas music already, but I really feel it’s a little early for this:

Get it together SVTC. It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.

3. The above picture was taken while tripping around our local “Mall”. I put it in quotes because it barely deserves to be called a mall. They couldn’t even keep a Forever 21. And the stores they do have choose to stock very odd assortment of items. I go to Macy’s and can’t find a single cute sweater or dress that I saw on the website, but I did spot this gem:

The bow is bigger than the headband part – which mean’s the bow is bigger than the wearer’s head. NO.

4. I finally got my haircut after almost a year:

I went to a new place thanks to a great deal I scored online ($19 for conditioning treatment + cut & blowdry). It barely looks any different because I just asked her to clean up the ends but I’m happy to not have frizzy split ends now. And the place was too darn cute:

It looks like a little house! It’s a historic building so they can’t change the outside (which I think actually used to be a house) so they just rolled with the theme and made it the cutest, coziest salon.

5. I have a new obsession. I tend to find something I really like, eat/drink it every day for 3 months straight, then burn out completely. Right now, that thing is hot cocoa:

J makes the best homemade hot cocoa, but since I can’t get him to get up extra early each morning to make me a cup and bring it to my house before I leave for work, I had to settle for some cocoa from the cafe at Gelson’s. Not J’s amazing recipe, but still tasty for $2. I especially loved the sprinkles.

6. I finally bought new cross-trainers for the gym since my old ones were covered in mud after the Gladiator run (and were about 100 years old). Now I can finally stop wearing my Brooks for elliptical days.

Nordstrom Half-Yearly score!

7. I loved the Twilight books, but I only saw the first movie and hated it. Such bad acting! Needless to say, the only Breaking Dawn hype I care about will just be seeing the pictures of Rob in US Weekly and People from all the red carpet events. I have decided that R-Patz needs to just keep his mouth shut and be pretty. I liked him better as Cedric Diggory anyways. I don’t know why they had to kill him off in HP. So sad.

That ring came off of a cupcake from a 25-year-old man’s birthday. Love it.

8. I found my dream car:

Why yes, that is a hot pink Mini Cooper.

9. I love this time of year because of weather that makes my drive home look like this:

10. And finally – my birthday is in 10 days! I’m going to be 1/4 of a century and that is freaking me the you-know-what out. When I was a naive little 15-year-old, I totally believed I’d have my life all figured out by this point. How wrong I was. But regardless, I have fun, love my life, like my job most of the time, have the best boyfriend on earth, live at home for free (seriously, major perk), and I’m pretty darn happy. I’m also determined to make 25 the best year ever. So here’s to my last 10 days of being able to round down to 20 and not up to 30.

That is not my cake but I would like it to be (hint hint)…

Party in the (Team) USA

I decided to take the weekend off from long runs since my ankle has felt tight for the last couple days. Yesterday morning I hit the gym and did 20 minutes on the elliptical followed by a 40-minute leg workout. I used all the different leg machines at the gym and I am feeling it today!

Last night we went to a Halloween party hosted by our friends Jen & Mat. We had a blast and I loved seeing how creative people were with their costumes.

Jason and I as Team USA Ping Pong Champs

Tiffany and Aaron as the Potatoheads – They even had different pieces you could put on the faces!

Jen made the Taco Bell Hot Sauce costumes – too cute!

How pretty is that Belle costume??!

We had such a great time at the party and didn’t get home until 2am. Unfortunately, my camera died after only a few pictures so I didn’t get any of the other costumes. There was a hypochondriac, a Wall-E and Eve, the Flintstones and so many other great costumes. It amazes me how creative people are when it comes to thinking up ideas for Halloween.

Tomorrow is our work party and we spent a lot of time decorating on Friday afternoon. I’ll be sure to get some pictures. After work, I think I’m going to go for a run through the neighborhood to see how people have decorated. We have some exciting tricks at our house for the Trick or Treaters 🙂

What are you dressing up as for Halloween?

Cone of Shame!

I feel like I’m still catching up from the long weekend. Work has been absolutely insane and all I can think about is how I cannot wait for it to be October when some of the craziness will settle down until the holiday shopping season starts up. Luckily, I work in advertising, not retail – so as long as I stay on top of things and get everything set up before Thanksgiving, it’ll hopefully be smooth sailing into the new year.

Now, I really wish I didn’t already have holidays and new years on my mind. It was just Labor Day! And it feels far from Fall right now as I sit here boiling hot at 9PM. Ugh. Hate the heat. But Labor Day was a great day of pool lounging, eating too much and backyard beer pong. Yesterday I had to get back into the swing of things with my first speed workout, and today I took it easy on the elliptical. It was supposed to be a rest day but I felt like I needed to make up for the mass consumptions of the holiday weekend.

My mom lounging in the pool.

The boys teaching my dad and uncle to play beer pong (and yelling at them for their ELBOWS)

Heidi tried to cool off. She gets stressed when school starts back up and the house is empty all day so she bites her paws. Then she gets to look super embarrassing in the Cone of Shame. Other dogs point and laugh. My dad likes to tell people when she looks in the right direction we get HBO.

I yelled at Heidi for partaking in underage drinking, but she told me she is 54 in dog years so it’s totally legal. Touché dingo.

Another exciting thing happened over the weekend (besides my craptastic 2 mile run on Monday. 90 degrees + running + pre-run pancakes = death). Jas and I got to head back to our BEAUTIFUL alma mater because my little brother just started his first year of college!

That’s the face of 4 whole years of fun ahead.

And that is the face of pure, bitter envy. I don’t blame you J… 

After lunch at Wahoos Fish Tacos (I scarfed down my Grilled Fish Banzai Burrito way too fast to take a picture), we took Michael back and J and I braved the craziness of Venice beach for about 23.6 minutes.

Drinking iced tea from the coffee shop we used to work at on campus.

Fancy skulls and coffins. If only I had a place to put them.

Jason better watch out because there were some fine fellas out there on the boardwalk:

Then we paid $1 for 20 smelly sticks and went home to suburbia where I can walk alone at night and never have to pay for parking. And had Yogurtland. The end.

Overcoming the Treadmill and the Boy Turns 24

A week between posts… I have not been a good blogger this week. Possibly because Bikram Yoga has been sucking away my energy and time during the week. The good news is, I can now get through the 90 minutes with only one or two small breaks where I feel like I might die. We’ve also discovered that the Wednesday and Thursday night teachers turn on the fans when we lay down between postures. LIFE SAVING!

In other news, I have had no energy to wake up and run before work and being the middle of July, it’s just too hot to run outside after work. The only logical solution was that I had to hit the treadmill at the gym. I have never ever ever  enjoyed running on the treadmill. In fact, I have a running list of things I hate about running on the treadmill:

1. Lack of scenery – 24 Hour Fitness seems to think that FOX News and Dr. Oz are all people want to watch on TV while they do cardio. (Anyone else find Dr. Oz to be incredibly creepy and borderline perverted?)

2. The smells – why do people think it is OK to smoke/layer on perfume or cologne/not wear deodorant before going to the gym and running in very close proximity to other people.

3. Music – When I run outside, I don’t listen to music. It helps me focus on my breathing which is the biggest thing working against me when I run. I like to hear each breath and make sure I maintain a steady breathing pace so I don’t get side cramps. At the gym though, it’s impossible for me to go without my iPod. I feel like having no iPod at the gym is an open invitation for creepy old guys and meatheads to talk to me while I’m actually there to work out and not socialize.

However, despite all my complete contempt of running on the treadmill, I really had no choice this week. So I am proud to say I ran 2 20-min 2-milers 2 times this week. It’s not much (but a lot of 2’s), but for me that’s a HUGE accomplishment. I can run a decent 10 minute and hold a steady pace for 3-4 miles outside, but usually on the treadmill I’m cramped up and sweating after the first 1/4 mile, so I’m going to call this one a success for the week. I also did Bikram twice and lost 1.5 lbs after each class – SCORE!

Finally, last week we celebrated J’s and his twin sister Tiffany’s birthday.

We went to a delicious BBQ restaurant for dinner with their parents and Kyle, where I consumed my weight in onion rings, beer, and a tri tip sandwich.

Then, on Friday, I took Jas out to our FAVORITE MOST AMAZING WONDERFUL restaurant on Earth, Lady Face Ale Companie. It’s a microbrewery with some seriously incredible beers and great food, with a super cool, laid back rustic vibe. Unfortunately, while we were there I realized that I left my camera’s memory card in my computer, but take my word, the food is to die for. We both had a Tripel and an IPA, then we split the pretzel bread with mustard dipping sauces and the IN-CRED-I-BLE macaroni and cheese. They bake it with a salt and vinegar potato chip crust. A little strange but a lot phenomenal.

On that note, I’ll finish up today’s post with a few pictures from J’s birthday party last Saturday. Just like the good old college days only no one puked and we were all asleep by 1AM.

Our resident non-drinker pretending to play BP with the boys

Me with my dad - who will also be running his first half marathon with me!

Jaybo and my dad. No idea what they were laughing at but one probably was insulting the other 🙂

Our fish Turok partied too

My parentals - love them

Love of my life is finally 24!!

We were more excited about coffee than booze

Frat boy bromance/honor poseLegendary BP Champs