Archive for August, 2010
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Smelly pee and charity
I can rhyme, yo.
Hope everyone is enjoying the last minutes of their Sundays … Mark and I are on a countdown until the latest True Blood and Mad Men air.
Yesterday I attended a coaches’ training for Girls on the Run – St. Louis. As you may know, Girls on the Run is a national organization with chapters in over 150 cities nationwide. St. Louis has the third largest chapter in the country, with over 90 schools in the area participating. When I showed up for training on Saturday morning, I walked into a room with hundreds of women approximately my age who all are runners looking to help and inspire others. The energy was amazing.
The program itself is a 10 week program that girls between 8 to 14 can join. The group stays small (no larger than 17 girls can participate per team) and meets twice a week for about 90 minutes. The activities involve running, but also strive to teach the girls life lessons and build their self-esteem.
I did feel some regret that I had not started earlier, because the program is so right up my alley, but right now the timing is really good. My schedule is flexible and I can work early in the day so that I can get to the after-school training.
If your schedule isn’t as flexible, you can always sponsor Girls on the Run by participating in their Solemates program. The Solemates program means you help raise money for the organization when you run a race.
If you don’t have a chapter in your area, START ONE. Here’s how.
Tonight, Mark and I grilled some beef and asparagus. The beef was shoulder filet, for those of you interested in cuts. The beef was sold in a marinade already. Bonus.
There is not much better than grilled asparagus. I kind of burned them … I put our gas grill on high. Oops. Mark thought the beef was too salty but I was down with it.
I cleaned my plate, no problem.
Did you know that the ability to smell and create “asparagus pee” is genetic?
Now you do.
I am missing one of the two abilities. Now you know that, too.
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His & hers & hugs
Dinner tonight was a test in creativity. We had a pizza crust (whole wheat from Boboli) and we had cheese. The rest was a big question mark.
I like marinara sauce on mine, but Mark really doesn’t. The solution was His & Hers pizza. On Mark’s half: raspberry-chipotle barbeque sauce, hot banana peppers, red pepper flakes, chicken, mozzarella cheese, and rosemary.
I smelled the rosemary cooking and I said, “Did you really put rosemary on your barbeque pizza?” Yes, he did. I had a bite – it was hot (spicy), sour, and sweet. Not my thing. Actually, I thought it was pretty gross. He said, “This is the best pizza I have ever made.”
Hers:
Maybe mine wasn’t as creative. But it tasted good. Mine was made with marinara sauce, mozzarella, italian seasoning, minced garlic and light cream cheese.
Yum.
The weirdest but best thing I ever had on a pizza was mashed potatoes on thin crust pizza in (ironically) Chicago. I didn’t think I was going to like it but it was really good.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever had on a pizza?
My husband taught our dog Ada to give him a hug. She does it whenever he comes home and he says “Where’s my hug?” So cute.
Since I’m so short, she clobbers me when she does it. It’s one of my favorite tricks that she can do.
Yesterday, I got a traffic ticket. I was not really happy about it – I got it on my way home. The officer, however, was a pretty nice guy.
Later, we went to get dinner at a restaurant in town and we parked next to a cop’s patrol car. Inside, one of the cops looked a lot like the one that pulled me over.
I have strong opinions about law enforcement after handling hundreds of criminal defense cases and traffic tickets. One of my many strong opinions is that cops have one of the hardest and most underappreciated jobs in the U.S. I would hate to have to spend my day pulling people over – that moment almost inevitably becomes the driver’s worst moment of their day, and cops get the brunt of it. There is no doubt in my mind that has to become old real fast. The worst of law enforcement reacts in the worst way. But there are some good cops. I think that the cops probably deserved a boost that day. So I decided to leave the cop an Operation Beautiful note.
I was a little afraid they were going to come out and taser me or something while I was doing this
I hope it made their day a little easier.At least I promoted Operation Beautiful if nothing else.
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Blogging emergency and Mini-goal #2
Happy hump day
I’m experiencing my first blogging emergency. My camera charger is DEAD, and I think I left my charger in Nebraska the last time I was there! I can’t find it. Right before my camera battery died last night, I was able to take some pictures of my dinner. (Which I didn’t put up yesterday because I guess I got lazy!) Beef & veggie stirfry:
What I did was really simple, and SO FAST. I heated a tablespoon or so of sesame oil in two pots. In one, I dumped the thawed beef. In the other, I dumped the frozen mixed veggies. Then, after giving the veggies a stir, I put the lid on and let it do its thing, occasionally checking on it and giving it a stir. With the beef, all I did was add ground ginger and soy sauce. I was pretty generous with both and let me tell you, it was a fantastic combo. I wanted to lick the pan! After 10 minutes, both components were finished and I mixed them together in the beef pan for that awesome sauce.
Mark told me I had to give him credit for this photo. Pretty good for a point & shoot, right?
We could have added rice and added more sauce but I didn’t have the patience for that because I was pretty hungry. Instead, we had a side of honeydew. Random.
Yesterday I did this workout:
What that means is that I did 10 minutes of warmup running, 1 kilometer at 7:55/mile pace, 2 kilometers at 8:00/mile pace, 1 kilometer at 7:55/mile pace, and another kilometer at 7:55 pace with 400 meters of recovery in between each, followed by 10 minutes of cool down.
I have a love/hate relationship with interval workouts. Too much math, too much mile/kilometer conversion, for running. What I love is how I feel afterwards. Fast. Good. Exhilarated. For anyone that’s never had a runner’s high, I would suggest speed intervals. I rarely get the “high” from a longer run, but I do get it pretty often with speedwork!
Last week I talked about my mini-goal #1 – to just track my food intake. Well, it turns out, that’s not really hard. All I wanted to do was track my intake, with no regard as to whether I went over or not. I have no problem doing that if I’m totally accepting of the fact that I may go over – and oh, I did, every day. My problem is that I don’t track well when I know I’m supposed to be eating a certain amount. When I know I’ve gone over, I stop tracking – so that I can pretend it didn’t happen. Alternatively, I don’t track, knowing that my day will be challenging and I end up overeating because, once again, my head is in the sand. There’s no evidence, so it never happened – how lawyerly of me. So my mini-goal # 2 is to stay within my points. This is a much harder goal to achieve, but it’s vital that I do it if I’m going to be successful. It’s pretty much the cornerstone of the program. I’ll need to continue to work on tracking no matter what as well.
Well, I’ve got to get off to Best Buy to see if they have the right charger. Pray for me that they do! Today I haven’t had the best luck. I better not have just jinxed myself!
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Good news day
Hello! I hope everyone likes the format of the blog. I’m pretty excited about using Dreamhost. So far, it’s been more difficult to use than a WordPress-hosted blog, but I’m learning a lot about how it works and I enjoy that part. It also feels like it’s more “mine” – more customizable - so I’m excited about that too. If there is any feedback you have, good or bad, let me know!
Something I realized this morning is that my old and new headers are both pictures of trash. Last time it was a picture of discarded cups at a water station at a race, now it’s an orange rind. Next time, maybe I’ll put a picture of compost up, just to keep things lively.
As you can see from my sidebar, I have a link to 30 days of Self-love which is being initiated by Tina at Faith, Fitness, Fun. It starts in September, but there is no reason why you can’t start now! It’s something I really believe in. Yesterday, I got trapped into a “fat talk” complaining session again at work. I didn’t know what to do or say. It’s really hard to tell someone to stop berating themselves – since who knows what their motivation is – small talk, reassurance, habit? I didn’t want to tell her she wasn’t fat because I thought it would encourage a cycle of “I’m fat” “No you’re not” “Yes I am” (I’m noticing that this is a habit of hers because it comes up in almost every conversation)… So I just nodded sympathetically and was relieved when someone else changed the subject. How do you stop someone from engaging in “fat talk”? How would you have responded?
One other thing I’m excited to share with you all is that I will be going to a Girls on the Run Coaches training on Saturday. Girls On the Run is a nationwide organization that encourages young girls to develop their athletic side and their self-confidence with a focus on running. The program helps the girls work up to running a 5k in November. I’ll be assistant coaching once or twice a week — I’m really excited to help girls do something positive and to share my knowledge about running.
Last, but not least, on the exciting news front is that my brother Tom and my sister-in-law Mel welcomed their second child into the world yesterday. Soon I’ll be traveling up to Nebraska to see Daphne Michelle (best middle name EVER).
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Hello everyone!
This is my first post using Dreamhost. If you have a subscription on google reader through www.chasingambulances.wordpress.com, make sure it’s updated to www.chasingambulances.net. I will be messing around in the background with the site’s appearance so bear with me. I don’t know what I’m doing at all.
However, I do know how to peel an orange. One piece, baby:
But I don’t know how to properly size my photos. Boo.
About Me
My name is Michelle and I like to write about running, food, and fitness in general. Check out my About Michelle section for more!
