Simplify ~ Rachel

Greetings everyone!

I’m here to tell you that I am officially putting this blog on hiatus until my dissertation is done.

In order to just get that darn dissertation done (goal is to defend in September), I need to simplify my life. That means clearing the calendar. That means removing as many obligations as possible. I know the blog isn’t an obligation…but it does take time and I think it deserves more than a half-assed attempt at posting regularly.

Until I defend my dissertation, I am going to stop blogging.

I am also stopping personal training with Isaiah. The money was definitely a contributor but it also seemed silly to have personal training sessions at a time when I am not regularly and consistently going to the gym.

I am also stopping my Weight Watchers membership. Again, it seemed silly to pay a monthly fee when I rarely use the website and haven’t been very faithful to meetings. I have the knowledge and materials to still follow the program if I choose to do so.

I will miss all those things but here is what I am going to do until my dissertation is done:

(1) Eat right

(2) Move more

I think if I can just get back to eating right again (and tracking what I eat) and get to the gym at least a couple of times per week for a class (water zumba just started!), I will be fine. It’s all about being aware of what is going in to my body and getting in some exercise.

Other than that, I just need to chain myself to my computer so I can dissertate…every now and then coming up for air in the form of a social life.

I’ll still be around the blogosphere….I just won’t be contributing posts to it anytime soon.

Once I defend, though, look out!

I can get back to a real life where I have hobbies and interests and time that isn’t completely taken over by feelings of guilt that I’m not working on my dissertation.

Until then, be healthy

Climbing Everest ~Rachel

Lori over at Finding Radiance was just at Disney with her husband and is sharing her experiences and photos with all of us. She recently blogged about Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom. While that coaster was not their favorite, Dave and I LOVED it! We actually went back to Animal Kingdom on our last morning, just to ride Everest before heading over to Epcot. Unfortunately, the ride wasn’t operational so we headed over to Epcot. We were disappointed but we did get to ride it 3 times in a row on a previous day. Anyways, I figured I would share a couple of pictures of us on Expedition Everest…we knew where the camera was and tried to ham it up when they snapped the photo:

High Five!

Rock on!

Right now, I feel like I’m climbing Everest…and base camp is still in my view. I think I maybe need to change my point of view so the summit is in view and base camp is far behind me. Between weight loss and the dissertation, I have a helluva climb ahead of me. I have the plans in place…executing them is a little tough. I’m still getting the hang of putting work aside after 10 hours per week so that I can focus solely on my dissertation. The OCD researcher in me is uncomfortable doing that. I’ve already had people respond to my auto-response to ask, with lots of sarcasm because it doesn’t work for them, how it’s working out…my auto response says I am checking email once per day and will respond within 3 business days. I definitely need to stick to that a little bit better! Right now, my email is always up…I tend to see all the emails I get, get overwhelmed and then ignore them for too long. Anyways, I’m going to work on my system this week!

Weight loss has been mostly easy lately. I was down 0.6lbs at weigh-in this week.

After that though? Good grief, I’ve been eating everything in sight since Thursday. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I think you know what is coming but still…

So, this week, I’m going to do 2 things:

(1) Actually keep my email closed except for one two-hour period of time per day

(2) Stop the eating frenzy and get back to tracking everything.

I hope you all have a wonderful Super Bowl Sunday! I hate the Patriots so I’ll be rooting for the Giants!

Crock Pot Asian Pork with Mushrooms ~ Rachel

Have you all discovered the blog Skinnytaste yet? Gina hasn’t let me down yet with her recipes. The latest recipe that I tried is a definite keeper. Dave loved it so much that he was enthusiastic about eating leftovers. We had this for dinner one night…and he made tacos out of it the next day for lunch…and we finished it up at dinner that next day. I would say that’s a pretty good endorsement!

Rather than retype the entire recipe, I’ll just repost Gina’s picture with this link to her recipe. You will not be disappointed, I promise!

Homemade Applesauce ~ Rachel

Apples are in season right now in NC…not for much longer, but they are in season for several months in the late fall/early winter. I wanted to try my hand at making applesauce in the crock pot. I asked Lindsay at Savory Spice Shop how to do it. It’s a lot simpler than you could imagine. The pictures below are just grabbed from random places on the interwebs…every time I make applesauce, I forget to take pictures while I’m doing it.

Step 1: Buy some apples. I usually buy a 1/2 peck in order to fill my crock pot!

Step 2: Peel your apples. I use a paring knife to do this but I suppose you could use a potato peeler.

Step 3: Cut your apple into big chunks and throw them in the crock pot, dumping a bunch of cinnamon on top. You'll want to fill your crock pot to the top!

Step 4: Pour a little water over top of the apples...enough to cover the bottom of the crock pot (maybe about 1/2 cup). Cover crock pot and cook on low for 2.5-3 hours.

Step 5. Mash cooked apples in the crock pot after cooking...I like to use a potato masher.

Step 6. Enjoy your homemade applesauce.

Notice that your applesauce contains only apples, cinnamon and teeny tiny bit of water. No added sugar. You won’t need it, I promise.

So far I’ve made applesauce out of old timey wine sap apples, rustic red apples, and pink ladies. There are probably other varieties that I am forgetting. Try whatever you want!

You will never buy applesauce at the store again.

Now I have to figure out what to do when apples are no longer in season in NC. It’s going to be a lot more expensive to buy organic apples at the store. After all, a 1/2 peck of in-season apples in NC is only about $5!

If you come up with anything special to do to your applesauce, let me know!

Stress ~Rachel

I had a really horrific week last week due to unnecessary chaos surrounding my job and dissertation. I met with the chair of my dissertation committee to talk about everything…he, of course, was awesome and supportive and helpful. We decided on a timeline with lots of intermediate deliverables. That kind of structure and accountability, in general, will help me be successful. It will also help him enforce the fact that I’m a student first. When I emailed the plan to everyone, it wasn’t really received as well as I would have hoped. Only one person actually agreed to it…I haven’t heard from anyone else. I also had someone tell me he/she worked 70 hours per week in the last year of grad school to get everything done and that I should be putting a lot of time into my dissertation. Well, yes, I agree…but when you are donating a lot of time to a job, it’s tough to do that.

Let me tell you all something. I’m not willing to work 15 hours/week for my job plus 70 hours/week on my dissertation. I have a husband…and 2 dogs…and my health to worry about. I need to sleep…around 7-8 hours per night. I need to eat healthy…that means meal planning grocery shopping, prepping meals and cooking. I need to exercise…that means spending some time at the gym. I need to have down time…that means reading for fun, seeing friends and family, and watching tv. I need to be a wife to Dave…that means actually communicating with him, instead of only having conversations with my computer screen.

My plan is to defend in early/mid September at the latest. If I can under promise and over deliver, I’ll be happy. So will everyone else for that matter. After all, the best dissertation is a done dissertation.

Anyways, the stress didn’t end there. My work laptop went kaplooey right before a seminar on Tuesday. I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon waiting for the IT guys to fix it but they were understaffed and couldn’t get to it. So I handed it over to them and left for the day around 3:30pm. I’ll pick it on Tuesday. However, in order for me to do my job and my dissertation, I needed to have my statistical software up and running on a laptop. So instead of selling the refurbished replacement laptop Dell just sent me for my other laptop that died (that happened in mid-December), Dave got it up and running with everything I need. Looks like I’ll be holding on to that laptop until my dissertation is done. Just in case.

The stress didn’t end there either! Let’s just say that the unnecessary chaos continued with my job. There was a lot of me yelling this week. Dave didn’t quite know what to do with me.

I’ve decided to set my boundaries and stick to them. I’ve decided to stop emailing with the people who make my life a living hell. I’ll email what I have to and let them dig their own holes because they don’t pay attention to things. My dissertation chair told me to stop the codependent relationship with my job and the people I work for. I am going to do just that!

So this weekend I enjoyed a night with friends playing A Game of Thrones card game, an evening with Dave and his Mom at the restaurant where we held our rehearsal dinner, and I took care of my emails so that I didn’t feel completely overwhelmed when I turned on my computer.

It’s time I get things under control and take back my life.

And since this is mostly a weight loss blog, let me end this whiny post with this: Even with the obscene amount of stress I dealt with this week, I still ate healthy, counted all my points (and stayed within what I was allowed to eat), and tracked everything. That includes dinner out from my now favorite restaurant…cracklin’ pork shank, blue cheese grits, sauteed spinach, pear brown betty and a piece of fudge. It was the best pork I’ve ever had in my life. That pear brown betty was pretty awesome too. And it didn’t even break the points bank because I had saved so many of my weeklies.

Weigh in was Thursday morning…I was down 1.2lbs.

We’ll see what this Thursday brings

Cupcakes for Dinner ~Rachel

I don’t know who started the trend of cooking everything in muffin tins but I want to thank them profusely.  I’ve made Weight Watcher’s Mini Meatloaf Muffins before…lots of times…and have enjoyed both the food and the built-in portion control. Let’s face it: I didn’t get fat by eating reasonably-sized portions.

I love to cook but I’m not really creative in the kitchen. I can follow a recipe but I haven’t branched out much further than that. There is, however, someone who took the muffin tin idea and ran with it.  For those of you who don’t like to cook…or who don’t have much time to cook…or who have picky eaters at home who would rather eat wings and burgers than salad and veggies…I bring you Emily Bites.

Just like Tuesdays have become Taco Tuesday, I think Thursdays are becoming “Cupcake” Thursdays.

Last Thursday I made her Buffalo Chicken Cupcakes. They. Were. Awesome.

Buffalo Chicken Cupcakes @ Emily Bites Original

Last night I made her Cheeseburger Cupcakes. They were pretty awesome as well but I think I’ll make some modifications next week when I make them again. Oddly enough, Dave and I thought the mushrooms were too much. I say this is odd because we’ve never met a recipe that had too many mushrooms in it. If I had a cooking motto it would be “You can never have too much garlic or too many mushrooms.” Anyways, when I make these again next week (yes, on Thursday), I’m going to cut the mushrooms in half, replace the ketchup and mustard with BBQ sauce and add a little bit of bacon (to replace some of those mushrooms). I might also use Laughing Cow Swiss Cheese wedges instead of the Queso wedges. The possibilities are endless!

Emily also does breakfast cupcakes…I can vouch for the Banana Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Singles!

Now, to make all these muffins you need a good muffin tin! I don’t normally do this but I’d like to recommend a particular muffin tin. Would you believe Rachael Ray’s Oven Lovin’ Muffin Pan has served me better than any other muffin tin I’ve owned (especially the Calphalon one)? I’m not very good about not using metal utensils on non-stick surfaces and this muffin pan has been quite forgiving. It really does not scratch easily. The Calphalon? I looked at it the wrong way and it scratched (I think this is odd because I love my Calphalon pots and pans).  Ok, PSA on muffin pans over and out.

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Marsial over at Eyes of the Sun: Musing and Losing was tagged by someone, had to answer a bunch of questions and tag some of her fellow bloggers to do the same thing. Well, Marsial tagged me. The questions are not easy to answer without a lot of time and effort (and I am a bit short on time due to a meeting with my dissertation chair on Monday) so I will leave you with answers to a couple of the questions:

Q: Which author do you admire so much that you have read more than one of his/her books

A: John Irving: A Prayer for Owen Meany is my favorite book of all time and I actually keep an eye out in the news for when a new Irving book will be published (next new one is due out in May)! I don’t think there is any other author I “track.” I don’t know if I so much admire John Irving or just admire his talent.  His stories are pretty epic!

Q: Describe how you met your spouse/significant other/love of your life (even if you are no longer with that person). 

A: I don’t think I’ve ever told the story of how Dave and I met. We met on Myspace of all places. Yes, MYSPACE. After we met, we both posted a note on Myspace about how we met (from our own perspective), kind of a he said/she said thing. Here’s what I wrote (Sorry it’s long, but I promise it’s a good story):

A lot of you know that I’ve tried the online dating thing off and on for the past 3 years or so. You name it, I tried it…eHarmony (twice), Match, and Yahoo. This past spring break, I even tried my luck with Craigslist. Yep, you too can find a date and a used couch by barely lifting your clicker finger. For the most part, I met nice enough guys, and even dated one for a little while. I also met my fair share of total lunatics (Craigslist is their home apparently), but that’s a whole other post that’s not even worthy of my time.

Anyways…

I still had a profile on Yahoo, but it was inactive and invisible to anyone on Yahoo who was searching for women in my age group. But Yahoo would still send me weekly-ish “These are your latest matches” emails and every now and then I would get curious and just browse. On April 16th, a Monday, I happened to browse my latest matches and stumbled upon one that actually sparked my interest. He had this huge smile that drew me in to the rest of the profile where I learned that despite a certain level of corniness (he did, after all, quote a Rupert Holmes song…groan), he was pretty funny. And for those who know me, I really like funny. He also seemed like he had a big heart, was open-minded and easy-going, and was kind. Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the position to subscribe to Yahoo (these things get expensive). I wasn’t going to get to break the ice with this cute guy who had grabbed my attention.

Except…

The very next morning, I had a message in my MySpace inbox from HIM! It was about 8 something in the morning, I wasn’t fully awake yet, and I about fell right out of my chair. I swear the Twilight Zone theme song was playing softly in the background. I think I did my best to resist thinking about “fate” and “destiny” but those words were creeping into the forefront of my mind. I mean, what were the odds of this happening? They were totally independent events…which is always fun to explain to people b/c they somehow think Dave could see that I checked out his profile on Yahoo (he couldn’t). When people realize that we just happened upon one another at the same time in unrelated cyber territory, their eyes get real wide and then they smile.

Anyways…

Not only had he sent me a message, the subject line was “Not the same without Cowher.” He was a Steelers fan! I didn’t want to reply immediately and had to get to school, so I think I replied sometime in the early afternoon. We spent a couple of emails back and forth that day and then began talking on AIM that evening. I had mentioned in one of my emails that I wanted to see Grindhouse…he echoed that sentiment. When we were IM’ing, I decided to just ask him if he wanted to meet up that weekend to see it together. I usually do not suggest meeting up so quickly, or even at all…I usually let the guy make that move. But I didn’t really know where it would all lead and knew I was sick of the whole back-and-forth emailing that came with meeting guys online. We exchanged numbers and ended up talking for 3 hours that night. Our little meeting up for a movie quickly turned into a real date when we realized that there was a lot of chemistry between us. He was all shy about asking me to dinner beforehand…it was really adorable. We ended up talking every night that week for about 3 hours a night. We never wanted to get off the phone, we never ran out of things to talk about, and we talked about the heavy stuff and felt totally comfortable doing so. There was no way that the first date was going to end poorly.

And of course, it didn’t…

***********

We met on our first date on April 21, 2007. We went to see Grindhouse (a B-movie double feature full of zombies and blood and machine guns for legs) at North Hills cinema and then out to dinner at 518 West (contemporary Italian food) in downtown Raleigh. After dinner we went to the Raleigh’s Little Theatre Rose Garden and had a wonderful time. That was just the beginning of a new life together…

***********

Interesting fact: We lived closer to each other in Pittsburgh growing up (Mt. Oliver and Penn Hills) than we did here in Raleigh/Chapel Hill when we met!

And if you’ve lasted this long, here’s a picture of us very early on in our relationship. I think it might have been taken at his mother’s on the day I met her for the first time!

I’m Going Down, Down, Down, Down ~ Rachel

That blog post title is in reference to a Bruce Springsteen song from his Born in the USA album. Bruce has a new single that dropped today and his new album comes out in early March so I’m quite excited. My mother raised me on Bruce. I was not your typical kid in the 80′s…there was no Michael Jackson or Madonna…just lots of Bruce, some new wave and a lot of oldies & classic rock (that part was from Dad). And that’s the music I still prefer to this day! I’ve seen Bruce with the E Street Band 3 times and it was worth every single penny every single time. Bruce is one of the few musicians that I would spend triple digits on for a concert ticket!

Here’s a picture of me and my Mom dancing to Bruce at the wedding. It was sort of a mother-daughter dance because I made sure to drag her on to the dance floor.

Photo by Stephanie Spencer Photography

 

Anyways…the whole reason for this post was to let you all know I was down 2.4lbs at weigh-in this morning. So, yes, I’m going down, down, down, down! I’ll post some recipes very soon, I promise!

And on a more serious note…if you’re the praying kind, send some prayers up for Biz’s husband Tony…poor guy can’t catch a break and is back in the hospital. Hopefully, this will be his last hospital stay in 2012!

 

You Take the Good, You Take the Bad…~Rachel

You take them both and there you have: The Facts of Life!

It’s been a wacky few days full of highs and lows. Here’s what’s been going on:

Bad: My Dell Studio 15 laptop has a design flaw that causes it to overheat…it eventually fried the processor and the hard drive…and I’m 4 months past warranty. I’ve been fighting with Dell since mid-December. I will never ever buy from Dell again. Their customer service disservice has now topped Time Warner Cable and Verizon Wireless on my list…and that is saying a lot!

Good: I bought a new 21″ iMac which is so very pretty and lovely to use. I’m trying to switch everything over and relearn stuff from my previous Mac experience. But all in all, it’s soooo worth it!

Bad: That knee injury has apparently not resolved itself like I thought it did. It has been feeling better each day since last Saturday when it was at its worst. I iced, I rested, I stayed away from exercise involving the lower body. It seemed fine. I did 20 minutes on the elliptical today and it felt fine. I followed that with 10 minutes on the stationary bike and it felt less fine. This evening, it’s swollen again and throbbing a little bit. Crap.

Good: I had personal training sessions with Isaiah twice this week, each time focusing only on the upper body. And while Thursday’s workout kicked my butt (boy oh boy did I WHINE), I’m not nearly as sore as I anticipated and I actually feel like I accomplished something in the session. But don’t tell Isaiah. He already likes to give me smug smiles as he’s kicking my butt.

Bad: I had bought a Groupon for a shellac manicure (Never done one? They. Are. Awesome.) and had a 1pm appointment yesterday. I showed up 20 minutes early in case they wanted me to soak my already shellac-ed nails. The only person working was doing hair. She couldn’t track down the manicurist. She called twice and finally, around 12:55pm, LEFT to go get lunch. Yep, I was left alone in a salon with another customer (who had her head under a dryer) while the ONE employee left the building for lunch. At 1:15pm, when nobody had shown up, I left. Boy was I pissed. I REALLY hate people who are late and people who don’t show up. I called Groupon from the call so they could issue me a refund. They did, without so much as an apology, but whatever. When I got home, I sent a message online to the nail person and said I was issued a refund and I would be reviewing her “business” online at various websites.

Good: The nail salon owner emailed me today to apologize. Apparently, they didn’t have my appointment in the book. Even though I was issued a refund, she offered me a complimentary shellac manicure. I sent her my phone number and we’ll see what happens. Mistakes happen and I will give her a second chance. I haven’t posted my review of her business online…yet.

It really does last!

But in the middle of all these “first-world problems,” I was down 8.2lbs at weigh in yesterday morning, I’m still faithfully tracking all my food, and I’m still not drinking pop!

Oh by the way….that dark chocolate caramel with black sea salt candy bar that has its own Facebook page? I finally ate it…half yesterday and half today…and it is good enough to have its own Facebook page. And that is not an exaggeration. Each half of the chocolate bar cost me 6 points plus. It was worth every single one of them.

Have a good weekend everyone! I’ll have some great recipes for you next week!

When You Work the Plan… ~ Rachel

…the plan works.

I worked the plan this week. I tracked everything. I stuck to my points. I managed one session with my personal trainer before dealing with a knee injury and a back sprain.

I was down this morning at weigh in.

I was down 8.2lbs to be exact.*

Boo-yah!

I went from my meeting to another session with Isaiah. I told him to stay away from my knee and lower back. You know what that meant? He absolutely destroyed my arms. I will be cursing his name tomorrow. Hell…I’m already cursing it. As I am typing, my arms are shaking!

I hope I can hold my arms in position for my manicure later!

 

*Last week’s weigh in did involve me wearing jeans rather than workout pants like this morning, but my jeans don’t weight 8.2 lbs.

LCL ~Rachel

If you’ve been following me for any period of time, you know that I am a bit of a klutz. I just fall. It just happens. I roll my eyes and get over it because most of the time, I’m not injured.

Last week (Wed or Thurs) my ankle rolled and I hit the floor. I walked it off but knew my knee was a little more sore than normal. My inner knee, where I have a plica that is prone to inflammation, was a bit cranky but after about a day, it was fine. Fast forward to Saturday night when my knee began to throb in pain. It was bad. It was distracting and it definitely hurt. Except the pain was on the outside of the knee. Weird. Anyways, I iced it a few times on Sunday, popped a bunch of ibuprofen, and told Doc about it on Monday morning. He was perplexed about the 2-3 day delay in pain after my fall. Then again, I’m not normal so who knows what happened. He poked around and said I have a mild LCL sprain and to rest it (and ice it) for a week. That meant no cardio except the recumbent bike. BOO! I was actually gonna get back on the elliptical after that appointment.

So I hopped on the recumbent bike for 10 minutes before my training session with Isaiah. I did not enjoy those 10 minutes. I was uncomfortable, my knee hurt and I didn’t feel like I was actually doing anything (except bothering my knee). I decided to just skip cardio for the week and do strength training. Isaiah stuck to an upper body workout. Only problem is that I pulled a muscle in my lower back doing chops with the pulleys.

So I’m a hot mess right now. My knee is feeling better and almost back to normal (I think). My lower back is not. I see Isaiah again tomorrow and will tell him to stay away from lower body and lower back. I have a feeling I’m going to have some tired arms tomorrow! On Friday I plan on easing back into some cardio to see how the knee feels. Let’s hope for the best.

In the meantime, I’m going to try and not hurt myself again