on the beach house

Our Beach House is my happy place. When I drive up to the House I immediately feel all of the tension and worry leave my head, which is a pretty wonderful feeling if you ask me. Walking in? That's like a little piece of heaven. I have no idea what it is about this House that gives it this quality, but it happens every time. Maybe it's the pink furniture in my bed room, or possibly the large fish sculpture thing hanging on the wall that is placed just perfectly so it looks like it's eating the lamp over the kitchen table. Who knows.

We're leaving for the beach at some point today. Some point soon. This departure time kind of hinges on me going to put gas in my brother's car (which will be making the journey). I've been sitting at my computer for an hour instead doing pretty much nothing. Apparently I'm already in beach mode. We still have to get there. Stupid 2 hour drive!

One of the first things I want to do when we get there (besides unpacking, Dad! I promise) is go for a nice, flat run. Our neighborhood here is a bit hilly, which makes for a lot of walking breaks. I would much rather run farther on a flat surface than walk lots of hills! Now don't get me wrong, I try to run the hills...try being the operative word. It's just such a huge expenditure of energy, and when I'm not carrying water with me it makes me too tired to start running again and then my 5k turns into a 3k. No bueno.

So someone ask me if I ran today! Because while at the moment I may be super incredibly excited to run, once I get to the beach house I may feel the relaxation set in so strongly that I won't want to leave. Because I could seriously not leave that house for a week. Beach? What's that? People think I'm crazy, but just visit the House and you'll see what I mean. For serious.

Oh yeah, and I lost the 3lbs I gained last week! Take that, sodium gain!

either someone slipped an invisible brick onto my scale this morning...

...or I really gained 3lbs.

I deserved it. I pretty much did absolutely nothing that resembled a healthy, WW lifestyle this week.

Time to get my head back in this.

just like riding a bicycle...

Yesterday was my first day back at work. It's almost as if I never left, except for a few small changes. Changes like our closing time a couple days out of the week, which may seem minor when the day that changed is Thursday and yesterday was Tuesday, except that when a customer asks what time we close and I give the wrong time I look like an idiot. Changes like the type of plate we use for our calzones, which should be a non-issue since I'm a manager and technically don't have to stock anything, but becomes an issue when I tell people they need to keep up with their sidework, go grab plates myself, and am subsequently told by the pizza cook that no, we don't use those plates anymore. Crap. I'm awesome.

I also noticed how easily I started to slip back into my old eating habits. Remember those habits? The ones that caused me to gain roughly 30lbs in about 6 months? Crostini and croutons have points, people! You can't just snack on them all day and expect to get away with it. Sheesh. But just look at this menu. Who wouldn't gain a bunch of weight working here? The food is just so delicious. nom nom nom.

Yesterday I made myself a small bowl of grapes ("made" is a relative term. It's not like you have to cook grapes), and whenever I felt like eating croutons I had a few grapes. Worked pretty well! I did have some soup, but it's a bean soup and really point-friendly. Yes, I had pizza (*gasp*) yesterday for lunch, but today I had a veggie wrap! Yes, I had it with a side caesar salad, but I put the dressing on the side! It's amazing how little dressing you need when you control how much goes onto your salad. Notice how I said need, not want. I could totally eat like, 5x as much caesar dressing as they give me. I love the stuff. But it's about portion control, right? Who really needs a whole cup of dressing for like, 3 bites of salad? (I kid, I kid.)

Anyway, this time around it'll be different! I can totally control what I eat.

I think I can.

I think I can.

I think I can.

i'm alive, i swear! part 2

The past few days have been ridiculously busy! I flew in on Friday at 4:30pm, had dinner with the fam, slept, and was up the next morning at 7am to go to Baltimore for the weekend. No sleep until about 1am Saturday night, only to be up again around 8 Sunday morning. Lots of people to see, lots of food to eat, lots of fun! Sunday night we had a graduation/birthday party for the brother, which was great. I love that I was able to see pretty much everyone in the span of 2 days! Exhausting, but very efficient. And I'm all about efficiency.

I thought the food situation would be a nightmare since I knew I wouldn't be home at all the first few days, but I'd say I actually did pretty well! I wasn't able to eat my usual 3 meals and a snack or two, but I stayed relatively within my points and didn't just eat a bunch of crap. The party was catered by a fabulous restaurant in the area that does Mediterranean/mostly Greek tapas, and I totally could have eaten my weight in their food. Luckily I hadn't seen any of the people invited in 9 months, and every time I took a bite of food someone would come talk to me. We would chat for 15-20 minutes, in which time I would set my plate down somewhere because who can give a proper hug with only one arm? Once we finished talking I would find my plate, take one bite of food, and be approached by another friend or family member. If that's not the best form of portion control out there, I'm not sure what is! Maybe I should go away more often.

Today I had my first doctor's appointment since I started WW (I was supposed to have one before I left for London but the scheduling didn't work out). She was very pleased with my weight loss to date, and my continued efforts! It was the first doctor's visit I've been to (that I can remember) where I weighed less than I did the previous visit. So I'm pretty pleased with myself! Am I where I wanted to be at this point? Heck no. But I'm definitely a lot closer to my goal than to where I started, and that's pretty darn good.

Tomorrow I start work, wish me luck! I'll be surrounded by my favorite pizza for 6 weeks. I need some strong willpower...

it's almost like iI'm moving or something

My flat hasn't looked this clean since I moved in. And even then, it's probably cleaner than it was the day I moved in. This is quite a feat, considering I hate cleaning. Not all the time, but probably about 98% of the time.

That 2% is comprised of those rare occasions where I start organizing say, my sock drawer, and end up going super massively compulsive and clean my entire room/apt/whatever I'm living in at the time. This typically involves taking clothing out drawer by drawer, unfolding, refolding and returning to each drawer. Then I go around collecting pieces of random paper that I can finally part with after years of not paying attention to (even though at some point, for some reason, I decided I just had to keep that piece of paper). Then I stack things neatly, and dust the remaining free space. Once I'm done, it looks like I've been a neat person the whole time. Generally this lasts a couple days, or until I have another useless piece of paper that I can't part with just yet. This time around, I'm going for a record of 6 weeks!

I guess I'm kind of cheating, since I won't actually be here. Whatever, it's my game so I get to make the rules.

t-24h to flight time!

a haiku

Friday I go home
So excited I can't think
I just want to dance

top o' the mornin' to ya!

Ok, so it's not actually morning. But I feel like if I'm going to post about Dublin, I should be in Irish mode, or something like that. I even had green nails for the trip! Unintentionally, of course. But still. Kind of fun.

So Dublin was great! Getting there was quite an experience, since I didn't necessarily take into account the time we would have to wake up when I booked our 8:10am flight...We were up bright and early at 4am to trek to the airport! Ouch. But we had a seamless morning of travel, which is always nice!


On the bus from the airport to city center. Happy faces!




Oh yeah. Let me introduce you to my brother! Did I mention he was coming to visit? What's that you say? Only about a million times? Oh. Right. Well, that's him!


You know how I love to eat? Well so does Jarrad. You know what Jarrad loves to eat? Bread.


Look at all that bread! He actually went to a cafe in the airport and asked for an entire baguette. They looked at him like he was crazy! Because he is, a little. That one baguette would have made 3 sandwiches, and he ate it all! Ok, I helped a little. It was pretty good bread.



nom nom nom






So once we got into the city, the bread had worn off. We decided to start off our day with a wonderfully nutritious meal...


See? Strawberry-rhubarb tart from the Queen of Tarts cafe! It's got my fruit servings! And there was a dollop of whipped cream on the side, which totally counts as dairy. Right? Yeah...

Regardless, it was delicious!







Jarrad had a chocolate fudge cake, which was pretty delish, too.













After our delicious and nutritious "lunch", we walked around the city for a bit. When we travel, we like to wander and explore and find things while wandering and exploring. No real plans, no real touristy stuff (for the most part), just lots of walking and food. We made two exceptions on this trip: Trinity College and the Guinness Storehouse. The Trinity campus was beautiful! And the Guinness tour was actually really cool. It was self-guided, which made it feel more like a museum exhibit and less like a tourist trap. 5 floors of Guinness history and brewing process, which is interesting in and of itself, but enhanced when you're touring with someone (aka Jarrad) who took beer brewing as a class in college. Jealous much?


Oh and the best part? Each entry ticket comes with a free pint at the Gravity Bar, on the top level of the building with a fantastic view of the city! They even make your beer pretty for you!

How cool is that? They put a shamrock design in your beer! You don't even notice them drawing it, they're that skilled. The coolest part about the shamrock was that we could still see it as the glass was drained! For some reason this was fascinating.






In the spirit of really wanting to go home (and being exhausted from wandering all day), we opted for the simplicity and convenience of NY-style pizza for dinner.

It was fabulous.

Don't worry, we ate plenty of classic Irish food as well! I just don't have pictures. Apparently eating this pizza was far more entertaining to me. I guess that makes sense, since we were eating NY pizza (yes, it's the same Ray's as NYC!) in Ireland.

Awesome.


All in all, a great trip! And if anyone ever goes to Dublin and is looking for a hostel, we stayed at the Four Courts hostel, which was pretty fab!

Ok, I'm tired of writing. And I have to feed my brother. He's on my top bunk and doesn't really feel like getting up. Go figure.

i'm alive, i swear!

First, I had papers due.

Then, my brother came into town.

Then we went to Dublin.

Now we're back in London.

I'm exhausted, and will maybe possibly potentially write more tomorrow.

Happy weekend!