Yup, there’s been a lot going on in the past few weeks and I am SOOOO tired.

I moved in with Brandon this weekend. Spent all last week packing up my apartment after work. Brandon would come over and grab a few boxes each night and move them over. Then Saturday we had movers come to get the large things. I have many large items it seems… Is this more than most?:

• sectional couch
• futon
• queen size bed
• 2 book shelves
• 3 dressers
• glass entertainment center
• computer desk

It never seems like that much but it took them 2 hours to get it all down to the truck and another hour to unload it all. Whatever tho, it was worth the money and also worth us not breaking our own backs! We still need to unpack and such.

The garage is currently packed with stuff so neither of us can park in it. Brandon did get these awesome surfboard racks tho that hang the boards on the wall to clear up some space. Those look really awesome mounted! So we’ll slowly unpack over the next week or so. I still need to clean the old place but I’m hoping to get the majority of that done tonight. I need to turn the keys in by Wednesday anyways.

Now, hopefully Brandon won’t get transferred anywhere immediately.

Running still sucks. I hate it. I dread attempting it today as I’m still tired and sore but I only ran once last week. Cycling however is going swimmingly! I get faster each time and this coming Saturday I’ll try one of the longer rides with one of the local cycling clubs. I’m excited for that, those are pretty enjoyable.

Then in 2 weeks I go home and visit my parents for roughly 10 days! I’m stoked for that as I haven’t been home in a LONG time.

And when I get back… I want to BAKE! I’ve not done that in forever since it’s generally a weekend thing and I was rarely hanging out at my place on the weekends. Cakes incoming!

Ya, I had one and it was gud.

It’s been slightly hectic since my last post. Work has picked up some, I’m running still, I bought a bike, and I’m moving in with Brandon next month if nothing catastrophic happens with his job.

Running

It’s been going pretty good. It will always be hard for me and I’ve come to accept that. Monday I had the fastest run yet for my 4.15 mile lunch route. Wednesday I accomplished my fastest mile pace but turned around after 1.5 miles and walked back because my legs were sore and I was mentally having a rough day from the start. I blame the sore legs on the new bike, which I’ll talk about next. I also purchased a new pair of running shoes so they might have been causing some aches. RoadRunner sent me a mailing saying Nike was discontinuing the shoe that I’ve been buying so I went and got another pair before they’re gone. The inserts I get tho have already been moved to a new model and are slightly uncomfortable. I’m giving them some time to see if I get used to them or not. But for today I brought in my old shoes because I know nothing hurts with them on.

Biking

Check it out!

It’s awesome. Did I spend more than I wanted? Hell yes… Am I currently regretting it?… Newp. God, these things are expensive. I had no idea. When I bought my mountain bike I got it for $700. It’s decent enough, I saw them go all the way up to like $4000. Road bikes go up to like $8000, that’s like a third of the price of my Jeep!

Everyone I chatted with who bikes said shell out a bit more now and I’ll be happy with it for much longer. So it’s a carbon frame which is so light compared to my mountain bike. I can easily lift the entire bike into the back of my Jeep. I made sure to get the 105 components. There were a few other component names mentioned that were better but then the bikes started to get into the $3500 range. So I got the bottom end of the good bikes from what I understand.

I rode it 6 miles on Tuesday during lunch. My butt still hurts… as well as my legs are very achy in various places which is why I think I failed on my Wednesday run. I got 10 miles out of it yesterday in the same amount of time since I’m starting to get more comfortable with it. It’s way different than my Huffy from when I was a kid!

There are some bike groups that ride on the weekends that I’m going to start going with. That has always looked fun to me and they are free and have a wide range of experience. Unfortunately, the weather has been pissing on San Diego on the weekends. I believe this Saturday is no different looking at the forecast. There is a Sunday group but I think they may be slightly too advanced for me so I may just wait until next weekend to try the group stuff.

The lunch path I’ve been doing is pretty neat and off any areas with motor vehicles. I’m too scared to go on the street until I manage a few rides with those groups. The lunch path tho is long with some hills that make me put forth effort. They even pass some wildlife! I’ve seen a snake, a rabbit (not the fluffy bunny kind), and a chipmunk! I’ve also slaughtered many caterpillars. I apologize every time I notice if I hit one. Not that it cares at that point but still… trying to keep the karma good.

Moving

Looking forward to moving. Hopefully everything goes according to the plan I don’t have. Brandon is kinda in flux at the moment at work. I’ve already given my notice to my apartment tho and I have to be out by the 31st. Stuff like this is why I apologize to the flattened caterpillars. See? Karma. I should be on the good karma list right now and hence I know this is going to work out well and I will have a place to live come April 1st…

Oh and then this is what happens when boys bake.

Giant jars of marshmallow fluff gravitate towards their mouths.

And when they can’t reach the bottom?

But real work was done too! See!?

Ya, he’s pretty cool still.

I love long weekends. We don’t get enough of them in the year. This long weekend also happened to be over Valentin’s Day.

Friday night was pretty chill. Brandon’s roommate made enchiladas so we ate, drank, watched movies, then crashed.

Saturday Brandon went surfing and I took some pretty lousy pictures. I think I was messing with some HDR stuff earlier and I think I messed up my white balance. That’s totally fixable in post but the shots themselves weren’t anything worth mentioning unfortunately anyways. Later we went and saw The Wolfman. I personally didn’t care for it but Brandon liked it. I prefer more stylized werewolfs like in Underworld or Twilight: New Moon. We’ve been having bad luck seeing good movies lately!

Sunday we decided to head up to Santa Barbara on a whim. We drove up the coast and stopped a few times along the way to check out waves and such.

In front of a biker type hangout. LOUD!!!

You know, I got that awesome Samsung camera that has a display on the front so you can take pictures of yourself easier. It proved difficult tho when you bf towers over you. I wouldn’t change that for the world tho.

I like this picture a lot. Except for the bird shit all over the rock!

It was an awesome but long drive. We left about 11am and got there around 7pm. Unfortunately there was some sort of convention there and that topped with it being Valentine’s Day made it impossible to find a room there. So we ended up grabbing a nice dinner and head back south a bit so find a place to stay.

Sunday we headed back and decided to take the freeway for a shorter trip. So much driving is TIRING and our butts were numb from sitting! We took a small detour though and drove around Hollywood and Beverly Hills. Definitely glad I don’t live there. It looks miserable and not worth the money.

San Diego is the best!

Surprisingly I didn’t completely blow it in the food department. It wasn’t the healthiest by any means but when I tallied up the numbers this morning I stopped feeling so guilty. So the weekly health and fitness recap looks like:

I didn’t get as much workout in as I would have liked but between feeling like shit Thursday and a long weekend where we were out of town for two days I’m happy.

No workout Monday either obviously so I’ll try and make that up the rest of the week and I’m sure this weekend we’ll so something active. I bought a Camelbak and I’m really excited to use it! I got it for $40 at Sport Chalet since it was the 2009 model. Can’t beat that!

Awesomest Valentine’s Day weekend ever.

Time to work I guess.

Another weekend comes to an end.

Recap as follows:

Friday night I took Brandon out to dinner to celebrate his promotional awesomeness of Captain. I’m sure I’ve mentioned that a few times already, hehe. But now I have pictures!

I really like this picture of us.

The wine was good…

Really good!

Brandon eying the foodage. He got Blue Crab Crusted Mahi Mahi, which are hiding behind my Crab Cakes.

This thing was in fire when I took the picture! Wish the blue flame came out.

Saturday is kind of a blur for some reason and Friday night really wasn’t that crazy to induce memory loss… We pretty much just chilled, rented a movie, and made yummy chicken quesadilla’s for dinner. And a bit more wine.

Sunday was pecan pancakes and the Superbowl! Go Saints?! Ya, go SAINTS! OK, so I only cheer for them because they are Brandon’s team. But that’s one of the best reasons I can think of.

This week I changed around my diet some. I increased calories at the advice of some people and I also tried to reduce my carbs to be about 50% rather than the almost 60% they were before. Even with some of the bad eating over the weekend there was nothing horrible number wise. Workouts were good too except I didn’t get something in over the weekend like I wanted.

This week I’ll be sure to be a little better with it.

So that was all the fun and good, but I guess it can’t always be like that… Isn’t it amazing how we can be such punks to the ones we love at times? I was totally this at a few points in the weekend. I hate that. It bums me out. Everyone does it here and there I suppose. I’ll assume the most important thing however is making it a rarity. So I’m not gonna sit here and make excuses why I acted (or at least think I acted) that way but I will be sure to keep myself in check and not let small things make me snap at the people I care more than anything about. I’m 99% happy right now and I want to keep it that way.

Oh well. So now I’m just finishing up some laundry and preparing myself for the work week ahead. Light of the end of this weeks tunnel is a 3 day weekend however!!! I love 3 day weekends!

So that’s the name of their large ice cream anyways. But have you tried this?!

If not, you must go grab yourself a Coldstone Ice Cream Cookie Sandwich! It is AWESOME!

Funny that this post comes right after the post where I was wondering if I should sign up for a gym? HAHA.

But this is how amazing Brandon is. Showing up announced at my place at 7:30pm bearing creamy ice cream between soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies. It was the perfect-ist little surprise ever.

There are 2 more awaiting their fate in the freezer but they’ll at least survive until the weekend.

Just roughly 32 hours ’til the WEEKEND! Friday night I am taking Brandon to dinner to celebrate captain-hood. We’re going here:

to eat:

It has some great reviews on Yelp. I’m pretty sure we are going to have a great time! I can’t wait!

Since this post seems to predominantly be about food here’s an interesting thing I noticed the other night… Every time I cook some form of turkey, last night was a turkey burger, the tortoise wakes from his deep slumber and sits in his dark habitat looking out at me. Doesn’t do it with salmon or the jambalaya I made the other night. It’s happened 3 times now though with turkey burgers and turkey meatloaf.

What does this mean? He’s a herbivore. Nevertheless, it’s pretty cute. He’s all curious about what’s going on so I give him some more of his food and then he goes back to sleep. He’s not getting my turkey damn it.

And now for the last thing about food. Tonight I’m making a yummy Maple Salmon for dinner as my attempt to get fish in my diet at least twice a week. I actually remembered to take it out of the freezer before I left for work.

Things are good!

It’s now Tuesday and I’m still tired from this weekend. This is going to make for a long week!

Friday night we went out and saw Legion… The Angels Gone Bad movie. How much can you really expect from something like that? Not much. But the angels had black wings and were covered in tattoos, my kind of people! I have black wings and also sport a few tats.

Saturday we went to Julian for a hike. That was awesome! Took about 90 minutes to drive there. Dirt roads and everything! It was a 3 mile trek down the mountain to this awesome waterfall where we chilled out for a bit and had lunch. Took a few pictures.

Then the 3 mile trek back up! It wasn’t too rough getting back up, we were passing up everyone else making the ascent. Brandon could probably go much faster even than we were but I’m slower.

I used RunKeeper on our little adventure. The times weren’t quite that long since we stopped to take pictures along the way a few times. You can check out the journey map even!

That was pretty exhausting. We had plans to go out later that evening but we were pooped! So we chilled out the rest of the night.

Sunday we were still rather tired so we didn’t do anything too adventurous. We headed off to Seaport Village for a few hours to look around. I had never been there. It’s cute! We grabbed lunch then ate some awesome fudge from a candy store. Then Brandon made some new friends.

And that was that for Sunday!

Unfortunately I woke up at 1:30am with a horrible tummy ache and wasn’t able to get back to sleep until 3:30am… Only to be awoken by a small earthquake at 6:20am. Good morning Monday. So I guess that’s why I’m still tired!

Last thing, Brandon made Captain yesterday! How awesome is that?!

My body is so tired today. I just want to go home and veg on the couch, but I won’t.

Since yesterdays walk wasn’t going to happen I ended up running stairs for 15 minutes to replace it. Man that’s tedious. I did that after work and the followed that with my little crossfit type workout, which in hindsight was a bad idea. Or well not a bad idea, but I was pewped. I only made it through 5 of the 7 rounds I was trying for. Definitely much nicer doing my main cardio at lunch.

At least today is supposed to be nice out… or well, not raining. So I’ll get to do things in the order I like.

Today is also Golden Spoon say. I’ve cut that down to only Wednesdays. That was starting to get to be an expensive Starbucks-like habit. And with that out of my life it got me into that range of 50/30/20 I was trying to get in my diet breakdown. I’m curious to see what that changes. I must need more going on in my life if this is how I amuse myself…

I went over to Brandon’s last night to watch The Biggest Loser. I’m losing interest fast in this season, these people are just not as fun to watch as in the past. I dunno what’s different. The highlight was Jillian telling that one girl she was flat out lying to her. As much as I say I dislike Jillian, I did get a kick out of her last night. And I learned that you put an apple in shallow water, cover it, and microwave it for 3 minutes for a nice dessert-like snack! That was amusing, the minute they had that “trainer tip” we were all go “GO TRY IT!”. I wonder how many other people were microwaving apples at the same time, haha.

Tomorrow I’m probably going to end the life of one of my field recorders trying to record some vehicle sounds. Not quite sure how that’s going to go but I’m looking forward to getting out of the office for a day. I’m starting to go insane sitting in my padded room all day with limited human interaction! I think I’m going to make a point to get out once every other week and record stuff. I guess one can never have too much source audio.

Wow, I wish I were in bed right now…

I love that feeling. You’re stumped trying to figure something out for a significant amount of time and then at some random point, sometimes not even thinking about said issue, it dawns on you. And everything makes sense. And I had one of those moments last night. So, hooray!

My lunch walk today is in jeopardy, not sure when to get it in since we have an “all hands meeting” at 11am at work and at 12pm I have an appointment at Fidelity to make me rich.

Yesterday I did a neat circuit when I got home. Eight rounds of 4 different exercises and I was surprised how much it kicked my ass. That was a nice feeling. It was mostly stomach and cardio. Stomach is the only thing that I rarely get sore from. That frustrates me because I equate sore with doing it right and getting stronger… But I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong! So who knows.

Here is my big problem with doing two workouts in a day. I run out of sports bras… I have 4 pairs of shorts that I’ll walk in and I have several other random types of bottoms to use in the evening… But I own just 4 sports bras. So basically I have do to laundry every other day. That began to frustrate me so I started just hanging the sports bra after my walk to air dry and use it again in the evening! Ya, that kind of sucks too imho. So the appropriate solution would perhaps be to purchase more sports bras. Too bad they always seems to be one of those most expensive items when it comes to fitness clothes. $30-$40 or more depending on brands. Ya you can grab some for cheaper but there is such a quality difference between some off brand and say Nike or Adidas. And forget Lululemon. The day I pay $60 for a sports bra is the day I’ve lost it and might as well suicide. Oh well, I guess it’s the same reason why bikinis are around $70. Stupid.

Oh well, I guess my current method isn’t so horrid. I knew guys in jiu jitsu who’d roll in the morning, air dry their stuff, and use it the same afternoon. At least with my scenario it’s contained to just my sweat. They had like 5 other dude’s grossness fermenting for hours before they put that stuff back on. See, gotta look at the bright side to everything!

Tuck was in an odd mood last night. I often wonder why goes through his little brain. Generally he goes to bed around 3-4pm and sleeps through the night. Last night as I’m watching TV and eating dinner I hear some frantic digging sounds and next thing I know there is a tortoise up and about starting at me in the dark. He crawled up on his half log, paced a few times, sat in his food bowl, ate a little fresh food I gave him, then went back to bed after staring at his log for about 5 minutes. Tortoise nightmare?

Oh and last thing. I signed up for a photography course at UCSD. It doesn’t start until April unfortunately but I am definitely looking forward to it. Now I’m debating if I want to hold off getting a 7D or if I should just bite the bullet and do it. I’m going to want it even more after the class anyways, haha.

…tell the damn bagging person at the grocery store to take 5 so I can bag my own groceries? I mean really… Is it that hard to bag things efficiently?

When I put stuff on the conveyor belt I put it in the order I want bagged. That should make it an easier task. All I ask for at that point is put the heavier and boxed things on the bottom and the light and fragile things at the top. I bring all my own bags. It’s all laid out for them to do their “thing”. Yet it never happens! Stuff just gets chucked into random bags, bread is squished, fruit and vegetables are crushed, it pisses me off to no end.

Yup, next time I’m just going to do it myself.

This weekend flew by and it makes me sad. Right now I’m sitting here watching the Saints vs. Vikings. I’m cheering for the Saints only because Brandon likes the.

I can barely even remember what went on this weekend… Friday night we went out and grabbed some food and then just chilled. I got my new compact flash card so I formatted it and dorked around with my camera while Brandon read. Here is the only decent shot I took all weekend and I took it with my telephoto from 4.5 feet away so I had to manually focus it so it’s got issues. But it’s just too awesome.

Saturday we took my Jeep down to the dealer for some stuff. Got a yummy breakfast and then went and look for some waves. We drove around for quite some time looking for a good spot. Nearly everywhere was vacant due to pollution. Eventually Brandon settled on trying Tourmaline… No one was in the water. There were about 4 people looking and finally someone took the first step in and the others followed. Everyone was back out after 20-30 minutes. It sucked. I never even bothered pulling out the camera.

Sunday we checked out more waves, nothing was appealing. So we went to the Birch Aquarium which I had never been too. It’s a cute little place but no pictures worth uploading. I had a good time though. After we went and looked at more waves and decided it was just too damn cold.

And that was that. Now it’s laundry time and trying to enjoy the last few hours of freedom before the work week creeps on in.

/sigh

Hopefully this week will be nice so I can get back to my lunch walks!