After my trip to Pittsburgh, I came to the realization that I need to get back into at least some semi-regular weight training.

My mother (in her mid-fifties)can lift more than me, people.

So today was the day I was determined to get my weight-lifting butt to the gym.

Breakfast was protein french toast, photographed with my beautiful flowers!

• whole wheat bread
• 1 whole egg, 2 egg whites
• 1 scoop Dymatize butter cream toffee protein powder
• maple syrup and cinnamon

French toast has got to be one of my favorite breakfasts of all time.  I’m not sure why I don’t make it more often!

I also drank half of this Skinny Water that I bought at a convenience store yesterday.

In case you were wondering, it didn’t make me skinnier.

Lunch:

Big salad.  Veggie burger (Eating Well brand from Safeway… those are pretty good!), romaine, broccoli, edamame, cheese, olive oil and vinegar.

Then it was weights time.

I did:

• Chest
• Dumbbell bench press (12x, 10x, 8x, 6x, 12x)
• Back
• Wide grip pull-down (12x, 10x, 8x, 6x, 12x)
• Shoulders
• Overhead dumbbell press (12x, 10x, 8x, 6x, 12x)
• Biceps
• Bicep curl (12x, 10x, 8x, 6x, 12x)
• Triceps
• Tricep push down (12x, 10x, 6x, 6x)
• Overhead tricep press (6x, 6x)

I was wearing my Pittsburgh Half-Marathon shirt, and a guy came up and asked if I was from Pittsburgh.  Turns out he was too – moved here 22 years ago!  I always love meeting people here who are from Pittsburgh.  It’s a nice commonality and always makes me feel good.

When I got home, I had a huge protein shake and 3/4 cup of cottage cheese to protein up and rebuild my muscles.  I don’t even want to think about how sore I am going to be tomorrow… I love it! 

For dinner, I had a healthy mixed plate.  I couldn’t decide which goodies to eat, so I piled them all together.

Dessert was a Promax protein bar.

I am making a commitment now to weight training at least once a week.  That might not sound like much, but for me it really is!  After a month or two, I will boost it up to two days, and go from there.  Of course, I’m not limited to one day a week… I can do more if the mood strikes me!  But I doubt that it will…

Yesterday, a long-awaited package arrived – a new protein powder I bought! 

I usually buy the same few protein powders over and over again, but this time I was feeling crazy and decided to try a new kind.  Butter Cream Toffee sounded delicious!

I wanted to make use of it with breakfast – so I made protein oatmeal. 

• 1/2 cup oats
• 1 scoop protein powder
• 1 cup soy milk

I didn’t add a lot of extras because I really wanted to taste the new protein powder.  It was…. ok.  Not bad, but not amazing like I expected.  I prefer my All the Whey cake batter protein powder.  But I’m hoping this will grow on me as I try it in new things and get used to it. 

That actually happens to me a lot with protein powders – I am iffy about them at first, but then they grow on me.

Has anybody else had this type of protein powder before?  Any suggestions for good recipes or things to try it in?

All morning long I enjoyed having my sliding door open so I could look out onto the patio and see these:

I returned from Pittsburgh to find my whole patio abloom!  My roses bushes are absolutely gorgeous.  I am really appreciative of the flowers and their heartiness, because I’m not exactly a green thumb.  In fact, since I have moved in I have seriously neglected this garden and my rose bushes.  But they just keep on coming back and blooming season after season. 

Flowers make me HAPPY!!! 

S and I made a Trader Joes run to stock up the kitchen again – it was completely empty of anything perishable when I left for (and thus when I returned from) Pittsburgh.  Do you know that S ate ONE MEAL at home while I was gone?  And that one meal was a frozen pizza that he made for himself in the toaster oven.  He ate all his other meals out  for a week and two days.  Unbelievable.  He probably ate more take-out in the past two weeks than I have eaten in the past year!

I used my new Trader Joes goodies to make up a huge salad for lunch.

• romaine
• carrots
• egg
• garbanzo beans
• mozzarella cheese
• turkey bacon
• olive oil/vinegar

Turkey bacon is so good!  It’s not an every day kind of thing, but it sure adds some great taste and flavor.  And it smells so good when cooking it!

For a snack, I pulled my last Figgy Date Protein Bar out of the freezer.  I love how well baked goods freeze and easily reheat.

For dinner, I was just too tired to cook.  So it was a subway kind of night!  Which is the best kind of night.

With some colored peppers and pistachios on the side.

Got all my food groups in there! 

And for dessert…. soft serve frozen yogurt!  Razzyfresh.  Soooo good.  I got half cookies ‘n cream, half pistachio frozen yogurt.

Topped with kiwis, strawberries, sprinkles and some fruity pebbles!

The fruit was really good, the sprinkles gave it some extra sweetness, and the cereal gave it extra crunch.  It was perfect! 

S and I are really interested in starting our own business of some kind, although we haven’t really decided what kind.  We have a million ideas!  But one thing we were discussing was the smart business plan behind all of the soft serve places popping up all over the place.  Think about it:  You have to pay some initial startup costs for the soft serve machines, the supplies, cash register… the basics.  Then you have a few ongoing costs like rent or property purchase for your store.  And then the ongoing supplier costs for the yogurt, the toppings, etc.  However… that’s about it!  These places have very little overhead – some of them are tiny little rooms that just have one or two employees working at any given time.  People serve themselves, and then just have to get it weighed and pay for it at the cash register.  There is significantly less cost for a business owner then there would be for some other sort of ice cream store, restaurant, or other type of business.  Plus, business is booming!  In California, there is always line for these soft serve joints.  It’s the perfect treat!

So… maybe a soft serve business is somewhere in our future?  I sure wouldn’t mind!!!

Have you ever thought about starting your own business?  What would you do?

This trip to Pittsburgh just flew by.  I can’t believe it’s already over and I’m back in California.  I’m so happy I got the chance to go home (it had been over two years!!!) and to run the half-marathon in my hometown.

The last few days of my trip were basically just spending time with my parents.  

My mom’s house and my dad’s new house are completely different.  My mom lives in the city.  You can walk to the stores, have to park on the street, etc.  All that good stuff that comes with city living.

My dad’s new house is in the suburbs, similar to his old one (the house I grew up in).

It has a nice back yard with a big porch.  On the porch, they soon will be placing a hot tub! 

The overall environment and the types of things that I do at each house are completely different.  At my mom’s, we can walk a lot – it’s in the city so there are fun shops to walk to.  There are also animals to play with:

And instruments to play:

Isn’t she one hot mama??? 

There is also tons of healthy food to eat.  Fresh fruits and veggies everywhere, and pretty much no sugar since my mom doesn’t eat it.  (There is also a lack of coffee and anything containing wheat or gluten….)  Therefore at my mom’s house there are beautiful meals like this:

At my dad’s house, there is a lot of gardening and yard work.  Their garden is beautiful and my stepmom is really into flowers, plants, and gardens. 

I sat and…. watched everybody work   And enjoyed the beautiful sunshine!

There is a plethora of coffee, always.

And the food is, well… a little different.

We also do different kinds of things together.  My mom and I talk a lot.  We cook and bake, we go for walks and go to the gym.  We gossip and talk about boys, of course, and clothes and friends and grandchildren.  Yep… she’s chomping at the bit for some grandbabies!

With my dad and his wife, we shop and go to Barnes and Nobles.  We do walks and get coffee (a lot!)  And I watch them sweat while working in the garden! 

My dad and his wife are also really involved with the church (my stepmom is a Pastor.)  We went to a craft fair at the church, which was a new experience for me.

I got JB and Mendy a Steelers cat toy filled with cat nip!

I also got my mom this African Violet in a tea cup.  Isn’t that adorable?

The highlight of the craft show for me, though, was the FUDGE!  I bought myself a half pound.  Only to show my support for the craft fair, of course.

Holy yum!  I consider myself to be a pretty experienced fudge-taster, and this was truly some of the best fudge I have ever had.  I got peanut butter chocolate, and m&m fudge.  The m&m was incredible!

The highlight of the craft fair for my dad and his wife?  The walking tacos.

What’s that, you say?  You don’t know what a walking taco is?   I didn’t know what one was either, before I went to the craft fair.  Well, allow me to enlighten you as I myself was enlightened.

Apparently, a "Walking Taco”, or  a “Taco-in-a-Bag” is not really a taco, but is a Midwest name for the Texas dish called “Frito pie.” A bag of Frito’s corn chips is opened and topped with various ingredients, such as cheese, beans, tomatoes, onions, ground beef, guacamole, and salsa…. taco toppings!

Basically, you take a bag of fritos, open it, and dump taco ground beef and any other taco toppings in there.  Grab a spoon and voila!  Walking taco.

Easy cleanup too… no dishes!  Who would’ve thunk it.

It’s always funny going back and forth in between my mom’s house and my dad’s house because they are so completely different.  But I feel so lucky to have both of them, and have them live close enough to each other that I can spend time with both during one trip.

One other major highlight from my trip?

Eat ‘n Park smiley cookies.

You’re never too old.

I (may have) nabbed four cookies after the race and consumed all four within 24 hours.  Can you blame me?

Bye bye, east coast.  I will see you again in two months!

Today I ran in the Pittsburgh half-marathon. 

It was crazy… with 15,000 runners registered, it was nearly a third bigger than last year (or so I heard more than one person say.)  The course was packed from mile 1 through mile 13.1.  I kept waiting for it to thin out, like it usually does after a mile or two, but it never did.

At the starting line, I was literally sandwiched between four different people.  I don’t mean that they were just really close together, as people usually are at the starting line of a race.  I mean I was literally sandwiched and couldn’t move.  And for 7:30am, it was hot and incredibly humid.  Those few minutes, waiting for the gun to go off, I had a huge why the hell am I doing this again moment.

In fact, that moment lasted quite a while after the gun went off.  The whole race was pretty tightly packed, but the first few miles were the worst.  Once people started running and the body heat started rising, it was ridiculous and so uncomfortable.  I was literally dripping sweat after just a half mile or so.  It was going to be a long race.

I had been hoping all night and morning that it would not rain, even though the sky was overcast and the weather report called for a 30-60% chance of precipitation as the morning progressed.  Well, at mile 2 it started chucking it down with rain.  And I was so hot and uncomfortable at that point that I was actually happy because it cooled me down a little bit.  That happiness lasted for about a mile, and then the rain got old.  After another mile, it got really old.  It lightened up a couple times throughout the race, but for the most part it was pouring the whole time.  There were little rivers running along both sides of the street, and I stepped in them multiple times (as well as having other people constantly stepping in them and splashing everywhere.)  Not that it mattered anymore – after about 10 minutes I was thoroughly saturated so from that point on it was irrelevant.  I swear, I was running with about 15 extra pounds of water weight on me – in my clothes and on my shoes.

My official chip time was 1:58.  I was happy with that, especially considering the fact that it was pouring rain the whole time and was so crowded.  It was also up and down… no huge hills, but little rolling ones the entire time.  It was a nice course, through some great areas of Pittsburgh and across many bridges.

My garmin of the race can be found here.

Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that there was a bomb scare.  Gotta love Pittsburgh!

The race is tomorrow, and I have pretty much been carbo-loading for a week.  That is only because I want to be able to do ok in the race… I am only thinking about my running and my stamina.  It has nothing to do with the fact that I’m on vacation and have all these goodies surrounding me… 

I have had my proteins, too.  Breakfast the past few days has been omelettes made by mi mama.

Eggs, feta cheese, red peppers.  Each day I had boca sausages on the side too.  I have not been very diligent in my photographing, I’m afraid.   But trust me, they were there

Lunches have been healthy too.  All kinds of veggies – my mom always keeps the house stocked with fresh fruits and veggies – with lots of egg, cheese, turkey, chicken, boca, avocado, olives….  All kinds of mixes and matches.  Example below.

Ok, now the good stuff.  My carbs. 

There have been cookies, like this monster oatmeal carob chip cookie. 

Caramel blondies.

Words will not suffice, I believe in this case a picture really does speak 1000 words.  And a bite speaks about 1849203138219048321904 words.

The blondies were from a kosher, non-dairy bakery down the street from my mom’s house called Sweet Tammy’s. 

Holy yum.

They were eaten by themselves, and with their friends, brownies.

Blondies and brownies, sitting in a tree….

There was also a plethora of trail mix.

There has been other race preparation, as well.  We picked up my race packet from the expo:

Look at all those goodies!  I love the shirt – it’s such a nice, long-sleeved tech tee! 

Ok, sorry for the boring post.  But I’ve got to rest up for the big day tomorrow… it will be long and they are expecting rain.  Will write more and a race recap tomorrow!