Thursday, April 29, 2004
sunny day!!
i woke up today around 10am (~9 hours of sleep-yay!). woke up to some warm, sunny weather (let's hope it sticks!)
today my DVD burner came in (there was this huge box in my office). yay! i'm so glad, now i will actually be able to burn CD/DVDs (i don't have a CD burner, so it was always a pain).
today my DVD burner came in (there was this huge box in my office). yay! i'm so glad, now i will actually be able to burn CD/DVDs (i don't have a CD burner, so it was always a pain).
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
argh.. am in strange mood today. last night (around ~2am) i started getting a really nasty tummy ache. i think maybe because around 8pm i drank some coffee and then some iced tea (waay too much caffeine, especially after working out for about an hour and a half). also, i had a late snack around 1 am so that must have something to do with it.
despite, that, yesterday was ok. i ran 3 miles in 29 minutes (ok, not great) along with others from the sp running club. then i went to my cardio kickboxing class, which was a great workout as usual. afterwards, it started raining really hard (first time that day) so ended up biking home in the rain in my gym clothes (shorts). despite that fact, it wasn't that horrible...i was at least i had my bike so i would only be soaked for 5 minutes as opposed to 15.
when i got home, i was hoping to find some yummy chili waiting for me in my crockpot...i was a bit surprised when i walked in the kitchen and it smelled a bit unusual. when i opened the crockpot and stirred it a bit, a noticed the meat looked sort of weird..really soggy, like when it's in a soup. i then realized that i had forgotten to brown the meat before throwing it the crocker that morning..i had just taken the ground turkey from the package and thrown it in along with the other ingredients. ARGH! i was a bit pissed, but at least it wasn't totally ruined..it was eatable, after all (after adding salt, onions and other loads of spices and trying to fry the bean/meat mixture in a skillet and later adding marinara sauce and of course the un-leave-out-able sour cream :D ). anyway, at least i didn't have to throw it out. kind of reminded me of the time a few weeks ago (last week?) when Michael and I were making mashed potatoes (also in a hurry) and we had forgotten to cut up the potatoes after peeling them (we just threw them in whole into the boiling water, and then wondered why they weren't soft after 20 minutes). And like with the chili, it was fortunate that we were able to salvage it (we dragged the hot potatoes out and cut them up before boiling them again).
oh, and after that happened and i attended my (last?) SPEC+ meeting, Michael came over and we watched Master & Commander. it's an excellent (though a bit gory) movie. I was wide awake through all of it, even though we started watching it at 11:30 pm (we spend like 45 minutes trying to figure out why there was no sound coming out of the DVD player, when it turns out all we had to do is turn the volume way up!)
P.S. back to the recipe stuff--last week i made this Strawberry Pie, and it was de-licious. Michael said it was one of the best desserts i had ever made. I sort of agree. i give it 4 stars. I'll post the recipe up here sometime soon!
despite, that, yesterday was ok. i ran 3 miles in 29 minutes (ok, not great) along with others from the sp running club. then i went to my cardio kickboxing class, which was a great workout as usual. afterwards, it started raining really hard (first time that day) so ended up biking home in the rain in my gym clothes (shorts). despite that fact, it wasn't that horrible...i was at least i had my bike so i would only be soaked for 5 minutes as opposed to 15.
when i got home, i was hoping to find some yummy chili waiting for me in my crockpot...i was a bit surprised when i walked in the kitchen and it smelled a bit unusual. when i opened the crockpot and stirred it a bit, a noticed the meat looked sort of weird..really soggy, like when it's in a soup. i then realized that i had forgotten to brown the meat before throwing it the crocker that morning..i had just taken the ground turkey from the package and thrown it in along with the other ingredients. ARGH! i was a bit pissed, but at least it wasn't totally ruined..it was eatable, after all (after adding salt, onions and other loads of spices and trying to fry the bean/meat mixture in a skillet and later adding marinara sauce and of course the un-leave-out-able sour cream :D ). anyway, at least i didn't have to throw it out. kind of reminded me of the time a few weeks ago (last week?) when Michael and I were making mashed potatoes (also in a hurry) and we had forgotten to cut up the potatoes after peeling them (we just threw them in whole into the boiling water, and then wondered why they weren't soft after 20 minutes). And like with the chili, it was fortunate that we were able to salvage it (we dragged the hot potatoes out and cut them up before boiling them again).
oh, and after that happened and i attended my (last?) SPEC+ meeting, Michael came over and we watched Master & Commander. it's an excellent (though a bit gory) movie. I was wide awake through all of it, even though we started watching it at 11:30 pm (we spend like 45 minutes trying to figure out why there was no sound coming out of the DVD player, when it turns out all we had to do is turn the volume way up!)
P.S. back to the recipe stuff--last week i made this Strawberry Pie, and it was de-licious. Michael said it was one of the best desserts i had ever made. I sort of agree. i give it 4 stars. I'll post the recipe up here sometime soon!
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
ok, despite it being a cloudy, windy morning, around 2pm today the weather got to be really nice (weather.com said it was 13 C, but i didn't believe that). i rode my bike to my chiropractor's office (i found a way not use mass ave and thus avoiding the psychopaths). anyway, she was really glad that i was able to run 12 miles of the boston marathon (and then 3 miles the next day) without any pain. i'm excited that i'm back into running again.
oh, and right after that i stopped by WholeFoods on Prospect St and got some groceries. as usual, i expected to buy only 2 or 3 things but ended up with about 12. :) oh well, i never waste anything, so it all gets useeventually anyway. :)
one of the things i bought there was freshly cut butternut squash (1 lb was like $2.50 or something like that). when i got home i found this recipe for Butternut Bisque and made it. If you look at the reviews, you can see that it came out really excellent (was really delicious). Even better with sour cream. Seriously, it must have been one of the best soups i've ever tasted in my life. It's really scary though, when you think that the best-tasting food is the stuff you make yourself! Especially for me..about 5 years ago, i didn't even know how to boil water (i'm not exaggerating)! Anyway, too bad Michael doesn't like butternut squash (he hates everything in the pumpkin/squash and sweet potato family), otherwise he could enjoy it as well.
Also, for the main dish i cooked some Alaskan Halibut (bought at Trader Joe's a while back), which actually turned out pretty decent. I used this seasoning mix that i paid an arm and a leg for (it was like $5 something for a small tin) but it came out good. Sometimes (a lot of times!) expensive food is worth paying for. A few days ago i paid $5.99 at Harvest for 4 chicken-apple sausages ($1.50 per sausage)...and they were definitely the best-tasting chicken sausages i have tasted yet (and probably the healthiest as well).
oh, and right after that i stopped by WholeFoods on Prospect St and got some groceries. as usual, i expected to buy only 2 or 3 things but ended up with about 12. :) oh well, i never waste anything, so it all gets useeventually anyway. :)
one of the things i bought there was freshly cut butternut squash (1 lb was like $2.50 or something like that). when i got home i found this recipe for Butternut Bisque and made it. If you look at the reviews, you can see that it came out really excellent (was really delicious). Even better with sour cream. Seriously, it must have been one of the best soups i've ever tasted in my life. It's really scary though, when you think that the best-tasting food is the stuff you make yourself! Especially for me..about 5 years ago, i didn't even know how to boil water (i'm not exaggerating)! Anyway, too bad Michael doesn't like butternut squash (he hates everything in the pumpkin/squash and sweet potato family), otherwise he could enjoy it as well.
Also, for the main dish i cooked some Alaskan Halibut (bought at Trader Joe's a while back), which actually turned out pretty decent. I used this seasoning mix that i paid an arm and a leg for (it was like $5 something for a small tin) but it came out good. Sometimes (a lot of times!) expensive food is worth paying for. A few days ago i paid $5.99 at Harvest for 4 chicken-apple sausages ($1.50 per sausage)...and they were definitely the best-tasting chicken sausages i have tasted yet (and probably the healthiest as well).
Saturday, April 17, 2004
sunny day
ok, right now according to weather.com, it's 20 degrees C!!! Amazing!!!! It's sunny and it's actually HOT inside my room that i had to open all the windows!!
Anyway, the weather was so great that today Michael and I decided to go for a picnic. We took a zipcar for a few hours and drove to Medfield, to Noon Hill park, a state reservation. We had some trouble finding it (sometimes Mapquest leaves out key details) but we eventually did and got to have a nice picnic by a nice-looking pond. Lunch consisted of chicken salads that i had made plus some fruit. although we didn't have enough time to walk around and stuff (we had to return the zipcar by 3pm). towards the end we were rushing like crazy to get the car back on time (it was bad since the traffic got a bit maddening), but it still ended up being a relaxing trip overall. the sights we saw on the way were pretty nice..some of the houses there were huge! i could only dream in living in one of those things.
Anyway, the weather was so great that today Michael and I decided to go for a picnic. We took a zipcar for a few hours and drove to Medfield, to Noon Hill park, a state reservation. We had some trouble finding it (sometimes Mapquest leaves out key details) but we eventually did and got to have a nice picnic by a nice-looking pond. Lunch consisted of chicken salads that i had made plus some fruit. although we didn't have enough time to walk around and stuff (we had to return the zipcar by 3pm). towards the end we were rushing like crazy to get the car back on time (it was bad since the traffic got a bit maddening), but it still ended up being a relaxing trip overall. the sights we saw on the way were pretty nice..some of the houses there were huge! i could only dream in living in one of those things.
Wednesday, April 14, 2004
rainy day
it's raining again, but i guess that's ok cuz it's quite warm. and it doesn't seem as bad as yesterday, which was pouring cats & dogs (or as they say in Spanish, "lluviendo sapos y culebras," which means "raining frogs and snakes.")
anyway, yesterday (well actually tonight at 1:00 in the morning) i finished my research report. yay! i've been meaning to get it done for a while, but i had so much other stuff to do. i'm glad so now i can relax (for a bit anyway)
anyway, yesterday (well actually tonight at 1:00 in the morning) i finished my research report. yay! i've been meaning to get it done for a while, but i had so much other stuff to do. i'm glad so now i can relax (for a bit anyway)
Sunday, April 11, 2004
well guess what..i just ran about 10.4 miles (with Michael, too!) thing is, i needed to run 10 miles, in preparation for running half of the Boston Marathon on the 19th. At first it was really hard (it was a bit chilly, and we actually stopped at Ashdown after 1.5 miles to get gloves, hats, jackets) but towards the end it seemed to get a lot easier. We did the loop from Longfellow - Eliot (that's 9.23) plus two times SP to BU bridge (which is 0.6 each way). I was so glad that Michael was able to run as well..he didn't actually run with me, he did intervals (sprinting + walking some) because of his knee, and it actually worked out!! yay! now i'm not so scared about crashing the boston marathon (well, i still am, but..)
