My half-marathon–the one I had to bow out of last year because my left foot went all pear-shaped–is on November 6, and I’m a little behind on my training, but still feeling confident that I’m going to be able to finish. I had a totally awesome walk/run last Wednesday, totaling about 4.6 miles; I ran for the majority of it and was fine afterward except for some muscle soreness.

This was largely thanks to all the athletic tape I put on my foot beforehand.

Here are some pictures that made their way onto my camera over the past couple of weeks…

Here’s one of the almond butter pumpkin brownies I made.

They were pretty tasteless, but in a non-offensive way, and the texture was fantastic. I plan to mess around with this recipe so that it involves chocolate.

The Tuesday after Contagion came out, the boyfriend and I went to the Cheesecake Factory and then to the IMAX. This was my first time at the Cheesecake Factory and I agree with everyone who said the menu was overwhelming. I finally went with some salmon and broccoli…

…and some fries. Because I couldn’t think of anything else to order.

I did only eat part of the fries. And they were delicious. As was the salmon. I’ve never had salmon with tartar sauce before and it seemed weird to me when they brought it out, but I figured I’d try it anyway. It turned out to be pretty good.

With the exception of some donut binges and the occasional meal out, I’ve been trying to eat pretty primal lately. It’s been fun to try out new dishes, such as buffalo chicken and veggies.

I’m still trying to get the sauce right for the chicken, but it’s pretty good. I’ve also been making blue cheese dip to go with it (out of cream cheese and blue cheese crumbles).

There was even a trip to Golden Corral where I pretty much stuffed myself on veggies, fajita steak, and shrimp.

I also got a piece of cheesecake for shiggles, but I didn’t eat the crust. Oh, and I had some chocolate soft serve. Because I could.

On Saturday, September 17, it was time for BugFest. I volunteered at the USDA-APHIS booth for the fourth time and sampled some of the buggy fare. My boyfriend tried some, too, which made me happy. We had the cricket and crayfish jambalaya…

…and some fried waxworms, and then some chocolate-covered mealworms. I had the orange-chocolate ones. Mmm.

I have recently discovered a love for Chargrill. (It hasn’t supplanted my love for Cook-Out; these two loves can co-exist peacefully.) I like to order their low-carb option–a 1/2 lb hamburger on a bed of lettuce–with cheese, mayo, and tomatoes. And more lettuce. And I split an order of fries with my boyfriend (which is to say, I take some of his fries).

I like Chargrill because you don’t have to talk to anyone to order.  You just check off what you want on a ticket and put it in a slot. It appeals to me in the same way that self-checkouts at the grocery and the library do.

At some point, I made more buffalo chicken, and my boyfriend made garlic Parmesan fries, and their wonder twin powers activated into a totally awesome dinner that I ate way too much of.

—

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned it here before, but I’ve spent the last couple of years growing out my hair with the intention of one day getting it all cut off and donating it. I finally did it this Friday!

I chose to donate my hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths because their length requirement is only 8 inches, and because I’ve heard a lot of positive things about their program–the donated hair is actually used for wigs, not sold for profit (as with some other, better known charities), and the wigs are given to women who have lost their hair because of cancer treatments.  Everyone always tells me how beautiful my hair is, so I hope that my donation will help make a kick-ass wig.

I’ve cut my own hair, had friends cut my hair, and gone to some less expensive salons (i.e., Great Clips, JC Penney), but I’ve never gotten my hair cut at a nice salon. I figured that since I was doing a good deed by getting my hair cut, I could splurge a little. I bought a LivingSocial voucher back in May for a nearby salon and I finally used it on Friday. The stylist cut off my ponytail…

…and then gave me an extremely cute haircut that was exactly what I wanted.

And thanks to the LivingSocial voucher, it ended up being about as expensive as getting my hair cut at Great Clips would’ve been. LivingSocial FTW!

(It does not explain why I’ve gained 15+ pounds since the beginning of this year, when I was so happy to be below 150. That’s my own fault.)

—

So I’ll just dive right back into posting like nothing happened.

Today was the first day I’ve worked since September 1st. I took a much-needed vacation and it was pretty awesome. Hands down the best vacation I’ve ever had–I barely thought about work, and when I did it was to think, “Huh, I’m not thinking about work.”

Tuesday we took a trip downtown to eat lunch and visit the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. I Googled around to find a restaurant we could walk to from the museum’s parking lot. That’s how I discovered The Oakwood Cafe, Raleigh’s only Argentinian-Cuban restaurant. I ordered the marinated chicken, which was smothered in onions and came with mojo sauce on the side. I also got the kidney beans,  which were delicious, and an order of tostones, which I got just to try and probably wouldn’t order again (they were pretty bland).

But now I can say I’ve eaten at Raleigh’s only Argentinian-Cuban restaurant.

Then we went to the museum, where this pretty cool fish lives.

Fish was all up against the glass, like some sort of overly friendly aquatic dog.

We also saw this Buddha-esque frog.

The main reason we went to the museum was to see the Living Conservatory, in which are living a sloth and many butterflies, among other things. I had to take a picture of this sign…

Despite working for PPQ, I am not authorized personnel. Sad times.

Later in the day there were donuts.

It was prep for a trip to Myrtle Beach on Wednesday. We drove straight to Margaritaville to meet up with my mom, aunt, brother, and sister-in-law. (My dad hurt his back Tuesday night and wasn’t able to join us–boo.)

I went with the Cheeseburger in Paradise. Margaritaville’s good, but the burgers are huge (and overpriced)–I ended up taking a third of mine to my dad at the condo.

Thereafter there were many donuts, and lots of swimming, and a tutorial game of Shanghai rummy.

Friday the boyfriend and I hit up Woodhaven Pancake House (home of the WaffleCam). I got two pancakes, sausage…

…and an order of delicious homefries.

I ate maybe half of the pancakes and all of the sausage and homefries, and spent the rest of the day whining about how I ate too much.

We went to Barefoot Landing to do some wandering around, and I had a delicious Diet Mountain Dew.

Glass makes every drink taste better. Unless there’s glass in your drink. I can’t imagine that would make it taste better.

For dinner that night I had this delicious plate of nachos.

And that was my trip to the beach. Hurrah.

Now that I’m back from the beach, I’ve decided to go back to not eating tons of crap. I’m participating in our latest wellness challenge at work, but my goal this time is to train for my half-marathon in November, not count calories like it was before. Subsequently, I haven’t been making an effort to eat better, until today.

Tomorrow I will blog about tonight’s adventure with making primal almond butter pumpkin brownies.

I’m just gonna file that under “things I don’t need to know.”

Naturally, this evening while I was eating some leftover stir-fry, something popped in my jaw, and now my lower right jaw, which has been sore since yesterday’s appointment (there was irrigation and suctioning…ugh), hurts more. Will it never end? Actually, I can’t complain much; this whole experience really hasn’t been that bad.

—

I fell down an Internet rabbit hole the other day and ended up on Mark’s Daily Apple, and have been voraciously reading about the paleo and primal diets ever since. This is totally what I feel like my eating habits have been progressing towards. I already know that if I eat lots of carbs I end up starving soon after, and I have to have fat/protein to feel full. I also am not a big fan of wheat and other grains, and if there’s a way of eating that says it’s cool to give them up entirely (or almost entirely, ’cause I still plan on having angel food cake for my birthday…!), I’m down with that. I also don’t really like fruit that much. So I’m understandably intrigued. I’ve got The Primal Blueprint waiting for me at the library right now and have been skimming blogs for recipes and have already tried a few.

One was this:

This? Was an explosion of awesome in my mouth. Hardboiled eggs, bacon, cherry tomatoes, and guacamole all smushed together with some pepper. It was nommy warm, and I had leftovers cold for lunch on Monday, and it was still nommy!

After my visit to the oral surgeon yesterday afternoon, I wanted something squishy to eat. So I made an omelet.

Or I was going to, but I had too many peppers/onions/mushrooms/pieces of sausage that I couldn’t fold it over. So really, I cooked three eggs into a square and topped them with deliciousness.

Also on Monday night, I decided to make  a frittata so I’d have breakfast ready to go for the next four days.

A dozen eggs, five slices of bacon, and some diced onions and mushrooms…ta-da! We have frittata (next time I’ll add cream cheese, but I had none…). I quartered it after it had cooled and wrapped each quarter in wax paper, then stacked them neatly in my fridge. This morning I ate a slab cold out of my lunch box, and I swear by the time I ate lunch at 12:45 I was barely hungry. I usually have breakfast and a snack and am still starving by 11 AM. But today I just felt a tiny bit hungry, and since I had a meeting at 1:30 PM, I went ahead and had a peach and passionfruit Liberte and this salad:

A romaine heart, a chopped-up chicken thigh, cherry tomatoes, cotswold cheese, pecans, and garlic dressing. It was majorly tasty, although I couldn’t quite eat it all.

Tomorrow’s lunch might not be quite so tasty: I’m going to try sardines for the very first time….

—

I finished reading Robert Heinlein’s Double Star over the weekend. Like all the Heinlein I’ve read, it was awesome (well, okay, I didn’t think Stranger in a Strange Land was awesome…). I demand that you stop reading my blog and go read  some Heinlein!

Fortunately, I have no more wisdom teeth left to remove. Ha ha!

The worst part was when the local started wearing off in the car on the way home, hours before it was supposed to, and really, that was upsetting more because I knew it was going to hurt a lot worse if I didn’t get some pain meds than because of the actual pain. I ended up taking an extra day off work, and I’ve been sitting at my desk with my jaw cradled in an ice pack, but really, it hasn’t been that bad. I attribute much of my pretty awesome recovery to the skills of the oral surgeon–Blue Cross Blue Shield Federal Basic provided ONE option for an oral surgeon in Raleigh, and I’m glad that option was Dr. Gaines. ‘Cause if I have to have someone dinking around in my mouth with a knife, I want it to be the chief of oral and maxillofacial surgery at Rex Hospital. Also, my mom stayed with me for a few days and kept track of all my medications and made me eat and took my dog out.  That helped a lot, too.

Of course, part of my speedy recovery is due to my bad-ass self. Who was talking on the way home from her surgery? That’s right, me. (Wait, that wasn’t a good idea?)

—

I had an appointment about my blood pressure on May 2 and had the follow-up this past Tuesday. Being able to sleep + being on metoprolol was tanking my blood pressure (and by tanking I mean it was 100s/70s–this is tanking in comparison to what it used to be), and I was getting lightheaded a lot. So after an appointment with my PA, I went down to a half-dose of the BP meds, and now my blood pressure is around 117/76. (Of course, it wasn’t at my follow-up appointment, thanks to all the ibuprofen I’m taking for my jaw.) My pulse is still averaging 107 no matter what I’m on, which is disappointing. I’m also a little sad to be on BP meds in my mid-20s–I know it might just be the way it is, but it’s still a little disheartening. I’ve decided to spend the summer focusing on seriously improving my diet in the hopes that by doing so, I can drop some (more) weight and maybe that will bring my blood pressure down even more. There’s no doubt that I eat a lot better now than I used to, and I’ll even venture that I eat better than most Americans (this past week’s soft-fast-food binge aside), but there’s still a lot of room for improvement.

I’m now going to lay on my bed with my netbook and an ice pack.

And no, I’m not posting post-surgery pictures of my huge swollen face online.

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.

—

This is a day I’ll remember not just for its political significance, but because I sent in the last payment on my car this morning. Yep, that’s right–Clementine is all mine as soon as the payment goes through. My only debt now is in the form of five student loans, totaling about $11,000. The interest rates are so low that I’m probably not going to pay them off too early–I want to focus on building some savings and a Roth IRA.

—

Breakfast was a peach Chobani yogurt. I bought four Chobanis from Food Lion weeks ago because I was out of Liberte and didn’t want to go to Whole Foods. But then I didn’t eat the Chobani, and it ended up sitting in my fridge getting closer and closer to its expiration date. Which was over the weekend. So I put them in the front of my fridge and am forcing myself to eat them before I start eating the stash of Liberte yogurts I have in there. One more to go!

Lunch was a vegetarian version of last night’s taco salad.

It, er, shifted a little in the container, but once I put the crackers on, you can’t tell. Right? It was very tasty; I might have to do this again. Salad was definitely a nice change of pace from straight fruits and veggies.

But then I skipped all the afternoon snacks I’d brought in favor of eating 750 calories’ worth of peanut M&Ms from a big bag someone gave me as a thank you gift. It would’ve been rude not to eat the M&Ms, y’all.

I did control myself somewhat. I mean, I didn’t eat the whole thing.

Also, I came home from work, changed clothes, hitched up the dog, and went for a half hour walk. Then I had dinner, in the form of leftover teriyaki vegetables (with a tiny bit of beef) and a bowl of grapes.

I came out at about 1700 calories consumed for the day, even with the M&M massacre. Also, I’m shocked those grapes I ate are still good; I bought them at Aldi forever ago.

To the shower to wash off all the sunscreen and sweat!

…with things like one of my favorite meals ever.

I had this Tuesday evening with my last potato and my last onion. It was delicious.

But not as delicious as the taste of victory on Wednesday…

Our team was in a four-way tie for first place, so we could have walked out empty-handed, but instead, we nailed the tiebreaker question and were victorious at trivia.

Also, we won some brownies.

Friday was my day off, which means I spent part of it running errands. I had to go to Target to get a screwdriver, and then to Discount Pet Supply in Cary to buy Heath some food.

Since this is not the first time he’s run completely out, I bought two bags. Then I went to Whole Foods and was very sad because the Liberte yogurt was on sale for 99 cents, but there were only two apple crumbles left. Sigh.

I consoled myself with some pasta salad from the deli.

This was good; now I want to make my own, except mine won’t have olives in it.

That afternoon, I made six servings of my pasta-less lasagna for the freezer. They stacked so nicely!

As the afternoon drew to a close, I headed to Neomonde, a Lebanese restaurant/grocery/bakery, to meet a friend for dinner. While I waited for her to arrive, I wandered around looking at the food.

And then I spent some time scoping out what I wanted to eat. Which really wasn’t hard, because I knew I wanted chicken shwarma and grape leaves.  (I found grape leaves in cans in the store! I could take them home and eat them!)

After my friend arrived, we ordered and headed out to the patio to eat. I got half a chicken shwarma on a pita…

And a little plate of grape leaves.

Mmmm.

Then we headed to the dollar-and-a-half theater, where we met up with some other folks to watch The King’s Speech. It was good, but I cringed a lot.

For lunch on Saturday, I had a little something I pulled out of the freezer…

Chicken, black beans, and peach salsa, with a dollop of Daisy sour cream (oh, their annoying theme song…). I resisted salting it since I had an appointment on Wednesday about my blood pressure, and it was fine without salt. Who needs seasoning when you have salsa?

I spent a couple of hours on my patio, fixing my self-watering containers and rearranging things so that my new, enormous deck chair would fit.

For dinner, I made the enormous bag of veggie teriyaki that I bought at Aldi. I’d already used some of the veggies to go with another meal last week, and I’ve got enough leftovers from Saturday night to have this again for dinner Monday and Tuesday.

I cut two thin minute steaks into small bits and threw them in–I wanted to get the taste of the meat in there, but still have the focus on the veggies.

After dinner, I walked over to the grocery, and came back with a reusable bag’s worth of items.

The yogurt is partially to mix with the strawberries, apples, and grapes for a snack and partially to make chicken tandoori, which I’m going to pair with the yellow rice. That meal needs vegetables, but since I won’t be eating it until at least Thursday, that’s okay.

I bought calorie-free honey dijon dressing, but as you’ll see a couple of pictures down, I got by without it for two salads.

I also bought peach cobbler Breakstone’s cottage cheese, even though I have tons of cottage cheese and peach singles, and some Sierra Mist Natural in 100-calorie cans. I scoured the ginger ale section for something that didn’t have artificial sweetener in it, but no dice. I bought these to drink in the afternoons when I’m craving sugar. (I wanted to buy peanut butter M&Ms instead.)

For Sunday’s lunch, I had some fruits, veggies, smoked salmon, and hummus. Yes, it’s the return of the hummus; I’ve tired of pimento cheese for the moment.

Mid-afternoon I snacked on a “crispy rice treat” (hmph) and some trail mix.

Then Heath and I took a walk that was about 3.5 miles, much of it on an unpaved trail that we found. I’m going to bring my camera next time, because this trail was awesome–parts of it looked impassable from a distance, and at one point these big slabs of rock led right down into the creek like steps. I let Heath walk down them and into the water and he walked right off the rocks and into the creek, then flipped out and started running in circles in the water. He was a good sport, leaping over rocks and clamoring over tree roots like a dog twice his size.

A little while after we got back, I whipped up dinner and tomorrow’s lunch.

This…is a salad. It’s under there, really. I threw together some romaine lettuce, cheddar cheese, and tomatoes, then added some beef mixed with taco seasoning and topped it with crunched up saltines and sour cream. It was excellent–the only thing it needed was some onion, but I was out. I wouldn’t even trade the saltines for tortilla chips; I like crackers on my salads. For tomorrow’s lunch, I packed the same thing, except I mixed together taco seasoning and kidney beans and used that for the protein instead of seasoned ground beef. I hope it turns out just as delicious!

But now I’ve used 2/3 of my bag of lettuce and haven’t even cracked the salad dressing open. This is why it’s handy to be located next to a grocery store.

So I drove to Target to buy some more, and also to buy some more drink mix, because it comes in these tubes that are perfect for fixing my self-watering containers. But when I got to Target, it was closed.

I went to Lowe’s instead, ’cause it’s right next door. I found tomato and pepper plants outside. Then I wandered around looking for duct tape. I finally found it and bought a huge roll; I may never buy duct tape again. Then I went outside and spent an hour wandering among the plants.

…I bought a couple.

Did I need to spend $60 on plants? No. But I’ve been wanting some plants for my apartment since I moved in–one of the reasons I love my office at work is that the windowsill is full of plants. Rooms seem more alive when there are plants.

All the plants at the top of the photo–the two anthuriums, the little orchid, the cactus/succulent in terra cotta container, and the spider plant–are from the clearance section. I also got a bromeliad, a wandering Jew, a sweet pepper plant, and two tomato plants–one Big Boy and one that will produce small tomatoes (like the kind I eat for lunch).

When I got back, I set to work fixing one of the self-watering containers. I only had enough drink-mix-tubes to fix one. Heath came outside with me and finally laid down on the patio.

Also, a slug crawled onto my foot.

–

Yesterday I went to my brother’s house, where there was food.

Potato salad, broccoli casserole, crescent rolls, and chicken. I only ate half the chicken, but I made up for it by having two crescent rolls.

And there was banana pudding.

Which counts as a fruit.

I can’t believe it’s 7:30PM already! That means that it’s only a little more than 12 hours until my appointment with the oral surgeon tomorrow to talk about my wisdom teeth and their fabulous plan to vacate the premises of my mouth. Do not want.

–

And he departed from our sight that we might return to our heart, and there find Him. For He departed, and behold, He is here. — St. Augustine

I’ve been craving Chinese food, so I planned to call and order take-out from the Chinese restaurant near work and then pick it up when I walked over to get my new prescription during lunch. It turned out several co-workers were planning to go over there for lunch at the buffet, so I joined them instead. I’m kind of proud of how different my plate looks now versus a few months ago.

Veggies, veggies, everywhere…and some salmon (most of which I didn’t eat–it was hot!), a few bites of sesame chicken, a cream cheese rangoon, and an eggroll. And some fried rice–not as much as it looks like, since it was all on top of the veggies mixed with crab (which I didn’t eat, I just wanted the veggies).

My plans for tomorrow are to get up at 7AM (I hope!), take Mr. Heathcliff for a long walk, get some early morning work done, and then walk to the store to pick up a few things, including the broccoli and cheese for the broccoli casserole I’m taking to lunch at my brother’s house.

15 minutes to go….

Therefore, I find ordering at Tomato Jake’s to be slightly annoying. This is the Spicy Clucker with fries.

It’s good. I’ve gotten it on my last two trips to the restaurant. But it’s a spicy chicken wrap. Why can’t they just call it that? Why?

Oh well. They have trivia, so they’re still cool.

Also, I felt a little awkward taking a photo of my food, because on that episode of Criminal Minds I watched last night (the one I’d already seen twice), one of the victims, unknowingly being watched by her soon-to-be murderer, takes a picture of her breakfast at an al fresco diner and posts it online along with “MMM! Scones!” Fortunately, I haven’t been strangled by someone seeking facial symmetry yet.

I had another visit with my sleep specialist today…no more appointments for two months! But I’ve had three dentist appointments in the past two weeks (one cleaning, one treatment consultation, and one round of fillings) and I’ve got another one coming up Thursday, and then Monday I have a consultation with an oral surgeon about having my wisdom teeth removed, and I need to make an appointment to get my blood pressure medication adjusted because being able to sleep is lowering my BP (yay!) but now it’s going too low and making me dizzy…

…so I’m very happy that the Federal government didn’t shut down, so I have money to pay for all of this and sick leave to take.

The car loan is currently around $1040, with a $200 payment pending, and I’ve been writing in my spare time and should have another $150 to throw at it next week.

Oh, and those tornadoes that hit central North Carolina on Saturday? That was scary, and I’m not ashamed to say that at one point when the hail was beating against my sliding glass door and shingles were flying around up in the air that I picked up the dog, wrapped him in a blanket, sat him on top of the washer in the laundry room, and then climbed in after him. Fortunately, my part of north Raleigh didn’t see too much damage, but downtown and northeast Raleigh got hit pretty bad, as did Sanford, the town I grew up in and live in/near from the time I was six until I left for college. Here is a picture of the building I was baptized in…

Fortunately, although there were deaths both in Sanford and Raleigh, all my family and friends are safe and still have houses.

—

Here’s a picture of Cliffy.

Here’s a picture of one of a couple of trips to China Queen over the past couple of months.

Here is a picture of a single slice of pizza from Tomato Jake’s in Durham.

Here’s what I had one Friday night when Alison and I went to some Italian place in Raleigh, the name of which I can’t remember…Pulcinela’s?

Salad with house dressing…

…and cheese manicotti.

Here…is a picture of Heathcliff on my bed.

Here is an unfortunately blurry picture of the spinach and mushroom enchiladas I was raving about. Soooooo good.

Here is a meal that is two-thirds composed of Aldi products: the steak and the asparagus both came from their freezer section.

And here is one of the awesome veggie pizzas from Aldi that I took a chance on and bought. I picked up two and ate them both within a week.

It had zucchini on it. For real.

And here are two of my current worries…

I am actually kind of petrified of the dentist, and teeth, and things being in my mouth. I hadn’t been to the dentist in five years since I went in for a cleaning two weeks ago. Fortunately, I found a great dentist’s office (in the same office park as my sleep specialist!) and even though I was almost in tears after the cleaning at my exam (from the stress, not because they were mean to me), I was actually pretty okay while getting fillings in three teeth on Friday. Unfortunately, the wisdom teeth — all four of which are impacted — have to come out because the dentist can’t work on my back teeth with them in there. I manned up and made the consultation appointment with the oral surgeon, but I have a full-scale freak-out planned for the day before my surgery, whenever that is.

I am very pointedly staying up until 10PM in an attempt to fix my sleep schedule (now that I can sleep), so I may as well watch this episode of Criminal Minds that I’ve already seen like twice. I will post again later this week (promises, promises…)…