Climate Changin’

Today was the first day of classes! I only attended one, but it was a solid one – 3 hours long! Run down of the day:

– wake up
– few bites of banana
– gear up for the gym
– bike to the gym (1.7 mi)
– sweaty workout on the elliptical
– bike home (1.7 mi)
– shower, change, eat oats in a jar, on the porch, while still sweaty (starving!) and coffee

In the mix: 1/4c scottish oats, 1/4c soy milk, banana slices, scoop of PB, Kashi Go Lean cereal

– bike downtown to farmer’s market (1 mi) – picked up some local produce! 
– bike to school, go to class!

Climate Change and Mitigation – pretty neat class, we get 2 weeks to shop all of our courses until we decide which ones to take, so I have time to decide, but it seemed like a neat class. I need to brush up on my climate change policy, science, adaptation, etc so this sounds like the perfect class for this!

– ate greek yogurt mixed with fresh wild blueberries and kashi go lean cereal for lunch in class
– biked home (1.2 mi)
– walked to friend’s house to lend her my juicer and hang out
– walked home
– picked up Jeff and drove to Chipotle!! Mmmm veggie burrito!! And chips and guac, sooo good!
– a quick stop at Trader Joe’s on the way back for some essentials
– at home, figuring out more class stuff, emailing, etc etc!

Do you see a theme here? Lots of BIKING! Approximately 5 or so miles. Biking is my main mode of transportation here, because 1. school, my work office, small markets, and friends’ houses are all within about 1.5 miles of me 2. it’s best for the environment! 3. it’s great exercise 4. parking is tough near school and in the city in general 5. fairly safe with bike lanes on some streets 6.awesome in the good weather and gives me time to enjoy the gorgeous new england weather and scenery on my pedals around town, 7. and all of my friends and classmates bike everywhere too, so we have lots of group bike brigades! :)

Oh, and dessert: Last time I had this chocolate was in the car driving up from DC!   It’s so good, dark choc with chunks of toffee, walnuts, and pecans.

Tomorrow I’m shopping four classes:

• Management and the Environment
• Statistics
• U.S. Climate policy
• Life Cycle Assessment Practicum

ahh, it’s going to be  LONG day. But, it’s the only way to figure out if I actually want to take a class, so gotta do it. And, the reading and homework will start to set in tomorrow, eeee. Last night did not end up as an early bedtime night – alas, I will try again tonight. Shooting for 11! G night.

Indulgences (Part 1?)

Well today’s potluck goes along nicely with the theme of a post from Carrots n Cake today about healthy eating sometimes involving unhealthy choices. There were so many yummy things to eat at the potluck today that I ended up sampling them all, especially the desserts :)

I nibbled: crackers n cheese, a scoop of guac, black beans over cilantro rice, pasta with tomatoes and cheese chunks, spinach dish, potato salad, a very small slice of pizza, two brownies, 1/2 of a famous raspberry jam bar, and grapes and cherries. Wow! They were all tasting size servings, but it was still alot, and full of not super healthy choices (and lots of cheese, oof).

I have to admit that I have not been the most healthy eater lately. Overall I really like the idea of eating healthy whole foods and making good choices about 80% of the time and then 20% of the time indulging and making-not-so-healthy choices, as mentioned by Cait.   I usually adhere to this pretty well, but the past few days I’ve been overeating and overindulging in treats. The food forecast for the next few days is not looking super great for healthy choices. But, I will do my best!

Today after work all the interns went out for happy hour since many of us are done on Friday! I had a glass of red wine (for free! due to drink tickets). I then headed to Foggy Bottom to meet two friends from high school for a drink and some nibbles. It was so great seeing them! One was in town from NY for a conference so it was extra special to get to see her :) I had another glass of red wine and ordered a kale, peach, goat cheese salad. It was super tiny which was perfect, because my mom was at my apartment getting dinner ready! (what a treat!).

I told mom about the little farmer’s market that’s in Foggy Bottom on Wednesdays so she stopped and picked up some fresh local produce! We had: corn on the cob (yet again, amazingly delicious), sliced tomato and cucumber with salt, and some of the leftover Indian food from last night, mixed with some freshly cooked tempeh. It hit the spot!A few things before bed time. G’night!

Whirlwind Saturday

The rest of the day went as follows…

Errands….laundry….cleaning….

Gym! I did 30 minutes on the elliptical and then did my lower body and butt workout

A pre-workout snack of Dakota bread slice with PB

Post workout snack/pre party snack of raspberries.

Well, as for an update on today’s to-do list:

• Laundry
• Trader Joe’s
• Buy Amtrak ticket for next week’s trip
• Send a birthday package
• Gym
• Clean the apt
• Cut my bangs
• Cancel gym membership
• Update Resume

Not too bad, considering I went to a party from about 4-10pm. One of our bosses had a bunch of the interns and other work people over for a party, there was soooo much yummy food! Taco bar, lots of chips n guac, biggg fruit salad, pound cake, choc chip cookies, peach cobbler, mmm I sampled everything! The host made everything vegetarian which was so nice!  It was great hanging out with people from work out of the office and talking to some folks I hadn’t chatted with yet. Oof I think I’m still full though… ehhh.

I’ve been feeling a bit tired today and a little out of it, with a teensy bit of a sore throat. A ton of people have been out sick in the office, and I think the heat really wore me out today when I was running around in it trying to do errands. Hopefully I just need a good night’s sleep. Thinking it’ll be a nice early Saturday night bedtime, sometimes I just love those! But first, catching up on blogs and a little SATC. G night.

Finally the weekend

Yesterday after work I went to happy hour with my fellow interns. We hadn’t done one all summer so it was about time! I had a blurry locally brewed beer but can’t remmeber what it was called.

We shared a few plates of food and I had a nibble of a spring roll and a few sweet potato fries. It was a fun time.  I sauntered home to get ready for my special visitor whos amtrak train was delayed. I whipped up a batch of peanut butter cookies and had some dinner. Obviously I ate a lot of the peanut butter dough….. and licked all bowls clean… 

Dinner was an old standby of veggies and beans, I topped it with salsa.

I then went to meet Jeff at the train station. Hooray!! We came back and had a beer and some chips and guac. We go on our mini get-away this morning – time to pack up, make breakfast, and head out! :)

Jazzy Friday

Today’s conference went by much quicker than yesterday. I think it was that the sessions were much more on-topic for me personally, the fact that I knew it was Friday (homestretch!) and also that it actually did end earlier! 3:30 rather than 5:30 like yesterday. Lunch involved this:Spinach salad mix, black beans, carrots, green beams, persian cucumbers, nutritional yeast, and a bunch of roasted veggies I added on at the conference from their lunch spread. Yumm.
Ok, the conference didn’t really “end” at 3:30… but a bunch of us interns realized that our note-taking and interviewing work was done, so, we took it upon ourselves to head home for the weekend! I was feeling a bit pooped after not sleeping great last night, but got energized on my walk home.

I rounded up Matt from his day-long museum excursions and we put together a fabulous, slow-carb diet-friendly picnic dinner to bring to Jazz in the Garden. It was my second time going and it was really fun the first time, basically a nice excuse to sit outside, sip wine, munch, and enjoy some live performances. It was really nice out today too, and thanks to getting out early we got a great spot on the lawn.

We ate … 

mmmm beans/salsa/avo combo mush :)

drank..

sat under the awesome tree scuplture..

and fell asleep! A perfect Friday evening :)

This is right after I woke up from a 40 minute pass-out in the middle of the giant crowd. Just making sure I didn’t look too cracked out … Matt was still asleep! Too much sun… too much work.. okay maybe too much wine ;)

We came back to my apt thinking we’d venture out again for drinks somewhere with some folks but once we chilled out we realized it would be just fabulous to stay put and have a relaxing night. I munched on some raw almonds and decided we needed a more fun snack for this Friday night – perfect night for kale chips!  

Time for some good sleep now. SO EXCITED for cheat day tomorrow!! I’ve got lots of goodies I’m looking forward to eating. Lots of ’em! Ones like this:

source: http://blisstree.com/eat/chocolate-croissant-bread-pudding-for-mothers-day/

G’night.

Special lunch, part 1

When my alarm went off at 6:20 this morning I surprisingly didn’t groan in misery – I woke up feeling quite rested and ready to get up! I think it might have been the strictly enforced 10:45pm bedtime last night. Maybe I’ll try to stick to that. Breakfast was the usual:

I’ve been trying to not put salt on my egg/peppers in the morning to decrease my salt intake a bit – it’s been through the roof lately! And in my travel mug, a big cup of hot coffee with cinnamon. Today I had meetings almost straight from 10-3 with lunch with my boss in between. He treated me to Qdoba which proved to be very easy to eat at on this diet and quite tasty. Although I would certainly choose Chipotle any day for quick mexican. I got the vegetarian taco salad, naked without the big fried tortilla bowl thing. It looked something like this (minus the squash, and plus a big mound of guacamole):

Source: http://foodfitnessfashionista.blogspot.com/

My boss is taking me out to lunch, again! tomorrow. :) It’s a week full of special lunches. I had some afternoon Tazo tea and plugged away at some research. It’s getting exciting, as one of today’s meetings revealed how important my work will be and could potentially be part of a paper EPA is putting out. I came home and revelled in the beauty of the flowers that I bought over the weekend – they’re in their peak!

I’m having a few spoonfuls of cottage cheese (would prefer a few sips of a protein shake but not having a blender if proving to be quite a barrier)and gearing up for a ~5 mile run with Melissa, my first outdoor DC run! I’m a bit nervous so packing my camelback, we’ll see how that works out. Looking forward to the run, but wish it wasn’t still 86 degrees out! Ah well, off we go!