runnin on empty... NOT!

I’ve seemingly developed a tapeworm the past few days. I’ve seriously been so hungry, no matter what I eat or how often! The past few days I’ve been eating my newest creation for lunch – BURRACOS! Ok, they might really just be burritos (I’m a little fuzzy on my Mexican food terminology), but I think the term Burracos is pretty sweet. They’re a mixture of black beans and lean turkey meat, Greek yogurt, reduced fat “Mexican blend” cheese (Kraft), and TJ’s tortillas. Yummm! To make them more transportable, I’ve been wrapping them in the tortillas, then wrapping them in foil and putting them in a plastic container. Works pretty well! In theory, they should be really filling… but in reality I could totally eat a village after I eat a Burraco. In other new products, I branched out and tried both the TJ’s low sodium butternut squash soup and the vegan split pea soup. The butternut squash was sadly a terrible disappointment – very runny and unflavorful and ultimately too watery. The split pea soup, on the other hand, was pretty fab-u. It was chunky, vegan, fat free, and had only 100 calories per 1 cup serving. The sodium (as with any soup) was pretty high (570 mg, 24% RDV), but it had 3 grams of fiber and 7 grams of protein per serving. It was super yummy and I expected that the combination of a Burraco with 1 cup of the soup would tide me over for a few hours… but no. So I caved in and ate ½ cup fresh strawberries and about 7 pretzels dipped in unsalted cashew butter. I’m hoping to remain satiated until at least 4!
 
Ooh, and good news! My garage door finally works! It was heavenly today – I went outside, pushed a button, and the door went up. I got in the car, backed out, pushed another button FROM THE COMFORT OF MY CAR and the door closed. Just as it should. It was glo-rious! For probably the first time since I’ve bought the house, everything is in working order. I expect this to last until probably tomorrow, when undoubtedly something else will break.
 
In the middle of the night a few nights ago, I mysteriously took a small chunk out of my face… I have no idea how it happened and I have vague memories of it hurting and my face bleeding, but my nails aren’t that sharp. How on earth did it happen? Now I have this red mark just under my nose that looks like either a pimple or a bloody booger until you look closely and see the layers of dermis underneath the redness. Sometimes I’m just so awesome I amaze myself.
 
I’m excited to go to the gym tonight since I took last night off. I’ve been doing a lot of weights and mat work and I definitely notice a difference in the way I feel. Also, I’ve noticed that walking on a steep incline burns nearly as many calories (sometimes more!) than running, so that’s pretty interesting.
 
I’m gonna get up from my desk before I scarf down my fruit snacks I’ve reserved for pre-gym fuel. I really need to get rid of this tapeworm!

paranoid android

do you ever have the unfortunate experience of having words fly out of your mouth before you really process what you're saying? i had that experience today, among many other experiences. this one in particular was when lori called and invited me out for drinks with her and jeremey. i totally had all intentions of going, but for some reason my mouth formed the words saying that i wasn't going to go. i honestly didn't even realize what i had said until i hung up the phone... and immediately thought of calling her back. but, as is often the case, i decided that maybe my 30-second delay was from my brain and body telling me i needed to go home and relax. to put it mildly, it's been an "interesting" day. (interesting for me, not necessarily interesting to anyone else.) i really just need to process some things at the moment.

let me start with the good part of it all - last night george the garage door man came and almost completely fixed my garage door. my dad paid for it all (yes, i know i'm spoiled... but the door wasn't getting fixed otherwise), and it was lucky because it cost $550! basically, everything's wrong with it - springs, track, and a bunch of other things i neither remembered, understood, nor cared about... he fixed everything he could last night, but needed to get another part before fixing the opener part. luckily, my door is about a gazillion times lighter now thanks to the new springs and i can lift the door without killing myself. george said it was all pretty awful and that i easily could have gotten really hurt and i could have really wrecked the rest of my garage. hmm. oh well, it's much better now and it'll be fantabulous tomorrow afternoon!

this morning i headed out to the south side soup contest, which was pretty great. we had good weather for it and it even warmed up a little towards the end! i had expected actual bowls of soup, but instead we got little cups about the size of dixie cups. everything was still really good, though. i think i got to sample about 15 of the 23 soups - i almost made them all, but the last few were out of soup and a couple of them had signs that they were "forced to not participate," whatever that means. still, $5 and a can of campbell's broccoli cheddar got me a late and yummilicious brunch. i think my fave soup was the soupe savoyarde from le pommier. it was like a creamy vegetable soup. the crowd favorite from what i heard was the exotic wild mushroom soup. i puke on mushrooms, so i didn't try it, but every single person who left that table said it was incredible. i don't think i've ever heard so much food praise in my life as i did for the mushroom soup. actually, on my way back to my car, there was still a small line for the mushroom, so i jumped into it and decided to suck it up but (gasp!) they ran out of soup just a few people ahead of me. i guess that was for the better. wouldn't want little chunks of lindsay hanging around the southside...
there's more to the soup contest part of my day, but i'll keep that all to myself.

i had to scramble from the southside to make it to monroeville by 3 for my eye dr appointment. i'm SOOO glad i went - while i was being examined, i casually brought up my eye watering/pain issues that i'd had checked out a month or two ago. it's a lot better, but it's still there, so i'm pretty sure it's not the suspected sinus infection. maybe part of it was since i seemed to get a sinus infection almost immediately after starting antibiotics, but it wasn't entirely that. this doctor, however, offered a more reasonable and lindsay-plausible solution: my mystery autoimmune disease is probably flaring up and it's projecting itself through my eyes. given my ridiculously crazy medical history, i'm willing to bet that's the case. anyways, he gave me some new contacts to try (ooh, and i LIKE them! they seem more hydrating!), and then i checked out a sweet pair of vera wang spectacles that will be coming home with me in about 2 weeks. :) also, the technician fixed my old glasses since they're constantly falling off my face. now they actually fit! they'll probably stay that way for about a week or so. :)

after all the excitement of the day, i hit up the gym for a loooooong workout. not my longest by any means, but i didn't have my ipod, so the time just dragged on and on. i did the first part of my abs exercises, the little stair stepper machine (ugh), the elliptical, then the treadmill, then used nearly every machine i'd never used before since the gym wasn't crowded and i was soup-drunk. it was pretty cool to use other machines and i even found a few i like (and some that i hate but should probably use... i'm talkin to you, glute machine!). i ended it all with part 2 of the abs and mat workout. it was only an hour and 33 minutes, but it felt like 4 hours!

quite an exciting day for me!

you are the sunshine of my life, right by nature!

I don’t have a whole lot to report today, but I DO want to sing the praises yet again of Right by Nature. I stopped yesterday before volleyball “scouting” to waste some time and fuel up on a salad. I got the things I was looking for, loaded up my salad (spring mix, sunflower seeds, roasted soynuts, dried cranberries, a feta/asiago mix, bean sprouts, some mixed nuts and some de-lish green goddess dressing!), and headed to the registers… but wait! What’s that sign the bakery lady’s putting up in front of the bakery case? Surely that doesn’t say “Buy one, get two free!” Oh yes, friends, buy 1, get 2 (yep, 2!!) free! So I got 3 bakery bagels for some breakfasts: a blueberry, an everything, and a sunflower honey wheat. 3 breakfasts for only 69 cents total. Rock. Freakin. On. In addition to my salad and breakfast beauties, I snatched up 2 tiny tangerines and some new salad dressing – Drew’s Lemon Tahini Goddess. I’m super excited about the dressing and I think it’ll go swimmingly with my feta. To be on the safe side, though, I think I’m going to ditch the rest of my bagged spinach since I’m pretty sure it’s waging a war on my stomach. Perhaps I’ll stop at TJ’s before going home today to grab some spring mix.
 
Speaking of heading home, I have to go home early today because a mystery man named George is supposed to meet me there to fix my garage door. The door has been broken since early September and I give myself a hernia every morning when I have to heave it up to get my car out, only to have to prop it up on a ladder to keep it from crushing me and my little Cobalt. Apparently my dad has decided that I’ve suffered long enough and he called George to come fix the cause of my morning frustration. It seemed like he was going to pay for the job, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. The only reason I hadn’t called someone myself is because I don’t have the money to fix the door at the moment… so if George is demanding payment before he leaves, this homeowner may have to be a bit late on the mortgage payment this month…
 
I have some big plans for the weekend! Ok, they’re not really big plans for normal social-active people, but they’re exciting to a dork like me. First up, and the most exciting, is the Annual South Side Mid-Winter Soup Contest!! $5 and a canned soup donation gets you access to bowls of soup from 23 different vendors. Seriously, how awesome is that?! $5 and a canned soup = 23 bowls of soup? Hot diggity dang, that’s a screamin deal! I’m determined to forego a normal breakfast and potentially even dinner just to sample as many different soups as I can. I love me some soup. In college, my friend Katie and I called each other “soup sisters” because we always headed straight for the soup kettles in the cafeterias and ate soup whenever possible. I may go as far as to say that soup could easily be the perfect meal. I’m probably going to have trouble sleeping tonight just thinking about all that soup! :)
 
My other plans for the weekend include a super-long-overdue eye doctor’s appointment for new glasses and contacts, returning library books, balancing my checkbook and paying bills (hopefully there’s still money available after George leaves!), maybe baking some bread for next week, and cooking some dinners in advance for the week ahead. I’ve really been slacking on dinner this past week – I’ve made due with salads or soup or even some tortillas with hummus. I just haven’t been up for actually cooking. I’m hoping I’ll be inspired after the soup contest to make some delish creations of my own!
 
Happy Friday, everyone!