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Hi folks!
Something kind of amazing happened when I tried to upload photos for a post yesterday. I ran out of space!
Rather than pay for additional photo uploading space, I decided to bite the bullet and get my own domain.
From now on, you can find me (and all my old posts, too!) at www.alimental.net.
See you there!
It’s starting to feel a little more like home around here.
We have plants on the patio! Basil, cilantro, parsley, serrano peppers, and tobasco peppers. Not sure how the peppers will turn out, but we thought we’d give it a shot.
I’m especially smitten with the basil plants.
Various heart shaped rocks from my dad.
Endless strawberries.
Oh, and look what we found about a 2 mile walk from our house.
The ocean!
I do like this place an awful lot.
This place makes Wisconsin seem like a wasteland.
My breakfast this morning. Strawberries with cereal.
We hit up another farmer’s market today (the one that we’ll probably be frequenting, since it’s less than a mile from our apartment).
3 more pints of strawberries.
9 avocados, 5 tomatos, and some cauliflower. Since it’s no secret that I am obsessed with good deals, I have to mention that here, 9 avocados cost $5. We are going to get fat on guacamole and raw chocolate pudding.
We also bought this bag of all kinds of mushrooms. I’m not really a fan on mushrooms, but these look quite intriguing!
Emily had to go home this morning. That was difficult for me. I probably won’t see any of my family for a few months, and I won’t see her until at least December (she’s leaving to study abroad in Italy next month). However, that’s the way it goes, and we had lots of fun while she was here.
Emily and Greg being beach babes at ocean beach.
In the eyes of a sculpture near the harbor.
and next to the Midway.
Hope all is well with everyone. More job hunting for me this evening.
I’m back!
We’re all safely in La Jolla and settling into our new home. Greg’s drive went fine, and Sid was an absolute champion on the airplane. I’m so proud of him. 🙂
Our apartment is not ready for pictures, and we’ve barely had a chance to do any cooking (or grocery shopping), but we did spend the day yesterday at Torrey Pines beach/state reserve. It was possibly the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen.
Greg enjoying the sunshine. Note to self: buy swimming suits ASAP.
Emily pointing to random hiker.
Emily’s pet cactus.
My favorite plant along the trail. Anyone know what this is?
We won’t have wifi installed until Friday morning, so until then!
Well, it’s probably pretty obvious.
This used to be our apartment. Now it is a lot of piles of boxes, disassembled furniture, and miscellaneous crap.
We’re loading up the trailer one week from today (June 27), and Greg and his dad are leaving the following morning. It’s a long drive to San Diego, so we thought it would be best to fly the cat out. I’ll be staying with my parents until July 2, and then I’m flying from Milwaukee to San Diego with Sid and my sister. I’m not sure how Sid is going to react to the whole thing, so I am incredibly happy to have an extra person along.
I will miss Greg terribly. This will be the longest we’ve been apart since before we were dating! However, I’m glad that I’ll have some extra time to spend with my family.
One lovely thing about all this clutter is that Greg has had his guitar out of storage. I haven’t heard him play in ages.
We haven’t been cooking much, and what we have been cooking has been just to get rid of everything in our pantry.
Also, we eat on the floor now.
We spent this morning at the farmer’s market in Madison that takes place outside the capitol.
We tried the continental breakfast at the hotel that we stayed in last night (THANK YOU, E!), but it was very unfortunate. White bread, canned peaches, cocoa puffs, doughnuts. I ate a banana, but we decided to do breakfast at the market. That was a GREAT success!
I had this whole grain, vegan, carrot raisin scone. Does that not sound like my soul mate in scone form? It couldn’t have been more perfect.
Greg had a vegan cookie, which he obviously enjoyed very much.
We did about two and a half laps through the market and bought lots of green stuff. Lettuce, bok choy, swiss chard, fresh mint leaves, green onions, etc.
We also bought a loaf of bread from the same place that Greg bought his cookie, and a jar of jam.
We haven’t tried the jam yet, but the bread was fantastic.
Now we’re hanging out with Greg’s dad until they’re done showing our apartment, then we’re off to eat some Indian food with our gorgeous friends Jem and Erin.
Hope you’re having an awesome weekend, and thanks for all of your well wishes for our first anniversary!
1 year ago, I married my best friend.
Today is not only our first wedding anniversary, but also marks 5 excellent years spent together.
Happy Anniversary, Greg! There are no words to describe how much I love you.
We have had a pretty productive day. The laundry is done, and winter coats have been washed and prepared for long term storage (YES!). I have finished birthday shopping for the upcoming birthdays this week. We went for a long walk, bought an airline approved carrier and harness for Sid, made a vet appointment, listed more of our possessions on Amazon and Craigslist, and shopped for plane tickets. I even found a few jobs to apply for!
I think this is a decent list of accomplishments, but anxiety is still getting the best of me. Today, stress led me to do something that I try to avoid at all costs: stress baking. Before I knew what was happening, I had a beautiful batch of vegan chocolate chip cookies in my kitchen.
Aren’t they adorable? I was concerned about how ridiculously oily the dough was, but they turned out to be quite nice. Luckily, it was a very small batch (I used the recipe from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar), and chocolate chip cookies are Greg’s favorite. Not too much harm done.
Well, I’m off to find a non-food way to cope with my anxiety. A book and a mug of tea sounds just right.
Recently, a friend asked me to share more about my workouts on the blog. I am not a personal trainer, but I am MY personal trainer. I’m happy to share what what works for me, but I will not claim that I know what I’m doing (it’s all trial and error), and I offer no advice.
This morning I did an outdoor walk/jog, since it looks like we’re going to have rain for the rest of the week. Here’s what I did:
I started by walking for the duration of two songs. This is my warmup, and allows me to get down to the lake (where there are no stop lights) before I start running.
After my warmup, I alternated running for the duration of two songs (this time, that was about 8-10 minutes), and walking for the duration of one song (3-4 minutes). I repeated this until I had completed 4 running segments (about 35 minutes). The whole workout took 50 minutes.
I like this kind of workout, because as long as your playlist is on shuffle and you change your playlist now and then, it’s never the same. It also allows plenty of rest time for my bum knee.
Sweaty and janky. Mission accomplished.
I’m trying to get my veggies at every meal. Initially, adding vegetables to breakfast was kind of awkward, but I’m becoming a pro.
Brown rice toast with peanut butter + cinnamon, cherries, raspberries, and cucumber. I think cucumbers and raspberries are in love.
Things like this monstrosity, which contains almost 2 cups of raw spinach. If you add enough blackberries, it’s not even green. All I could taste was berry and banana goodness.
Today I had a more savory veggie breakfast. Chickpeas, zucchini, red bell pepper, spinach, and marinara. SO delicious, but I missed the fruit.
Do you eat vegetables for breakfast? What’s your favorite way to incorporate more veggies into your meals?
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