Running Mix

This is my current running mix. I made it right before my foot got messed up so I've only run with it once, but I looooooved it. Everything is timed perfectly and I love the first song as my starter. Rehab by Amy Winehouse kind of starts my getting into the zone section where I'm just running and not really paying much attention to anything else, but the beats are perfect to keep me going and keep me motivated.

Buuuut, 13.2 miles is definitely going to require more music. Does anyone have any recommendations?

Packing

These were taken on Saturday night after Julie came to help us start the packing process.
This doesn't even begin to show the disaster that we are now living in.
Packing kinda sucks.

DUMBO

On Saturday my Julie took me Down Under the Manhattan and Brooklyn Overpass. She kindly escorted me to her pilates gym and schooled me on how much I am lacking in my Core department. It was embarrassing. But before we went in we had some extra time and walked to a cute little park under the Manhattan bridge.
It was a ridiculously gorgeous day.
I think everyone was grateful for the sunshine. Especially now that we have rain and chilly weather for the next few days. Brooklyn is pretty. It reminds me of a more well laid out Manhattan with a little bit more space and a more relaxed feel. Two thumbs up for Brooklyn!

Apartment?

Our ridiculously long search for an apartment is over.

Please excuse the bad phone pictures...
bedroom window (where we can finally put the air conditioner! hallelujah brother!)
2 bedroom closets!
bathroom
kitchen (that desperately needs to be cleaned and spruced up)
living room window...

It's slightly larger than what we have right now, kitchen has a good size counter and looooots of cupboards and 2 drawers! (no dishwasher, sad face), no view, but hopefully not being in direct sunlight 24/7 will make things a bit cooler in the summer, 1 more closet than what we have now, elevator, laundry in the building and the price is just right. There's also another family in our ward in the building which is always fun. Dan goes tonight to sign the lease. This is actually going to be the longest time I've lived in one place since I turned 18 and started college. The longest I've lived in one place was my senior year at BYU and I stayed for spring term so I was there for 10 months. So I plan on trying really hard to make this cute and actually put some paint on the walls : ) color makes me happy. Yay for no more looking!

New Apartment?

So I think we've got ourselves a new apartment finally. After looking for over a month and seeing at least 20 places, I think we've got it. There's good and not so good parts about it, but I'm trying to stay positive and that means decorating : ) I'm pretty sure I've fallen in love with this temporary wall paper. I want to put it in the kitchen and do more of a red and light blue theme. What do you think cute or a little too much? Remember NYC kitchens are not so much big as they are ummm... smallish. The new one isn't too small, but it's no Utah or California kitch that's for sure!

Birthday Summary

Yesterday was Dan's Birthday. It went a little something like this. Dan got up early and went to work, I slept in and worked from home. Dan had to deal with teenagers and school stress all day. I did paperwork while baking and getting things ready for his birthday dinner. Dan got home exhausted, I got home ready to party. I think he was supposed to have my day...
Dinner was General Tso's Chicken requested by Mr. Dan. I surprised him with bottle of "nectar of the gods"
We had angel food cake with strawberries and home made whipped cream a la Thomson family
The aftermath.

It was pretty fun. No other pressies for Dan as he (and I ) got a plenty big present with the iphone! It was a nice relaxing night and I hope it made up for his stressful day!

Oh Danny Boy

Dapper Dan man turns 27 today. Guess what we got for his Birthday this weekend? Yeah that would be an iphone. Guess what we did for about 4 hours straight after we got home Saturday night? Yeah played on our phones. It's been less than a week and we're already addicted.

I like it when someone else's Birthday results in a present for me too!

Happy Birthday Dapper Dan Man. You're the tops!

Running Update

image from here

I have now been running 3-4 times a week for the past 13 weeks. I have never run or worked out this consistently in my life. I have of course lost no weight because I enjoy eating bad foods way too much, but I've also never felt healthier and more in control of my body. Currently each Saturday I have a "long" run and I add a mile each weekend. Before two weeks ago, I'd never run longer than 3 miles ever and those were only for 5k's that well intentioned friends and family forced me to sign up for. This last weekend, I ran 6 miles. SIX! I know other people run that regularly and it's not that big a deal, but that is HUGE for me! If anyone knows me well, you'll know that I'm not athletic and I don't like sweating. Trying to run four times a week and for long distances is not something I naturally enjoy.

But training has given me such a sense of accomplishment especially now that I keep up-ing my weekend run. Every single weekend I run further than I've ever run in my life. It doesn't matter if it's not a good run or if I get a terrible time because I have never before intentionally moved my body in a forward motion without the aid of a vehicle or something for that distance. I get such a high after knowing that even if I had to walk and I wanted to catch a cab to finish the mileage, I actually did it on my own. I took control of my body and it did what I wanted it to do.

I've learned that running is at least 50% mental (I think it's more but we'll just say 50% cause that's a nice number : ) I have to remember that I can physically do this. I may feel like my legs have turned into wooden stumps and my ankle wants to snap off and my knee cap is going to throb right out of my skin, but I can do this, I have done this. All the way up to the new extra mile, I've done it all before and I'll survive. At the beginning I was talking to my mom about the trainng (she's going to run with me too!) and she said "I just have to remember that the second I stop running, the pain goes away, so why not run just a little bit further and deal with the pain and reach your goal a little bit faster." I try to remember that a lot when I want to quit. It's about making little goals for yourself and then trying to go just 5 more blocks. Because if you push it and go those extra 5 blocks you'll get that high sense of accomplishment again that will help carry you through the next 20 blocks.

I think I've really started to like running. And it scares me just a little.

Lust

Currently lusting after these and dreaming of spring time wearing cute shoes and a vintage dress with red lipstick while walking through Central Park with my boo. Sigh, I wish I could have seen NYC back in the day.

Happy Friday!

Wifey

This week I was chatting with the girls at work and one of them said "Maddie, you're such a Betty, you were born in the wrong era!"

And it's true.

I would absolutely love it if I could stay home and clean/decorate the apartment, cook, plan meals, go to the gym, read, do little projects etc. I definitely hope to be able to stay home once we have kids (at least while they're little) but even without kids, I would love to be a little housewifey!

I do think I would get bored fairly frequently... I would probably spend waaaaay too much money because I'd always be making excuses to get out of the apartment and go shop... and I probably wouldn't be as productive because I'd have too much time on my hands...

So it's probably better that I'm not just sitting around the apartment. But a girl can dream right? : )

Anyone else dream of being a housewifey or am I an ridiculous anti-feminist?

Central Park in Springtime

My absolute favorite time of year in NYC is spring. Not even Christmas or gorgeous fall colors can beat it. I absolutely adore CP in spring. Like I said yesterday Dan, Julie and I went and walked around CP after church on Sunday. It was divine!

They'd finally opened the lawns for people to lay out on
There was a choir singing in the tunnel
Blooms every where!
We got to see the sailboats
Fountains were still shut down, but people could rent boats from the boathouse
Flowers every where!
More tender times!

And here's a video of a sax and bass duo that were playing along a random walkway. Is there anything better than New York jazz in the park?

It was a perfect day : )

Central Park

Dan and I went to Stake Conference on Sunday down at the Lincoln Center. After we walked around gorgeous Central Park with our child Julie. We got some cute pictures by the lake area where they race boats.
tender times


my sweet j-meezy

Dan and Julie giving me some top model action.

Sorry lots of random pictures of us, because this blog is all about me and I'm really self centered like that.

I'm hopefully making another movie thing of all the pictures I took of the pretty blooming CP... we shall see how successful I am... I may just post the pictures : )

Wasting time...

I recently discovered imovie. I generally think imovie is ridiculous because there are absolutely no instructions and it's all just moving things around to try and figure it out. And apparently last Thursday night I was ready for a challenge and kinda sorta figured it out.

A long time ago (4 years!) I traveled through France and Italy with some girlfriends after living in Spain for two months. Here are my favorite pictures from that trip.

music: Coeur de pirate, Comme des enfants (I have no clue what it's about, but I adore it : )

I still can't figure out how to keep the sound level in the transition from movie clip to photos, and the ending is a bit choppy, but it was fun to make. I never consider myself a very creative person, but I love creating things. I always feel such a sense of accomplishment even though they're not all that amazing.

Europe feels like a dream. Someday Dapper Dan and I will go back... fingers crossed it's next year : )

Garlic anyone?

What happens when you send your husband to pick up a couple of groceries with one being the very ambiguous "garlic"?

You get about 5 bulbs.
Just to make sure it's enough!

Isn't he a helper? : )

Easter 2010

You know what's pathetic? This is my only Easter related photo. I took absolutely no photos at our family Easter celebration in CT, and have no evidence to prove that I have the cutest nephew on earth. It's really quite sad. But I do have this:
An empty peanut butter eggs bag. Let's not talk about how many peanut butter eggs were in there, let's not talk about how they were gone within about a 24-36 hour period, let's not talk about how my sister in law bought me a bag and then Dan and I proceeded to purchase...4 more bags, let's not talk about my slight addiction to the perfect ratio of peanut butter to chocolate which only exists once a year.

Good thing I'm training for a half marathon huh?

Final days...

On the last day and slight morning we had in Annapolis we decided to try and get the most out of the local goods. Dan went golfing for the morning while I did my run and then had a massage and manicure. I think that's a tradition we should definitely continue in our vacations! We then went and had lunch at the same place we went for dinner the first night we got there. We went back because of these bad boys...
See that little ball of goodness? That's the best dang crab cake you've ever tasted! It's known the town over for the amazing crab cakes and we had to go back for some more after getting a little appetizer taste that first night. They were dang good!
Then we walked around the Naval Academy. I sure do loooooooove me some navy uniforms! They're my favorite and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing them with frequency. It was also mildly entertaining how many people were running and exercising everywhere. We went on campus (after showing ID's of course) and every single person was in gym clothes running around. We wanted to go inside the chapel, but when we got there they were having Holy Thursday mass so we popped in for a sec before it started. Lots of gorgeous blue stained glass (I love stained glass!).

No pic but that night for dinner we went to the "fancy" restaurant in town. Dan and I tend to compete with who orders the best food for dinner. He had the best starter, a delicious cream of crab soup while I had a pretty good sauteed lettuce with apple/strawberry/gorgonzola mousse with a balsamic reduction. But I trumped all with my amazing filet mignon with a red wine reduction, and grilled onions with cut up potatoes (think country potatoes). They say everything all fancy on the menu but basically it was meat and potatoes, and oooooooh soooooo good! The amusing thing about this establishment which tried very hard to be extremely fancy is that a random politician had decided to have a party that night in the bar above the restaurant and had music absolutely blaring. The maitre'di kept rolling his eyes and making snotty faces at the ceiling. It was good times. (if you haven't noticed, the focus of our vacations is good food. As much as we can get in our bellies. yum!)
The last morning we got a quick bite to eat at an open air market and ate looking out over the pier.
Last vacay photo! Can't wait until the next one!

Annapolis to DC

On Wednesday of our trip, we'd basically exhausted the shopping options of Annapolis and surrounding areas (we were very excited to have a car and drive around and go to places like malls where there were many stores conveniently placed together. oh the joy!). So we went to DC for the late afternoon/evening. We met up with my elementary/high school friends Evan and Dana who live there and are hilarious people. We had pizza and it was good. Sadly I have no pictures of us, but I did go a little crazy with the DC temple and the blossoms we checked out before dinner!
I heart sun flares!
I didn't know the DC temple is a large temple. It's actually been since Utah that I've seen a large temple so it was kind of neat to be overwhelmed with the size and grandeur.
Yay for temples!
Then I became distracted by blossoms...
They were everywhere!
And I finally got to fulfill my east coast dream of seeing the cherry blossoms given to the US as a gift by Japan that line the tidal basin where the Jefferson Monument is located and FDR's monument is right around there too I think...
I like blossoms, especially now that I live in dreary winter NYC. NYC's winter sucks my soul away and the blossoms and green that explodes in the spring is absolutely amazing.
And I really like my Dapper Dan.
Tender times!
And the Jefferson Memorial. DC is a little ridic with all the American pride every where you look. I kinda love it.

I wish I had some pictures of the evening with Dana and Evan. We had fun even though we waited almost 2 hours for a dang table on a Wednesday night! We each got a different mini pizza and then traded slices. It was pizza deluxe! I really like DC a lot, it's so clean and such a young city which is fun and I love the mix of urban and suburban being so close together. I heart DC!

Annapolis

Last week, Dan and I went to the quaint city of Annapolis. It's the capitol of Maryland but and ity bity cutesy wootsey kind of town (that may be a slight exaggeration). We stayed at the Historic Inns of Annapolis in the building right across from the capitol building. When we got there Monday evening it was raining, it rained on Tuesday, Wednesday was windy but pretty, Thursday was gorgeous and Friday was beautiful! So things just got better as the week progressed. The rain earlier in the week actually wasn't all that bad because we had a car so we didn't have to necessarily walk around in it like one does in the city. Then by the end on the week we got this!
Love that bloomin tree (capitol building in the background).
Wish the macro worked on my camera...
Pic of the main street on rainy Tuesday. Lots of cute little buildings with expensive shops or indulgent treats inside.

We had a lot of fun relaxing and doing absolutely nothing. No real tours, no site seeing (there's nothing really to see there), we went on a short day trip to DC (more pictures from that later), and we watched as much free cable as we wanted!

I don't want to go back to work (but given a choice of being on vacation and going to work, I'm the type who would almost always choose vacay... or school, I wouldn't mind going back to school again), but I'm not feeling as stressy as I have before when coming back from a break. This type of vacay was just what I/we needed right now.

More pics to come!