This past weekend was my first "event" planned at my new job. It was a picnic at Saratoga Springs.  We had never been there before, but it was beautiful!  Lots of green, trees, and shade.  There was an awesome bridge that S immediately wanted to climb.

I wouldn’t let him.  The company also had some awesome things set up – particularly for the kids.  There were a bunch of those bouncy-houses, as well as an obstacle course, a huge slide, a swimming pool, a ping pong table, a petting zoo, a pony and horse-ride area, a DJ, a photo booth… the list goes on and on.

My favorite was the petting zoo.  There was the biggest rabbit that I have ever seen!

There were also these adorable chickens, goats, a little pig, ducks, etc.  They even let the kids pick up the animals!  So these little kids were running around holding tiny chickens.  Love it!

There was a delicious lunch of bbq chicken, hot dogs and beef, as well as coleslaw, pasta salad, regular salad, fruit salad….

then cookies and an ice cream sundae bar for dessert!!  I’m afraid I didn’t take any pictures of my plate, lest my new coworkers label me “that weird girl”.  I’m sure that will happen in time, but for now I’m still “that new girl”. 

Other activities from the weekend included riding my motorcycle, which made me happy.  I just rode around our town a little bit… I am going to try to ride just around town a little more frequently so that I keep getting more and more comfortable and less scared.  The good news?  I didn’t drop my bike or hit anything.  The bad news?  On one right turn, I almost hit a car.  Key word:  almost.  S was behind me, though, and I pretty much gave him a heart attack. 

I also re-joined 24 Hour Fitness (my membership expired this month).  I was considering not joining, since I have the gym at work, but the gym at work doesn’t have all of the stuff that 24-Hour has, and it’s not as convenient for me to go there on weekends.  In addition, I really want some place to go that is “separate” from work – even though I will still work out at the work gym during the week, I still consider it being at “work” so I’m not 100% comfortable going ALL OUT and being a totally Sweaty Betty.  My manager might walk in, or my customer.  I’m just sayin.  Plus, the company will reimburse me for the 24-Hour membership, so there’s really no downside.  So I got a year’s membership and worked out there over the weekend.  Home sweet home

This morning it was back to work.  How do the weekends possibly go so fast?  And unfortunately, the first thing on my schedule for the day was a 3-hour scoping meeting for the entire program.  I got in early and had a quick breakfast:

Then headed out to the meeting.  Where I promptly had a chocolate-frosted kreme donut as my second breakfast.

Great hoogly moogly.

The bad thing about 3-hour meetings?  Well… that’s sort of self-explanatory.  THEY.ARE.THREE.HOURS.   Plus there are lots of donuts.

The good thing about 3-hour meetings?  There are lots of donuts.  But besides that?  Free lunch!!!  And a good one, at that.  We got a bagged lunch that included a smoked turkey sandwich:

Along with an apple:

A bag of chips (which I saved and snacked on later in the afternoon)

and a raspberry bar!

My other mid-afternoon snack (along with the Sun Chips) was:

A pack of dark chocolate almonds (LOVE those…) and a pack of Nerds.  Eating Nerds always makes me feel like a kid again. 

So… after work I hit the gym and then headed home to make dinner.  S had to work late so I was home before him.  Dinner is pictureless because it was… *gasp*… an Amy’s frozen meal (lasagna, to be exact.)

For dessert, I pulled out some of these apple pie wontons I made over the weekend.  These were pretty good, and really easy to make:

Plus they taste good warm and cold.

Apple Pie Wontons

1 medium apple, chopped
2 tbsp chopped nuts (I used pecans)
1 tbsp butter
1/2 tbsp brown sugar
cinnamon to taste
12 wonton wrappers

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Melt the butter in the microwave.  Mix in the chopped apple, chopped nuts, brown sugar and cinnamon.  Put a scant tablespoon of the mixture in the center of each wonton wrapper.  Use your finger dipped in water to wet the top and right edge of the wonton wrapper, then fold the bottom left corner up and press to seal.  Spray lightly with spray oil, and sprinkle some brown sugar on top of the wontons (I like the little crunch of the baked sugar.)  Put in the oven and bake for approximately 12 minutes until golden brown.  Enjoy! 

Now I’m off to indulge in some Bachlorette.  I thought this week was the finale, but just found out I will have to wait until next Monday…

I am seriously eating a piece of humble pie.  I knew that going from my full-time work at home job to a full-time in the office job would be a hard adjustment, but I didn’t know exactly how hard.  I’m exhausted.

Here is what my day looks like:

6:30 – wake up, get dressed
6:45 – make and eat breakfast and coffee.  Finish packing S and my lunches for the day (whatever I didn’t get done the night before)
7:30 – S leaves, I finish getting ready
8:15 – drive to work
8:45 – start work (after arriving, settling in, getting my coffee, etc.)
5:15 – finish work (assuming I leave on time…) and head to the gym
6:35 – get home, take a quick shower
7:15 – make dinner
7:45 – eat dinner
8:30 – clean up, set everything up for the next day
9:30 – emails, cleaning, laundry, misc…

I am totally overwhelmed.  I feel like I wake up and do my morning job.  Then I go to my day job.  I (sometimes… not consistently right now) get to work out in between.  And then I go home to my night job.  I’m hanging in there for now, but am not sure how long that is going to last.  It’s already becoming difficult.  The fact that S doesn’t really do much around the house (cooking?  cleaning?  What is THAT?!?!) doesn’t exactly ease the burden on me.  Although I have to admit, he is making more of an effort.  I have actually been getting home after he does, and each day I have found something little already done.  The garbage taken out, a load of laundry started, etc.  It’s the little things that really  make a difference.  He even stopped to pick up milk on the way home from work the other day because I told him we were out!

One great thing about my job?  The fruit that is available at the office is just awesome.  It’s so nice to be able to just head into the fridge and grab a fresh piece of fruit… one that I didn’t have to buy or pay for    And it makes a great, healthy complement to the food that I bring myself from home.

My meals have been pretty “standard” since I started work.  AKA:  I have been eating pretty much the same thing every day.  But I am loving it!  Here are my eats from yesterday to give you an idea.

I have an initial, quick breakfast at home with S in the morning.  I usually just grab a protein bar or some frozen waffles, because I know my mid-morning snack is a little more substantial once I get to work.

Mod-morning looks like this:

A cereal blend, a cottage cheese/yogurt blend, and a piece of fruit (or two) from the work fridge.

For lunch, I bring a monster salad, which is again enhanced by a piece of fruit from the work fridge.  This plum I ate was seriously the best plum I have ever eaten.  It was sooo sweet and juicy (and squirted plum juice all over my keyboard, but it was worth it )

Mid-afternoon snack varies as well.  On this day, they had granola and nuts at an open house they were having in the office gym!  So I grabbed a bag of each, and ate them with an apple as my snack.

The granola was sooo good!  I chose the one with the most visible dried fruit.  Yep, I’m that girl… digging through all the bags of granola to find the best one.

No one can say I’m not eating enough fruit every day, now!!!  I literally eat at least four pieces every day, just at work alone! 

Unfortunately, the other thing that I eat a lot of at work?

Candy.  Today I happened to be on a fruity, gummy kick – hence the twizzlers, laffy taffy and tootsie roll pop.  I also ate a box of nerds before I took the picture.  But more often than not, I head to the chocolate jar which is actually more fully stocked and has a zillion types of chocolate.

Grrr…

For dinners – I have been winging it.  For example, tonight was something that we have been having waaaaay too much of.

Frozen pizza.  And not even the healthy kind… the “supreme” kind with sausage and pepperoni.  And I didn’t even pick it off.  I am so tired and hungry by the time that I actually sit down for dinner that I basically devour whatever is quickest and easiest to put together.  Don’t even ask me how I am hungry after my afternoons of snacking, but I am! 

Guess all my hard brainpower I have churning at work all day just makes me hungry!

I have been heading to the gym about 3x a week after work, which helps.  Once a week I have even been doing weights!  Consistently!!!  Usually I go on Wednesdays with S because he works from home so after work he drives over to meet me.  However, this Wednesday he didn’t work from home so I actually went and did weights by myself!  Like whoa.

Then after dinner, I always have some kind of dessert.  Tonight, it happened to be a chocolate bar.  Somehow, even though I snack on it throughout the day I don’t get sick of chocolate.

*sigh*…

Other interesting outings this week?  Not many…  Wednesday evening I went and got my nails done.

Ok, so let me tell you about getting my nails done.  It is SO. NOT. ME.  I got acrylic nails (tips) done in high school for homecoming, prom, etc. and I basically hated them.  Sure, they looked pretty… but I hate them for the following reasons:

1. The fact that they looked so FAKE.  Again, I just feel like they are so not me.  I don’t like having fake things… like dyed blonde hair (ahem… present.) but I feel like I keep doing things like that more and more.  But I guess that’s a topic for a whole other blog post.  I actually have really nice natural fingernails, too… in my opinion.  So why pay to get fake ones??
2. The fact that they file down my real nails in order to put them on.  It basically destroys your real fingernails underneath so as soon as you actually want to go back to your natural fingernails, they are a mess.
3. I am way too active for acrylic nails.  In the past, when I got them done, they would last for a MAX of a few days before I broke one.  And then once I break one… my ocd causes me to pick all the rest of them off.  I do sports, I am constantly doing dishes and scrubbing things and washing my hands… all these things make them come off even sooner.
4. They are EXPENSIVE!!!  Every 2 weeks to pay for a fill… plus if I actually want to keep them looking nice I have to get the ones fixed that I break.  Ugh.

Ok, so now that I have gotten all my complaints out of the way, let me continue…. I got my nails done.  I actually got them done first in Pittsburgh.  S convinced me to, because he loves them and because since we just got engaged a lot of people are asking to see my hand (aka the ring.)  And believe it or not, I actually managed to go an entire two weeks without breaking one!  However, they were really starting to lift and look raggedy at the bottom edges so it was time for a fill.  I made my appointment at a new place here in CA and now have shiny new nails:

I have a feeling this is going to be the last fill that I get.  I’m sure S will be sad about that, but I won’t shed any tears…

Ok, now I’m off to bed, which I have been doing WAY too late every night.  I am so happy it is almost the weekend…

Time flies.  Thing change quickly.

A year or so ago, I went through a period in my life where I felt like I was in a stalemate.  Things weren’t changing – I wasn’t happy with the way things were, but I didn’t know what to change first or how to change it.  It seemed like all the things making me unhappy were just too big.

Now, everything is changing.  All the time.  Just when I start to get used to one of the changes, something changes again.

It’s hard for me to deal with that.  I am a person who is comforted by routine, by control and knowing there is consistency in my life.  Having a lot of change and uncertainty has not been easy for me.  But it is making me grow as a person, and helping me to recognize that I really do have a lot of consistency in my life, beautiful things that I can count on and appreciate and am so lucky to have.

Like S. 

On the fourth of July, we woke up at 6am to catch our morning flight to Pittsburgh.  I was groggily trying to wake up and listen to what S had started to say.  All of a sudden, before I knew what was happening, he was out of bed and down on one knee asking me to marry him.

I was shocked.  Yes, we had discussed marriage and had picked out a future ring, but we had agreed upon waiting for a number of months.  Turns out S had the ball rolling on the ring already and was just faking those plans with me all that time.  Sneaky little devil

It was really special timing – for us as a couple, but also because we were flying that very day to visit my family so I got to share the engagement with them.  And it turns out, S called my mom to ask her three days earlier!  So she had known about it and didn’t let it slip!

Anyhow, after a layover in Las Vegas and a lot of engagement excitement, we landed in Pittsburgh after 11pm.  We saw some fireworks from the plane, which was nice.  We didn’t go see fireworks last year on July 4th either.  Next year that will have to change!

Pittsburgh was a whirlwind, as always.  My family is a lot to handle – especially this trip because both of my sisters came into town as well to see us.  The whole thing was very overwhelming! 

It was also HOT and HUMID!  California is hot, but it’s much more bearable (in fact I love it) because it is dry heat.  The humidity (along with the bugs that come with it) totally sucks!

We had several barbeques – ones at my dad’s house:

And at my mom’s:

We went to the Carnegie Museum, as well as the Carnegie Science Center.

This is my mom and my sister at the museum.  See something wrong with this picture??? 

S and I also had Coldstone ice cream for dessert EVERY SINGLE NIGHT we were there.    No joke – every single night we each got a Love-it with one mix in.  It was the perfect ending to our hot days… plus it is just down the street from my mom’s house so it gave us the chance to get out of the house and go for a walk just the two of us and talk about the day’s events.

Mine usually looked like this:

I go for the vanillas, the sweet cream, or the cake batter flavored ice cream with either heath, peanut butter cup or oreo mix ins.

S, on the other hand, goes for the dark chocolate ice cream with gummy bears mixed in.  Always.

For some reason, Pittsburgh always seems to get a bad wrap.  But it really is a beautiful city.

We went up on Mount Washington and took some beautiful pictures and enjoyed the view.

Another thing that was really nice about this trip was the opportunity to go through old pictures and videos and share them with S.  Here, we were in a cafe with my Dad and he was going through some really old pictures from when he was younger.  It was so fun! 

I know the whole trip was especially overwhelming to S, who had never been around my entire family at one time.  There was a small amount of drama, but for the most part it was really a great trip.  Leaving is always bittersweet – I’m sad to leave my family, but happy to go back to my home and my life.

I’m so excited to see what changes the future holds now!

I have officially made it through the first week at my new job.  Not like it was difficult or a hardship or anything… just exhausting.

As far as healthy living goes, this job is going to make it a little harder for me.  I thought it would be easier, because at my old job I was working at home so was constantly heading into the kitchen whenever I was bored or needed a break or had some sort of craving.  But here it is almost worse… because I still head to the kitchen when I’m bored or need a break.  However, here there are not a bunch of healthy options like in my kitchen.  Actually, there are (there is always fruit and water) but of course it is sitting next to the candy, the cookies, the chocolate, and the soda pop.  Gee, I wonder which one Rachel goes for.

For example, I had scrambled eggs and fruit for breakfast at home this morning.  But when I came into the office, guess what was sitting in the kitchen?  Freshly baked cookies!  Of course I had to have one.

Twas oatmeal raisin.  Twas glorious.

My lunches have been good.  I pack them from home, although the first three days I have been surprised to have lunch provided to me.  Monday we ate in the office cafeteria, which has some awesome healthy options and I was not disappointed.  Tuesday my team went out for lunch to Billy Berk’s where again, I got an awesome salad and was not disappointed.  The other days I have made use of my Fit n Fresh salad container.  I have several of the other Fit n Fresh containers, and just picked this one up at Target last weekend before I started work.  Overall I love it, but I’m not that impressed with the salad dressing holder that fits in it.  It keeps coming out and making a mess with the dressing everywhere!

I didn’t remember to snap a pic today until after I had finished it.

I have also remembered to bring snacks from home.  I try to concentrate on those, rather than the bad goodies!

As I mentioned in my last post, working out will also be a little more difficult because I am now working the typical 9-5 (plus) hours each day.  No more mid-afternoon gym runs when the place is virtually empty.  This week I did manage to work out twice – Tuesday I went to the gym at the office after work.  That was good, it is a nice gym, but Wednesday it closed until after the shutdown (did I forget to mention?  Next week is a shutdown week so we have the week off!  Yippee!) because they are renovating it.  That’s really nice, because it will be fresh and they are getting new machines and stuff, but I was unable to use it Wednesday through today.  Yesterday I went running on a trail that is right by the office.  It was a really nice trail and a great run along the river all the way out to the San Jose airport.  I ran 2.5 miles out until I got to the airport and then ran back.  But it was HOT and sunny, and the trail didn’t have much shade.  I will definitely be doing this trail regularly, but will try to wait for cooler days!

Today after work I went to the gym (24 Hour Fitness, not the office gym).  I’ve always been the dork who loves to go to the gym on Friday evenings, when everybody else is out partying.  The gym is totally empty at that time, and it’s a great way to wind down and expend some energy after a long work week!  Today was no exception – I loved my gym time.  I did 20 minutes on the stepmill, and then 20 minutes on the stationary bike.

Something funny happened, too…  I was on the bike when this guy came up to me.  I was reading Fitness magazine, and he goes, “You should be writing that magazine, not reading it!  I see you here so often, you could write the magazine better than they could.”  Nice compliment, right?  Even though it’s not true, since I haven’t been to that gym in over a week… but whatever.  I’ll take what I can get!  But then he continued, saying “You’re not getting a workout on that bike, you’re giving that bike a workout!”  Ok, then it was getting a little weird.  He was totally hitting on me.  There was a long, awkward silence where I waited for him to walk away, and then he goes, “Well, just wanted to say hi since I see you here so often.”  Again, an awkward silence.  I was like, “Ok… thanks for saying hi!” and then started reading my magazine again.  Luckily he got the hint!

Now I’m going to make a huge dinner (I’m starving) and relax with some Mikes Hard Lemonade and my man.  Lots and lots to do tomorrow, because we leave for Pittsburgh to visit my family on Sunday!  I CAN’T WAIT!!!