Return home to get ready to move! :)

I'm home, and thanks for your sweet comments on my last post. I know it feels like forever since I've blogged! But here I am, and I hope you enjoy this post.

The Iowa shows were a great success as we got to play for lots of people, sold a decent amount of merchandise, and generally had a blast! One of the shows was at a nature conservancy with a bunch of great hiking trails. I went out to go hiking and I ended up getting lost, walking (with a tiny bit of running) for about 4 hours! I was a little worried though, because I didn't have any water and I was getting mighty sunburned! (Now, a week later, it's peeling incredibly severely, complete with water blisters, which means it was actually a second degree burn! Not fun, but not a huge deal. It honestly didn't hurt THAT much, and I'm fine now, minus the really obnoxious peeling!) The "walk" turned into probably at least 10-15 miles! And the next day I walked/jogged a 3 mile trail!

Here are some pictures of the Iowa plains, flatlands, farmlands, hiking trails, and nature that I saw and got to walk through, while there.



This stream running under a hiking trail was one of my favorite sights. :)

In clarification of my title of this post, I am moving apartments in less than a week. My lease is up on June 29th, so I'll be moving in with two new people who seem nice but I don't really know them, so I'm hoping for the best. I have a pretty good feeling about it, though. Therefore, all of my free time (after getting home!) has been spent packing up endless boxes! I have most of my stuff put away, but there's still a lot to do:

• clean the house entirely tomorrow
• call landlord about where to leave the keys
• be here on Monday for the gas company to shut of the gas
• call a mover about the big stuff, mainly my bed and some book shelves. (Ack! Still need to do this!!!)
• BREATHE. :)

I'm really exhausted right now (I've been fighting off being sick, and I woke up with a 101.2 fever today! But it's gone as of tonight, so YAY! Still have achy glands so I figure that I need to get some quality sleep!)

But here are a few quick food pictures. I have been eating really strange stuff as I'm trying to eat down the contents of my fridge. I'm sure you all understand. :)

I had a yogurt with leftover Kashi cereal and PB Loco Peanut Butter. (With coffee!)


I also used up a jar of Seeds of Change Tikka Masala sauce that I sauteed some chicken in. It's great, because I finished my frozen chicken tenders and I have an easy-to-grab protein filled snack any time. It's also incredibly easy. :)

I regularly crave broccoli, especially after being on the road touring for a week! I only ate 2 of the chicken tenders and saved the others, by the way.

On a less healthy note, my wonderful amazing boyfriend brought me a bunch of Starbucks pastries, so I've been mightily enjoying Toffee Carmel bars, reduced fat chocolate chip banana cakes, vanilla bean mini scones, and a couple other treats. They are so delicious! :)

I also finished a box of truffles this week, with the last one left.

And I finished a lonesome frozen waffle in my fridge. This was a Nature's Path Pomegranate waffle with lots of fiber and stuff and I topped it with peach yogurt.

I'm been drinking a ton of Bolthouse juice that has lots of Vitamin C in it (acerola cherries ROCK!) and it's been wonderful! So I think it helped me feel better today!

I discovered a BRILLIANT and HILARIOUS song this week by indie songwriter Jonathan Coulton called "Code Monkey". I found its music video on YouTube and I wanted to share it with you because the song cracks me up every time I hear it! :)



I am literally falling asleep at my computer, so I need to go to sleep! See you all soon! :)

Giveaway winner + bar swap!

I used random.org to generate integer 16 as the winner! Congratulations, Michelle!

Michelle said...

My favorite ways to get fiber are fruits and veggies and cereal! And Fiber One bars don't hurt either. :) I linked back to your post on my blog, and you're already on my blogroll! Have a great night!

I'll send you an e-mail to find out where I should send the deliciousness to! :)

My exciting news of the day is that the lovely and talented Mi from Whole Foods For Whole Me and I are doing a bar swap since she lives in England and I'm in America and there are some bars that are only available on one side of the Atlantic Ocean. So we're buying for each other and swapping! (I absolutely adore trying foods from other countries! I lived overseas for most of my life--MORE ABOUT THIS IN AN UPCOMING BLOG--and it instilled in me a huge sense of appreciation and love for other cultures. If I happen to have any other readers from other interesting parts of the world, I would love to do a similar type of exchange with you!) Anyway, I received her package today!! She is so generous and wonderful! (Don't worry; yours is on its way!) She sent me the following:


Plus an adorable and perfect card!


Obviously she spoiled me, and I hope she loves the things I'm sending her as much as I love hers! Thanks so much, Mi!!

I baby-sat this morning for two hours and then went straight to the gym. I did 20 minutes of running/walking on the treadmill and then 30 minutes of upper body lifting. Needless to say, my arms are sore now. ("What? You mean I have to lift the violin up?! Crap!") I had a Tide Me Over South Beach Drink on the way home from the gym (can you say "ravenous"?!) and at home I made myself an amazing lunch:


The burger is a smoke grilled chicken breast on a wheat bun (not whole wheat, and not my first choice, but I had them at home). With lettuce, tomato, and Sierra Nevada mustard. It's about time we worked beer into mustard, right?! ;-)


The side dish is this corn and black bean salad from Rachel Ray. (I don't ever watch any TV, and definitely not the food channel [I did enough of that with my ED--I'd rather be more fully engaged in life!] but I googled for a recipe and this one looked good.) It turned out great and it's super easy and super healthy! I highly recommend it!

I packed quite a lot of food to teach on, since I thought I might be hungry after the workout.

I had to try one of Mi's bars right away. On the drive to teach, I savored this guy:


I also packed:

A cheese sandwich. Half is full fat cheddar, half is FF slice. I only ended up eating less than half of this and throwing the other part away because it had been sitting in a fairly warm car.


(Didn't eat any of the above picture's contents).



I drank about half this bottle all night while teaching. It's pretty delicious! (Also, teaching all night made it so that I culdn't watch any of the Pittsburgh Penguins hockey game! But they won their 4th game against the Carolina Hurricanes, so now we're just waiting for the Western Conference finals to end and then the two teams will comete for the Stanley Cup! Yippee! GO PENS!)

I ate all of these veggies after teaching.

And some random pictures on my camera.


My roommate made these cookies and I cannot stop eating them. They are small and reasonably healthy so I grab one almost every time I'm in the kitchen. But seriously, they have some pretty awesome ingredients. Ww flour, coconut, applesauce, etc.


(Picture that time 15 in the past two days--like I said, they're small and it was also the majority of my food intake on Monday! Haha, whoops!)

Today was ridiculously busy for me! The summer wedding season has started and I'm talking to so many people about playing at their weddings! I sriously talked to like 4 different people tonight, plus got texts and voice mails from a few friends. Do you ever have those times when your phone just doesn't stop ringing? Being an extrovert, I really enjoy it! I feel blessed and honored that people would trust their wedding music to me! And I definitely don't want to let them down so I make sure I take all the calls and do the very best I can for every single one!

Do you have a favorite wedding song? If so, what? If you're married, what was "your" song, or the song of your first dance?

I'm exhausted and heading off to bed. Today was a really good day though! I had a great time teaching and it felt especially rewarding today! I am also getting ready to go out of town again for two days, this coming Thursday and Friday to play more shows, so sadly, there will be a few days without blogging coming up. But I'll be back late on Saturday and I'll try to blog tomorrow also! Tomorrow I'm meeting a friend for breakfast at a local Crepe shop (so excited!) and I'm teaching from 1pm-8pm! So it's a fairly long day as well. I'll "see" you all soon though!

Big Apple Recap!

I'm back from NYC and we had a fantastic time! It was a whirlwind couple of days and I started writing this on Sunday night but even though I couldn't wait to fill you all in on the exciting weekend I had, I needed to sleep (literally falling asleep at my computer), so it's going up on Monday morning. And by the way, Happy Memorial Day everyone! What are your plans for today?

We left early on Thursday morning. I had an Oikos with cereal and coffee because I had only gotten three hours of sleep. In the car my boyfriend had brought delicious pastries (a raspberry filled danish and a bear claw) which we ate over the next three hours. We stopped driving for lunch and I had a slice of supreme sBarro Pizza. (Nutrition facts on-line say 631 calories. Sounds about right and in addition to being really good, it kept me full for a long time!)


On the drive there, we saw a truck with pigs in it! They were trying to stick their snouts outs! So cute! :)


I also took a picture of the MASSIVE bridge you have to cross in order to get into the city. I don't know its name. Anyone know what it's called?


We got in late and after checking into the hotel went into Manhattan and walked around for about three hours until 1am. First though we had to figure out how to use the PT. (= public transportation). It's really not THAT hard if you know how to read maps and pay close attention to details. Here's the trusty MetroCard.


We got dinner at a great place simply called "Pasta Lovers". I can't find much information about it on-line, but it was cheap ($12 for a dinner plate!), DELICIOUS and had EXCELLENT service! I'd highly recommend it! I got the grilled chicken with veggies and it came with spaghetti on the side. I really, REALLY enjoyed it!


Fountains by the Chase Bank:


Times Square Church. What a GREAT slogan and design! :)


And Times Square itself. Yes, it is full of flashing lights!


On Friday morning we got up around 7:30, to take a shower and get to the free breakfast provided to us at the hotel. I made a breakfast sandwich from two slices of bread, a pork sausage and a small 'omelet', mostly eggs. It was greasy, but really good! I also had coffee, an apple and a cinnamon pastry thing.

Then we went into the city to explore. We got to Manhattan around 11am and walked almost non-stop until 4pm. (= 5 hours of exercise! And in the evening, which I'm getting to, we walked for another 5 hours straight. Leaving one hour for standing/map reading/bathroom usage still means we were walking for about 9 hours straight. I'm going to estimate 300 calories an hour. This means we burned 2700 calories during the day, not including the normal calories our bodies need. Some hours would have been closer to 400 calories. So anyway, the point is, that it was an excellent workout and my legs are STILL a little bit sore! :) We were exhausted in the afternoon, so we took a two hour nap at Washington Square Plaza. But let me start at the beginning of our day.

We walked around Central Park. Isn't it beautiful?!?


Right outside of Central Park we saw the Hardy Boys (not sure of the spelling and I don't think this is right! I wanted to give you all the link, but I can't find them on-line since I didn't think to be brilliant and ask them how they spell their name!), a (VERY GOOD!) bluegrass band from Nashville, TN, another one of my favorite cities!

We walked south toward and through the Theatre District and passed the very unassuming, humble building that is Carnegie Hall.



The street right outside Carnegie Hall is named after a violinist, Isaac Stern. I know this (and care!) because I am a humongous geek. ;-)

We stopped for coffee mid-morning and I just had black coffee, but they had adorable cupcakes. I would have loved one, bu I really wasn't hungry. But I took a picture anyway for you all. I mean seriously, there's a Cookie Monster one and he has a piece of cookie in his mouth! How cute!

We walked to the Empire State Building and we wanted to climb it, but I didn't realize it costs $20 just to go up it! So we decided against it. It is, however, a VERY tall building!




I got hungry around 3pm (had had breakfast at 9am and a small piece of bagel at 11:30am) so I stopped at Pret A Manger for a sandwich. This is my new favorite place to eat!! Seriously, it's AMAZING! It's actually a small chain in England and New York and all their prepared sandwiches use fresh and organic ingredients. I had the balsamic chicken and avocado sandwich (500 calories--nice thing about New York is that calorie counts are on every item!) and it was one of the most delicious sandwiches I've ever eaten.

We were exhausted so we took a nap in Washington Square Plaza. Lots of other people had our same idea. The weather was gorgeous for our entire trip! About 80 and sunny! Although I did end up with a decent sunburn on my shoulders since I was wearing a tank top. :)

We left there and walked through Greenwich Village, stopping at Cafe Reggio for some excellent Italian Espresso where I had a skim latte.

Then we walked all the way to the Southern part of Manhattan where we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge on foot--twice. (There and back). It's pretty gigantic! I was expecting something a lot smaller!


Manhattan skyline from the Brooklyn Bridge.

Statue of Liberty from the Brooklyn Bridge.


Around this time (9pm) my legs were getting VERY sore. But I'm stubborn, so even though my boyfriend asked if I wanted to take the subway, I said I'd rather walk. Here's Times Square in daylight.


We got back up to Times Square and purchased tickets for the Broadway Comedy Club. It was a multi-comedian night and pretty fun. The show didn't even start until midnight and we ended up getting back to the hotel room around 4am.

I figured an apartment in this complex was a little out of my price range. (I can't remember if it was near Central Park or Times Square, but either way, probably not something I can afford....)

Anyway, we woke up early enough on Saturday morning for a free breakfast (I just had cereal + milk, an apple, coffee and another cinnamon danish because they were really delicious!) and fell back asleep until almost checkout at 12 noon! We started driving home but got a flat tire on the road! It took a little while to call for help and get it replaced, but not too bad overall. Then we stopped by some friends' place for dinner which was lasagna, salad, and brownies and ice cream for dessert. We had to get one more hotel because we were exhausted. On Sunday morning I got a suprisingly good Cobb salad from a gas station (no dressing, diet coke to drink). I also ate a bunch of chocolate covered edamame from TJs and a bunch of chocolate covered chili spiced dired mango. Sounds weird, but it's actually very good! :) After driving all afternoon my boyfriend and I went to Subway where I got a footlong ham and cheddar on wheat, all the veggies and honey mustard sauce and I ate all of it. Sunday night I went to a rock band competition where my friends were playing and I had a Yuengling beer. Then we went out for one more beer and onion rings. Hah, so not so healthy, but I'll workout today and I don't feel bad about it. I'd like to run outside, as it's beautiful out and I have my amazing new iPod! :) I can't wait!

I read all your comments on my last post--it sounds like a lot of you are Mac users! Woohoo! I do love my Mac and won't ever switch over!

OK, this has turned into another super long post! I hope you enjoyed reading the re-cap! As always, I would love to get your feedback, comments, and/or questions.

I hope everyone is having an excellent holiday weekend!