I have already had quite the morning.  For starters, I took my first shower at the gym.  I was very nervous, but let me tell you, it was everything I hoped it would be.  I even scored the handicapped shower, which is twice the size of the other showers and has a little stool.

No.  I didn’t sit down.  I was tempted (spinning was hard) but I think one too many naked butts have been on that thing for my liking.

You’ll also be happy to know that I’m not one of those people who walks around the locker room naked.  But, I can now sympathize with those people, because those towels are small.  Seriously, I’m a rather small person and I had to use three.  I can see why some people just chuck them all together.  Sort of.  Not really.  I’d probably bring my own.

I did all of this because I needed to go to the DMV and I wanted to get there right when it opens at eight so I could be home by nine to start working.  So after my shower, I grabbed one of these:

And headed over, irrationally thinking that I’d be ten minutes early and probably the only one there.

Wrong.

Clearly I’m not as clever as I thought.  The line was super long.  But those people are efficient.  I guess you have to be if you work at a Brooklyn DMV.  I was out of there by 8:45 as planned and I’m now the owner of a New York driver’s license.

Kind of.  They mail it to you in two weeks.  Which is not so efficient, after all.

A bird shit on my shoulder when I was taking Jack for a walk tonight.

I don’t think there’s anything more to say about that, so let’s move on to food.

This afternoon I had some plain yogurt with strawberries:

Again, I know. I bought the biggest container of strawberries I’ve ever seen, and they’ve been consuming my life ever since.

For dinner I had the leftovers. There actually wasn’t much left because Chris ate nearly all of it after dinner last night, so I made a salad too:

Mixed greens, roasted red peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes, feta, walnuts, cucumbers and balsamic. I also had some more yogurt and strawberries (see above for the visual).

I’m not ashamed to say that I’m one of those people who eyes the stats on neighboring cardio machines (I also eavesdrop in restaurants, to the point that Chris makes me sit where I’m facing the wall so I don’t get distracted, but that’s beside the point).  A little competition never hurt, and if the person next to me is going faster or harder than me, it gives me incentive to turn it up a little.

This morning, I got on the arc trainer (that weird-looking elliptical) next to a guy, and naturally looked over to check his data.

He was going at resistance 100.

Did you even know that those things went up to 100?  Because I sure didn’t.  I go at 55 and that, more often than not, has me contemplating suicide.

Well, once I saw that, I couldn’t stop staring.  No way.  I was waiting for him to pass out and fall off of the thing.  But he didn’t.  In fact, I’m pretty sure he went for an hour that way, because I was on for half an hour and he had a little less than that left when I got off.

Yeah, I was looking pretty hard.  But really. 100??  That man is in shape.

Anyway.  Tomorrow I might try to turn it up to 60.  We’ll see.  Probably not.

I also made a smoothie today with my homemade almond butter:

Pretty good.  Not as good as peanut butter, let’s be real, but still not bad.

Tonight the UPS man came and he had a big box for me and it was a Cuisinart from my brother and sister-in-law for my birthday:

I am going to be 25 next week and it is high time I started processing things. I am so excited; I’ve been reading my manual all night. I’m going to make shredded vegetables and french fries (!!!) and falafel and hummus and soup and nut butter.

Not all on my first night, though. The nut butter was most appealing to me, and we have a HUGE bag of almonds because every time my mom comes to visit, she brings a baggie full of them and then leaves it here. I don’t really like almonds, and at this point, they are basically taking over an entire cabinet. We have about three cabinets, so this is a problem.

I threw a bunch of them into this guy and let it whirl:

And it turned into this:

Does that look like almond butter or does that look like almond butter? I couldn’t really taste it because it was pretty hot (is it supposed to get hot? I hope it’s supposed to get hot. Mom?) but I’m definitely having some tomorrow.

In fact, I may be eating all of my food in processed form from now on. I already told Chris I was going to make him carrot juice. He didn’t like that.

I can hardly remember what we had for dinner after all the excitement, but it was fish tacos:

There was a lot of extra guacamole because I had a little cumin incident and had to add another avocado to even things out a little, so after this I had some strips of yellow pepper and some more guac. I’m going to post the recipe for the tacos under that page because it was really easy.

And the last ice cream sandwich:

Jack ate both of my makeup brushes this afternoon.  Also, three nails and a cardboard envelope that I managed to grab just before he chomped through my birth certificate, which was inside.

Don’t worry, I recovered the nails, too.  But seriously, I thought I had a snacking problem.  All I had was some yogurt and strawberries:

It’s a lovely day here in Brooklyn.  Rainy, windy, and about 48º.  No lie, I wore my winter coat to the gym this morning, and if I’d had time to find them, I would have definitely broken out the gloves, too.

That, combined with the fact that my neighbor is blasting something that strongly resembles polka music, makes me think that someone is out to get me. I actually don’t even know what polka music sounds like, but I’m pretty sure this is it.

Anyway, for lunch I had a BLTA, which means I added avocado:

And a salad:

I also had a few bites of last night’s leftovers because I was trying to decide whether or not I wanted to eat them.  I eventually decided that I’m just going to put it off until they go bad have them for dinner tomorrow.

Oh, and I also had coffee this morning, but I think we’ve seen enough coffee around here, am I right?

Sorry, busy weekend. I had to watch Goodfellas, take Jack to the dog run so he could terrorize a Boston Terrier, and this afternoon, around three, I took a nap. Here’s last night and today.

Went to Mary Ann’s last night because it was borderline warm enough to eat outside and we decided to go ahead and shiver through.

Margarita:

Guacamole, which is by far my favorite part:

And a mushroom and spinach quesadilla with salad and black beans:

I couldn’t eat all of that, obviously. I had the salad, about 2/3 of the quesadilla and hardly any beans.

Then we had to go home. Either these margaritas are getting stronger or I’m getting old.

Today, on the walk home from the dog run we stopped and got the most disgusting frozen yogurt I’ve ever had. Well, I didn’t even have it, because it was too gross to eat. All icy and chemically tasting and just plain weird. So I had a Z Bar instead, but sorry, no picture - things were a little chaotic. I was distraught over the frozen yogurt and my wasted five bucks.

Lunch was a BLT with my favorite fake bacon and pretzels. I also had some plain yogurt with strawberry “spreadable fruit:”

I don’t know why my pictures are blurry. Every time I think I have this photography thing figured out, I get confused again.

Anyway, for dinner we had peanut noodles with vegetables and shrimp:

I would post the recipe, but to be honest, it wasn’t that good. Which sucks because there is a ton left over and I probably have to eat it for lunch tomorrow.

I’ll probably have an ice cream sandwich in a little while, too. GOOD NIGHT.

I dragged Chris through the green market on our way to Trader Joe’s and managed to grab these before he dragged me back out:

Mung bean sprouts!  This is exciting to me, so instead of a conventional snack (like one of the 18 chocolate chip Z Bars we bought) I made a salad this afternoon:

I would have bought more at the market but we went during the worst possible time and I just couldn’t handle it.  I can’t take crowds.  Which is why I live in New York, of course.  No crowds here.

Also, for lunch I had a veggie burger (Morningstar Grillers Prime) with some Sun Chips:

And I also got an iced coffee at Starbucks while we were shopping:

My snack this afternoon was carrots, which I dipped in some salsa:

This is just the first serving, I had more.  Okay, I had most of the bag.  They are carrots, though, not chips.  Let’s keep this in perspective.

Then Chris came home and started eating, which naturally made me hungry again, and so I had a bite of his Clif bar:

Jack was all over this.  Just look at the longing in his eyes.  It took me ten tries to get a decent shot.

And then, more carrots and salsa, and a few of the crackers Chris had out:

Okay, so here’s the question.  Chris says that dipping carrots in salsa is gross.  He, however, dips carrots in peanut butter, which I think is gross.  Also, we don’t all have the luxury of a super-fast boy metabolism, do we?

So let’s hear it.  Which is better with carrots, salsa or peanut butter?  Be honest and pick salsa.

This morning I had iced coffee.  I have a love/hate relationship with this stuff.  For some reason, I like hot coffee without sugar, but iced coffee, to me, should be sweet.  But sugar doesn’t dissolve in cold liquids.  Quite the predicament, don’t you think?

That’s Jack’s owner’s manual in the background.  I think he might be broken.  Or foreign.  I’m thinking Japanese, probably.  He doesn’t quite grasp important words we have in the English language.  Things like “no” and “sit” and “stay.”  Today, he’s particularly struggling with no.  As in, “No, Jack!  You cannot chew up the last roll of toilet paper!”

I’m not sure how to transition from toilet paper to yogurt, so:

Morning snack.  I am in love with this Sorrell Ridge strawberry jelly.  Or, as they like to say, “spreadable fruit.”  Which, I hate to break it to them, is jelly.  Or jam.  I am always confused about the difference.  One has seeds, is that it?  Anyway, this is good stuff, 100% fruit, and I’m addicted to it.