Friday, January 3, 2014

Christmas Thanks [and a Video!!]

Happy New Year and Christmas Thanks.

This is my first ever video for the blog, so bear with me.


Also, right after I made this we opened the package from John's family with several other gifts, so thank you so much.

And thanks for watching! If you'd like to see more videos please let me know. And thanks again to all my family, missed you.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

New Year's Day in Food

The New Year transition in food:

New Year's Day was kind of weird. As I mentioned, our friends had to leave early. After a quick dog walk and goodbyes, I made some Buttermilk Pancakes for John and I. This is the 500 Vegan Recipes version with flaxseed for the egg replacer.


We pretty much hung out, cleaned a bit, watched TV. I did some yoga/calisthenics and before I knew it the middle of the day had arrived. 

For New Year's Eve dinner I had made this Penne Vodka from Veganomicon - Shannon you would love this and it's really easy. I use cashews instead of almonds because I think the creaminess is nicer. Also, I don't have an immersion blender so I just blend the nuts with a splash of water in the magic bullet until it's a cream and then add it in. The nice part about that is that then the tomatoes don't get as blended up and there's a little more chunkiness to it which I prefer. 

I made a double batch so we would have a lot of leftovers and we had it for lunch with some steamed broccoli.


For snack a little later was an apple.


I was still pretty hungry at 3ish, so we broke out some chips and salsa. This is the Sabra prepared guacamole, which is actually pretty ok for packaged dip, and the salsa is Monroe's, a local New Mexican restaurant. It's my favorite. 


After a fair few of those, I was sitting on the couch watching TV when I suddenly could not keep my eyes open anymore.

So at 4 PM I fell asleep. At 11 PM I woke up and moved to the bed, and then slept until 4 this morning. 12 hours, no big deal.

It makes perfect sense actually. I'd been sleeping about 3-5 hours a night for the past several days because I was having such a hard time switching my body back over to days from my night shifts last week. Usually it's a little easier to get back to days because I have to go to work and I just end up exhausted and it only takes me a couple days. I think because of vacation days I just wasn't feeling pressured to be well-rested and didn't want to miss anything, so I was sleeping very little.

So I feel much better. I definitely needed it. 

That said, I woke up starving of course because I slept through dinner, so I started my day this morning with a banana at 4 AM. 

John has to work today so he's about to leave and I'm going to head out for a run with Luna. 


Not sure what else I'll do today, but I'm just really trying to appreciate it because tomorrow it's back to work for the next straight 15 days. I'm so grateful for these 5 days I had for New Year's, but it is that much harder to go back. 

Happy New Year!

To celebrate the New Year our friends Evan and Chris came to visit from Colorado. It was so great to have them here, and they brought their darling cats and dog. We weren't sure how the animals would get along, but it all went well.

Flying Star New Year's Eve Breakfast

This is the Tofu-ritto but I asked for quinoa instead of a tortilla.


We rang in the New Year at home but went out earlier in the evening.

Luna did surprisingly with cats in the house.

Jokers!

Dog walking through campus.

For Christmas we gave them Powergrid. It is so fun.

More dogwalking.

Obligate midnight selfie. Happy 2014!

Happy New Year!

They had to leave early on New Year's Day to continue their road trip, so we spent the day relaxing.

We miss you already, safe trip!


The New Year's Resolutions that Weren't

I used to be very dependent on the calendar indicating to me that it was the start of a New Year and time for some resolutions and a fresh start. It's been a few years though.


I can think of one successful New Year's resolution in my whole life:
The year I turned 17 I used one of those Bible in a Year programs and read the whole Bible. That's not to say I didn't have months where I skipped a few days, but I always caught up and at the end of the year I actually finished it. That was awesome, but it was also my only resolution for the year and the plan was broken down day by day.

In order to set myself up for success, I just have to have manageable steps, and not too many things to work on.

At the beginning of 2012 I wrote this post of things to look forward to, which is frankly a lot more fun than listing a bunch of goals that have potential for failure.

I think instinctively there's still that feeling that the New Year is more than just another day, but how quickly we have to go back to our lives and the transition is over.

I wasn't willing to commit myself to any resolutions this year. It felt like too large a commitment, so I just picked 2 goals for January:

1. Study time 6 days a week, even just a few minutes on a patient from that day. 
2. Exercise 4x/week. 10 mins is fine if that's all I have.

And that's it. While I have an enormous list of goals and things that I think would make my life better and I'm very clear on the lifestyle disparities between right now and my ideal life, I'm going to tackle just a couple things per month. 

Do you have resolutions or goals for the New Year?