Houses, Shots, and Chicken Casserole

It's always hard to come back to your blog when you haven't written anything in a month. I've missed talking about so many things that it simply seems overwhelming.

Weight Loss

As punishment for losing the Weight Loss Contest to Ryan, I took Maggie out and did the dishes for an entire week. It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be (plus, I think my awesome boyfriend was secretly loading and unloading the dishwasher while I was at work).

Maggie loved all the attention I was giving her.

The other thing Ryan won from our contest was a dinner made from scratch from me. Well, I'm not the best chef on earth (I tried to cook a whole chicken for Valentine's Day, and it ended up raw and inedible). So Ryan picked something pretty fool-proof: a chicken broccoli casserole.

Yummmm...

I was doing good losing weight up until this past week. Three of my college roommates visited this past weekend, so I ate (and drank) WAY too many calories.

Shots! At a dance club Saturday night.

Then, to make matters worse, I got a nasty cold which kept me inside with a food-filled pity-party for a few days. Ouch. But, I should be back on track soon.

Moving

We got notice in the mail that we needed to renew our apartment lease by March 24th. Ryan said, "You know... we don't HAVE to stay here." I had never given it even a moment's thought... but that was all it took to have me scouring Craigslist for new places to live. We love our current apartment... but we wish we were closer to downtown and the bike path. There is NO good place for me to ride my bike around here, and it takes a good 20-25 minutes for us to get from here to downtown.

We saw a total of 7 rental homes in a 2-week period. We have decided on an old duplex in the heart of downtown. It's an area filled with young professional couples with dogs (perfect). Our new place has 3 bedrooms and 1 bath (ouch) and is only 3 city blocks from the bike path (woohoo!).


Our lease isn't up until the end of May, but we get the keys to our new place mid-April, and we are very excited to move.

Half Marathon Training

Despite my week off from running, my overall training is going well. I am up to 4 miles, and the runs are pretty much a breeze. I do wish the weather would cooperate a little bit better. We had a few days with temperatures above 60, but this week has been chilly and rainy. My biggest struggle in training is motivation and time. I would MUCH rather sit and watch an hour of television than go run for an hour. Bleh.

Other

• I bought aero bars! I'll give a full review once I get them installed and try them out, but I'm very excited.
• Earlier this month, Ryan and I celebrated 2 years of dating.

The beautiful roses Ryan gave me.

• I dreamed the other night that I was doing an Ironman, then running a 10k the next day. I was going to pick up my registration packet, and it didn't hit me until then that it might be a REALLY bad idea... especially since I didn't even train for the Ironman! Woops. Good thing I'm smarter than that in real life.

I hope everyone is doing well. I am going to try to blog more in the near future, but I can't make any promises. We have a busy month coming up... and an exciting move to prepare for!