The good and the not so good

I really think Sunday nights are the worst! The weekends always go by waaaay too fast. Why does the work day seem so long and the weekends seem so incredibly short?

The rest of my first week at the new job went great. I'm becoming an old pro at the parking garage I park in, and even though I had to ask for directions 3 times on my quest to find the ice machine nearest me everyone was really helpful in trying to get me there. AND, it turns out I work with a fellow RBF-er . There are loads of runners in the company, and we get an AMAZING discount at the Y. There are also areas for walking indoors mapped out and posted on the walls, so I'm going to have to bring some sneakers to take advantage of the walking paths on my "breaks". So far, so good.

Friday night we went out for Mexican ala the Rosepepper. I tried the fish enchiladas, YUM!! The rest of the night we spent taking down all the Christmas stuff, and then Saturday afternoon we loaded it into the appropriate totes and into the attic. It's always so strange how empty a house looks when all the extra decorations are gone! Our tree was SO dry and brittle! Taking the bubble lights off I broke a ton of limbs, and our floor was covered in tree. I would share a pic of us dropping the tree off at the tree recycling center near our house but somehow it didn't get saved on the camera phone.

Saturday morning was our follow-up appointment with Pip's vet. The good news: he's already lost 2 pounds since Christmas Eve. Yay!! At one point he was up to 29 pounds, on Christmas Eve he was at 27 and on Saturday he was down to 25! Yay!! We've started cutting back his quantity of food, since he can't walk right now. (Which, by the way, totally sucks since this winter has been SO mild! I am dying to take him for a walk!!). The original goal weight set for him by the vet was 22 pounds, but we'll have to see if that is low enough, 20 might be a better size for his build. It will all really depend on how he looks, and not really a number. SO, that was the good news. The bad news? Nothing new on his luxating patella (dislocated knee), so there's nothing more the vet can do for us and at this point we're now referred to a orthopedic vet surgeon. We have to call this week and set up an appointment with them, but it seems that Pippin is going to be getting a shiny, (expensive) brand new knee. Hopefully we can schedule the surgery soon, so he can recover sooner and be back to his bouncing, jumping, running (though hopefully not quite as acrobatic) self. We were working upstairs this afternoon and since he can't jump on any furniture right now the poor little guy got up on my treadmill and sat there to try and watch us working. So sad - sort of a double irony as in "I'd really like to walk, please" and "I'd really like to come up those stairs with you guys".

I did get in a "long" run today, but only made it 6 miles instead of the 8 or 9 I would have liked. Between the vet appointment, the Christmas stuff, and my parents stopping in on their way home from my brother's house in Cincinnati there just wasn't any running time yesterday. And of course all day today was a total, pour-down washout rain event. Six is the absolute max I can do on a treadmill before I lose my mind, so I ran six while watching While You Were Out. Six is better than zero, so I'll take it. I'm still keeping up with lots of toning exercises this year because I really, really want to sculpt and tone more this year. Running alone gives me some pretty nice legs but it just doesn't tone my stomach and I hate having a muffin top. My goal for this year is to lose 12-15 pounds. I only weigh once a month, so I won't know how it's going (except my clothes feel looser already) for 3 more weeks.

We also spent loads of time organizing and cleaning our guest room upstairs this weekend. After nearly six months of looking for it we have found our plain envelopes and our extra printer paper. We're still looking for the paper cutter though!! I swear that room has never been vacuumed and I think most of the people who have lived up there have been cats with bladder issues. We're cleaning it and steam cleaning it in sections. Brent already has one section set up with his weight bench, so by the end of this week we will be have a nice guest room set up for anyone who wants to come and visit! And we spent a ton of money at the grocery store this afternoon, so we should have lots of good meals for our guests. I threw out a ton of old cooking ingredients when we moved, so we've slowly been stocking the pantry back up. I've also cracked out my Racheal Ray cookbook and picked out a ton of new recipes to try. Does anything beat a super-nice 30 minute meal??? And I love that she uses a lot of fresh ingredients. I didn't buy a single thing from the frozen section today, and the bulk of our cart was from the produce and meat section. That makes me happy!! For some reason having a gas stove has made us enjoy cooking much more. For our anniversary we decided to buy a new set of All Clad cookware for ourselves (we just have to get to the store to pick it up!) It's way too nice for our current kitchen, but in our remodel later this year they will fit in beautifully. By the way, I am IN LOVE WITH this stove. Seriously, seriously, seriously, in love. It's so hot. I heart it. It would make such a statement in this house. And it's available in EIGHT colors!! We've started shopping around for what we want in our kitchen, and we are in love with appliances! The thing we're having the toughest time with is cabinets. They're all so generic and cookie cutter, and that's just not us. We're leaning towards building them ourselves/finding some vintage ones and restoring them. I love the look of truly old cabinets. Our house would look ridiculous with anything else. There's a million things we've seen that we want for the new kitchen, we just need to sit down and draw it all out. And then multiply the cost of everything times two because nothing ever comes in at budget!

Ok, that's enough rambling from me! Have a great week everyone!

Rachel, who is going to try to be more like Racheal Ray this week. =) I get enough hits from people looking for her, anyway!