the last six months

I haven’t been “feeling” the blog in a while. In fact, I’m not sure I’m feeling it now either, to be honest. This might be a one-off post.

Anyways, a lot of time has past since the last post on July 31 of last year, so here are the highlights of what’s happened since:

August

We spent lots of time with our moms. Some on Bainbridge, some in Oregon. In between, we kept running (sometimes outside, sometimes on a treadmill that we had shipped to MIL’s in Oregon). We ran 19 times for about 106 miles. Wow. I didn’t realize we did so much.  We also spent some time in Walla Walla to see if it might be a place we could settle down (spoiler: it isn’t).

Also, we bought a car. And orange car. And it’s awesome.

September

We spent the entire month at my mom’s place on Bainbridge, running at Battle Point Park. It’s a nice park with a 1.5 mile path. Not much else happened. We ran 14 days for 68 miles. A bit less because a few injuries slowed us down.

October

First off, I raided the frequent flier accounts and bought tickets for our next adventure. I guess that settling down and being normal will have to wait. I started getting very sweaty palms when we were thinking about buying another house. So… yeah, the adventure continues.

We got to fly down to Ojai and see my sister and her brood, including the newest nephew. We had a really nice time visiting my family and family friends. After that, we visited Husband’s family in Oregon again.

We ran 21 times for 94 miles total. Pretty decent!

November

It’s Panettone season again. And I baked a lot (a lot!) of them. And some were really good and some were awful failures. Some even ended up in the trash before they were baked. But mostly they worked and were good. I was able to borrow a stand mixer which made the whole process a lot easier and at least a little bit faster, but not always more successful than doing it all by hand.

We flew to southern California and spent Thanksgiving with my brother and his family. It was my first time traveling for Thanksgiving and it was oppressively hot. We didn’t run at all. We barely walked. It was almost 100 degrees. But it was fun. We like visiting family.

We ran 16 times for 55 miles. Meh.

December

After having such a fun time seeing my sister and her kids, we had all planned to meet in Ojai again before Christmas. Unfortunately, about a week before then, the huge Thomas wildfire started and wreaked havoc on the area, so those plans were scrapped. We are very relieved that all our friends and family in the area are safe and accounted for… and somehow Ojai was spared the worst of the fire.

We met Husband’s mom and sister on the Oregon coast for Christmas. We rented a house and spent a few days together. We made a yummy Christmas prime rib with yorkshire puddings. We ate and drank too much. Fun was had. We ran one day on the beach. Why is running on the beach so hard ??? (and slow? Answer: wind and sand.) After that, we met again down in southern Oregon for an extra few days. And we ran on the dreadmill.

We ran 21 times for 103 miles. Wow!

January

We ran a lot in January (21 times for 81 miles). And prepped for our trip. And payed taxes. And other fun stuff like that.

 

And there you have it. Our last 6 months in a few sentences. We aren’t that exciting. Apparently, there wasn’t much to write about anyways. Also, I have pictures I’d like to add to this, but my WordPress app seems to be on the fritz again, so maybe I’ll be able to update this with something… eventually.

first fiver

31 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

It's Monday. That means today we run. And we did. We got an earlier than usual start today in order to beat the heat, which we did. And we felt really good running… I mean… "really" is kind of a joke right? But yes, we felt good. And we made it FIVE MILES for the first time (I think) this year. I'm pretty sure. It might be the first time since January 1st when I fell for the first time (but didn't bleed, so we did finish the run). Anyway, feels good after 7 months off.

Today isn't very exciting. We are leaving our Airbnb tomorrow, so we are cleaning it up and packing and stuff like that today. The really great news is that we got all our steps in before noon with the run and then the trip to the grocery store. Yay! So now we are hanging out, reading, writing, and cleaning. That's all I've got for today. Unless something really interesting happens later, which it probably won't.

Food and Activity

Breakfast

Peach, kiwi, melon, and blueberries with yogurt and bran flakes. Coffee with milk. Calories: 421

Lunch

Smoked salmon sandwich with cream cheese, red onion, tomatoes, cucumber, and cilantro. Calories: 461

Dinner

Spicy chicken sausage with sauerkraut and lazy slaw. Calories:

Activity

FIVE FUCKING MILES

summer sunday

30 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

Sunday. Feeling a lot better today. A lot. Normal, even.

On today's agenda, we are going on a quick visit to see my mom and drop off a few things at her place in advance of us staying there for a few days. See, we have amassed too much stuff already. And no car, so… The main thing we have is a fan that we pulled out of our storage locker. And it occurred to me a few days ago that it would be a potential nightmare on the bus with our backpacks on Tuesday, so we decided to take a load of stuff early. It was nice, we got to see my mom and visit for a while. Also, we got the fan over there, so now we don't have to worry about that (except that it's pretty hot here right now, so hopefully that wasn't a huge mistake for the next two nights).

Before our adventure, we took a brisk walk in the morning and then stopped by the grocery store to get stuff to make a picnic lunch. We were kind of under a time deadline for transportation, so we had to walk faster than we normally do. And for those of you who think we normally walk pretty fast, I have news. We don't. We probably walk faster than some people, but we are by no means "speed walkers". We just walk A LOT. Not fast. But many miles. So this morning's walk was basically just under the pace of our runs. Or at least that's how I felt as the sweat poured into my eyeballs. At any rate, good fast walk. That was our "rest" day.

After we got back, we made dinner and settled in to watch a movie. The new Ghostbusters, which I actually liked. Then we went to bed early because running tomorrow. And we want an early start next week because heatwave. Hopefully it won't impact us too much… <fingers crossed>

Breakfast

Oatmeal with blueberries and kiwi. Omelette with green onions. Coffee with milk. Calories: 419

Lunch

Ham sandwich with mustard and cucumber. Calories: 470

Dinner

Turkey corn dogs with crunchy veggies. Calories: 507

After Dinner Snack

Popcorn. Melon, kiwi, yogurt, and bran flakes. Wine. Calories: 564

Total calories: 1959

Activity

no, no, no, not that many beers, bitch

29 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

Yes, I realize that this is several days after the fact, but I require myself to catch up. Mainly I will tell you that I woke up Saturday morning (this day, the 29th) and basically felt awful. It turns out I didn't earn *that* many beers. And I definitely regretted that insane burger (although it was oddly delicious) and basically everything else I ate that night. But I got my buns out of bed pretty early anyways. See, we had a party to attend. A friend's birthday party. Which would likely involve lots of eating and drinking, but I'll get to that later. I prepped rolls (bread) for the party on Friday night (I know, I'm amazed that I was able to do that. I wonder if they'll be edible?), so I had to portion them out and proof them and bake them before the party. Managed to do all that and have breakfast and shower and everything else and take a walk… all before the party. Pretty incredible, given how horrible I felt.

zero to one hundred

This is how I feel sometimes. I'm either "on" or "off" when it comes to food and drink. There doesn't seem to be much of an "in between". Just "zero" or "one hundred". I'm either really good, counting every calorie, being careful, not having this or that. Or I'm literally eating everything in sight. I wish I could learn this "moderation" thing that people keep talking about. I mean, I feel like I'm doing things in moderation when I'm carefully tracking my food. Because it is really fucking easy for me to fall off the wagon. Sometimes it's easier than others to get back on the imaginary wagon. Anyway, Friday night I totally fell off. Not totally. I've definitely had worse nights. Way worse. WAY WORSE. So I guess in the big scheme of things, maybe this wasn't the worst? Yeah, not the worst. I'm really not trying to rationalize it though… in case it seems like I am. I'm not. It was a bad night.

So on Saturday morning, I felt so awful, I knew I wasn't going to want to drink. That was good. That's basically calories I just saved myself. And then I'd just have to manage the food thing. At parties it is hard because of snacky things. I wish I could just overeat at like really fancy restaurants because then it seems it would at least be delicious. I'm not sure that chips and salsa really qualifies as "delicious". I mean, it is at the time, but all corn chips are basically the same. And most salsa is meh. And and and… the point is, junk food is good at the moment, but not so much later on. Anyways, I held it together at the party. Just had a few snacks and a burger.

Oh and the party was fun. We met some new people who had just gotten back from a trip to Iceland and the Scandinavian countries. Sounded amazing! Also the rolls turned out really good and people seemed to like them.

After the party, we walked across the street to our other friends and visited for a while and then went to dinner. We went to one of those pub grub places that actually has printed their nutritional information on the website, so I somehow managed to stay within my calories (thank you, hangover), but still go out to a party and to dinner at a restaurant (these are the places where things fall apart). So I guess I am learning to do fun stuff and go out to eat without eating all the things. It's hard. Very, very hard.

Food and Activity

Breakfast

Oatmeal with soft boiled eggs and cheddar cheese. A delicious peach. Coffee with milk. Calories: 447

Lunch

Hamburger on a bun with condiments. Fruit. Pita chips and hummus. Calories: 782

Dinner

BLTA and a side salad. Calories: 527

Total calories: 1756

“earn your beer, bitch”

28 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

Yesterday evening we met a couple of our friends (Nickie & Dave) at the local pub (sounds like we're back in Britain, eh? We're totally not.) and had a few pints and played a few pub games and visited and had a nice time. Yay, friends!!

Today we were up early again (PS – I slept way better last night) to go running. And we went running again. Four miles again (for those of you keeping track… I know I am… that's 3 times this week for four miles. Pretty sweet!!). The run today was good. I felt good (which was kind of a relief after the beers last night) and we actually improved our time quite a bit too. Under 12 minutes/mile. We're definitely making progress.

Sometimes I read the "running" "reddit" and today they have the Friday spotlight where a runner shares various running and personal stuff about herself or himself. Today's runner is a woman who's mantra used to be "earn your beer, bitch" which I thought was awesome, so now I'm stealing it from her. But also giving her proper credit, even though she's just a username on reddit, so I'm not even sure how to give proper credit and probably don't want to use her username in my blog since my readers are kind of sketchy and might… haha… that's a joke. My readers are awesome and there's only like 3 of them. But anyways, I thought the mantra was funny, so I'm borrowing it. And I'm just making it known that I am not that clever and didn't come up with it myself, but now it's the reason I run. That and to eat more. Because I love food.

ladies, put down the perfume and step away slowly with your hands in the air

Today on our run, we passed this lady walker who completely stunk of perfume. In fact, as we ran in the opposite direction, Husband muttered "her perfume is going to kill me." And I got a little concerned because he is very sensitive to scents and I wasn't sure if he had his rescue inhaler with him, but he said he was fine. And really, if you're outside on a nature trail, even if you're walking to your job or whatever (meaning, you're not out for an exercise/sweaty walk), that's cool, but lay off the perfume, for the love of all that is good and other things. I've noticed that people who wear perfumes sometimes (and this happened to me, so I know) become so desensitized to the smell that they end up putting on too much. And then everyone gets to smell it for MILES. Listen, if I can smell your perfume, you're wearing too much. Unless I'm nuzzling you. Then I should be able to. But I'm not usually nuzzling strangers anywhere, so I shouldn't smell your perfume. I seriously hate perfume. And air fresheners.

Food & Activity

Breakfast

Fruit (melon, blueberries, kiwi, banana) plus yogurt plus branflakes. Coffee plus milk. Calories: 449

Lunch

Scrambled eggs with green onion on my buns. With a tomato and cucumber salad on the side. Calories:

Dinner

I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say there might have been a burger with peanut butter and bacon, which sounds gross, but I assure you it's good. And several beers. Ugh. Tonight was not good. At all.

Activity

Beer earned. Four mile run (see above… and ease up on the perfume, please).

my quarter of a cup runneth over

27 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

I'm getting a bit of a head start on my blog post for tomorrow, today. Um… I just confused myself.

Now that we've been back in the US and dealing with grocery stores and counting calories and all of this, I wanted to write about how full of shit the US food labeling system is. Seriously. Look, Europe isn't perfect with labels either, but they did pass a regulation a few years ago that made it mandatory to label food (which is kind of crazy if you think about it… this only became mandatory last year!). And the way they do it is really nice. The requirement includes listing out the nutritional information per 100 grams of the food. So it doesn't matter that a typical "serving" is 5 grams (although they can include that as well, but it's optional), they have to list out all the details for 100 grams of whatever it is. So, for example, you're in France, Italy, Scotland, wherever… and you want to get some cereal. And you're interested in whatever is the lowest calorie cereal, so you start picking up boxes and looking at the nutrition information. And it's all listed there for 100 grams of the cereal. So it's the definition of comparing 'apples to apples' because, even though you aren't going to eat (maybe) 100 grams each morning, at least you are able to see that the bran flakes have 349 calories, vs. the 550 in that granola (I'm making these figures up… I really have no idea if there is a cereal that has 550 calories per 100 grams… it's just for illustration purposes). It's really easy to tell which one has fewer calories. And it's like this for basically everything in the store. Theoretically you can compare apples and oranges and make an informed decision. Brilliant!!

Yesterday we went to Trader Joe's (love that place!) and we walked by the bread section… and I muttered to myself (maybe a bit louder than I realized) "never again, store bought bread… never again" and then a little roll type thing caught my eye, so I wandered over to have a look. It was a pretzel roll. I wish I took a picture with a banana for scale because it was probably shorter than most bananas, but slightly fatter. According to the package, it is 4.5 oz. And I turned it over to have a look at the calories: 160. And for a split second, I thought "not too bad" and then I saw "Serving size: 1/2 roll, Servings per package: 2." You've seen this before. How about those little bags of chips that they sell at sandwich shops and in the deli section of the store? Yeah, those all have 2-2.5 servings per bag. Are they fucking kidding? Who in the hell doesn't eat the whole bag? Alright, so there's that… single serving bags masquerading as multiple serving bags, so that the products seem less awful for you. Did you know that the serving size for a pickle is "1/3 of a pickle"? Nope? It's because they are high in sodium. Have you ever met a person who only eats 1/3 of a pickle? Me either. Personally I rarely even eat a bite of a pickle because I don't like then much.

Then there's cereal and a million other things that are measured in fucking "cups". Again, what the ever living fuck, FDA? I get it, "cups" and all the other "household measuring thingies" are common in the US. I get that, but holy shit, you guys, we should all have food scales. It's so much more accurate. (and if things really go south, we can all become drug dealers and won't have to buy a scale). The FDA does require the food manufacturer to put the grams on the package as well, but those are all over the place (for instance, we currently have two hot cereal packages from Bob's Red Mill. The serving size is 1/4 cup on both, but on one that is 46 grams and the other is 30 grams. Not at all useful, Bob's), so it's impossible to compare one product to the next because the servings sizes are all different. Argh. It drives me insane.

I started reading the actual rules yesterday and my head just about exploded. Not only is it complicated, but there are so many exceptions to everything. For example, ingredient/serving size. So they have minimums that have to be counted, but since it's by serving size, TicTacs are SUGAR FREE, according to the rules. You know what's in a tictac? Sugar, that's what. Total and complete bullshit.

Anyway, I found this article that sums up the differences between the US and EU requirements. Apparently the US is suppose to be updating the requirements to deal with this serving size bullshit, but I have no idea if or when that will become a thing. Especially now. Since we have a moron as president.

Alright, I'm off to bed now. Just wanted to get a head start on my post tomorrow, since apparently I have something to rant about.

Today, with feeling

We got up early today to go running before the death ray… you get the idea. I hate running in the sunshine. Or the heat. Today I woke up to glorious clouds and fog! Ahhh… sublime. I also woke up a bit crabby because I had trouble sleeping last night (hips were achy and I couldn't get comfortable and also couldn't remember where I put the ibuprofen.) I had serious doubts about my ability to run today. But the good news is that WE RAN FOUR MILES AGAIN!!! Yeeaaaaahhhhh. Unfortunately I'm still a wee bit crabby, but better than earlier. And the run was good. We are improving all around.

Food and Activity

Breakfast

I changed things up today to save time. Fruit (melon, kiwi, and banana) with yogurt and bran flakes. Oh and coffee with milk. Calories: 419 (fruit is surprisingly caloric).

Lunch

My buns, toasted with chicken tenders and a spicy slaw topping. Calories: 473

Dinner

Trader Joe's Chicken Potstickers with soy, ginger, garlic, spicy pepper dipping sauce, broccoli, and mushrooms. Calories: 471

nack

We met our friends at the local pub, so I had a few pints. Calories: 720 (beer is the devil!!)

otal calories: 2083
Activity

Ran 4 miles! Again. W00t!!

two weeks

26 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

It's Wednesday and that means we take a break from running today. So that means that we slept in. Which for me was actually quite late (7:20am). We've had breakfast, I still need to get my buns in the shower and get ready to take on the day.

We've been back home now for two weeks. Feels longer… or maybe not. I'm not really sure. I do feel like we're completely in limbo (because we kind of are), waiting for something to happen. I think mainly we are waiting for our new car to arrive, so that we can continue the "visiting friends and family" circuit we have tentatively planned. Being without a car is kind of a pain, I'll be honest. We were trying to get out to Sammamish last weekend. Sammamish is kind of a nightmare even with a car, so there's that. It's one of those communities that's completely landlocked, for lack of a better word. There are no major roads (read: freeways) that go there, the nearest ones are 20-40 minutes in some direction. Anyway, we tried taking the bus. Hahaha… joke's on us! There IS NO BUS ON THE WEEKEND. Not a single one. Nada. Nothing. There are tons of buses during the week, mainly during the commute hours, but I guess they figure "these people are not 'bus' people." Which is probably true. I imagine that many of the commuters only do it because it is less of a hassle than actually driving through that hellish morning or afternoon traffic. But they are commuters… not every day bus riders who have no other transportation. Suburbs. Anyway, so being without a car is a bit of a drag. But hopefully our new car will show up in a few weeks and then we can drive it to faraway places and see some family and friends that we haven't seen in a really long time.

Food and Activity

 

Breakfast

Same thing as yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. Calories: 417

Lunch

Chicken tenders cooked with spices then placed carefully on my sliced and toasted buns. Toppings include cucumber, lettuce, and a little pile of cabbage. Calories: 430

PS the bread was delicious also today. Nailed it!

Dinner

Shrimp boiled in Old Bay seasoning, broccoli, lazy slaw, and spiced up with home made cocktail sauce (which consists of ketchup, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and freshly made horseradish, also from scratch… it'll burn your eyes if you get with in a 30 block radius, so be careful with this stuff.) Calories: 410

 

Snacks

Earlier, I had a macchiato at Urban Coffee Lounge. As we were walking there, I said to Husband, "you know, I didn't miss this place at all… I mean, since we were basically able to get an amazing coffee at literally any time we wanted for several months. Also they only cost about €1."

After dinner, I had some yogurt (fat free Fage Greek yogurt, if you care), blueberries, and bran flakes. Calories: 249

Total calories: 1506

 

Activity

No running today, as I mentioned. We took a long walk around Kirkland (literally around it). From our AirBnB to the park at the north end of the lake, then to Urban Coffee Lounge, then to the Goodwill up on 132nd, then across 132nd, under the freeway, and over to Trader Joe's (which is basically the only thing still open around there because they crunched everything else up to build a Whole Foods). After Trader Joe's, we found the CKC (Cross Kirkland Corridor, where we run) and walked that the rest of the way "home". It was somewhere between 9 and 9.5 miles, depending on who's Strava you believe this time.

my buns

25 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

Ran again today. This time FOUR miles!! Husband's goal when we first started back was "get to 4 miles in 2 weeks." And I thought he was bonkers. Mostly because he didn't think we'd be able to run even a mile on our first day back, so I wasn't sure how he thought we were ever going to get to four in two weeks. And also because I was nervous about doing too much too soon because I really want to avoid injuries. I'm pretty stoked about getting back to four miles in just over a week. That is awesome!! And I feel really good. Last week I felt really tired and sluggish. Probably because of jet lag and running again. Maybe even mostly jet lag. And probably also the beer. Anyway, I feel so much better this week, so far. Tomorrow we "rest".

Bread!

My bread dough fermented overnight and was nice and pillowy and bubbly this morning. I managed to shape it into 8 nearly equal buns before our run. I left them to proof while we went running (and at the point when we checked in with each other on distance, Husband proclaimed he could do 3.75 or even 4. I said "no" immediately. He countered with "you don't want your buns to overproof, do you?" And then I was trapped. I got to the 3 mile marker and felt really good and said "ok let's go for four." So I cannot lie, part of my motivation today was to not overproof my buns. I'll take motivation from anywhere. I'm pretty competitive).

We got back and my buns looked good, so I fired up the oven and baked those guys.

They turned out fantastic!

 

We had them for lunch with chicken tenders and slaw. Yum!! So much better than store-bought bread.

fternoon in the park

We walked over to the park after lunch and sat on the shady grass (on reusable shoppers, since we don't have a blanket). We read, wrote, watched birds and bees doing their things. Eventually the shade disappeared and also I got bored, so we left and went grocery shopping. We bought a box of those canned waters and asked for it to be put into one of the shoppers. The cashier said it was too heavy for a bag and I said, "yeah, but we're walking, so…" and the cashier and the bagger looked at us like we were crazy people (maybe they are right). And then we made dinner and are now watching some show or movie, I'm honestly not sure which.

PS they did put the box of water in the shopper.

Food and Activity

Breakfast

I'm so boring. Same thing. Calories: 422

Lunch

Chicken tenders and slaw sammies on my buns. Calories: 486

Dinner

Turkey burgers (ground turkey breast mixed with chopped onions and mushrooms for moisture and texture), sweet potato fries, super lazy slaw (bagged coke slaw and green onions tossed with lime juice, sour cream, hot sauce, and chopped cilantro), tomatoes and onions for the burgers (bunless, ironically) and ketchup. Calories: 597 (those sweet potatoes have a lot of calories).

Total: 1604

signs that you might be too dumb for your smartphone

24 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

Doing today's post today, for a change… or at least for today. Or at least so far. I still have to hit "publish" after all.

We got up early this morning (6am) so we could go running before the death ray in the sky made it too hot. Made breakfast (I am one of those people who cannot function in any way without breakfast. And I definitely can't exercise because I just end up feeling like I'm going to barf… or maybe I actually do barf… I'll keep that information to myself, just so there's still some mystery about me), got dressed, etc. and headed out to run. This morning, things felt pretty good (as good as can be expected when running anyway) when we started out. I had my mental image of the tow line pulling me towards the 3 mile marker. Breathing felt good, legs felt good (sometimes they feel heavy and/or tight, which sucks). And I was scheming in my head about going a little further today, like maybe to 3.5 miles. But… I don't like to jinx stuff, so I kept my mouth shut (not literally… I basically am a mouth breathing runner most of the time, or I feel like I'm suffocating) until we were at the "1 mile to go" marker and Husband asked "how you doin'?" And I said "great… you wanna try for 3.5?" And he agreed. And as we approached the finish line, Husband said, "I'm running until Strava says 3.5 miles, not to the mile marker sign." Sometimes the two things don't line up. So I said, "obviously." And we made it. And I felt great at the finish.

This makes it sound so easy. The run was not easy, but it was good. And fairly cool, but I do realize how much the death ray in the sky affects my performance. When we're running in the sunny bits (usually the second mile is the worst) I tend to feel hotter and more tired and I start to wonder if I'm going to make it. But then I tell myself inspirational stuff like "mind over matter" and "keep your feet moving" and "relax" and "look! shade!" and I seem to make it through. So… anyways, the run was good. Hours later, I'm still high off the endolphins and I feel like I accomplished something and am improving. Yeeessss!

During the run, I was thinking about the blog and writing and stuff like that. And honestly, life is a little bit in limbo at the moment, so there's not always much to write about that's actually interesting, so I thought maybe I'd take a step back in time and check on what we were doing 1 or 2 years ago on this day (quite frankly, I'm not sure this will be interesting either, but… my blog). So here goes:

1 year ago

A year ago, we were waiting for the sale of our house to close. It was a fairly straightforward transaction because there was no inspection and there was no contingency for financing. There were those noisy birds though. They were living in the chimney. Swifts. They are cool though. Just kind of annoying after several weeks/months of them screaming at mom for more food. Anyway, I digress… we were waiting for the house to close. And by "waiting" I mean, "getting rid of most of our stuff" and packing and storing the rest. We had pretty good luck selling stuff to our friends. The "public" garage sale was a waste of time and energy and just annoyed me.

Every once in a while, Husband and I check in with each other to see if we miss this or that thing and/or house. So far, we don't really miss anything we've sold or given up, except this one IKEA shelving unit that was in our bedroom. It's really silly. And I'm sure we can buy it again, but I kind of missed it right away and we were both thinking about it the other day, which is weird. So there's one totally replaceable thing that we both miss. I guess a trip to IKEA is in our future!

A year later and I'm glad all that purging is over and our stuff fits either on our backs or in a small storage unit. I don't miss the house at all. I feel lighter and more mobile.

A funny thing that happened on this day exactly a year ago was that I was looking to see if our credit union had safe deposit boxes because we were going to close the one we had with our mortgage lender, since that wasn't a thing anymore. Anyway, so I was pretty sure they didn't have any nearby, in fact, they only have them in three locations in Oregon. But the kicker is that one of those locations was Oakridge, Oregon. This is probably a place you've never heard of. And the only reason I've heard of it (and been there) is because they have this great English-style pub with real cask ales. It's really awesome — if you have the chance, you should go there. But this town is really tiny. It's like one road with maybe three businesses (one of which is the credit union). The first time we went there, I noticed it and I was a bit surprised to see a branch (and kind of there are two branches, but one is just an ATM or something) in this tiny place. And I was even more shocked to find out that they have safe deposit boxes at this branch in this tiny town. And not so much that they have them… of course that would be a thing… but because they don't have them in any of the bigger cities in Washington state. What gives? I think I should write a letter. I did once ask a teller at my local branch and she didn't even know where Oakridge was, so that didn't exactly go well.

2 years ago

I don't know. I don't have any pictures from this day 2 years ago. I suspect that we walked around Seattle somewhere, but I am not sure. I do know I had 17K steps that day. AhHA! After consulting another data source, I figured out what we did. We went to Seattle to have dinner with some friends at Osteria La Spiga. We parked far away and walked around Capital Hill that day. And I probably showed Husband our old house and we fantasized about being able to afford a cute little bungalow in this area.

Present Day

Husband wanted to visit our favorite grocery store in Woodinville (Haggen) because they have some things we can't find anywhere else. So we took the bus. Why is it that there are countless blogs shaming passengers on airplanes who take their socks off, but nothing that pops up on my Facebook with regard to riding the bus. Because every single time we ride the bus, there's something that happens that would totally pop up on one of those airplane blogs. For instance, when we were riding the bus back from Seattle the other day, this lady got on the bus and proceeded to kind of lay back on the bench of seats she was sitting on to take selfies. And today, this character got on the bus and told the driver that her smartphone didn't show the bus coming. So he was like "yeah, ok, you getting on or what?" And then several stops later, she asked the driver "where does the bus go anyway?" And then I couldn't help but wonder if she was too dumb for her smartphone. And then there was this grungy couple on the first bus today and he was snacking on sunflower seeds and spitting the shells into a plastic bottle. I suppose I should be thankful that he wasn't spitting them on the bus floor? But gross. Just gross.

And on the subject of bare feet on an airplane… Everyone thinks this is disgusting. And I'm not necessarily in disagreement. Especially if you go to the bathroom in bare feet. Because that's really gross. But just in general (maybe not on an airplane), I'm pretty sure feet are cleaner than your hands. Especially your hands that have been touching your germ ridden mobile phone, a door handle, money, holy crap the list could go on and on. It's true that you don't wash your feet after each floor they might come in contact with, but really? You think everyone is washing their hands after paying for something in cash? I don't think so. So… anyway, I tend to agree that bare feet on a plane should be avoided… and sticking them on walls or armrests or another passenger's personal space (I use the term "personal" loosely) is kind of nasty… but so is your tray table and the armrest. Gross. I probably wouldn't even want my feet touching those surfaces! Sorry, that got a little more involved than I expected.

Bread

Let's talk about bread. Yes! Neither of us has made bread for a while (first of all, it was ridiculously hot and then we didn't have ovens in several places… also did I mention the death ray? Who wants to turn on the oven?!). Husband has diligently kept the starter (Valentino) alive through our travels, including back home!

Since we've been back, we've had some sandwiches on the road (picnics, if you will) with store bought bread. The first mini baguette type thing was too crunchy, too blah basically, so the second time we got those ciabatta rolls that were actually pretty darn good. Also I think I can make them. And it would be cool to have single serving bread rolls that can turn into sandwiches.

I started making the dough a little while ago. We're into the folding portion of the process. It all starts with the starter though. That has to be fed and active (which it was earlier and is now). Then you mix together the rest of the flour and water and just let it sit for 20-30 minutes. This is called autolyse. Something about protein in the flour and rehydrating it… words words, science science, also maybe some magic, I don't really know. After that, mix in the starter and the salt (don't forget the salt… or you get the nasty Tuscan bread that I secretly like, especially with a delicious sauce and pasta or whatever. I'll eat it always). Then I do the folds (3 times). This basically means that I take a corner of the dough (it's really wet, about 70% hydration) and stretch it out as far as it will go without tearing, then fold it back over itself… do this for all 4 corners of the dough. Then flip the dough ball over and let it rest for about 30 minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat a few times until it feels right. I don't really know what that means, but it's a million times better than kneading dough, so I do it 3 times and call it a day. If it doesn't hold together at all, I might do it 4 times. After the folding is done, you just cover it and let it sit (ferment) for some amount of time. I don't know yet what's right and best and all of that. There are a lot of variables like temperature, humidity, time, and whatever else. Probably the strength of the starter or the yeast. Anyway, it's supposed to triple in volume. I'll probably let this dough ferment overnight. Tomorrow morning, the plan (and the plan doesn't always work exactly as planned), I will take the dough and gently flip it onto a well floured surface and divide it into 8 pieces. I will carefully put these guys on a sheet pan and let them proof while we go running (which could very well be too long, but maybe the room will be chilly in the morning?). I will then bake them. And hopefully they won't suck and we can have delicious homemade sandwich rolls for lunch tomorrow.

Food and Activity

 

Breakfast

You know the drill. Serial breakfast monogamist. Calories: 413 (lower because I switched to 1% milk).

Lunch

Spicy chicken tender sandwich on a ciabatta roll topped with broccoli slaw. Calories: 482

OMG this was good!!! Will make again. Sorry for no pic. I forgot. Also, what if it was horrible, never to be consumed again?

Afternoon Snack

Popcorn. Calories: 100

Dinner

Pork tenderloin in the same marinade as last night (soy sauce, honey, mirin, garlic) with thai basil (we found it at the local market, go figure) and veggies. As of this writing, the veggies are mushrooms, eggplant, and broccoli. I think. Will update with more info later. Maybe even a photo! You never know. Update: delicious. And no picture. Calories: 556

Total Calories: 1551
Steps: 23101

it’s not going well

23 July 2017 Seattle, Washington

and by "it's not going well" I mean my ability to keep to a blog schedule and post something every day. Obviously I missed yesterday and so I'm writing yesterday's post today, just to keep myself honest. Here's the basic update:

We walked to the far away (3 miles) bus stop and then took the bus to Whole Foods, Uwajimaya, and Total Wine. We wanted coffee from Whole Foods, Thai basil, spicy chili sauce, Thai chilis, and mirin from Uwajimaya, and to check the inventory of Gewürztraminer from Alto Adige/Sudtirol (none of that Alsace crap, you guys) at Total Wine.

We were successful at Whole Foods with the coffee. We also got to use their grinder to make the whole beans into espresso style ground coffee, so that was awesome. The lady at the checkout took a big inhale of it and said "this is the best coffee… don't drink it, just smell it."

Then we ate lunch outside at the WF tables (we figured that we just spent $12 on coffee, so it was OK to make sandwiches with the stuff we bought earlier at The Met).

At Uwajimaya, we found everything except Thai basil, which was a little shocking, quite frankly. It's always been there, maybe we just missed it? I don't know. No, we didn't ask. We are shy like that and independent. We found the other stuff though.

At Total Wine we found nothing. They have no Gewürztraminer from Alto Adige/Sudtirol, which isn't exactly a surprise, but it is a disappointment. I should probably write a letter. Or maybe just go to Rain City Wines in Bothell, which is an awesome little small business run by a cantankerous guy called Santo. It's pretty awesome and he will probably have something and could definitely get something if he doesn't have it. So I think that will be the plan. We did browse the beer selection at TW and it was pretty good. Also you can buy single bottles (the small ones), which is nice. So I got this really good red ale called "My Bloody Valentine Ale" or something. It was really good.

We walked back to the bus stop and of course were just a little too slow and missed the first bus, so we waited for a while for the next one. We thought about walking, but I said "street blah blah blah doesn't have footpaths, so we can't walk back." So we waited. Then the bus showed up and we were driving down street blah blah blah and I was looking out the window at all the new footpaths they had installed. Which explains what they were doing with all the construction that was happening even before we left the country. Good to know. We got off the bus and walked back to the apartment, then went grocery shopping for the rest of dinner and stuff. Later we picked up our package from the Amazon locker (love those!!). Then we watched a few shows (we have a lot to catch up on) and went to bed early.

Here's the low down on food and activity for yesterday.

Food

 

Breakfast

Same ole same ole… oatmeal, eggs, cheddar cheese. Coffee with milk. Melon. Calories: 440

Lunch

Ham sandwich on a cibatta roll. Calories: 350

Dinner

For dinner, I made a yummy dish from Skinnytaste again. It was chicken yakitori with stir fry veggies. Calories: 529

Snack

Popcorn. My Bloody Valentine Amber Ale. Citradelic IPA. Calories: 641

Fitbit Steps 27,024