Quick Lunch: Sweet Salad and Soup

Salad nutritional breakdown

Today was another snow day which is crazy. It's not supposed to stick around until tomorrow, but it was nice having another work from home in my pajamas day. It's always dangerous to hang around the house all day though because there's the temptation to snack on things laying around the house. I did really well today and landed under 1300 calories with the help of my delicious lunch! I hunted for things I had around the house (including some of Wendy's pomegranate vinaigrette that I need to find in a store or online somewhere so I don't have to keep the leftover packets like a hoarder). I came up with two cups of organic baby greens, half a granny smith apple, 1/8 cup of craisins, 1/8 cup of goat cheese crumbles, and that packet of pomegranate vinaigrette. I ate it with a cup of jarred tomato basil soup and it was fantastic.

I also have to give a shout out to La Madeleine. Not only do I love their fat free Caesar dressing, they just came out with a low fat version of their tomato basil soup. That soup is pretty much the only reason I ever go to La Madeleine, but with the regular version, a cup has 340 calories and 32 grams of fat, so I would definitely have to save it for a special treat. The low fat version that they also sell in jars is 150 calories and 11 grams of fat for a cup, so I am thrilled. The best part? It tastes just as good as the regular fat version! They sell them online, and if you order some, you might as well pick up some of the Caesar dressing as well.

Snowpocalypse 2011: The Insanity Continues

On top of the ice sheet on the roads, six more inches of snow and still falling.

Snow Days Are Way Better Than Ice Days

So it's the third day where working from home is not only acceptable but necessary because of the sheet of ice that is currently blanketing Dallas. Normally I would love this...working in pajamas, bad daytime television, sipping a cup of coffee, fireplace on...and I did love it the first day. Until Texas decided it needed to force rolling blackouts.

I woke up on Thursday morning and realized that the electricity was off. I texted a few coworkers to see if theirs was out as well, and they told me that there were rolling blackouts and they should last about 15 minutes each. No big deal, right? So I went back to sleep and waited for the electricity to return. And it did, about an hour later. Not exactly the 15 minutes I was promised, but livable. I got up, made some oatmeal and the chai tea I posted, and went to work. About an hour later, the lights went out again, but this time they were back up in about 20 minutes. I figured they'd worked all the kinks out and now were on the right schedule. In another hour, at about 11AM, they shut it off again. I still had some battery on my laptop, so I continued typing my January reflections post, thinking I'd be all ready to post it by the time the lights came back on...but they never did.

I kept waiting and waiting, but an hour passed, and then two hours...and still nothing. I called the electric company to report the outage. I went through all my junk mail that had been piling up. I played some minesweeper on my computer until the battery ran out. I didn't have heat or any way to cook since everything in the apartment is electric. Thank goodness for the gas fireplace, I spent the day sitting on the hearth trying to keep myself busy.

Around 2PM I started getting really hungry and began calling takeout places to get some delivery food. I called for nearly two hours and probably 30 places, and only found one that would deliver to me...and they had a two hour wait. I ordered up a pizza and sat down by the fireplace again, anxiously awaiting the delivery man's arrival.

Once I had my meal, I felt much better, and I tried calling the electric company again. I got a message that they had stopped taking calls, so they didn't have anyone I could speak to who could give me an estimated restore time. I talked to a few people on the phone, then realized that I should probably conserve my battery life and not play Angry Birds until the phone died.

I tried to reheat some of my pizza over the fireplace on a splatter cover and had that for dinner. It was pretty much the most ridiculous thing I've ever done. At that point, I decided it was time to make some decisions, because there was no way I could stay there through the night without heat. The wind chill was at 4 degrees.

I called my mom's friend and she agreed to let me stay at her place, but I had to find a way to get there since my car was stuck in the garage. I found a cab company who agreed to take me, and what should have been a 15 minute drive took about 45 minutes. You could ice skate on the streets; it was just a solid sheet. At 10PM, people were still having wrecks. I couldn't believe anyone was driving anywhere in this.

Yes, that sheet of ice is the street. 

Finally, I made it to her house, had a quick snack and a shower, and fell asleep. So glad I made it over here, because I called the office at my apartment and they said the electricity is still out and won't be fixed before 7PM tonight. I hope everyone else in the building had somewhere to go, because it looks like it could be this way for a while.

Stay warm everyone!

Monthly Weigh-In: January 2011

This morning I woke up to a beautiful snow day! So while I'm working from home in my pjs, I'll give you the run-down for January.

 So it's the first month wrap-up for me. Overall, I'd say I did pretty well. If it hadn't been for the liberties taken this last week with food and working out, I definitely would've shown more of a loss. That said, my granma died on the 7th and I pretty much checked out for five days, so I am proud of the fact that I didn't gain any weight during that time. I think the main point is that I actually lost weight, and if I continue to lose at even less than this pace, I will meet my goal by my birthday. Now without further ado...


January (and total YTD) Progress:
Weight: -7.8 pounds
Days in calorie range: 19/31
Days worked out: 16/31

February's Goals:
Weight: -7.2
Track budget






February's goal was going to be to lose 6 pounds, but since I didn't quite make it to January's goal, I'm going to add on that extra 1.2 pounds to February and try to catch up to my goal. I'm also starting to keep track of my spending with a budget Excel spreadsheet that I worked on all weekend, so I'm also going to make a non-weight goal of keeping track of what I spend for the whole month and see how much I can save when I put my mind to it.

SNOW DAY!!!!

I will do my monthly update later but this is way more exciting. Here's the view from my front door after I did a little dance for no work today! And now I go back to bed.... :)