Yoga

Today I did Yoga before work. It was fun but I learned Yoga is just not for me. I don't like moving so slowly I would rather just swing my arms around as fast as I can for a minute instead of having moving them as slow as I can. The funniest things was that the Yoga instructor forgot to put her tights on! She took off her pants and then realized she just had on her underware! She was really embarassed but I have to say she had on some VERY modest undies. Volleyball girls where less monest spandex than these underware.



After work I just relaxed and worked on my scrapbooks.

Shamrock Shuffle

I woke up at 6:30 and went right to the computer to check the weather --not good..snow and hail. Looking out the window the streets are white. After a bowl of oatmeal, banana, and peanutbutter, and a massive cup of coffee it is time to head to the race. I took the el which was packed with other crazy Shufflers. I got the privalege of starting in the Elite Tent which was heated and dry. I met up with my other Fleet Feet Teammates: Joko, Jessica, Elizabeth, and Colleen. We went for our typical 2 mile warm up and realized that the weather was far worse that we thought. The wind and snow were going crazy. You couldn't even see! Soon it was time to strip down and head to the line. We were escorted right to the front. And I was RIGHT next to Tera Moody and Deena Kastor. I wanted to tap Deena on the sholder and say I had made her raspberry and chocolate scones. One of my male fleet feet teammates said he would give me 20 bucks to slap Deena on the butt. I decided that wasn't a good idea :)

When the gun I went to push off my foot and I had no tracksion so I started to fall forward. My teammate Jessica grabbed me and caught me from what would have been a over 10,000 people trample. Thanks Jessica!! I think the pictures pretty much can show what the race was like. Fleet Feet Team got 1st place!! We were pretty pumped! After the race I met up with Calvin friends for Pizza. What a great day.

http://vimeo.com/3913173

Pasta Party night!

Today I went over to Lisa’s house for a pre Shamrock Shuffle Pasta Party. I learned some interesting things from Calina. She is doing her neuroscience dissertation on violent kids. Kid’s that like are hurting there cats at age 2 and stuff like that. It is interesting stuff. Lisa was a great host and made yummy Lasagna and a veggie pasta dish.

Crawford's Visit Chicago

Today Jeff’s family was in Chicago. I scooted home as fast as I could and did a quick clean up. I made spinach crab dip, Mexican tortilla rollups, and hummus and carrots. They came over around 6PM. I had fun showing them my place. Scott and Suzie had fun playing the game rush hour and playing on the balance board. We then went to dinner at an Italian restaurant. There portions were HUGE. Dave got a piece of Lasagna the size of a brick! Mr. Crawford (of course) became friends with the owner of the restaurant and he brought us out cake for Tracy and Granny’s birthday.

Grand Rapids and the Irish Jig 5k

Today I ran the Irish Jig 5k in Grand Rapids. It was snowing this morning! It was really fun to run a race on the same roads that we would run distance runs nearly everyday at Calvin. The race went pretty well. I had done my research and knew that there were two girls that could run sub 17 so I went out in third. Unfortunately I had about 10 people right on my shoulder for the first 1.5 miles. I didn’t like the feeling of having so many people right behind me. However, at mile 1.5 there were a ton of people cheering and a lot of people from Calvin so that gave me a boost so I picked it up and dropped the people on my shoulder. I ended up with 3rd (18:10) and 175 dollars of prize money. Ends up the 1st and 2nd place girls didn’t run nearly as fast as previous years which made me wish that I had tried to go out with them.

After the race we went out to Starbucks. Dan has been working as a barista and gets a big discount. Then we went back showered and went to lunch. Emily joined us for lunch (along with Dan, Tad, Chris, and Gries.) We went to an Irish place in East Town. They offered a 20% discount if you had run the Irish Jig. The place was really cool- lots of dark wood and a cool ambiance. After lunch Emily, Dan, and Gries showed me the new field house at Calvin. Pretty impressive. Then we went over to the new dorm wing to check out Dan and my geothermal project. It was pretty sweet to see it working. I headed back on the Train around 6PM. I slept most of the way back to Chicago.

Calvin Lunch and Pizza Date with Jeff

A few days ago I was sitting at my work computer when my phone rang. I turned to look at who it was (it usually says who from my work is calling) but it just showed a number. I almost didn’t pick it up but I noticed it was a 616 number (Grand Rapids). It ends up that it was a man from Calvin Giving that knew my Uncle. He said that he wanted to take the Calvin people from SnL out for lunch. Anyway, we all went Miller’s Pub with him for lunch. This is the restaurant that I went to on my interview so just sitting in there brought back nervous feelings. It was a fun lunch but I do think he accomplished his purpose of making me feel like I should give back to Calvin! (after all I am a very satisfied customer of Calvin)

Later in the evening I went to redeem my Uno’s Birthday Pizza (Free individual birthday pizza.) It expired today so I had to use it. I set up a dinner phone date with Jeff. It worked out great because apparently it takes 30 minutes to cook an individual deep dish pizza. I ordered the Farmer’s Market. It was stuffed with Broccoli, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, eggplant…I don’t know what else but lot’s of veggies. Thanks Jeff for joining me at Uno’s !!

Soccer Party and Soccer Game

After work I headed over to Exchequer for our end of season soccer party. It was a good time of eating pizza and appetizers and drinking Blue Moon. However, I couldn’t stuff myself too much because I had agreed to sub for another indoor soccer team that evening. One of the joy’s of being a female in a male dominated profession is that coed soccer teams always want you to play with them!

Our soccer game was not the best. We got slaughtered (2 to 10). Oh well it was fun anyways.

Florida with the Grandparents and Sister

I didn’t have time to post the last couple of days because I was in Florida! I went down to visit my Grandma and Grandpa and Sister in Naples. My sister flew down from New York. My Grandparents were great as always. My grandpa spent a lot of time cooking. He made us skillet breakfasts one morning, made us sandwiches for lunch, cooked us dinner two nights, and, as always, appetizers for happy hour. My Grandma caught me up on what all was new in the extended family. We had fun relaxing in the sun, swimming in the pool, and walking on the beach. Grandpa and Grandma were great hosts.

The only bad thing was that my flight was delayed on the return. I ended up getting in on Monday morning instead of late Sunday night. I just went straight from the airport to work. This was good because I had a lot of work to catch up on from taking vacation.

Yogurt Making

Last night I was in my kitchen and thought- I wonder if I could make yogurt in my crock pot? So I googled “crockpot yogurt” and found that others had wondered the same thing. (See I am not so crazy :)

Here is the recipe: Pour a half gallon of milk into your crockpot and turn the crockpot on low for 1 hour, then stir in a half cup of yogurt. Turn the crockpot off and wrap the crockpot in a towel and wait until the morning.

The results: SOO EXCITING. I was so nervous as I unwrapped the crockpot but sure enough the whole thing was filled with yogurt!! I will be eating a lot of yogurt this week

So the nerd / Dutch person in me figured out my savings
1 cup store bought= 50 cents
½ gallon = 8 cups
½ gallon store yogurt= 4 dollar

1 gallon milk= 2 dollars (used half)
½ of a store bought plain yogurt= 25 cents
½ gallon my yogurt= 1.13 dollar

SAVINGS: almost 3 bucks :)

Wacky 5k

Today was the first race in Chicago since December. It was snowing hard when I woke up. It continued to snow hard all day. The race was a late start and started at 10:30. Holly and Darrell swung by to pick Jeff and I up at 8:30. I wasn’t racing this race. I just wanted to get in a good effort in before I did the Irish Jig 5k. I ended up second with a time of 18:50. Jeff and I ran together. Holly introduced me to Kalina and Jessica. These girls are apparently on the Fleet Feet Team which I will find out if I am on the team in a couple weeks. The pre-race party was awesome. They gave you big bags and had you go around this horse shoe of tables and take as much as you want- Quaker granola bars, cliff bars, lara bars, gels, girl scout cookies, apples, banana’s, bagels, pizza, cliff blocks, packs of gum, chocolate bars, etc. It was great. We all went home with big bags of groceries! I am doing this race again just for the pre-race goodies.