Friday, July 29, 2011

Rest Days and Farewell Fondues

Before I launch into the day’s events, something has been on my mind for a while so I figured I would get that out there for you all:

Rest days are hard for me to take.  I admit I have to force myself to not exercise at least once a week because I know it is better for my body to have a day to recover.  However, I don’t always rest on the same day or even after the same number of days of activity.  I normally plan my rest days around big meals out at restaurants or events like weddings.  If I know I have a few days in a row that I am going to be consuming presumably more than normal I choose to make those days when I get a bunch of physical activity in.  If I’m just hanging out in my normal routine, eating my own stuff, I am a bit more at ease with taking a rest day.

For instance, this past week with graduation and parties and dinners out with friends has been fairly caloric (and just wait until you see what’s in store tonight!) so I have been working out every single day.  I realized today that my body was really tired and sore and it had been 8 days in a row without a rest day.  With that in mind, I decided tomorrow, the day of my move, will be a rest day and I won’t fret about getting up super early to run before packing up the trailer and hitting the road.  As you can see, my rest days are necessarily sit around and do nothing.  They typically involve a walk with Jack, or in the case of tomorrow, a move where I am toting boxes around and such.  Being still slightly active makes me feel a bit better about taking rest days so that’s how I choose to roll.

In the end, yes, I do need rest days.  They are super important in the grand scheme of things.  My muscles need time to repair and my body needs time to recuperate.  I get that.  I also acknowledge that its hard for me to do this.  It is something I am working on a bunch and I have made significant progress with it.  So tomorrow I won’t run or hit the gym but I will move myself into a great new apartment and spend time with my friends.  This is not the end of the world, it’s only the beginning of something new and the road will still be there the next day.  It’s not going to disappear.  In fact, the roads I’ll be running on after tomorrow are brand new to me.  I have never run in this part of the city, or in any part really, so I’ll take my rest day and then wake up and hit the town fresh to start my explorations.  Sounds like a plan to me!

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To kick off the day I ran to the gym, did 20 minutes on the elliptical, some weights, then 15 minutes on the stationary bike, then ran home.  Now hungry and sweaty, I downed my breakfast which consisted of oats, yogurt, milk, chocolate protein powder, chia seeds, and really ripe bananas.  I topped it with chocolate crispy oats cereal and peanut butter sauce (yay for Bell Plantation PB2!).  It was a great way to refuel and get me pumped for packing.  Well, it did the first part of its job, let’s be honest.

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After a quick shower, the kitchen was calling “PACK ME!” so we taped up boxes and got going.  We made great progress and eventually the whole apartment was packed.  It’s amazing how everything can be packed up and put away yet the whole place still looks so darn messy.

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Can you tell I’m a compulsive labeler?  My thought: if you know exactly what’s in the box, unpacking is so much easier.

I can’t wait to get it all into the cars/trailer so it won’t be piled everywhere.  However, once everything is out, that means it’s cleaning time.  From what I remember of last time, cleaning wasn’t too terrible and didn’t take too long.  Hopefully the same remains true about tomorrow.  The move out appointment is at 12:30 and we have a moving elevator scheduled for 2:30 down at the new place.  If we leave on time we should get down just in time to sign the lease, get the keys, and start moving things up to the 10th floor.  Yay for the view!

Well, that isn’t my exact view but its pretty close!

Lunch fell by the wayside amidst the packing and the boxes and the clutter but apples were consumed and Jack had some leftovers from the fridge.  Dinner, however, mooooooooore than made up for the lack of afternoon sustenance.  That is because tonight was Fireproof and Farewell Fondue night!

The first course was the cheese course.  We made a goat/italian blend cheese fondue and had all sorts of veggies and bread for dippers.  The goat cheese’s moisture caused some gelling issues in the fondue but it still tasted great.  The chives and shallots gave the whole thing a great flavor.  Plus, we’re not picky about how it looks as long as what goes in our mouths is yummy.

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The second course consisted of proteins.  We cubed chicken, mahi mahi, and lamb for boiling as well as broccoli and potatoes.  The broth was a homemade veggie broth mixed with merlot and some italian seasonings.  It turned everything purple!!!  Like I said, we didn’t mind the color because the broth conveyed a great flavor to the main course.

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The final course came in two parts.  The first was a milk chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter, and maple fondue.  Sounds like a lot but it was nice and fudgy almost.  Our dipper array was terrific featuring everything from animal crackers to Reese’s cups. 

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The second part of the final dessert course was a coconut cajeta chocolate fondue.  Sadly we didn’t read the recipe close enough to make it properly so it ended up very watery.  I added more dark chocolate (which we replaced the bittersweet with) and that helped though it was markedly more liquidy than the first chocolate fondue.  This was probably for the best because having a heavy part two would have been disastrous being so late in the night.

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In between courses we watched Fireproof and let our tummies settle.  All in all it was a fantastic farewell dinner.  The winning creation of the night was this tasty monster:

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I devoured mine.  Faster than you can say “Holy yum!” and got a little messy in the process.  I honestly couldn’t bring myself to care.  I was too far on my way to Heaven.

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And with that, I say goodnight.  Tomorrow is going to be one heck of a day and it starts early.  See you on the other side.  I’ll be reporting from a brand new city!

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