100K/1K

Last Thursday I hit 100 thousand miles on my car. I also finished folding 1000 paper cranes.

Day 0

Today I drove up with my mom to NorCal. The drive took about 8 hours and my legs were dying by the end of it. It was already such a killer to drive up to visit my sister in SLO, which was only 5 hours. I can honestly say I never want to make the drive again. Someone please pick me up from the airport when I come to visit!

The room I have now is nice. It's smaller than the one at home but there's still good space to workout so I'm fine. The problem is I have a lot of clothes and the closet is super small >.< I'm hoping I'll add some new pieces and I can get rid of old stuff that I don't use much. I've been trying to update my wardrobe for a while anyways.

Last Day at Work

Just finished my last day at work. It bittersweet. I'm excited to be moving and at the same time I'm going to miss everyone.

Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree I decorated at the house. My dad put on Christmas music which got me into the Christmas spirit even more. We bought some new ornament balls from Target, probably ended up getting too many considering we didn't even use all of them. I had fun decorating, but I feel like Christmas was more magical when I was a little kid. Granted I didn't really have that great of a holiday season, or the past few months for that matter. Now that I think about it (I'm writing this on 1.15.2013) it sucks that sometimes unfortunate events happen in your life and it just makes everything else suck. But what's past is past. Next year's Christmas will be better for sure!

Electric Run

Tonight I did my first 5K run. It wasn't as long as I thought it was going to be. I had a lot of fun. I want to do more runs now! I ran basically the whole thing. I did stop for a water break and had to walk when the crowds in front or around me were too large. Overall however, I'm proud of myself for finishing and I feel like I did well.

The Electric Run

They had these DJs filming their music video there. So they played their song over and over again. It was super crowded. We waited like an hour just to start our run since the event disperses people from the starting line in waves of a thousand. I think we were wave 8 or 9. I was really thankful that it didn't rain during the race; I did step in quite a few puddles though. There was one especially large one at the beginning, after that I tried to avoid them to the best of my ability.

Christmas Tree

My phone was glitching out all day yesterday. It only let me upload half the posts that I wanted to. And I finally got it to upload the rest today. That thing runs out of battery so fast, so annoying. This happens every time Apple releases a new Iphone and iOS. The new iOS sucks the battery life out of the old Iphone.

By the way, it looks like there's a huge gap in posts from September to November. That's where basically all those posts I just uploaded these past two days came from. I just got too lazy to upload. I can usually manage 1 or 2 posts a day. Plus after I make the food I'm all tired and just wanna veg out for a bit.

We set up the Christmas tree at the office today. Usually I try and take a long time doing it, putting care in to make the tree look good, balance the amount of red with silver/white. But today I just kinda threw it all together. Plus Bo helped so it went by pretty fast. The tree looks pretty nice though. I want to put up the one for our house, but I think we'll wait til my sister gets back from college. I think her finals are next week. So she ends pretty early compared to other colleges I know of.

Happy Halloween

I carved my first pumpkin this Halloween with some friends. It was pretty fun. I think I want to do a pumpkin next year too! I tried to pick a design that wasn't too intricate because I thought it would be easier to carve. I think my pumpkin turned out pretty well. It molded by the end of the weekend though :[ There's special pumpkin carving knives that we used. I had to scoop out all the pumpkin guts beforehand too.

My pumpkin! It's supposed to be a cute bat cartoon character.

Natalie cleaning out her pumpkin.

Class 302: Hot Grass Jelly

Went with my mom, sis, and sis's friend to Class 302 again.We ordered plenty of food. I really should take more pictures when I go. But I'm embarrassed, the whole "pictures of Asians taking pictures of food" thing. I shouldn't care but I do feel a little self conscious.

Anyways, this review is for the hot grass jelly. I typically like it with rice balls, condensed milk, and peanuts. But for some reason, the last few times I've come here, they don't have any of the sweet peanuts! So lame! I asked for double rice balls then, but they ended up bringing double condensed milk? I'm too lazy to change it so I just ate it. I always feel like when I go to a restaurant, if I speak that restaurants language (ex: Korean at a Korean place) I get better service. Too bad I only speak English. Back on topic now, the rice balls are nice and chewy. The condensed milk isn't the sticky sweet kind, but more of a liquid cream kind of thing. Overall pretty satisfying and very filling. This whole weekend has been a bunch of good eats. I'm gaining a lot of weight.

The winter's cold weather doesn't help either. It's harder to get motivated to work out because it's so cold, I don't like changing into my workout clothes. I'd rather stay cuddled up in bed watching Netflix all day. Then there's all the fattening food available that's normally associated with the holidays. I'm getting back into cooking again. I find that happens with me a lot. I'll go through periods were I really like cooking and then other times where I just hate it. And it annoys me whenever someone asks me to cook. I just don't like thinking of it as a chore. When it's a chore it's not any fun anymore.

After this weekend though, I'm anticipating doing a fruit and vegetable flush. I feel like I need to clean out all this gunk and toxins from my body. I've been breaking out like CRAZY and it's annoying me to no end. So sad. My forehead is sprouting little zits everywhere. I've got a particularly bad one right between the eyebrows too. I'm also in major need of a haircut. I'm going to call the salon this week to make an appointment. The dry ends are killing me.

Recipe Copyright?

I've been wanting to post the recipes for the food I make for some time. But I didn't know if it was legal or not. I've done a little bit of research now. I think the issue is best summed up in this site. But basically the author says the ingredients are NOT under copyright protection. It should be okay to post a recipe as long as the directions are rewritten and not posted verbatim. Also, linking to the original source and giving credit is a good idea. So I have decided that this is what I am going to do.

Foibles

Foible
noun.

A minor weakness or eccentricity in someone's character
• - they have to tolerate each other's little foibles
The weaker part of a sword blade, from the middle to the point

Couch to 5K Day 1

Today was my first day of running. I started the couch to 5k program with Nick. For some reason my arms and shoulders are super tired, which is totally weird because I use my legs to run. I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing the workout even though it was just a 5 minute warm up walk and then intervals of 60 seconds walking and 90 seconds jogging for a total of 20 minutes. I got a cramp in my side which hurt. But yeah, I'm pretty pooped and I have to study for neurobio still. Finals are next week too, so this week isn't going to be that much fun. I bought the Nintendo 3DS in the pink color with the birthday money I got. I plan on getting the new Kingdom Hearts game when it comes out at the end of the month. I miss playing console games.

Birthday Cake and Free Ben and Jerry's

Today at work we celebrated my coworker's birthday. We had lunch from Bruegger's, which actually makes pretty decent sandwiches. BLT is one of my favorites and the vegetables they put in theirs were fresh and tasty. I think in a BLT the quality of the ingredients makes all the difference. The birthday cake we had was the chocolate marble cake from French's Bakery. The chocolate pieces honestly looked really delicious but they tasted horrible. The chocolate wasn't creamy and the texture was extremely soft and weird. I can't really describe what was wrong with it. But it just didn't taste how I expect chocolate to taste. The cake inside was overly sweet and not very moist.

Chocolate Marble Cake - French's Bakery

The line to get into Ben and Jerry's wraps around the fountain

Ben and Jerry's is offering free ice cream on 4/3 because it is their anniversary I believe. Nick and I went to the one closest to our house. The line was super long, it stretched all the way around the fountain. You can't see it in the picture but right before the entrance there is a little roped off section the line goes into that twists and turns around just like the way the lines at Disneyland are organized. Even though it looked like it would take a long time, we only waited about 30 minutes. They had run out of some flavors by the time Nick and I got there. No more cookie dough. I had the sweet cream and cookies flavor while Nick had the coffee. He enjoyed his, he loves coffee flavored stuff. I think the Oreo Overload from Cold Stone is better than Sweet Cream and Cookies from Ben and Jerry's simply because the cookies are nice and crunchy from Cold Stone and it adds more taste and texture that way.

100 Chicken Nugget Challenge

I thought I saw a promo on a McDonald's billboard for 50 piece Chicken Nuggets for cheap. So I dared Nick that he could not eat 50 chicken nuggets. But he got cocky and changed it to 100 nuggets. He wanted to go for 150 but I said it was unrealistic. Anyways, he started dying at around 30. But he made it to 50 and felt like poop after. It was really disgusting. They didn't have the promo by the way, so it ended up being 20 bucks. When we ordered at the drive through the guy working there was like, "Excuse me, how many?!" It was quite funny ^.^

President's Day Weekend

Really fun and productive weekend. On Friday, Nick and I went to Ikea because we wanted a long pillow. When we sleep our heads always fall in the crack between our two pillows. We were going to get a long one that would span the crack. However, we didn't find one to our liking and ended up purchasing Swedish meatballs and lingonberry sauce. I bought these trainers since we were going to go hiking on Saturday. The last time we hiked I wore Converse, which was really uncomfortable and I slipped which was embarrassing. These ones were comfortable. The hike was really enjoyable and I think we are going to go again this weekend. I didn't take any pictures though, since I didn't bring my phone with me. Where are you supposed to put your phone when you work out? My clothes have no pockets.

I felt really energized during the hike but after we got home I was starving. Then after we ate I felt exhausted. So weird. Also went and got a hair cut. I don't like it. It feels too thin and short. But whenever I get my hair cut it always turns out to be so similar to what it looked like before that most people can't tell the difference. Even when I ask for different styles it still comes out the same. My hair refuses to look like anything else. I tried the pear and Gorgonzola pizza at CPK with Nick. It didn't taste how I thought it would, it was kind of sweet, which was weird on pizza. The pears were good but too thin. Definitely not enough toppings. Sorry I didn't take a picture. But oh well, Nick's pizza choice wasn't too bad, the garlic chicken one. It's his favorite but they still didn't put enough toppings on it :[ sad. No picture either, since I forgot, sorry!

New Fitness Goal

I've been over-eating and not exercising lately, making me feel guilty. Granted I was sick on Wednesday and I can still feel the after-effects of my migraine today. But whatever, life goes on. So I'm going to pick one new fitness goal to work on. In the past I believe I've tried to make too many drastic changes at once which is overwhelming and difficult to keep up with, perhaps leading to my relapses back into the cookie jar. Anyways, my new goal is to drink more water. Mostly because water is good for you, and I think I'm not getting enough anyways. My water bottle holds 32 oz. So four of those puppies should equal 1 gallon.  I'm not shooting to drink one whole gallon right now. But just two of these bottles. I've had one and a half so far and it's practically time for me to sleep. So I'm not doing too bad. 

Excited for this 3 day weekend. Could really use the break after midterms. I need to study more, I tell myself this everyday. I'm getting better though. It took years to develop my horrible study habits. They aren't gonna disappear overnight. Hope all goes well. Just keep moving forward.

Valentine's Day

Got an Edible Arrangements from my wonderful boyfriend. We also spent time making chocolate covered strawberries.