...and a valuable lesson was learned

Heeyyyy friends! Well, it has obviously been a while since I've written anything here. I'll try to get through this catchup business so we can get to the good stuff like concerts I've been to, musings about teaching yoga and other stuff that's been on my mind lately.

Before we go any further though can I just say, this winter is straight up ridiculous. It's either -30 or snowing...there is no middle ground here. 

Also I broke my car about a week and a half ago...and by 'I broke it' I actually mean 'dude ran a stop sign right in front of me and I couldn't stop in time'....so my lovely little Honda is now in the body shop, sans front bumper. Thankfully no one was hurt, and my stop sign-running friend was actually a decent human being who stopped to make sure I was OK, exchanged insurance info with me, and hopefully learned a valuable lesson about traffic laws. 

I did drive away, and went straight to my favorite yoga class. Good times. [Sidebar - it's possible that I should not have actually driven away nor should I have driven to the body shop a couple of days later. Dennis (the shop owner) gave me the extreme side eye and was like 'yeah...this is borderline driveable...' ) but you know, everyone is alive and OK so all's well that ends well]

In a related story, Facebook has identified the following as the defining moments of my life in 2013:

That last one is probably the most representative of my life

Here's a little somethin somethin from my Weather Puppy app. This basset hound is not pleased about the -41 windchill, and neither am I.

Nope. Do not want

A couple of weeks ago, I volunteered selling tickets for the Minneosta Bach Ensemble's winter concert which was fun times. MBE was founded last year by my former choir director (he left us to move to Boston...le sad), another former choir colleague and friend is the managing director and I know most of the musicians and soloists so I always enjoy working with them. At one point, we ran out of tickets so I started tearing up small pieces of paper and writing 'ticket' on them. Profesh.

Real tickets

Also real tickets?

That same night, I went to Hilary Hahn and Haushka's concert at Aria in Minneapolis. Aria is in the former Theatre de la Jeune Leune space in the warehouse district, and I hadn't been there since it was Jeune Lenue so it was fun to see a classical concert there. Well, classical-ish. New classical. Hauschka plays a prepared piano, which I will link to a video of in case you haven't seen this. You should...it's awesome. He also de-prepared his piano towards the end of the night and just started tossing the random objects all over the stage - fascinating and hilarious at the same time. And to top it off, the show was almost entirely improvised.

These two have an album together, Silfra, which is gorgeous and atmospheric and I definitely recommend checking it out.

Hilary Hahn and Hauschka at Aria

Last Sunday we went to Piccolo for Ben's birthday - Piccolo does very creative preparations and small plates, and it's one of our favorite spots in MSP. We shared roast carrots with fennel and bleu cheese (pictured below), lamb loin with brown butter gnocchi and mushrooms, and an oxtail terrine...and a buttermilk panna cotta for dessert which was heavenly. Favorite dessert of 2014 so far.

Yumm

And for good measure, here's what my car looked like after Thursday night's incident. Stop signs are not a joke, friends.

Yup.

Well that's all I've got for tonight! Time to 

Are you a warrior??

So as I've mentioned several times, my co-workers somehow talked me into running the MN Warrior dash on Saturday.  Why I agreed to this I'll never understans, but I'm so glad I did because it was a BLAST. The Warrior Dash was definitely one of the most fun experiences I've had in recent memory.  

For some reason, I was not nervous for this race at ALL.  I think it was partly because I just had no idea what I was getting into, and partly because I had virtually no expectations for my performance. My only goals for the day were:

1) Don't die

2) Don't get carted away in an ambulence

3) Have fun

(Ben came up with the last one - he thought it would be lame if I stopped after those first two, and he is probably right.  What's the point if you're not having fun??)

Ben and I got there a little early so we had time to hang out, survey the grounds and nosh on some free granola.  As the group started to arrive, we all got together for the required "before" photo:

Me with about half of our group.  That purple shirt was not purple for long...

And then we lined up to start!  We ended up pretty close to the back of our wave because it took us so long to get in line, which has impacts that I'll get to later... but finally, we were off!

Getting ready to start!

While we ran, Ben sat duitfully in the spectator area, waiting to take photos.  Poor Ben - one thing I should mention about the Afton Alps course is that there is no shade, and no covered areas anywhere.  Literally none... except for a few shady areas on the course itself.  If you're just a spectator you are in the sun the entire time.  Being that it was 90 degrees on Saturday, I almost felt worse for Ben than I did for those of us who were running.  Almost.

Since Ben's camera obviously did not capture anything between the start and the finish, I'll try to provide a brief summary what happened in the middle:

I started out with the group and the plan was to at least attempt to stick together.  The first two obstacles were cake, and the first hill was challenging but not too bad.  After the third obstacle I stopped to wait for people, but after that I got tired of waiting and decided to just go on ahead with a couple of others who wanted to keep running.  I had told myself before the race that if I could run, I would and sticking together as a big group would have meant not pushing/challenging myself very much.  Plus, there were two others whose names I will not mention...we'll call them Shmavid and Shmob... who didn't even try to stay with the group and had left us in the dust a while ago.

My co-worker and I stuck together for the next couple of obstacles, but then we hit the woods.  This was maybe the most annoying part of the race, besides the ridiculous hills.  The woods were right after this killer hill, hence many people were too tired to start running again and wanted to walk.  Unfortunately, the path through the woods was very narrow and cut into the side of a steep hill, so it was basically impossible to pass anyone.  If you should know one thing about when running or walking anywhere with me, it is probably this: getting stuck behind slow people annoys me like nothing else.  I wanted to start running again but because of the woods/path situation, I literally could not.  I finally resorted to asking people if I could sneak past them, and risked life and limb to get around all of the slow walkers.  When I looked back I had totally lost my co-worker...oops...so I just kept going.

The rest of the race was basically a lot of hills...like really, a lot.  Most people (including myself) started just walking up the hills at a certain point because 1) they were so long and steep and there were so many of them, and 2) it was so effing hot.

The obstacles themselves were not that bad.  Mostly they felt like a welcome break from the damn hills - after hiking against gravity for a quarter mile in the blazing heat, doing an army crawl through the gravel is pretty much a cakewalk.  There was only one that made me nervous - the "Dead Man's Drop", which I can't even describe...it was just high and steep and near the end of the race.  I saw several people go around it, which was probably a good choice if you were fatigued.  I went over it...and I'm still alive so yay.

After the last couple of obstacles, it was pretty much run down the ski hill, slide down the slip-and-slide, jump over the fire, crawl through the mud and you're done!  I may have gotten a little overenthusiastic with my speed on the slip-and-slide, realizing about halfway that there was no way to slow down before the end.  Needless to say I did not land gracefully and I have a couple of awesome bruises. 

Just leaping over the fire...no big deal

Crawling out of the mud like some crazy swamp monster

Wheeee

done!!

The whole gang! (most of us at least...)

Work should be a piece of cake after this...

Clean, sort of...

Even though Warrior Dash is totally about fun and it's kind of a joke that it is even timed, I was really proud of my performance!  My goal going in was basically to not look like an idiot - but even with all of the stopping/waiting for other people and not pushing myself 100% I still finished in the top 13% of my age group, and I was one of the first three people from my work group to finish (along with the two aforementioned rebels...)! 

I'm honestly not trying to brag or pat myself on the back, but I was genuinely surprised by how well it went, as I don't necessarily consider myself a "runner."  I'd be really curious to see what happened if I actually pushed myself hard for the entire race.  Here are a few tips/takeaways if you're thinking of signing up:

~~~

1: Don't Wing It

Seriously, I know a lot of people don't really prepare for this because it's supposed to be a "fun" race, but I'm guessing that if you were not in shape or didn't work out at all beforehand, this race would not be fun AT ALL.  It is challenging - I can't speak for other courses but the MN Afton Alps course with the multitude of hills is killer, and the sun and heat made it even worse.   Running three miles was the easy part, to be honest.  I saw a lot of people who looked like they probably just went "Warrior Dash woo!  Whatevs it's only three miles I'll be fiiiiine..." I'm guessing those were the same people who rested under a tree for 10 minutes and finished the course in an hour and a half. 

Not to mention, some of the obstacles present the potential for serious injury if you're fatigued or aren't being careful.  You can always go around them but then you're kind of missing the point of Warrior Dash...meh.  Anyways I guess I am probably a massochist because I loved it anyways. 

Below is my "training regimen", such as it was:

• Yoga 4-5 times a week (at least 2-3 of these were hot classes)
• Running 3 times a week (2-4 miles each time)
• CPY Bootcamp.  I am seriously so glad i did this...it gave me so much more confidence in my overall fitness level, and I think the circuits helped improve my strength too.  And as tough as warrior dash was it sort of paled in comparison to last week's outdoor workout...

...so as you can see, not exactly akin to that of an Olympic athlete, but at least I am in decent shape...

2: Don't worry about your time

....and if you are worried about your time, make sure you start at or near the front of your wave.  We started near the back and ended up waiting in a huge line for the first obstacle becuase the crowd still hadn't thinned out.  There were about five lines waiting to climb over the wall, and when you actually got over it depended on a) which line you picked, and b) how fast the people ahead of you in line were.  That combined with the whole 'being stuck behind slow people in the woods' make the timing kind of a crap-shoot if you aren't in the front to start with.

3: Have fun!!

Ben was totally right about this, by the way.  You get to be a bad ass!  You get to leap over fire and crawl through the mud like a champion, and in this setting it is completely socially acceptable to do these things.  Do not underestimate how awesome this is.  Enjoy it!!

~~~

Anyways, Warrior Dash was awesome and I am SO glad I decided to sign up.  I will definitely be doing this again.

Another takeaway from this whole experience is that I realized I probably don't hate running.  I also realized that without some external motivation, i.e. an upcoming race during which I would prefer not to die, I probably won't run that much.  So, I'll be making running dates with my husband/sister/whoever just because someone needs to hold me accountable for these things.

That's really all for today!  Only one more day in the office this week, and then I am out until July 9!  We're not going anywhere, just hanging out at home but I'm pretty excited because this is the first real "vacation" time I've taken since Jaunary and even then I was sick for half of it.  Unfortunately it will be 95 degrees and humid the entire week, and we only have one AC unit in the bedroom...so I might end up wishing I was in my air-conditioned office building.  Either way, it will be nice to relax for a few days.

Happy almost 4th of July!

A Quinoa PSA, and seven foods you should never eat

Yesterday was kind of an abrupt return to reality after my weekend of yoga - slammed with e-mails, a task list that only got longer as the day went on, and to top it all off I found a pretty glaring omission in one of our project plans and spent part of the morning doing damage control. So...that was fun.

I tend to take my stress out in the kitchen, so as soon as Ben and I were both home I whipped out my giant knife and started going to town on some broccoli - I figure this is more cost-effective than chopping up my laptop, which is what I kind of wanted to do.

As I was cooking, Ben walked by and happened to glance at the recipe I was using. He cast me a very suspicious look and asked, "Double Broccoli Quinoa? ...Can you eat quinoa?"

No, I can't.

"But wait!" you say. "You eat quinoa all the time!" Well yes, I did. But I don't anymore, and here's why. It started last spring when, after eating a meal containing quinoa, I started to feel really nauseous. For whatever reason, I convinced myself that it was something I had eaten for breakfast and just went about my life. The second time, I was in an immersion practice...and if anything it was worse than before. Of course this was also the day we practiced falling out of handstand...it was less than awesome. This time I decided it was because the bulk spinach I used in my salad was somehow contaminated, and I vowed never to buy bulk spinach again.

Then in June, after eating a giant lunch of quinoa and subsequently feeling like I was going to ralph, I finally put two and two together. I went back to my desk and googled both "quinoa causes nausea" and "eating quinoa makes me want to die," both of which proved fruitful. Apparently, developing an allergy or extreme sensitivity to quinoa is a real thing, and is usually the result of eating quinoa that has not been washed or cooked properly. The websites I found suggested taking quinoa out of your diet for a few weeks or months and then trying it again...but they also cautioned that sometimes, the allergy never goes away.

So I took about three months off, before one day accidentally scarfing down a sample of orange quinoa at the Linden Hills Co-op. I mean, it was free. Anyone could make that mistake. But the best part was...nothing happened. Convinced that I was now invincible after surviving a teaspoon-sized sample, I bravely purchased a quinoa salad for lunch the very next day. Bad idea. Quinoa came back with a vengance. Imagine Ben's surprise when he came home to find me curled up on the kitchen floor hugging the dog.
"What happened?!?"
"Umm... I ate some quinoa."

My almost-doctor friend Amanda suggested taking a full year off and then trying it again. I'm really bummed about this actually. I love quinoa -it is one of my favorite foods, and I would be pretty sad if I could never eat it again. But the nausea is BAD. And painful. It feels like the worst menustral cramps ever, except in your intestines. ... lovely visual, I know.

So I've started substituting other ingredients for my favorite grain...seed...thing. Last night I made my favorite double broccoli quinoa with millet. It was good - but it wasn't quinoa. It didn't have that snap to it. I loved the way the pesto would coat each grain separately, the contrast of textures... I like millet, but it just wasn't the same. Le sigh.

In a related story, this morning I stumbled across a Prevention Magazine article listing seven foods you should never eat. It was published through Fox News, which is ...not normally my go-to source for things that are real... but I learned a few things from reading this article. I already knew about farm-raised salmon, conventional apples, grass-fed beef...but canned tomatoes? And it is pretty scary that potato farmers say they would never eat the conventional potatoes they sell. If you want to read the whole article, you can find it here. Here's the list of seven foods you should never eat, and a brief explaination:

1) Canned tomatoes. Apparently the acidity from the tomatoes causes BPA from the cans to leach into your food, and BPA is no good for your reproductive system. Instead, buy the kind that come in glass jars, or TJ's brand in boxes.
2) Corn-fed Beef. Cows were meant to eat grass, not corn. Grass-fed beef is expensive, but it is a lot more nutritious.

3) Microwave popcorn Chemicals in the lining of the popcorn bag vaporize in the microwave and make their way into your popcorn. These chemicals can cause cancer and affect the reproductive system. Yikers.

4) Nonorganic potatoes. Root vegetables absorb more chemicals from the soil than other veggies do - and potatoes are treated with herbicide, pesticides and fungicides before being shipped to your local grocery store. Washing doesn't help. Their own farmers won't even eat them. Buy organic potatoes.
5) Farmed salmon The shit they are fed is just nasty. Plus they are exposed to (and absorb) all kinds of dangerous chemicals and are treated with antibiotics and pesticides (pesticides? In fish? Really??). The worst in terms of carcinogen content come from northern Europe, so avoid those at all cost.
6) Milk produced with artificial hormones. This is a little trickier to avoid. While most supermarkets carry organic produce, the milk choices are generally pretty slim. If you go to a co-op you can probably find milk from local dairies that is less processed. Also, check the label to make sure the milk is produced without artificial hormones. Bad news, cancer, etc.

7) Conventional apples. Duh. Apples are the worst in terms of pesticide content. The saddest part is that workers who are exposed to pesticides on a regular basis have higher rates of many cancers - so by buying organic you are giving less support to these practices, as well as doing something good for your body and the environment.

Yes, all of these options are more expensive in terms of the $$ you spend at the grocery store. But when you consider the true cost to your health and the planet, it really isn't. OK I'll get off my pedestal now...

Phew that was a long one! So many words!!

Happy Tuesday.

Valentines Weekend Recap, part 2!

Happy Monday! After a 6am Vinyasa class this morning, I drove up to my parents house to pick up some materials I needed for my Healthcare class, and lo and behold I am still here :) I helped my mom dismantle the tree (I mean LITERALLY dismantle... we chopped it into pieces and dragged it outside. My dad always picks out the tree and each year it gets progressively more gargantuan... yet somehow he always gets out helping take it down... but with his new hip he has no excuse right??)

I also almost hit a deer on the way up...this is not an unusual occurance, as deer tend to frolick about quite frequently in these parts. I stopped to avoid it and then waited for about 20 seconds as the deer ran around in circles trying to decide how, exactly, to get off the road. Going back the way he had come did not seem to occur to him. Deer are not the smartest... I digress.

So the second day of our valentines weekend started out with whole-wheat muffins and chocolate hazelnut strudel! The chocolate hazelnut strudel is probably my favorite of Teri's pastries (that and the little orange-flavored rolls...mmm...). I don't even want to know how many sticks of butter are in them, but in this case ignorance is definitely bliss. Besides, everyone knows that the whole wheat in the muffins cancels out the butter and chocolate.




The red plates and glasses were gorgeous, and the mango mimosas were...mmm yummy. Never to early in the day for Prosecco.

The main course was... I'm not even sure what to call it but wow it was good. Also no dearth of butter in this guy... some sort of bread-pudding benedict type concoction. Delish.

Before we hit the road we picked up some sandwiches from Water House for the road. I picked the Desdemona (ham, cheese and rosemary mayo on sourdough...real ham too, no fake deli-sliced ham here), which is probably my new favorite sandwich. I will have to figure out how to re-create it at home :).

The last stop was at our favorite wine shop - turns out when you've bought 12 bottles you get one free! So I left Lake Mills with 3 wine bottles and a six pack of beer....the only way to go out.

I figured the same concept that applies to pastries also applies to beverages, so I got some tea to balance out all the wine. Totally logical.

Now back to reality... I have three assignments due this week and I need to figure out what to cook for myself so that I actually have lunches to bring to school with me, AND I need to figure out what to make for my birthday party on Friday... chances are good that my B-day present from my parents will be involved :)

Wowwwwwwwwwww.......

I cannot believe how thoroughly my ass has just been kicked.
I went to my normal Monday night class hot vinyasa class, taught by Patrick (another Olaf grad)... and now I feel like I am dying but in a good way. What has gotten into you tonight, crazy yoga teacher man? Why did you feel the need for us to flip from chatturanga to vasisthasana 85,000 times in a row? Or how about the repeated "floating" from half-pigeon into headstand (or at least it was supposed to be floating but in my case was more of an awkward hopping...which is what pigeons do anyways, right...? right? OK moving on...).

Long story short, I am pooped. I am going to sleep now.

G'night :)