Missy Maintains » turkey

Celebration!

MissyMaintains — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 16:00:46 +0000

Hope everyone had a nice weekend! I knew mine would be great as soon as I found out I got a promotion on Friday!! I interviewed for a position in my company a few weeks ago and got the good news right before I left work! I’ve been in the same position since I moved to New York in 2007 so I am really excited for a new change. I knew this called for a celebration so Mari and I decided to go to a bar in Queens that night. Before heading out, I took a fun Zumba class and stopped at Subway for a quick dinner.

I got turkey, ham, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and pickles on a whole wheat roll. I had some Riceworks chips on the side. I am loving Subway lately!

After dinner, I met Mari, her sister Jenn, and her friend Gigi at the bar.

We went to this bar a couple of months ago for Mari’s birthday (ya know, the night I lost my Droid!) I made sure I kept my phone hidden in my purse all night! That day, Mari asked me if I knew of any good low-calorie drinks. I recommended a vodka and soda with a splash of cranberry. I had a feeling this drink would taste too much like actual vodka for her. My other recommendation was vodka and Crystal Light! You can barely taste the alcohol and a packet is almost no calories. They also make some Crystal Light with Stevia now which is nice.

We made drinks with half a packet of Crystal Light, 2 vodka shots, and a glass of water. They were delicious!

I believe we each had 3 of these drinks by the end of the night (6 shots)!!

Eventually we ran out of packets and moved onto Blue Moon.

Very fun night!

The next morning (2:00 pm actually), I headed to Tower Diner to refuel! I got an egg white omelet with feta cheese, peppers and mushrooms. Some fatty bacon seemed necessary after 6 shots.

I felt that an Applebee’s Hurricane was also needed to cure the hangover!

I’d say October is starting off really well for me! I am ready to take on some new challenges and can’t wait to start the new position! I know I am a few days late but I would like to set a few other goals for the month:

1) Focus more on strength training:I am currently loving intensati and Zumba which means I am slacking on the strength classes. I want to take one 3 times a week again.

2) Choose at least 1 day a week to chew no gum! I still go through 1/2 a pack to a whole pack every day. Not only does it cost too much money, it bothers my tummy and jaw. Maybe one day without gum will turn into 2 days, then 3 days, etc.

3) Continue eating out less: I’ve been eating oatmeal every day and packing lunch a few days a week. I also stopped buying $2.00 iced coffee every morning. I’ve been on a Subway kick as well which obviously is cheaper than eating out! I hope this streak continues!

What are your goals for the month?

30 Seconds of Fame

MissyMaintains — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 16:22:35 +0000

Hope everyone had a nice weekend! I pretty much spent my entire weekend at Citifield! The Phillies were in town playing the Mets so of course I had to go and support my team. I did not plan on going to all 3 games! I actually did not even plan on going to 1 game! On Friday after work, I had every intention of going home and collapsing into bed. When I walked in the door, my roommate said, “Get your Phillies hat on. We are going to the game!” Okay! We got there and bought tickets from some dude on the street. They were pretty good seats!

I had a few of these and felt much better.

I got to visit my friend from college that works for the Mets. She handed us 2 tickets for the game on Saturday! Thanks Kaity!

During the game, I snacked on a few peanuts but decided to wait until after to eat a real dinner. The Phillies won so we ended up at Friday’s to celebrate with half-priced drinks!

I got my usual Cosmo and Cobb salad.

Saturday

It was really nice out so we decided to get to the stadium early to watch batting practice. I just wanted to catch a ball or meet Chase Utley and Cole Hamels. I had a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast.

I fueled up with a Vanilla Soy Latte before starting on more beer!

We got to watch them pratice for about an hour. I love this picture for obvious reasons.

I love this one even more…

One of the players threw me up a ball! I was also one of the only girls screaming for one.

Our original tickets were near the Mets dugout in the 15th row. After the first inning, my friend upgraded us to the 1st row above the Phillies dugout! Amazing!

I got to do some serious stalking.

I think I may have scared him a little. Every time he looked up, my camera was in his face. My friend text messaged me a picture of her TV during the game. We were on ESPN!!! I caught a 2nd ball during the game! A 3rd ball came my way and I jumped up for it but missed it. This older guy next to me started yelling at me asking why I would try to get another one if I already had one. I said, “Why wouldn’t I? I like balls.” He shut right up.

We left and got some Subway and called it a night.

Sunday

My friend called me at 9 in the morning and told me she had 2 more tickets for us! This time they were above the Phillies dugout but in the 2nd row! So exciting!

I think some of the players remembered us. We were the only Phillies fans both days sitting right above them. I got a wave and a nod! I got another ball too!

I ran into my neighbor that I grew up with at the end of the game. She lives in New York now too but is still a hardcore Phillies fan.

I went home and watched some of the recaps from the game. I found myself in a few videos! I am on the right in the pink hat.

Now I need to get my hands on full copies of the games. I’d say I got my 30 seconds of fame this weekend. Now I just need Chase Utley’s phone number and I’ll be satisfied.

In exercise news, tonight will be my first workout in about 2 weeks. Can’t wait! It is much needed after the amount of beer consumed at the game!

What type of workout do you have planned for today?

What was your favorite part of the weekend?

Sangria in the Summer

MissyMaintains — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:28:03 +0000

Since it is already the middle of August (insert sad face here), I am trying my best to take full advantage of summer. This past weekend I did just that. I think a great summer consists of outdoor sangria, baseball games, friends, and backyard parties. I’d say I covered most of the bases (haha).

Friday

My lovely friend that works for the Mets got me tickets to the Mets/Phillies game. I am a huge Phillies fan so she always goes out of her way to get me tickets when they play in New York. I found Mari and friends at the subway stop and we rode to the stadium. Mari thinks I am nuts for rockin my Phillies gear in New York. I have to show my pride!

We were 13 seats away from the field! Hello!

We also had a waitress for our section! So cool! I ordered a Blue Moon.

Excuse my nail polish. Getting a manicure in a few days.

I brought my own turkey and cheese wrap to be on the safe side.

I was kind of upset that I brought food after I saw a Subway right where we were sitting! There was also sushi on our menu! Oh well, at least I saved a few dollars.

Mari ordered a Kahlua iced coffee from the menu but we swore there was no alcohol in there. Our server told us they only use one shot so Mari begged her for a little more. Still no luck.

The Phillies lost but it’s okay because we beat the Mets the next 2 nights!

Saturday

I woke up and went to the wonderful Tower Diner for brunch. I got an egg white omelet with feta cheese, mushrooms, onions, and peppers.

We also split some pudding for dessert. Never too early for chocolate pudding!

Later that night I went to Dori’s apartment for her first ever backyard party! It was so nice back there! I can’t believe we don’t play out there more!

Dori, Angela, Me!

Dori made delicious sangria….

She also made amazing Magnolia banana pudding! YUM!

I was happy…

Sunday

Dori and I woke up bright and early for some Core Fusion! It was another great class! We had plans to go to Angela’s rooftop for sangria but first we went to Dos Caminos for brunch. They had a very reasonable brunch special, $13.00 for a drink and meal. I started with a margarita of course!

We split some guacamole and chips. The guacamole there is amazing!

I got an omelet with goat cheese, mushrooms, and some corn thing. I forget the word. We had to google it to see what it was in English. Dori will remember.

The omelet was pretty good but nothing special. I want to go back there for dinner next time. We headed over to Angela’s afterwards for more drinks! We were supposed to go in her kiddy pool again but it ended up raining. We still had a great time inside her apartment. Angela made her own spinach dip!

We drank sangria alllll day long!

Angela also made coconut truffle brownie bites with cashew frosting! Check out her recipe here!

Great weekend! It is always great to hang out with fitness and food bloggers since it is almost always a given that the food and drinks will be on the healthier side. We also always make sure to fit in an exercise class to balance out all of the alcohol. I wish summer would never end! Or maybe I just need to move somewhere warm. One day…

1) If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

2) What is one thing you want to do before summer ends?

Pizza and Beer!

MissyMaintains — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:10:55 +0000

Happy Friday! Let’s start things off by choosing the winner of the Omron GoSmart Pace/Distance Tracker Giveaway!

Random Integer Generator
Here are your random numbers:

11
Timestamp: 2010-07-16 13:36:40 UTC

The winner is….Mari! Congrats girl! Hope you enjoy your new pace/distance tracker!! Just in time for your birthday!!

Back to yesterday….

I was craving cereal in the morning so I stopped at the nearby deli for some breakfast ingredients.

I can’t be trusted with large boxes of cereal so the single serving Kashi bowls are perfect! I made a delicious yogurt mess!

The deli has a new kitten! So cute!

I’ve been bringing lunch every day this week. I made a turkey and cheese wrap with Food Should Taste Good chips and cucumbers on the side.

After work I had another intenSati class! The class was actually a special event hosted by Well+GoodNYC. Anyone who is a subscriber to their newsletter was invited to attend intenSati for free last night! It was perfect for me since I am not allowed to do the Warrior Challenge! The class was really fun and led by Natalia, my favorite teacher. She always has so much energy and keeps letting me on her guest list! Love her! The Well+Good girls gave away a Lululemon gift bag at the end but unfortunately I did not win. One of my blog readers was at the event too so she came up to me to introduce herself. That always makes me feel special! I think the Well+Good girls took a lot of pictures during the class so I will be sure to let you know when they are posted (unless they are extremely embarrassing)!

**Edited to add: Here is the link to the article! You can see me in the 2nd picture!

After class Mari and I walked over to Whole Foods for some dinner! I made an awesome salad!

It contained avocado kale salad, seaweed salad, broccoli, beets, peppers, eggplant, tofu, and more! We sat outside and people watched while eating. We got some very weird looks while taking pictures of our food!

I probably should have went home and went to bed after that because I had another 6:30 am intenSati class planned! I got invited to the W Hotel so I ended up going out for some drinks instead! I had 3 Stellas by the end of the night. I totally planned on just having 2 drinks but the bartender brought me out a free one. No complaints here!

Next thing I know, it is 1:30 in the morning and everyone decided they wanted some pizza! I could not resist a slice when I saw this:

So good!! Probably not the best idea to eat that at 2:00 am when I had plans to wake up at 5:00 am for a workout! I obviously woke up feeling dehydrated and nauseous so I decided it would be smart to sleep for another 3 hours and skip intenSati for the morning! There is a free outdoor intenSati class at 5:30 tonight so maybe I will take that one instead! I definitely still want to work out at some point today after all the pizza and beer last night! I’m not sure what else is going on this weekend but I do have an 8-mile hike on Sunday! The best part is that there will be a wine tasting at the end of the hike! Talk about a motivator! Can’t wait!

1) What are you looking forward to this weekend?

2) What was your favorite workout this week?

My First Race!

MissyMaintains — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 16:14:09 +0000

Last night I ran my first race, the Wall Street Run & Start! Heart Walk. This is a 3-mile walk/run that supports the American Heart Association. I went to the same race last year but ended up walking it. My main goal this year was to run the entire 3 miles even if that meant running extremely slow. The weather was completely opposite from last year’s race! Last year was cold and windy. This year it was 90 degrees!! I was pretty nervous about the hot weather but I think I’d rather be hot than cold!

I got to the race about 20 minutes early and waited around nervously until I found Dori and Melissa. There were tons of people…about 12,000!

Eventually I found Dori and Melissa. Dori brought me my race bib so her and Melissa quickly dressed me since the race was about to start! Melissa pinned on my bib and Dori attached my scoring tag to my shoe! I was too nervous to pin anything to myself! Luckily seeing them before the race calmed me down a lot!

I wore my heart rate monitor, an arm band for my iPod, and a Spibelt for my phone and keys. I also wore my new Omron Distance Tracker. The company sent me one to try out so I decided to see how accurate it was. I will be giving one of these away in a few weeks by the way!

I was kind of upset because I was not able to make a fun playlist for my first race. My laptop is broken so I have no iTunes! I decided to set my iPod on my 25 most played songs. It ended up being a good mix!

“Elements of Life” by Tiesto
“Sail” by Armin Van Buuren
“Burning Up” by Starkillers and Austin Leeds Remix
“When Love Takes Over” by David Guetta
“Yes We Can (Saw Mix)” by Houseshaker
“Feel the Love (Christian Marchi Main Extended Mix)” by Marchi’s Flow
“Sexy Bitch” by David Guetta
“Fallen” by Guiseppe Ottaviani
“Advanced (Trance Energy)” by Marcel Woods
“Comic Strip” by Orla Feeney
“Irish Adventure” by DJ Antoine & Mad Mark
“Move It” by DJ Antoine & MC Roby Rob
“Drops of Jupiter” by Filo & Peri

There may have been a few more but the whole race was a blur so I don’t remember. Every song on my iPod is house or techno so I knew I would have great music the whole time anyway! The race started and it took a while to actually start running. There were just so many people! The 3 of us started together but eventually I stayed behind and took my time jogging. I felt pretty good during the first mile. I had to weave in and out of a ton of people! I liked that I was passing some people! It definitely built my confidence a little bit! I knew I was running slow but I didn’t have a cramp and I could still breathe so I was happy. I was extremely hot though and really had to pee! I drank a Venti coffee during the day to give me some energy for the race. Bad idea. I figured it would make me go a little faster but it also made me shaky and extra nervous for the race!

Eventually I saw mile 2. By this point I was HOT. I was pretty much dying. I could not wait for the race to be over. My mouth was dry. I could not breathe. I knew I only had 1 mile left so I did not want to stop and walk! I kept thinking about the blog and how I really did not want to come back here today and tell everyone I had to stop and walk! Then I saw a hose shooting water onto all of the runners. YES!!! I passed a few people so I could run right under the water! It felt SO good! I just wanted to stop and stay under there. I knew I had to keep going. A minute later I saw the one and ONLY water station during the entire race. It looked so packed and crowded so I didn’t stop. Probably not the best idea but I just wanted to finish at that point.

The last mile was horrible. I was seriously freaking out in my own head.

“I am never running another race again!”
“I want to fall over and die.”
“I can’t breathe.”
“I can’t feel my legs.”
“I want to take all of my clothes off and jump in a cold pool!”
“I hate running!”
“HOW MUCH LONGER?!!!”

I tried to cover up these negative thoughts with more positive ones.

“1 more mile, I can do it.”
“I made it this far, I am not giving up now!”
“There are margaritas waiting for me at the finish line!!!”

I listened to the positive thoughts and continued. A ton of people in front of me stopped running and started walking because of the heat. I was tempted to follow but just kept going. I looked down at my heart rate monitor and it said my heart rate was 207. I immediately slowed down a little. I know that if I was not in a race and just running alone, I would have started walking at that point. There was just half a mile left. I knew we were coming close to the end because I saw the river. I remembered the end from last year. The finish line seemed so close but so far! I wanted to speed up at the end but my legs were not having it. Finally the finish line was right in front of me! I did it!

My heart rate monitor said I ran the 3 miles in 31 minutes and 50 seconds. I didn’t even care what my time was. I needed water!!!!!!!!!! I ran through the crowds and grabbed 2 water bottles, found a bench, and collapsed. My Omron said I ran 4 miles. I probably did run a little over 3 miles because of all the weaving in and out of people but I think 4 is a bit too high. I will test it out again…if I ever run again lol.

Once I stretched and got my breathe back, I headed over to Southwest for some much needed margaritas!!! I texted Dori and said that I wanted to die. I found her and Melissa at a table and collapsed once again. I ordered the best margarita ever!!!!

I got the best dinner ever too!!! It was a roasted vegetable and goat cheese quesadilla with extra guacamole. Just what I needed!

We enjoyed another margarita and watched the sun finally go down!

Pretty view from the table!!

We kept checking our times on our phones during dinner. My pace was up on the website but my time wasn’t! Weird! By the time I got home, I got a text from Dori with my pace and time!

Pace/Mile: 11:23
Time: 34:07

I am very happy with that. I’m sure it sounds slow to other runners but it was my first race, the weather was extremely hot, and I did my best! I reached my goal and ran the whole race! Did I enjoy it? Not really! Sorry to be negative but it was just so hard. As much as I want to love running, I don’t right now. Right after the race I said I was never signing up for another one. I might consider another 5K but it has to be at least 15 degrees cooler outside! For now I will continue to do runs on my own outside for pleasure every now and then.

Weekly Goals

Last Friday I set a bunch of goals for this week. In case you missed it, they were:

Make it to the gym at least 4 times during the week.
Run a 5K.
Go to bed by 11:00 Monday through Thursday.
Bring breakfast and lunch to work 4 out of 5 days of the week.
Make dinner instead of going out to eat at least 3 nights next week.

How did I do??

GYM 4 times: Monday-Spin, Tuesday- Nothing! (Yoga fail), Wednesday-Elliptical, Thursday-Run! So far that is 3 times but I will make it 4 or 5 by the end of the weekend! Goal Set!
Run a 5K: The race wasn’t technically a 5K but I’m sure it turned out to be very close to that. Goal Set!
Go to bed by 11:00: I think I went to bed by 11:00 just once this week on Monday night! The Yoga, Eggland event, and run made it tough to go to bed early! Goal Not Set.
Bring breakfast and lunch to work: I brought it every day but today!

I brought omelets….

I brought cottage cheese…..

I brought turkey sandwiches every day for lunch! Goal Set!

5. Make dinner 3 nights: I made dinner Monday…..

I made dinner Tuesday….

Wednesday I made dinner at the Eggland’s Best Event! I am counting that! Goal Set!

I set 4 out of 5 of my goals for the week! Not bad! Next week I will work on the sleep thing again! I definitely felt better this week knowing that I was making most of my meals myself and keeping up with a consistent exercise schedule. Well I gotta run! Okay maybe not run…walk! I need a massage! Have a good weekend!