Fabulous Adventures of Listgirl

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

There's A Place For That

I'm continually amazed at the power of the internet and social networking. It's very cool how no matter what hobbies and interests you have, there's a site/group on the internet for it. The other day I was making a list of all the sites that I frequent that sort of make up the big interests in my life, and I thought I would share them here.

Running - Daily Mile - a place similar to Facebook, where you can comment on friends' workouts. I keep track of all my running here, and any other workouts that I do.

Knitting/Crocheting - Ravelry - I keep track of yarns and projects here. It's a HUGE community and super-fun.

Reading - Goodreads - I put all my book To-Reads in here. I mark books as "read". I get book recommendations from friends. I read and write book reviews. It's awesome and I love it.

Dieting - Daily Plate - I keep track of my daily calorie intake here. I say "dieting" with quotes, because I don't believe in diets that deprive me of any foods. I eat everything in moderation when I'm tracking calories. It's worked for me before. I lost 6 lbs in about 3 months last year... slowly but surely.

Eating - Chowhound or Yelp - I love to read restaurant reviews here before I go!

Cooking - MyRecipes.com - where we link to all our favorite Cooking Light recipes online.

Digi-Scrapping - my non-store open forum/gallery of choice is My Scrapbook Art. You can find my gallery here.

Technology - Lifehacker - my favorite technology blog/site.

Sewing - I am just starting this hobby and would love it if anyone can suggest a site/forum/social network for me?

What are your favorite hobby/interest sites?

Sizzling Summer Sale - 35% off

We're having a Sizzling Summer Sale at Little Dreamer Designs! All products in the "Sizzling Summer" category is on sale for 35% off through Sat 6/26!

Here are my products that I've put into the category for sale.

Click here to browse the sale!

Awesome Five Miler

Yesterday was our last run with West Coast Road Runners. We didn't sign up for the fall season from July - Dec this year. We've been running with the club for 18 months now. It's time to take a break and diversify ourselves fitness-wise. Todd has already begun training for an Olympic-distance triathlon last week. He's got 2 swims, 3 bike rides, and 1 run under his belt.

This last run with WCRR started at the decent time of 8:30am yesterday. We ran from DeAnza Cove at Mission Bay.

My group

Todd's group

I tried to push myself to run faster. My legs felt great and my sore quads were a distant memory, so I thought why-not? Plus it was ONLY five miles, LOL. Not to belittle five miles, of course. This is the distance that I hope to continue to be able to run easily and fast on the weekends. If running felt this good and this easy all the time, boy I would just run all the time. It was just one of those days where the body and the mind cooperated and the faster five-miles felt pretty easy. Perhaps this was due to some interval running this week too? I don't know, but I'll take it when it happens, LOL.

Some scenic photos on the route on Mission Bay.

Location: Mission Bay
Distance: 5.01 miles
Time: 52:16
Avg pace: 10:26/mile
Calories: 501

After the run, we came home and took showers. Then it was time for lunch and Todd wanted In N Out Burger, so that's where we went. I wanted to get a cheeseburger, but I looked up the nutrition value and the cheeseburger was 90 calories more than the hamburger, and I didn't think the piece of cheese was worth 90 calories to me at this starting point of my calorie-counting endeavor. So I got a hamburger and we shared french fries instead of each getting our own.

Don't let him fool you, one of the burgers was mine!

After that, we went to meet up with Dejah and Roby for wine-tasting at Vintage Wines on Miramar. This is the second time that we've gone to wine-tasting there with Dejah and Roby. They're regulars there and the owners know them. For yesterday, it was six kinds of Pinot Noir. Neither Todd nor I found it yummy, I guess we're not really pinot noir people. We shared a tasting.

Todd made some Spiced Marinated Tomatoes to share. We got these heirloom tomatoes from Trader Joe's on Friday night.

It was super-yummy, we loved it!

Roby and Dejah.

After Vintage Wines, we braved the San Diego County Fair traffic and drove up to Del Mar to pick up some cake. But wait! Dejah and Roby wanted to stop by their favorite cheese shop called Venissimo.

Could this be Todd's worst nightmare coming true?

Todd was pretty horrified at the sight of all these cheese. But he was especially horrified at the smell in the store. It was pretty strong.

The only good thing about it is that it's close to the Nothing Bundt Cakes store. Todd had to console himself with a white-chocolate raspberry cake. We forgot to take photos of it. We brought it home and ate it after dinner. Todd cooked Asian Spicy Honey Chicken and it was super-nommy.

Chill Out Friday

I took Friday off from work, because I have too many vacation days accrued at work and needed to use some days off or lose them. I do feel very blessed to have worked long enough at the same company to have this problem! :)

I decided to just chill out at home. I read some magazines and books. I watched TV. I also went into my craft room (which is a huge mess, by the way). I took the first step in organizing it by organizing my yarn collection and recording them all into my Ravelry.com account. Which led me to discover a few skeins of yarn that I know I'll never use, so I bagged them up and I'm going to give them away to a local charity.

Here's the color scheme of something I'm working on... It's a gift so I can show you after I've given it away. :)

That one is a crochet project. I also started a knitting project for myself. I'm making some arm-warmers. I'm sure they'll come in handy in the long and cold San Diego winters, ha ha!

I had a really fun alone-day-off on Friday. Very relaxing and something I needed. Todd came home after work and we went to get some Indian food at Delhi Kitchen. It's this cafeteria style Indian place that we like to frequent. Also, right there in the same plaza, there's a Trader Joe's. We got some really nice little heirloom tomatoes, which I'll show you in the next blog post! We also got some soap, some sulfur-free and sugar-free dried mangoes, and some fresh basil. Lots of good stuffs! Then we headed to the new Sprouts Market nearby and bought a bunch of produce and fruits. What a bonanza!

Dinner with Dejah & Roby

It's been a busy week for us, social-wise. I guess I saved all my blogging for today!

On Tuesday night, Dejah and Roby came over to our house for dinner. Todd made one of my favorites, Szechuan Spicy Noodles with Carrot-Cucumber Relish. The meat sauce was nicely spiced, and spicy hot too. In fact we were eating it and wondering why it tasted so salty and hot, when we remembered that we didn't serve the carrot-cucumber relish, which was still in the fridge! DOH! After we trotted that out, the dish tasted way more balanced!

The highlight of the meal was this though.

Apple and Blackberry Crumble

We served it ala mode and everyone just loved it.

I even ate some for breakfast the next day. Yum!

After dinner, we played Rock Band together and took turns singing, playing the drums, and playing guitar and bass. It was really fun with four people! Usually Todd and I just play together and we don't have enough arms and legs to cover all the instruments. It was definitely a fun evening together.

On Thursday night we got to go to Pete and Cassandra's place and they cooked for us. We got to meet Evan (the 8 year old human) and Sid and Fuzz (the 3 year old cats). The food was so good and we had so much fun with them, playing Rock Band again! Todd blogged about it, you can read it here.