Can't Sleep Sunday!

This is a real thing for me... Sunday night rolls around and all of the sudden I feel like I should probably be productive and my mind starts racing with all of the crap I need to do this week and I should probably make lunch and look at Pinterest for dinner ideas and do laundry and ......AAAAAHHH!

So, while I'm waiting to get tired and while the laundry and the dishes get all clean, I figured I might do a little bloggin' about the week and share a recipe (and watch Adventure Time) since I'm all for multi-tasking!

This was week two of half marathon training and the mileage is still low.  I'm hoping this week I can start adding on to the prescribed amount and maybe start some strength training.  I wanted to do this last week, but it was hot and nasty and I at least got all my runs in:)

Thanks humidity!  And apparently all my sweat is on my back, because this shot does the sweatiness no 
justice.

So as part of today's Can't Sleep Sunday, I also felt the need to assemble lunch for the week.  I made something similar to this a few weeks ago.  If you aren't a fan of chickpeas, sorry 'bout ya.  I took some to work, and I ran into a lot of chickpea haters. This recipe is a spin-off of this one from eat-yourself-skinny.com, and it was very good.  I adjusted it to include some of the things I like, which is one of the nice things about it, you could really add about anything to adjust to your taste.

Cilantro-Lime Chickpea Salad

1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained

juice of half a lime

dash of red pepper flakes

teaspoon of minced garlic (I cheat and used the pre-minced kind)

half a banana pepper sliced in rings

chopped cilantro, a tablespoon or two, depends on preference.

drizzle of olive oil

Mix it all together and let it sit for at least an hour to blend all of the flavors together.  I make mine the night before and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.  After that the choice is yours. I eat them cold, added to salads, warmed up etc.  I kind of want to blend them together to make something kind of hummus like (maybe without the banana peppers), but I don't think my blender would do very well.

My garden fresh (sister-in-law's, not mine), but kind of unfortunately shaped banana pepper

 Mix it all together and......

Yum!

Does anyone else have issues with Sunday night sleeping? Good night!

Back to it (finally!)

So I've been pretty AWOL, and a lot has gone on in the last couple of months which has kept me from blogging and really focusing on some of the goals I had for myself.  It's not that these are all valid reasons, but sometimes it's easy to make any excuse to not do something!

 I have a new job (same place, different position).  I moved from being a chemist to an Inside Sales position.
I really like the job and the people, and now that I'm getting the hang of things, the stress level has gone down a lot.  It was a hard decision, I loved (and still do!) the people I worked with before, but I came to the realization that I can't make decisions because of others.  It was something I needed to do for myself.

My in-laws have suffered a lot of losses, many of them untimely.  I love both my families and this was a really stressful time.  Things are getting a little better (as good as they can), and we are starting to work on some projects to honor those members of the family that are no longer with us.  Hopefully I'll be able to talk about some of them in the future.

I find myself always making excuses to not eat right, to not run, be lazy...blah blah blah.  Then I get mad at myself for not doing those things, because they really do make me happy!

So... this week begins our city's Team 13 half marathon training.  I love this training program and seeing all my running friends again!  I'm going to take this and use it to spur myself to get back in the habit of eating better and running and doing some cross training, and trying to record it along the way.

Thanks for listening to my random rambling :)

One more new thing...meet Aurelius, the newest member of our fur family: