Blogger Book Club and 20 Miles Walked

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My weekend in a nut shell: Good food, long walks. As usual, lately. Ever since my fiance got the Jawbone Up for his birthday, we've been walking like fools. Or would that be geniuses?



After a low-key Friday, I was excited for Blogger Book Club on Saturday. As usual, the spread of food was killer. I made Chickpea Cookie Dough Dip and it was gone by the end. Pretty sure I heard Emily say it was "like crack." Well, I guess I'm a crack dealer now.

The only picture I took with humans in it.

Book club was hosted by Sierra from Posh Meets Pavement, and I was pretty pumped to check out her digs because we have two things in common: a similar style and obsessed with organization. Emphasis on that second part.

Also, I've been working on convincing my fiance that we should get a ghost chair for the desk in our living room, so I was excited to see that I could test them out over at her place. Winning. Yes, Justin, they are freaking sturdy.



We read a book called The Life You've Imagined by Kristina Riggle. While I have to admit that we talked about the book for a grand total of 5 minutes (and that's a generous estimate on my part), I will say that I am enjoying it. Notice I used present tense? Not done with it yet. But, the fact that I'm still working on it even though I'm done with book club means I'm actually liking it.


For those of you who are considering the book or just want to know what the heck it's about: The book focuses on three friends who collide back in their home town -- a fast-paced Chicago lawyer who faces some seriously depressing stuff between the death of a friend and her mother's store and home being taken, a girl with a gambling addiction who is forced to move back in with her abusive alcoholic father after she runs her bank account (and her relationship) into the ground, and a girl who has worked extremely hard to lose a lot of weight, but now struggles an obsession with perfection (and probably some control issues related to food and exercise). Overall, I found myself liking the characters. I can definitely identify with the lawyer (and found myself glad I didn't end up going to law school, actually -- a story for another day), but I found the woman with the food/exercise/perfection issues to be the most interesting. She made so many rationalizations for things that I was kind of mind blowing to watch her do it.




After book club, my fiance and I went on a long walk for dinner and drinks. I think we were gone for about 5 or 6 hours. We walked up and over to Wicker Park, tried to get into Piece (2 hour wait? No thanks) and Big Star (similar wait - too hungry), and ended up walking over to Mac's on Division. It's one of our standard favorites, and they had a booth open for immediate seating. Done and done.

Later, we walked from Wicker over to River North (so I could use the ladies room at my fiance's office), and then down to a bar called The Pepper Canister. The crowd was a little bit older than us, which was fine. They still got pretty rowdy. And I had a delicious manhattan.



The next morning, we walked to and from church (seriously, if you want the man in your life to start walking, buy him the Jawbone up. It's like a game to him now). We had a few errands (hello, Costco) to run and I had some work to do, so we did some necessaries during the early afternoon. We also did some hotel research for two upcoming trips. This involved a lot of computer work as well as a full oven...



When business was somewhat wrapped up, we did it again. By it, I mean yet another walk. We took the train two stops to get a head start, then walked around Lincoln Park for a while.



We hit up the zoo, where I demonstrated my awesome fashion sense to some children. I was walking around with my zip up hoodie on backward (convenience, seriously), and we walked past a group of boys who looked like they were in middle school. One of the kids exclaimed, "That's a SICK way to wear your sweatshirt, Imma do that!"

Well, I'm a fashionista to middle schoolers. Take that, Loop Looks.



Finally, we were both starving (we walked like 9 miles that day), so we stopped at George Street Pub for some grub. My fiance had a black and bleu burger, and I ordered a turkey burger with pico, cheese, and avocado. I ate the whole thing, plus fries. #noms



Now, we're back to the grind. Here's to another great Chicago weekend. Bring on the summer weather, Midwest...

QUESTIONS:

• Do you use a step tracker, like fitbit or jawbone? Does it make you more active?
• Do you participate in any book clubs?

GRATITUDE:
Dear Jawbone,
Thank you for making a bracelet that looks manly enough for my fiance to wear it around town. My legs will thank you later, too. And probably my glutes.
Love,
Carly 

Scenes from the Weekend

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We had a late night (read: wine) on Thursday, so Friday morning's running and CXWORX were a total no-go. A bit later (after work), I hit up the gym for a new class.

Ballet Barre. For those of you who do Pure Barre or Barre Bee Fit, you're pros. Me? I've never done a ballet barre class before. Even as a child, I was always second fiddle to my sister when it came to dance. I've always avoided any classes that involve Hip Hop or Zumba.

I was obviously pretty excited to try it out. We used small, 4lb weights, and a 9lb bodybar, as well as a mat for ab work toward the end. I'm honestly amazed by how quickly the class went - I think it was a lot of work for my brain to keep up with the dance lingo and mirror the moves that I had no time to get bored.

Afterward, I had a quick shower at the gym and headed home to snatch up my fiance. We had plans to meet my aunt and uncle at Havana on North Clark street for dinner and mojitos, so I quickly threw my hair up and we hopped on the Grand bus.

Havana was delicious. I ordered Carne Asada and saved half of the steak for lunch this week. Justin had a pork dish, my aunt had a tequila steak dish, and my uncle ordered chicken that came with plaintains. So, we pretty much had it all covered. Oh, and did I mention half priced mojito pitchers? It doesn't get much better than that.

When all was said and done, and the mojitos were done and drunk (ha?), we had a pretty slow start the next morning. We did some TV binging as we downed some coffee over some beautiful hydrangeas our neighbor gave us.

I threw together some Peanut Butter and Jelly Fudge (using honey, protein powder, prunes, nuts) for Sunday's book club. To be honest, it didn't quite turn out how I expected. I found the recipe by following a blog recommended to me by Chobani, and am pretty disappointed with how the recipe turned out. Psh. For someone who doesn't usually follow recipes, this wasn't a good time to start. 

Before I headed out to the gym, I cooked up about 10 chicken breasts for the week, some with taco seasoning and some with greek seasoning, and chopped them up.  I threw together this taco chicken salad and was only able to eat half of it before heading to the gym for my run. Guess I did too much taste testing with the fudge... Oops!

I had a pretty good run at the gym. I watched most of The Lucky One with Zac Effron, which was cute and, while not the most brilliant thing ever, was at very least entertaining enough for an 8 and a half mile run. I was planning on 9miles but had some really weird calf pain toward the end. Who knows, it may have been nothing, but I'm still fairly new to distance running so I decided not to push it.


After the gym, we hit up CostCo and came away with some serious goodies. I made us some baked berry crumble using frozen fruit and added some plain greek yogurt and almond butter.

Unfortunately, since I've recently started an acai cleanse, I had the need to add some solid food almost immediately after eating the berry crumble soup. So, I whipped up some english muffin cheesy garlic bread. 150 Calories and DELICIOUS. Did I mention Sriracha?

 

The next morning, we cleaned up and made delicious breakfast before I went to Blogger Book Club.

Look at those noms. Delicious, right? Can't quite remember what's on that plate... marinated mushrooms, quinoa and guacamole salad, fried polenta with a goat cheese sauce that was delish, a brussels sprout and kimchi salad, spanikopita, some kind of sweet potato pancake, a cheesecake bar... I can't even. Now I'm full just talking about it.

Oh, right. And the wine! I loved these wine charms Erin had at her place... so cute.

Afterward, my fiance and I lounged around before hitting up Grandview Tavern for dinner and a few drinks.

And now for the gratefulness...
Dear Showtime,
Thank you for making "Shameless" so unbelievably gross-nasty and sad that I no longer want to watch it. That will save me many hours next season, which I can spend on much more productive things!
Love,
Carly