It's good to be home!

SUITE

I've officially been home for two weeks now, and the novelty still hasn't worn off. I was in the beginning of the unpacking stages at the time of my last post, and it wasn't pretty for a while... but thanks to my 5 day weekend, I was able to get fairly settled in and have some much needed recuperation time. Look, I even cleared the living room after emptying all my bags in front of a Hoarders marathon!

A shoddy representation of my living room before and after unpacking

What else did I do on my five-day Andrea weekend in Huntsville? I deep-cleaned the kitchen, washed and vacuumed my car, did some training for my next race, went to couple of amazing Bikram classes at the new hot yoga studio in town, and slept... a LOT. All much needed, and incredibly enjoyable.

PLAY

One of the best parts of being home has been the fact that I can hang out with my friends after work, spend time with my family on the weekends, and chase my dog around the house (she secretly loves this). The fact that my little brother is home for the summer has made it even better! He's so close in age to me that he generally acts like the older sibling, but we (usually) get along incredibly well. We joke that we have the weirdest family dynamic- he's a conservative Beef Cattle Nutrition major, while I'm the crazy vegan liberal. Somehow we make it work, and our relationship is absolutely perfect.

Aside from family time, I've gotten to play with some of my favorite people in Huntsville these past few weeks. My good friend Meghan and I had a fun meal at Pane e Vino, a cute little pizza cafe at the art museum downtown, and then went back to her house to watch True Blood. Earlier in the week, she had taped a giant Justin Bieber poster to her roommate's door, and unwittingly started a war with the male victims. When we pulled in to the house, there was something different about the yard...

The bottle of Coors Lite was a nice touch, boys...

Every month, my coworkers Amber, Kellie and I make it a point to go to dinner together and catch up on non-work things. We ate at my favorite Huntsville restaurant, 1892 East (which I think I've blogged about at least 4 times now), but nothing on the dessert menu struck our fancy. So we grabbed ice cream afterwards instead, and Amber showed us the correct posture for avoiding the dreaded cookie-dough-on-the-shirt when you're eating an ice cream cone.

It's all in the strategy

GRUB

I joke that I'm the worst vegan ever because I'm deathly afraid of a lot of veggies. I can eat salad all day long, but the list of things I won't eat is rather lengthy. But in order to stay healthy and get the nutrients my body needs, I know that I need to face my fear and at least try the veggies that scare me. Greens are one of these scary vegetables- I don't mean dark lettuces or spinach, those are easy. But kale, collards, bok choy- they scare me to death! So I used my mad Google-ing skills and discovered that if you put kale in the oven with some olive oil and salt, they get super crunchy, like chips! I tried it, and though they were totally weird at first, they were completely addictive and delicious.

My fear of veggies is largely a texture thing, and the crunchiness of these totally put that to bed. I used Alicia Silverstone's recipe, but there's tons of ways to make these fun, like tossing them in dressing with different spices.