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Tuesday, January 31, 2017

Dim Sum with Coworkers

My coworkers and I have had this dim sum lunch on our calendars for the past month. I was a little afraid that there were going to be too many people because my calendar appointment got forwarded quite a bit, but it turns out that there were only 6 of us that ended up going, a manageable amount. I told Ben to sit next to me since we were already familiar with the menu. I feel like each time we go, we get better and better about knowing how much food to order and not having a ton of leftovers, heh. OMG, per usual, the food was amazing, and I'm already looking forward to going back soon.

Saturday, January 28, 2017

Happy Lunar New Year!

To start off the day, my sister and I went to CrossFit for the 9:30 AM class and then we went to Dunkin Donuts with Shannon (one of our CrossFit friends) for some breakfast. Afterwards, Julie and I went to my place to pick up the pet beds that we made a few weekends ago and drive over to the humane society to drop them off. The staff there were over the moon about them and the prints that we chose for the beds (not that the animals would have been too picky.

For Lunar New Year this year, my contributions were dumplings (that Julie helped me make like 10...) and a plain cheesecake (with a blueberry topping on the side). The cousins and significant others went downstairs afterwards to play a Monopoly card game. About half of us were first time players. My cousin Hugo and I were a team so he could help me out. We ended up winning!

Sunday, January 22, 2017

Weekend Movie Round-Up

For this long weekend, I spent it on the couch flipping between CNN and movies and making food. I rented Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad on Redbox, and both movies were meh. I'm glad I didn't spend $10+ to see them at the movie theater. Jason Bourne was like all the other Bourne movies with lots of running and car chases. I wonder when Matt Damon's going to get to old to run so much and then they'll have to end the series. With Suicide Squad, I've seen better superhero movies. I did like Harley Quinn though. She was fun! The Joker, on the other hand, what a creep!
Food wise, I made beef stew in the crock pot and a cheesecake in the oven (with blueberry topping). I think I should have waited a little more for the cream cheese blocks to get even softer because the texture in the finished product was a little different than usual. It still tasted fine though! I ate 2 slices just to be sure. ;) I left a little over half of it at my parents' house so that I wouldn't be tempted to eat more than I should.

Saturday, January 14, 2017

CrossFit and Pet Beds

The local animal shelter built a new facility not too long ago, and we've been looking for an excuse to visit it. We'll bring present, perfect! Julie got funding from her volunteering organization to buy enough fabric and foam pads for 15 pet beds. We went to Joann's after CrossFit this morning to pick out fleece fabric in different patterns. The design is basically two sheets of fleece fabric and a foam pad in between. You cut strips around the edges of the foam pad and tie the two panels together, so new sewing involved!

RJ supervised the whole operation, of course.

We got about halfway though the project today before Julie had to go home to get ready to go out with friends. I stayed on the couch and watched CNN. I had no energy to do anything else...so soreee.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Work, Rawr

Work this week has been exceptionally challenging, and there was nothing I could have done would have prevented it. I've been working on a return on investment project for the past 3 years with a workgroup composed of members from my association. My work hired a consultant to crunch numbers that the workgroup provided, and for the past few months, we've been asking the consultant to explain how he got the numbers. This shouldn't be difficult, right? Just show us the formulas. Easy peasy, right? NOPE.

We had an in-person meeting yesterday and today, and wow, things got a little heated yesterday (first thing in the morning, mind you) when the workgroup had lots of questions for the consultant. He raised his voice a few times and got defensive. UGH, it was so uncomfortable, I wanted to leave the room a few times. I feel like this project is one step forward, three steps back. BLAH! I'm hoping we can find ways to move forward with this project without the consultant because there is NO way I want to add $30,000 to this project and continue to work with a consultant who is rude to our members and slow to be forthcoming with his data methods.

At least folks had a good time at dinner last night. 1/2 price bottles of wine probably helped!

I'm glad I was able to make it to CrossFit this evening. I couldn't go yesterday because of this meeting.


Saturday, January 7, 2017

CrossFit, Pet Beds, and Valentines

9:30 AM CrossFit, check! Wow, big class today, even though it was a little snowy outside. As an ice breaker, Coach Rel asked everyone in the circle to say their name and one thing they are looking forward to this weekend. It was funny to hear what people chose to share: playing with their pets (riding a horse, walking a dog), going to see Wicked, going to sports games, etc. Julie talked about a crafty project (see below) and I said I was excited about the curry rice that Mom's making for dinner. Hah.

Anyway, I went to all the lift days this week, but I wanted to practice my hang clean form. Maddie said “Nice work!” so I guess I’m getting somewhere! 3 x 5 at 70 lbs.

Partner WOD…Between you and your partner, accumulate the following:
200 wall balls (8 lbs)
100 med ball sit-ups (8 lbs)
50 cal row

We did the exercises bottom to top because it was a big class, and there wasn’t enough room for everyone to do the same thing at once. In the time cap, my sister and I did the cal row, the med ball sit-ups and 140/200 wall balls

Julie and I met up at Joann's around lunch time to look at pricing for fleece and foam pads so we can make no-sew cat and dog beds. The idea is that we'll make them and bring them to the local animal shelter, as an excuse to see the new facility and see the cats and dogs. If there's a stowaway in my purse, oh well! After we parted ways, I went to get a slice of Costco pizza and my free bagel from Panera. Yummm.

For my afternoon activity (since the weather was rather snowy!), I made some Valentine's Day cards. I bought this pack of Valentine’s Day embellishments a while ago, and I wanted to use them as the focal point of some of these cards. I used this previous Valentine's Day card as a reference. I haven’t decided if I’m going to send these out myself to friends or put them in the staff kitchen for coworkers to pick through.

Mom made curry rice for dinner tonight, so of course, I went over for dinner. That's 2 sit-down family dinners this week. That New Year's Resolution is off to a good start! :)

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

The CrossFit Community

When you read about CrossFit, there's usually an element of community somewhere in the article. For the morning classes, it used to be Maria, Ryan, my sister and myself. Maria moved to Mexico in October last year, but even today, her name still came up. Coach Rel said that she was still expecting Maria to be scurrying down the parking lot exactly at 6:30 AM and we could start class. I still text with her at least weekly just to see how she's doing. I hope I can count on her in 2017 to tell me that whatever cake or baked goodie I'm lusting after is probably dry and awful, and I shouldn't have any. Once an accountability partner, always an accountability partner I guess.
After doing my makeup inventory on Monday, I took note of what items (makeup and non-makeup) are almost done that I need to focus on in the next month or so in order to finish them up: 2 Bath and Body Works sprays, 1 deodorant, 1 lotion, and 1 Maybelline Color Tattoo in Bad to the Bronze. I want to get back into the habit of doing empties on my blog every so often, especially this year where I'm going to make a conscious effort to finish stuff up instead of bringing stuff in!

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Tina's 2017 New Year's Resolutions

CrossFit
  • 100 burpees for time, sub 9:45 (current time 10:15)
  • 1 RM bench press @ 115 lbs (current 1 RM is 105)
  • 20 consecutive double unders
Crafty Work
  • Cease buying craft supplies unless for specific project/order or I completely run out of something
  • Reach 1,000 sales on Etsy (currently at 944 sales)
  • Create a stock pile of cards for the office and whatever money that would have otherwise gone into my pocket will be a donation to the animal shelter where I got my cat at 5 years ago. I want to encourage people to write and send more cards because I feel like it’s such a rarity these days.
Makeup
Allow myself 12 new makeup products that I buy with my own money. Caveats: If I get them as gifts, hey, that’s cool with me! And also, if something runs out, like concealer, that doesn’t go against the 12. I want to challenge myself to use and really love/appreciate the collection that I have already, and not impulsively buy something that’s new and exciting.

Family
I’m stealing this one from my sister: have a sit-down dinner with my family once a week.