Picking up the kids

We're leaving for Colorado this afternoon to pick up the kids from Grandma's house. We plan on taking off this afternoon, sleeping in Vegas at Paul and Sarah's house and going the rest of the way (12 fun-filled hours) on Friday. Conveniently we have an XM radio and I've got a blackberry so we'll have plenty of entertainment while driving through the desert wasteland that is Utah. We'll be there for two days before we have to turn around and head home. We plan on filling those two days with lots of frisbee golf. It should be fun. Unfortunately the closest course that doesn't suck is 20 miles away but that's okay. Sean's parents live in the ass end of nowhere. Eating healthy food will be challenging. I plan on doing my best while on the road. I know my options will be limited out in the middle of nowhere so I'll try to be flexible. I plan on bringing one of my simple vegetarian cookbooks so I can help out with the cooking at the in-laws' house. They're meat and potatoes people and Sean's mom is a lousy cook. She's follows the boil-frozen-vegetables-until-they-turn-gray school of cooking. She also makes her spaghetti sauce with about three pounds of meat (ground beef, sausage and a pork shoulder - YIKES!) I'm also bringing my running shoes so I can go for a jog while I'm there. It may or may not happen but it's good to have the option.

I haven't done really well with logging my food for the past few days but I'll try to remember what I ate yesterday:

B: 1/2 c. oatmeal, 3/4 c. soymilk, 1 banana
S: orange
L: pan-fried noodles with veggies (drool!)
S: 1 zucchini
S: 1 slice of toast with earth balance margarine....and 3 inside-out oreos (I swear those things were forged by Lucifer himself!)
D: 1 c. WW pasta with fresh tomato sauce & fake vegan italian sausage.
S: Soy Delicious ice cream

I went to a bar

Saturday night Sean and I went out for a night on the town. We took the trolley to the Gaslamp Quarter which is a trendy area downtown with lots of swanky restaurants and bars. We went to an awesome Chinese place called Blue Ginger and had veggie potstickers, kung pow tofu and mu shu vegetables. When I said hold the eggs on the mu shu vegetables, the waiter asked if I was vegan. I said not really but I do my best. He said that's what he did too. We were going to be really good and just have water with our meal but then we remembered that city water tastes like ass so we had diet coke instead. After that we went to a dueling piano bar called The Shout House. It was totally packed. We saw some girls leave their table so we grabbed it. The waitress came and asked what happened to the girls who were sitting there and we said they up and left so we sat down. She got all pissy and took our order. We ordered two diet cokes and she made us pay for them in advance ($2 for a soda, not bad for a bar.) Later she apologized for her crankiness and told us that the girls who had been sitting there before us walked out on a $100 bill. OOPS!!! Maybe you should watch your tables a little better, lady. Anyway, it was fun listening to music and watching the crazy drunks. The piano players were good but not as good as the ones on the cruise ship. It was fun staying out late and doing grown-up stuff though. We need to do that more often.

More about vacation and back to healthy eating

So the cruise was tons of fun. We both got a little seasick though. Luckily they had motion sickness medicine in one of the little shops on board. We lived on the stuff. The first stop was San Diego where we just tooled around the boat and enjoyed the amazing view of the harbor. They had little trivia games in one of the lounges where we cleaned up. We were an unstoppable team. We won four little water wallets (which actually came in really handy for the rest of the trip.) We hung out by the pool and ate and played trivia and ate and hung out by the pool again and played trivia again and I took a step aerobics class and then we ate. Then there was a "Captain's Reception" thingy with free booze (unfortunately we don't drink) and free tropical punch (we drank a lot of that.) The captain was from Croatia so he had this really cool eastern European accent. We also nick-named the cruise director "King Tool" 'cuz he was a tool. Then there was a fancy-pants formal dinner. After dinner there was lots of live music in the lounges. It was fun! The next day we stopped at Catalina Island which was really neat. Neither of us had been there before. We signed up for a Kayaking class which was a blast. We were a little wobbly at first and it took a little while to learn to steer but we got pretty good at it by the end. Then we walked around and checked out all the little shops but we decided that we like seaport village better so we got back on the boat and had lunch. After lunch we hung by the pool some more. We were all bummed because we missed trivia that day. In the evening we went to the dueling pianos show which was fun. The next day we stopped in Ensenada, Mexico where we'd never been before. We went on a tour to La Bufadora which is a natural blowhole. It's this underground cave that fills with water and then when the air pressure builds up, it squirts the water back out. It's really cool. There's only three of them in the world. Next to the blow hole was a cheesetastic flea market which totally reminded us of Kobey's Swapmeet in National City. I swear it's the same exact stuff. You couldn't even look at anything because everytime you're eyes would land on something for more than a second they'd start hounding you to sell you stuff. It was annoying. Then they took us to this really cool old building in Ensenada that used to be a casino owned by Al Capone. It had these beautiful carved ceilings and murals and stuff. There they had a little fiesta with a mariachi band and dancers and a guy who did rope tricks. I swear I've seen that same guy perform in Old Town. They said he's like the national rope trick champion or something. After the tour, we decided to just get back on the ship instead of tooling around the city. We considered having lunch there but then decided that the only difference between Mexican food in Mexico and Mexican food in San Diego is just health codes. We definitely like Old Town better than real Mexico. Real Mexico is a lot like Chula Vista. After we got back on the boat and had lunch, we played some more trivia and won some really neat passport wallets. Now we need to get passports to put in them. Then they had an art auction which was pretty fun. We ended up buying an animation cell from Speed Racer. It's really cool. We're going to frame it and hang it in the living room (they're shipping it to us.) Later that night we went to the dueling piano show again. We sat near some frat boys who kept requesting the cheesiest songs ever. The requested "Come Sail Away", "Footloose", and some Tom Jones song. One of the piano guys kept trying to flirt with me, pointing me out and making little comments. Sean was considerably less amused about it than I was. After the third or fourth time, he leaned over and said, "I don't think you're sitting close enough to me." Then I said, "Feeling a little insecure there?" And he goes, "A little bit!" It was funny. The next morning, they fed us breakfast and booted us off the boat and we went home. All in all, it was a good trip. We gave it a B. It wasn't quite as awesome as our trip to Charleston last year but we didn't spend nearly as much money either.

On the diet and exercise front, I've been doing pretty well since we got back. After all the junk we ate on the cruise, I was actually craving health food. It also feels really good to get back to my exercise routine. I've been really sore but in a good way.

Here's my log for yesterday:
B: 1/2 c. oatmeal, 3/4 c. soymilk, 1/2 c. blueberries, 1/2 tbsp. flax seeds 283 calories
S: banana 109 calories
L: black bean burrito, 4 tortilla chips 404 calories
S: 17 soy crisps, green salad, 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegarette 160 calories
S: 1/4 c. raisins, 1 slice WW bread, 1/2 tbsp. non-hydrogenated margarine 212 calories
D: 3/4 c. brown rice, chole (made with chickpeas, tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger and spices), mixed green salad, 1 tbsp. balsamic vinegarette 332 calories

Total: 1498 calories, 33 g. fat, 51 g. protein, 267 g. carbs, 40 g. fiber
Workout: Step Blast

Back from Vacation

Friday morning, Sean and I came back from our cruise. It was a lot of fun. We sailed from LA to San Diego (where we just farted around on the boat) to Catalina (where we went Kayaking) to Ensenada (where we went and saw La Bufadora, a natural blowhole.) We had a really good time. The food on the boat was really good but all the vegetarian meals had loads of cheese in them (which tasted fabulous but wasn't exactly good for my diet.) We ate desert every day at lunch and dinner. Amazingly, I didn't gain any weight while I was gone. I'll give a more complete cruise report when I have time to sit down and write. Now that I'm back, I'm back to healthy eating. Sean just announced that he's going to give the vegetarian thing a shot. He hasn't eaten meat in two days. I think that might be one of the signs of the appocolypse.