Chinese Food and Ice Cream = Perfect Friday

I could not be any more happy that it is FRIDAY! This week seemed so long. I celebrated this lovely Friday with a quick drink with my co-workers after work and then a nice visit to our favorite Chinese Food restaurant with Eric. If you live in the Boston area, venture out to Newton, MA (almost Watertown) to go to a place that LOOKS like a hole in the wall, but I promise it has the best Chinese food ever: Chung Shin Yuan. Of course it is cheap too so you basically cannot go wrong. Apparently they do a ridiculous lunch buffet on the weekend but Eric and I have never been because there is always a line out the door. Eric has stated that if he could only eat one food for the rest of his life he would eat the egg rolls from this place.
I like them too but my stomach does not enjoy the beef or the deep fry so I just eat a tiny bit of the end of one when we go. I order the Chicken Lo Mein and it's SO good- not greasy at all just amazing. When I tell people how often Eric and I frequent this place, I have been questioned how we are not the fattest people alive. I swear the food here is not nearly as greasy and yucky as many other Chinese places and no MSG what-so-ever. Here is my meal:
Don't worry, I didn't eat all of that. We have some yummy leftovers that Eric will probably eat for breakfast tomorrow morning :) And to finish it off-
Just kidding :) My fortune was not nearly as fitting as this. However I saw it in someone's blog recently and it reminded me a lot of my life lately, always thinking about what I am going to blog about. Unfortunately I forget which blog I saw it in and when I googled it I found it somewhere else so I can't give the original person credit- but if it was you, thanks! My real dessert was, of course, ice cream!
It was a delicious coffee mug filled with Edy's Slow Churned Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough. I try to make myself feel better by eating the 1/2 the fat version. Probably would be better if I just didn't eat ice cream so often! But not as fun.
Now that I am done with my masters I am trying to catch up on all the pleasure reading I have not had a chance to do. Of course I should probably be wedding planning, but I'm still temporarily checked out from that so pleasure reading it is. I got 3 books out of the library today. I am going to start The Help first because it is a 2 week loan only. If I don't get into it pretty quickly I'll switch to one of the other books. Hopefully they will be nice, relatively-mindless pleasure reads!
I'm off to bed early tonight. I get to run in the morning (and by "get to" run I mean at least I don't have to bike or swim!) and then I'm going to watch my darling kindergarten kids play soccer. Even though they have driven me nuts all week I am still going to support them, what a nice teacher. Luckily they won't annoy me tomorrow because I will not be in charge of them. Plus, I'll get to see if they really score the 10 goals per game they all claim to!

I need a new book...

I am absolutely exhausted today and I don't know if it's because I am fighting whatever illness has kept half of my work out this week or if the kindergartners are just pushing me over the edge...probably both. I am so ready for this year to be over! I can't handle the immaturity anymore. I was literally about two seconds away from searching for a new job (yeah right, like I could find anything in this economy) when I did have something sweet happen that made me (SORT OF) remember the "perks" of my job. We have this "Secret Reader" in my classroom where someone comes in to read to my class, but I don't tell them who. Today the Secret Reader was the mom of one of my students. Her daughter just learned to speak English this year, but she does not know it well (and by that I mean she is still WAY better than I ever was at Spanish after 8 years of class so I'm still impressed...). She came in today and brought a book with her. Apparently it was a traditional Korean tale about a wood cutter and it has a moral about the importance of telling the truth (which a few of my kids could use to learn!). This was really exciting for my class because two other students are also from Korea and knew the story already. Anyway, the mom read the story and then she asked the kids a couple of questions about it. She also gave the kids little pencils she bought in Korea when she went to visit a few weeks ago. The kids were so exciting and her daughter was smiling ear to ear. When she left she told me she had been nervous for two weeks about this because she knows she is not great at speaking English. She kept telling me how her daughter really wanted her to come and she was really scared and didn't want to. I think she had rehearsed reading the story and asking the questions! This got me thinking about all that mom's do for their kids. How they are willing to do things every day they are scared of, just to make their kids happy. Of course, I was so uplifted about this for awhile until I realized that none of my bratty children will come close to appreciating all of these things but hey! That's not fair though because this woman in particular has a wonderful, appreciative daughter who I am sure will be excited about what her mom did for her for a long time to come :)
In other news, since I can't eat cheese (although at this point I eat ice cream and greek yogurt, so I should probably just start eating cheese too and see what happens), I haven't eaten pizza in almost two years. Today I finally decided to make my own pizza, inspired by Meghan. I took a pizza crust, put on tomato sauce, black beans, summer squash, mushrooms and zucchini.
It was actually delicious. Of course it's been so long since I ate real pizza, I may not have a lot to compare it to. I liked it though. I was thinking of putting mango on my next one to make it like Kelly's version of a Hawaiian pizza, but who knows if that would be gross. I was too scared to risk it this time around, but maybe next time.
I also went for a 30 minute bike ride today. I was proud of myself for getting off my butt when I am this exhausted, however I also realized I am the slowest biker alive. I really have to work on that. Training for a triathlon is weird because you only do each sport twice a week. It doesn't feel like enough to really improve in any of the sports. But it also seems impossible to do more than that. It's very strange.
Lastly, I finished my book last night- The Red Tent. It was really good, nothing like what I usually read (as mindless as possible), but it was much better than I expected. I need a new book, anyone have any recommendations?

Fancy New Gear

Today was a crazy day at work because I got a new student in my class. She does not speak a word of English, which seems to be the general theme for my kindergarten class this year. I'm beginning to think I should just not talk, because 1/2 my class doesn't understand me and the other half doesn't listen anyways!
This weekend I did some shopping for training/racing gear. First, I had a recommendation for a triathlon book so I set out in search of this book. Lucky for me, the only place that had the book in the area was a bookstore in the center of the town I work. I knew this meant I would see someone I know, so I dragged Eric with me and headed to the bookstore. Fortunately I only ran into one kid that I know and he hid behind his mom while we talked to her haha. This is probably one of the least shy kids I know, but something about seeing a teacher in the wrong environment confuses even the most comfortable of kids. I wanted to get some frozen yogurt, but I saw some more families I knew outside of the store so I decided that was my cue that I didn't need any dessert. Here is the book I got:
I haven't read every word of it yet, but I have skimmed through and it is already answered a lot of my questions about what to wear, how to go from one sport to another, and what to do on the day before/day of the race itself. I am sure I am going to be referring back to this book a lot as the race gets closer.
Also, with all of the training that I am doing I decided I should really get myself a serious pair of running shoes. My sister recommended a place called Marathon Sports where they actually look at your foot shape, how you walk/run etc and then recommend a couple of different shoes. I decided to try it out since I clearly have no idea what I am doing when it comes to running shoes. I headed over to the Cambridge location on Sunday. I love Cambridge because there are all sorts of great restaurants and stores there, but there is absolutely no where to park. It took me forever to find a space. The store was crowded but I still got a good amount of attention from one of the guys who worked there. He told me that I do not overpronate (yay) and that I do not need a ton of extra support in a shoe (does this mean I can buy cheaper pairs guilt free?). I brought up my recent problems with my knee and past history of shin splints, so he recommended I try a shoe with a little more cushioning. He also said that I should go up a 1/2 size because my feet will swell when I run. I had never heard this before but I figured he probably knows what he is talking about. I ended up with these:

They are actually Asics, which is completely different for me because I am very faithful to the Saucony brand. However, the Saucony shoes the guy gave me were not as comfortable (possibly because they were a 1/2 a size bigger than I am used to!) so I decided to try something completely different. I'm planning to run on the treadmill (aka completely torture myself because it's going to be raining and I'm sure its better for my knee to have the cushion) tomorrow morning so I'll let you know how they go. I also had a small impulse buy at Marathon Sports (if you are wondering how I am affording all this new gear- it's my new tutoring job and my travel point earning credit card of course!).
This is going to hold my ipod on my arm so that I don't have to hold it in my hand anymore. For as long as I can remember I have had serious side aches while running and I have had all sorts of theories about why I get them. However, my latest (supported by both my mom and sister) is that I need to have my arms more relaxed while I am running and holding something doesn't really support that. So...here is the solution: The Nike Sport Armband!
I really love work out gear...probably more than I love working out. But it is certainly a good motivator :)

Finally, for all the ice cream lovers out there- I just found out that TCBY will be giving out free frozen yogurt to Moms on Sunday. So if you are a Mom, or have a Mom, or have some kids that you can borrow to pretend you are a mom (hmm, do you think any of my kindergartners would pose as my kids for the day? they call me mom all the time so it wouldn't so hard)- go to TCBY on Sunday!