My complaint for the day

This has nothing to do with my list, but I'm feeling very annoyed right now, so I thought I'd take the time to complain about it here, where probably no one cares but it makes me feel better anyway. I did just listen to one of those motivational speaker-life is awesome-people for a work event last week. And he did say something that I thought long and hard about before deciding to write my complaint in a blog. He said something along the lines (I can't remember the exact wording) that you shouldn't complain to other people because 80% of the people you're complaining to don't care, and the other 20% are happy that their life is better than yours. :-) Which I think is true. Sometimes when people complain to me, I can't help but think that I am soooo happy that I'm not going through that, or that didn't happen to me, etc. But obviously I didn't take all that much away from the motivational speaker, because I'm still going to complain about this:

Contacting your health insurance is probably the most annoying/troublesome/frustrating thing ever. Maybe not EVER, but pretty close to ever. All I wanted to do this morning was call my health insurance provider to make sure I did not need a referral to see a specialist doctor. I called the 800 number, and got an automated "person" at first. Which I expected. But here's what I don't understand--how in the world do they think it's better to have me 'say' my ID number and, and my name, and my date of birth, and everything else they want to know about me into the phone, so this automated "person" can try and decipher what I"m saying to transfer me to the right person. Personally, I think it'd be 100x more efficient to simply have to TYPE my ID number and date of birth and whatever information into the phone than try and say it in a way this automated system would understand. After 5, yes 5, tries, I finally got them to understand my birthdate. And after about 15 minutes of 'saying' everything they needed to know, I was transferred to an actual person, who just asked me these quetions again. Frustrating.

Anyway, now after all this has happened, I'm left wondering if I had just typed a zero into the phone right away, would I have just been trasferred to an actual person right away? No one answer that for me, because if that is true, I will probably become annoyed all over again. :-)

That is my complaint for the day. You can all go ahead now not caring or knowing that your life was better than mine for a half hour this morning. :)

Guacamole!! And a good run. :-)

I made my new recipe for the month thanks to my good friend, Sarah. (See previous blog...that's her). She's a great cook and gave me her recipe for guacamole. Usually I just buy guacamole, because let's face it...that's just easier. But I figured I could give it a shot. And it was easy. And very goooood.

Here's the recipe:

2 avocados
1/2 tomato, diced (the recipe actually calls for 1 roma tomato, but I'm not going to lie--I don't know what I roma tomato is.)
1/2 onion, diced
1 serrano pepper (when cut in half length-wise, remove half the seeds and membrane)
diced handful of cilantro (decorates the top of the guacamole when it's all mixed)
Course salt to taste (sea salt or kosher)

To prepare it, pretty much just mix everything and put the cilantro on top. :-)





Here is my picture of the ingredients:




And here is the finished product:




Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmm.



And then to work off allll the guacamole I ate on Saturday, I ran in my 3rd 5k of the summer on Sunday morning! This completes #68 for this year, anyway, of running 3 5k's a year. We still might do more, to get some more practice and try to improve our times, but at least I know that if I don't, I have satisfied this item for this year!

This race was for my work. My work is having it's big 'Annual Meeting' this week, where people from all over the country come to Milwaukee, where my company is headquartered. Every year there is a 5k/10k run, and this year, there were a record number of about 8200 people that signed up! That's a lot of people to try to dodge while you're running, so I tried to start in the front of the pack. And that strategy pretty much worked--I only had to dodge a few slow people in the beginning. And most importantly--I GOT MY BEST TIME EVER FOR A 5K! My official time was 23:32. Or a pace of 7:35 per mile. I was very very very very happy.

I started out doing realllly well--the first mile I ran in 7 minutes, the second mile I ran in 7:25, but that last mile was tough. The last quarter mile of the race is just about allll up hill. This is the 5th time I've run this race, so I should know that hill is coming in the end, but it still catches me by surprise and definitely slows me down. Oh well, I still got a good time, and am happy for that.

Here's my official time, thanks to http://www.onlineraceresults.com/, just in case you don't believe me. :-)


bib number: 1874
age: 26
gender: F
overall place: 188 out of 1498
division place: 6 out of 81
gender place: 19 out of 449
time: 23:32
pace: 7:35

Sometimes, I really can golf! And Wii disc golf..

I have completed #18: Visit Sarah and Scott in Sheboygan. Josh and I went up to Sheboygan this past weekend to see Sarah and Scott and their new house! And I just looove their house! Especially the kitchen. And given that Sarah is just about the best cook ever, she definitely deserves that kitchen. I met Sarah about 5-ish years ago when we both were interns for the same company. She also went to my same college and we also just happened to live on the same floor of the same apartment building! Crazy. And we've been friends ever since! And then to add on to the crazines--I met Josh through Sarah at her 21st birthday party. Sarah went to high school with Josh. And that's how our family tree is completed. :-)

Since Sarah and Scot live about an hour away, we don't get to see them as much as I'd like. But it's always a fun time when we do get together! It was such a nice day out this past Saturday, so we went golfing. This was the first time I had been golfing this summer so far, and I will have to say, that I did quite well considering how badly I normally golf. I was hitting the ball up in the air, instead of having it skid against the grass. And I was hitting them far--for me. Not far for anyone else, but I felt quite accomplished! Now I feel that I have to golfing more and more this summer to keep up my good work. Josh and I might go again this weekend, actually!

After golfing, we went back to Sarah and Scott's new house and made dinner. Sarah showed off her wonderful cooking skills and made some guacamole, which I LOVE. And then we had tacos. Such a gooood dinner! We then had a fire in their backyard, and after that went out and the bugs started to show up, we went inside to play their new Tiger Woods golf game for the Wii. However, Josh and I ended up playing the disc golf game on there instead. And I DOMINATED at that. Well, at least against Josh. That just realllly made me feel good because in real life, Josh would be the one dominating in disc golf and I'd be in the forest looking for my lost discs that barely went 10 yards. I think that's my new favorite Wii game. :-)

I had such a great weekend! I can't wait to see Sarah and Scott again!

Here's a picture of me, Sarah, and Josh. (sorry Scott, but you must've been somewhere else!) (And also sorry that your eye is cut off Sarah--blame Josh--he took the picture!)

Storm the Bastille!

I ran my 2nd 5k of the season last night to help with #68: Run at least 3 5k's per year. I did the 'Storm the Bastille' race at 9 p.m. in downtown Milwaukee. There were a TON of people that run this race, so it's hard to actually 'run' it. The first half of it is more like a light jog trying to get around people so I can actually start running. But it was fun! Josh and I crossed the finish line at 27 minutes, but we didn't actually cross the starting line until it was already more than a minute into the race. And considering the first half was pretty slow, I think we did great!

We didn't stay too much after the race to actually enjoy the Bastille Days festival because I'm boring and like to sleep so I'm not toooo tired at work the next day. :-) But the race was still fun!

Our next 5k is next Sunday the 19th for my work's annual meeting! I can't wait!

A really happy birthday to me!

Good thing it was my birthday last week! That helped me accomplish a few more things on my list that I would've definitely put off.

Let's start with #54: Get a fire extinguisher. Now, you might start to wonder if I've been having a lot of fires in our condo or something. I have not. However, sometimes I get so paranoid that our stove top is just going to burst up in flames when I use it, that my mind can now be at ease with a fire extinguisher. This was one of the things Josh got me for my birthday! And it's one of my favorite presents! He even got the 'kitchen' version in white. It's so classy.

I bet you want one of your own now.

Josh also helped me accomplish #57: Plant flowers on my porch. Also for my birthday, not only did he buy me some flowers to plant, but he actually planted them himself!! He's so nice. I didn't take a picture, but they're purple and kind of look like gerbera daisies to me, but I think they have another name. And they definitely spice up our small, kind of ugly porch! Thanks Josh!

And lastly, thanks to my birthday again, I was able to accomplish #97: Complete our dishes set. Yay! Now we have 12 sets of dishes and are alllll ready to have a dinner party. If only our small condo could accomodate 12 people. Someday, someday.. I didn't receive dishes as a birthday gift from anyone. However, my mother was in town visiting and wanted to take me shopping for my birthday. I decided I wanted to go to the Prime Outlet Mall in Kenosha, so that's where we went. At this outlet mall, there is a Corelle outlet store. Corelle just happens to be the brand of our dishes. (I love Corelle--they don't break even if you drop them, which is definitely a plus to me!). I wasn't exactly looking to buy more sets of our dishes, but decided to go into the Corelle store to look at them anyway. However, I couldn't find our set on the loooong wall of dishes. I was a little bummed I didn't get to see them, but didn't care that much. I mean, they are just dishes. BUT, on our way out of the store, I saw them. They were sitting there all lonely on the table of discontinued items!!! Sadly, our dishes are being discontinued. I make a split second decision and decided to purchase 2 of the boxes to complete our set. But the gooood part was--they were on sale because they are discontinued! Yay!

Just so you're not thinking that we must've picked out super ugly dishes--dishes so ugly that they have to discontinue them--here is what they look like:

They're not that bad, right?

And there you have it. 3 items accomplished all because I had a birthday. Maybe my birthday should come around more than once a year? I think so.