DownTown Abbey

The past two days have consisted of two things: going to the gym and watching Downton Abbey.

Let's talk about the first thing.

Yesterday I had my first tempo run of my training. Tempo runs consist of this (from the Glossary in my Runner's World App):

Tempo runs are preceded by a warmup and followed with a cool down. The mileage in the middle will be run at a certain pace. Veteran runners and coaches describe tempo runs as "Hard but controlled." You won't be able to talk comfortably during a tempo run, but neither should you feel as if you're racing. Stay controlled.

The tempo run I had on my schedule was for 4 miles, meaning one mile warmup followed by 2 miles run at a pace of 10 min/miles and then a one mile cool down. The warmup and the cool down seemed to take forever, mainly because I was running them extremely slowly. The two miles in between were definitely faster, but manageable. All in all, it was a good run.

After the gym, I got showered and what not and got ready for my Downton Abbey (or as I affectionately call it DownTown Abbey) season one marathon.

Essentially, the show is one of those PBS Masterpiece Theatre pieces about a British aristocratic family and their house staff living in a ginormous mansion being all stiff-upper lip and English.

I first heard about Downton Abby at last September's Emmy awards, when it pretty much won ever category it was nominated in. I thought that it was one of those boring Public Broadcasting shows and thought that I would never watch it.

Well, over the last few weeks, people have been all a-twitter about season two return of Downton, so my parents thought it would be a good idea to see what this Brit show was all about. Thankfully, Netflix had season one on instant download, so they were able to watch all seven episodes in one weekend.

Unfortunately, I have to work on the weekends, so I was way behind them. Luckily, my weekend was fast approaching, and it was my plan to watch this show.

And holy shit I can't get enough it. I don't know if it's the whole British thing or the dysfunctional rich family or the conniving waiting staff but I can see why this show won all those Emmys. It's freaking awesome. And Maggie Smith playing the family matriarch is hilarious. She really gets all the good lines.

Since I didn't finish all of season one yesterday, I'm continuing my marathon. Here's to more marriage proposals, talk of inheritence, evil middle sisters and douchey footmen.

Happy 6 Months!

Today was my 6th month anniversary with my job at NWCN. Woohoo! Time certainly flies when you're having fun.

I'd write a lot more about this, but I am absolutely exhausted from the last three days.

Lots of writing.

But I will say that I have really enjoyed the last six months at my job. I've learned a lot about news and newswriting, and I've come to be good friends with my co-workers.

I've progressed really quickly with my job (or so I've been told) and can't wait to go even further in this awesome company. I'm really glad that I ended up here.

Now time to numb my brain with Modern Family and Revenge. Love me some Wednesdays!

Will Run for Crepes

Today on my 10k training schedule was an easy 3 mile run at an 11:49 min/mi pace. When I woke up at 9:15 this morning, I was excited to run...but at the same time, not very excited.

I had to leave my house at 12:30 at the latest in order to make a lunch date I had in Seattle by 1:15. That meant I had to be at the gym no later than 10:30 so I could have plenty of time to do my miles, come back home, shower and do all that jazz.

Well, I didn't get to the gym until just after 11. Why, you ask? Because laying in bed and watching football is way more f*cking comfortable than running, that's why!

After I finally got myself out of bed and too the gym, I had to run my miles at a bit of a faster pace than I was scheduled for. Like a whole 2 minutes faster. Pretty much I was hauling ass on the treadmill.

Well, the running Gods must have been spiting me because a little under a mile into my run, I got two wicked side cramps. I thought I could push through and finish the three miles, but I was hurting.

In the end, I only ran two of my prescribed three miles. That made me a little angry. I really wanted to run a fast three miles ever since I signed up for my 5k. A lot of my 10k training has me running really slow paces in order to build up my endurance, and I'm afraid that's not going to do me any favors by the time I have to toe the line at Green Lake on February 11th.

Oh well, now I know that when my schedule says I have to run at a certain pace, I will run at that certain pace, instead of taking off like a galloping "Warm Horse" (it's War Horse...with an M).

That also means that I need to give myself plenty of time at the gym, instead of trying to squeeze everything until the last minute. When will I ever learn?

After showering and dressing and all that shit, I made my way to Capitol Hill to have lunch with one of my old college classmates, Megan. Megan and I studied abroad in London together, but didn't really hang out much when we came back to Pepperdine. She was a history major while I remained planted in my communications fortress at the top of the hill. But she's a nice girl and we always got along.

She's getting her master's in education at the University of Washington, so I thought this would be a great time for us to grab a bite to eat and talk about how much we love Seattle. We ate at Saley, which was the same crepe place that Victoria and I ate at after the Kanye/Jay-Z concert. It was delicious then, and it was delicious now.

I picked Saley as the place to have lunch because I thought it would be a great homage to our time in London, considering there was a bomb crepe restaurant just down the road from our house. I ordered a savory crepe with turkey, mozzarella and spinach while Megan went with what she knew -- a sweet crepe with Nutella and banana. A Londoner's staple.

We had a really great time eating and talking about a lot of things. I talked about work while she told me about her master's classes that were filled with older students that already had career's in teaching. That can't be awkward at all.

We chatted about all the cool things you can do in Seattle and how much more beautiful it is here than in California (so glad we have another convert). She told me about how awesome the Ballard Farmer's Market is, and now I'm pretty sure we're going to go together.

And of course we talked about how excited we were for the Coldplay concert we're going to in April. Well, we're not going together, but we'll be in the Key Arena at the same time. Both of us are huge Coldplay fans. She got to see them in London, which I was really jealous of until I got to see them at the Gorge. I think that should be a point in the "Ally" column. Regardless, the two of us are pretty stoked and are already counting down the days (it's 108 by the way).

I'm just really glad that I'm sticking to my New Year's Resolution to connect with friends more. Good for me!

After chatting and reminiscing for about an hour and a half, it was time for me to go to work, which is where I am now. Boo.

But thank goodness I have play-off football and the Mighty Tebows to keep me company.

Contagion

Last night, my parents and I watched the movie Contagion. I wasn't quite sure at the time whether that was the best idea, but we had nothing else to do.

By the time we finished the movie, I was terrified into thinking that I would never want to step outside my house ever again.

Here's why:

For those who don't know, Contagion is about what happens after a deadly virus sweeps across the world and turns everything into a fricking shit show. Naturally, this death virus originated in China (don't they all?) thanks to some bats and pigs or whatever, then ends up in the body of Gwenyth Paltrow, who ends up killing everyone.

It's a real feel-good movie, that one.

Contagion has now made me so paranoid about spreading deadly infectious diseases that I literally don't want to leave my house, because, what if someone carrying the swine just happens to breathe on my and 48 hours later I'm dead as a door nail.

No thank you!

At the very least I'll be Purelling my hands every chance I get.

And I'm pretty sure I will never take public transportation ever again. Metro buses are a breeding ground for SARS.

I also learned that people touch their face an average of 4-5 times every waking minute, thus making it super simple for these deadly viruses to get into our system. That basically means I'm never touching my face again. Thanks Contagion.

One last thing I learned from Contagion: working for the CDC blows. Especially if you're the one who has to go into disease ground zero and just pray to Tim Tebow that you don't get infected. Ask Kate Winslet's character how that worked out for her. Oh wait, you can't...because she DIED!!!

So thanks Contagion, for scaring the crap out of me so bad that I'm probably going to die alone in my house...and I won't even have cats to keep me company, because who knows what type of diseases they carry around.

Gym Pet Peeves

This morning I went to my first Body Pump class in weeks. Now that my 10k training is in full swing, I figured it would probably be a good thing to re-introduce strength training into my life.

I knew that I would be a little out of weight lifting shape, so I took it easier on the barbell weight today.

The class was meh. It definitely worked my arms, since they already are starting to feel sore and wobbly. But the instructor was really irritating. I can't really pinpoint the exact irritation, but I'm sure it had to do with her talkative nature and the fact that she was just too...uppity. I don't know, but she rubbed me the wrong way. Hopefully she's just a sub and doesn't actually instruct the class all the time. I'll definitely find out next week.

One thing that I figured out while I was at Body Pump was that I have quite a few gym-related pet peeves.

Number one being that I can't stand it when I see women at the gym wear their hair down while they're working out. I mean, that just seems really gross to me. Do you really not want a crease in your hair that badly that you're willing to feel your gross sticky hair on the back of your neck while you're doing bicep curls? Ugh. I don't get women sometimes.

Another thing that bugs me at the gym is when I see people wearing the ankle socks that go over their ankle. You know, the kind of socks that you can see over the tennis shoes. They're just not a good look. The sock goes right over your ankle bone and just makes your leg look shorter.

Either work a crew sock that goes up the calf, or wear the short ankle socks that go under the ankle bone. You look like you're trying to be a soccer mom.

That's all I have to say about that for now.

After the gym I went and got my eyebrows waxed, which, sadly, was much needed. I'm always a little apprehensive before getting my brows waxed, since getting hair ripped out of you by some small Asian lady hurts like a mother. But let me tell you, there's no better feeling than the one you feel after you get your eyebrows waxed. It literally feels like my face feels 10 pounds lighter.

Of course my forehead ends up turning bright red and every starts staring at me, but whatever.

I Made a New Friend!

I've been following several fitness/healthy living/miscellaneous blogs for a couple months now and I have learned (at a stalker-ish rate) about some really awesome people around the country.

One blogger that I read is Theodora, who lives over in New York City. I liked her blog because she talked about how she managed to lose 50 pounds while living in the city that never sleeps. You should check it out. It's all very interesting.

Well, in one of her blog posts from about a month ago, she gave a shout out to her friend Devon, who was running in her first marathon, and offered a link to Devon's blog. Since I like reading about people running more than I like running myself (I'm kidding...kind of), I clicked on the link to see what she was all about.

I read through some of Devon's blog posts and read that she was about to go on an around the world trip, which I was totally jealous of. Then I saw that she was from Seattle. Cool beans! I think it's cool to read about someone who lives in your area. They usually have really awesome restaurant recommendations. So I started reading Devon's blog and followed her on twitter (because why not).

Fast forward to last week, when news came out that my high school English teacher had been murdered (I'm not going to get into that because it's kind of depressing). That's when I saw Devon post on twitter about the tragic passing of her old English teacher. I thought, what are the odds that there was another murdered English teacher in the Seattle area? This chick must have gone to Woodinville High.

I tweeted Devon back and asked when she attended the old WHS. She wrote me back and said that she graduated in 2005, which was my sophomore year at Woodinville.

What a small fricking world! Thanks to the power of the interwebz, I managed to find someone that not only was from my hometown, but attend Woodinville High School at the same time as me. I thought that we had to get together or something.

So, after tweeting back and forth for the last week, Devon and I finally met today. We met up for lunch and beer at Redhook (because it's awesome!) and had a grand old time. We talked about school, work, traveling, Woodinville, blogging, RUNNING!!!, and our mutual hatred of Wazzu and water chestnuts.

Seriously, why do they insist on putting water chestnuts in stir-frys? They add nothing but terrible texture!

She also introduced me to the Cooperhook beer, which was delicious. Apparently I'm a day drinker now, since all the alcoholic beverages I've drank over the last week have happened before 1pm. Meh.

All in all, it was a good lunch. A great success for my first ever time meeting up with someone from Twitter!

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After lunch with Devon, I headed over to Redmond for a Trader Joe's run (which was totally necessary) and to stop over at the Foot Zone running store to register for my first road race!

On Feburary 11th, I will be running in the Love 'Em or Leave 'Em Valentine's Day 5k at Green Lake. I'm super excited and the people at the Foot Zone said that it was a great race for first timers. Now I'll just keep my fingers crossed that the weather isn't completely shit-tastic!

Also, in further preparation for my April 10k (which I should probably register for soon), I ran the three miles that were on my training schedule. The miles went fine. The middle of my chest felt kind of weird, like I couldn't expand it all the way, but I made it through. It was probably just a big wad of BagelThin still in my tum-tum.

I was supposed to do it at an 11:49 min/mi pace again, but I went faster again...this time with an average pace of 11:19. Oops.


As you can see on my splits, my last mile was sub-11:00. That was basically because I was running tight on time and I had to get the run over it.

Hooray for another great day off!

Back To Normal

Yesterday was our first day back to regularly scheduled programming at the N-Dub. That means the return of our 4am show (ew), our 15/45 segments (woohoo) and moving our 6pm show back to 7pm. Basically, everything is slowing returning to normal after the holidays.

Of course, now that 15/45s are back, my Mondays and Tuesdays just got a whole lot busier. And I'm okay with that.

During holiday scheduling when we didn't have 15/45s, there would be long periods of time when I wasn't doing anything but waiting for the producer to stack the show.

Now that I'm back to producing the afternoon 15/45s, my days are non-stop writing. And non-stop writing means that my day goes by a lot faster. Woohoo!

But before I went back to work, I started this little thing called my 10k training. Perhaps you've heard me writing about it the last few posts. I'm super excited that I can finally get started on it. I think it's going to be a little tough for me, but the reward is going to be so great.

On the schedule was a 4 mile run at a 11:49min/mile pace. To fuel me, I had a BagelThin with sunflower butter (I'm addicted!) and sliced banana with some honey drizzled on top.


The distance seemed a little daunting at first. 4 miles would be the farthest I've ever run at one time. But I figured with such a slow pace, there was no doubt that I would be able to complete it in one piece.

Sure enough, I got the 4 miles in. My average pace was about 20 seconds faster than I was supposed to go. Whoops! I'm sure it will be okay.


The good thing I noticed about my splits was that I got faster the longer I ran, which is a good thing in my book. I believe seasoned runners call that "negative splitting." Hopefully that continues into the rest of my runs.

After the gym, I went to the bank and deposited my latest pay check, which is always a good thing. Then it was time to hit the shower and get ready for my first real commute in the 520 tolling era. Before, not everyone was back from the holiday vacations, so commutes to and from work weren't that bad. Seeing as how Tuesday was the first day back to work for a lot of folks, everyone predicted that traffic around Lake Washington would be an effing nightmare.

They even dubbed it "Toll-mageddon." Don't they know that any word ending with "-mageddon" is not going to turn out as bad as everyone thinks it's going to me? Does no one remember LA's Car-mageddon? That thing was a joke.

Sure enough, by the time I was ready to drive to work, every single route there was pretty much free. No traffic jams, no slow downs, nothing. I got to work in record time.

Once I got to work, I was so starving that I just had to eat my lunch. I guess that's what happens when you get up at the butt-crack of dawn like I did that morning. I had a slice of toast with chicken-less BBQ chicken on it, an orange, and Greek yogurt mixed with blueberries and blackberries (it's in the cool green tupperware thing my mom got me for Christmas).


Then it was off to writing for the 2pm show. I got done with that pretty quickly, so I moved on to finding stories for my upcoming 15/45s.

Since I'm also a Production Assistant, one of my jobs is to teleprompt for the newscasts. However, now that I have my 15/45 responsibilities, prompting the 2pm show takes away a half an hour where I could actually be doing work. Not cool.

Since I didn't want to lose that much time when I could have been working, I asked one of the editors to prompt the show. I mean, by the time it's 2pm, they're all done editing and just sitting around watching video. Help a girl out!

But let me tell you, not having to prompt the 2pm show made all the difference. Having that extra 30 minutes to get work done allowed me to be almost an hour ahead in writing my segments. Basically it made my day a lot less stressful.

Yesterday was also Iowa Caucus day, which meant we had caucus numbers to look out for. There were a couple of times where we had some election snafus. One was during one of my 15/45 segments.

KING set up this graphic for us that was designed to update the polling numbers automatically throughout the night. Well, right in the middle of my segment, the graphic decided to update, which made the graphics computer freeze, which means it took forever (and a lot of button pressing on my part) to get out over the air. Then once it got up, all the numbers were different from what I had written in the script. Balls. Oh well, what can you do? I guess what I learned there is to just let my anchor ad lib the numbers instead of writing them down, because they are for sure going to change.

The second snafu happened during my EP's 15/45 segment. He managed to get the graphic up with updated polling totals. The only problem was that the picture of a random bald guy was where the pictures of Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich were supposed to be. Definitely not what I was expecting. My EP had now idea what was on the graphic until we told him after the segment aired. Needless to say he was not amused with the KING graphics department.

I thought it was funny as hell.

Before the 7pm show, I had a nice nutritious dinner of Trader Joe's garlic and herb pasta, turkey meatballs, and broccoli. Nom nom.


Pretty soon I was done writing for the 7pm and it was time for me to go home. Another work day done, another day closer to my weekend.

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Here's a new year's resolution I forgot to add in my list at the beginning of the year: Use mouthwash and floss everyday!

Double Movie Monday

I had Monday off due to the New Year's holiday... and boy did I make the most of my day off!

The first thing I had to tackle before I did anything else: clean my messy-as-hell room. I mean, just look how disgraceful this is.



I don't know why I have such a hard time keeping my room at home neat. I did a good job while I was living in California. But it was like the second I started living at home again, nothing made it back into the closet.

Instead, it ended up on my papason chair.

Or the floor.

I turned my Netflix on to some Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Swedish version) and got to tidying.

Cleaning up my room pretty much took all morning. But doesn't the end result look so fabulous!!!


Let's see how long it stays like that. Although, I do remember making a New Year's Resolution saying that I would clean my room every weekend. That seems like an easy enough resolution to keep, right?

I continued my cleaning streak and cleared out my purse and wallet. Man I had a ton of crap in there. No wonder it weighed a gagillion pounds.

After clearing my wallet of old receipts and useless gift cards, it can actually close. Hooray!

I ate a really basic and raw lunch, since I was still feeling some of the affects of my ginormous bacon bleu cheese burger from Sunday. I just wanted to eat something and know exactly what I was putting in my body.

Good, clean, simple.

After lunch, I showered quickly because my parents and I were heading to the movies. The three of us were going to see the latest Mission Impossible flick, but the my dad and I were going to stay and see the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Woohoo for movie double headers!

Mission Impossible was really good, definitely one of the better MI movies. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire last hour of the movie. My mom thought that I was afraid and kept reassuring me that the good guys (played Tom Cruise, Hurt Locker guy, Robin Thicke's wife, and the funny ginger from Shaun of the Dead) would ultimately prevail.

Somehow I don't think he's going to fall to his death.

Obviously I knew that. I'm not an idiot. I was just anxious about how they were going to pull all their spy shit off. So intense!

Another thing that made the movie more intense was when the power just randomly shut off in our theater. It was like someone turned off the movie screen and there was no more movie.

But only for about five minutes. The movie came back on...just with no sound. One guy in the audience decided to add his own sound effects, since we couldn't hear anything. It was pretty amusing.

And then the sound turned back on and all was well with the world.

After MI:4, my dad and I parted ways with my mom and headed to Qdoba to get some din before GWTDT started. I thought my best bet would be to get a salad, but a burrito just sounded so damn good.

We both ended up getting the vegetarian burrito with no rice (only because so effing much of it on there). I got mine with a wheat tortilla and some guacamole (because it's delicious).

I smuggled both burritos and two bottles of water into the movie theater. Contraband! Luckily, the theater's bag Nazi wasn't out there checking everyone's bags with her shrively Nazi hands. I scarfed down my huge burrito until the movie previews started.

The previews were basically the same as the previews before MI:4. I mean, how many times can I see a preview for The Grey in a day?

This guy does not look like he's f*cking around

Luckily, this round of previews also showed the preview for the Hunger Games movie, which looks amazing! So pumped!

Finally it was movie time, and thankfully there were no more unwelcome power outages.

I have to say that I really liked Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but I wasn't really blown away by it (although it was nice to not have to read subtitles the whole time). Obviously it had great acting, great directing and all that jazz. It's a Fincher film for God's sake. I just think it lacked something that the Swedish original had (blardah, bleeduh blur?). I think the original had a darker quality while the American version was a little too Hollywood.

Is it just me, or does she look like Johnny Weir?

I will say that I do prefer Daniel Craig as my Mikael Bloomquist, and not because he is way handsomer than the Swedish version's Mikael Nyquist (who played the villain in MI:4, so there was that). I thought Craig did a great job in the movie, though I couldn't really tell whether he was trying for a Swedish accent or a subdued British accent. Whatever, he's still hot.

As for "The Girl", I like Noomi Rapace in the original over Rooney Mara. Mara was just...too pretty (even with the lack of eyebrows) to be the ass-kicking, don't-give-a-f*ck Lisbeth Salander. Noomi Rapace literally looks like she could kill you with her bare hands.

I am afraid of her

All in all, it was a successful day at the movies. Now there's only like a million other movies out that I want to see, yet don't have the time or the funds. Movie tickets are fricking expensive, man!

Lunchbox Laboratory

How was everyone's New Year's Eve? Awesome?

Mine was spent at work, which was not awesome but awesome at the same time.

It wasn't awesome because instead of working my usual 3-11pm shift and then getting the eff out of there, I had to stay until after 12:30 am so that I could help tape the overnight show after the whole fireworks show at the Needle. No one told me that before I left for my weekend on Wednesday, so needless to say, I was a little (a lot) annoyed. Although, it's not like I had any hot NYE plans. There was no hot guy waiting to kiss me at the stroke of midnight. Sad face.

However, me staying later at work was awesome because I got to have a front row seat of the Space Needle fireworks extravaganza from the roof of my building.


So freaking cool! There were a lot of King employees up there that weren't necessarily working on New Year's Eve, but wanted an uncrowded place to watch the fireworks. Smart move. Plus they got to park for free in our lot. I'm stealing that idea next year...if we make it that far. F*cking Mayans.

I watched outside for a few minutes, but watching a bunch of fireworks without musical accompaniment is kind of lame. So I went back inside and watched the rest on the monitor.

I'm not gonna lie, I think that NYE fireworks pale in comparison to Fourth of July fireworks. I mean, why is that the fourth gets all the cool-shaped ones, like the smiley-faced fireworks, while NYE doesn't?

I think it's because the Fourth of July is just an America thing (because America is awesome), while New Year's Eve is happening all fricking day. Literally, from like 5 in the morning, all we see is celebrations and parties from around the world. Once we get to the West Coast, everyone's kind of over it. There's really no reason to go all out.

Not to mention most people are shit-faced by the time midnight rolls around, so they really don't care.

I ended up getting home a little after 1am on New Years Day and pretty much face-planted into bed. Long day, indeed.

I got up seven hours later so I could go to the gym before meeting my cousins Kristin and Jessica for a noon lunch in Seattle.

After eating breakfast, I thought it would be a good time to make my lunch and dinner for work on Monday. The Sunday and Monday workdays are really tough because by the time I get off at 11 on Sunday, I pretty much have to go home and get to bed so I can get up early the next morning to go to the gym and go to work. So if I don't manage to get my Monday meals ready before I go to work on Sunday, I'm screwed.

I made what I thought was a pretty balanced and nutritious lunch and dinner, plus some snack, that incorporated some of the food resolutions I made yesterday. I was really proud of myself.

Then, as I was putting on my gym clothes, I remembered that I didn't have to go to work tomorrow because of the company-observed New Years holiday. Well, shit. I could have taken that time to clean my room, which really needs to happen. At least I'm ahead of the curve.

By the time I got my lazy ass to the gym, I really only had time to run a single mile. But hey, it's better than nothing!

I was totally expecting the gym to be packed with people who made those ubiquitous "get fit" resolutions. But when I got there, the place was a ghost town. There were literally five people in the entire three story gym. Tisk, tisk people.

I did a quick warm-up and then tried to really push it for the mile. According to my watch, I finished the mile in 8:39...which by the way is the fastest I've run a mile since probably junior high. According to the treadmill I was on, I finished the mile in 9:45. Yeah, I'm gonna go with the watch.

I raced home, took a shower and got all beautiful before making my way to lunch. I was meeting Kristin and Jess at the Lunchbox Laboratory in South Lake Union, which oddly enough is six blocks from where I work.

I got there first and perused the menu. It was pretty much all burgers, which is fine. I then saw that you could substitute any beef-patty with a healthier bean patty. Now, I haven't have a legit restaurant-style bean burger since I was in Scotland (Wannaburger!), so I was ready to pounce on that bean patty. The hard thing was trying to pick a burger to put my beany patty on.

Jess and Kristin got there and we analyzed the menu until we picked what we wanted. I got the "Bleu Marble" burger, which came with the bean patty, bacon, bleu cheese crumbles, sauteed onions and sweet chili mayo.

We also ordered the $3 mimosas that were on the menu. Although, instead of using regular orange juice like a sane person, they used Tang to mix with the champagne. I guess there's a reason why it cost $3.

Not like it mattered since the three of us ordered three rounds during the course of lunch.

When the waitress finally came with our burgers, our chins fell. They were fricking enormous! I mean...look at all that bacon!


Hoe. Lee. Shit.

I knew the burger came with bacon, but I didn't know it came with BACON! My arteries are screaming in pain as I write this. Now I just need to remember this moment the next time I think it's a good idea to bit into a really fatty meal. You're body will not like you very much.

Nothing better than starting a healthy new year with the fattiest meal imaginable. But whatever, I have the rest of the year to be healthy.

Each of us only managed to eat half our burgers, but that wasn't because they tasted like shit. They were so good. Those LBL burgers put Red Robin to shame...and no one even sang Happy Birthday to us!

After we sat there for about an hour and a half more, nursing our third mimosas, it was time for me to go to work and for them to go off and do whatever it was they were going to do.

Work today was pretty low-key, aside from the guy who thinks it's a good idea to shoot park rangers on their holiday. We watched Tony Romo suck it up between shows, which is always good.

Here's a wish to the Tim Tebow that I get out of working on time...or early if possible. Then I can sleep in, clean my room, and do some heavy cardio at the gym so I can get rid of my Lunchbox Laboratory baby.

But such a delicious baby it was.