Morning Announcement

Good morning! I have an exciting announcement to make today. But first, let me share another amazing dinner. We did end up staying in New York last night, but we are definitely going home today! We moved to a different hotel - the Soho Grand, not too shabby. I remembered a really good seafood restaurant near there that my parents took me to my freshman year at NYU, so we headed there for dinner. Aquagrill is my kind of place - nothing but seafood on the menu! I decided to switch up my libation from the usual wine and ordered a Glacier cocktail. It had vodka, mint syrup, and homemade grapefruit sorbet. Delicious and nice and tart. My dining companions took turns taking pictures of me holding my cocktail to highlight my beautiful opal engagement ring :)

Not the best shot of the ring, but the cocktail sure looks pretty! They brought us quite a selection of bread - 3 on each of our plates! I tried to just pick at them but ended up eating 2 whole pieces during the meal - jalapeno corn bread and some buttery garlic popover kind of thing.
Yum! We all ordered mescalin salads and split a half dozen oysters. The oyster shot didn't come out. I was using my iphone and it was pretty dark in there.

Unfortunately, at this point the very drunk woman at the next table decided to strike up a conversation with us. Annoying but mildly entertaining. My entree was amazing and I really wanted to pay more attention to it than her, but the lady would not shut up!

This was mushroom overload! Truffle crusted cod, mushroom ravioli, roasted hen of the wood mushrooms, and truffle sauce. Wow! Incredibly flavorful and rich. I also had a glass of Beaujolais with my meal. Then I was so excited by dessert that I forgot to take a picture. Whoops! We all shared a plate of three profiteroles - filled with chocolate, caramel, and roasted banana ice cream and covered in chocolate sauce. Wow, heaven.

I didn't make it on to the treadmill this morning - my knees were a little sore from running yesterday after not running for a week and a half. Instead I did 2 x 20 minute podcasts in my room that I downloaded from Exercise TV. I've been trying to find videos like this that I can do in hotel rooms. One was Basic Cardio and the other was Incredible Abs. Neither were an amazing workout - and the Incredible Abs instructor's huge, tanned six pack just freaked me out - but it got my heart going and was better than sleeping in. Since I was in my room and knew there was no chance of getting fruit or protein at the editorial house, I decided to order room service! Although, they mistakenly brought me fruit salad AND and a fruit protein smoothie.
I drank most of the smoothie and picked at the fruit.  Fruit overload!

So...now for the big announcement! I registered to run the Stowe 8-Miler on July 19 in Stowe, VT! I'm really excited! I haven't run a race since high school cross country and I don't think I've ever run 8 miles straight before. I think it will be really motivating to have something to train for. And I'm sure the course through Stowe will be beautiful! We'll stay up there for the weekend and make a little vacation out of it! I'm working on my training schedule now. I'll have 19 weeks if I start next week - plenty of time!  And hopefully the weather will start getting nice soon and I can train outside - can't wait!