PotD: Home

Wawa / Route 13 / Wilmington, De

good morning, friday.

My go-to comfort food is usually pancakes. As some of you know, I’ve just been feeling very at-odds lately – confused, defeated, etc…. So after my post half marathon gorging of pancakes, I wanted to make some this week. But pancakes are so hard to make! Well, so hard to make when you have small pans.

So I made pancake muffins. Well, banana chocolate chip honey muffins from pancake batter. They’re like delicious portable pancakes. See below!

Of course this task did not go without injury. While grabbing the muffins out of the oven, my hand slipped and I caught them with the side of the other hand. I have a massive burn/gash on my right hand now that’s healing nicely with the magical powers of a Snoopy bandaid.

And lastly in this blog o’ fail, I spilled coffee all over my desk this morning. Here’s a picture of the demonic culprit.

Sure, it’s slender and cute and keeps my beverage warm, but clearly my thermos is deceptive. It has a clearly marked open and close function. I went to pour it into my mug this morning at my desk, and the open didn’t work. So I closed then opened and the coffee cascaded from the sides of the nozzle. Sigh.

Thankfully it’s Friday.

Queens Half Marathon recap

Four out of the five borough half marathons complete! Yay.

A recap of today’s race…

* I woke up at 3:45 am…after a few hours of barely sleep, sigh. Let me repeat: 3:45 am.
* On the way to the NYRR busses, I passed many people still out from the night before.
* It is very cold at 4:30 am.
* I was a bit warmer after I spilled my HOT COFFEE all down my shirt and shorts. Fail.

* We got to the park around 5:20 am, race started at 7:00 am. So I took a nap on the slide.
* Oh yeah, I forgot my phone at home, whoops. I felt completely naked. Thankfully there were lots of landmarks in the playground near the start and finish so finding everyone wasn’t as problematic as it could have been.

* I felt good despite sleeping for 3 hours and not having my coffee.
* The course was sucky. It was through Queens neighborhoods, narrow roads, lots of ups and downs.
* Aside from the first 3 miles of running shoulder to shoulder with people, they were quick. For most of the race, I was hitting 8ish minute miles, I felt fast but it felt ok.
*Then hills happened at mile 7. And I was sad.
* Saw some hookers probably still on the prowl from Saturday night.
* And my right knee started hurting, but nothing I couldn’t run on.
* Had a slow 10th mile, I was tired.
* AND MILE 13 WAS UPHILL. AND STEEP.
* I said “oh fuck” out loud and the people around me laughed.

* Finished in 1:58:50

Not a GREAT race, but I’ll take it. The weather was PERFECT aside from freezing my butt off at 5 am. Though my struggle with the steep inclinations in the last few miles really proves that I need to up my mileage on my long runs. It’s boot camp time, especially if I want to run a sub 4 hour marathon in Philly in two months…

And this is me after the race to prove that I really was a goon and spilled my coffee all over me. I’m a winner!

payday!

Happy payday! In honor of the glorious payday, every first and fifteenth of the month, expect a money post.

Now, I’m certainly no money expert. I receive a paltry paycheck, live in a super expensive city, and have accumulated a four digit debt figure from “surviving” on my “own”. But I’m getting better! I’m been scrimping and becoming more wise about my purchases so I can be entirely debt free by 2010.

I never made any frivolous purchases, I just bought more than what my paycheck allowed. For example, when I first moved up to NYC four and a half years ago, my pay after taxes was about $800 every two weeks (shut up, it’s really not that much more above that now…but, uh, I love my hob). So that’s $1600ish a month. Necessities include rent which was was $850, utilities were about $150, and a bus pass was $75ish, which leaves $525. Then factor in $75 for groceries, $300 for my car payment, and $100 for car insurance (I didn’t have my car in Hoboken but seeing how I didn’t know how the job would pan out, it was still my responsibility). After all of those expenses, I had $50 left. $50 to spend on socializing, drinking my sorrows away, NYC travel since the bus pass didn’t cover subways, work clothes, concerts, etc. Hello plastic. And luckily there was strength in numbers since this is an epidemic with nearly all twenty somethings in the city.

Then of course I moved out on my own into Manhattan last year and had to buy furniture and everything else that goes with living by yourself. But I’ve finally reached a point where the past few months I haven’t had to rely on fake money and my debt is (slowly) going down. Totally manageable. And after my debt is paid off, this girl is opening an IRA. I don’t have a 401(k) option at work, so I guess I should start looking ahead on my own.

So now you have my financial backstory.

So my tip of this pay period is to BYOC. Bring Your Own Caffeine. I’m partial to Guy & Gallard house blend, which is $1.75 per 16 oz cup. Recently I started bringing my own coffee to work. It’s a cumbersome balancing act between my purse, work bag, and hot coffee travel mug, but I’m saving $8.75 a week/ $35 a month / $455 a year. Which doesn’t seem like much when looking at the weekly savings, but $35 is like an extra week of groceries and if someone handed me a $455 check, I would surely take it. And plus I don’t have to wait in line. Granted, the coffee I make at home isn’t free, but a $9.99 container of TJ’s finest lasts me about 3 months, so I guess all in all, I’m saving about $415 and I’ll still take that.

Plus, my Wawa travel mug reminds me of happiness.