I’ve been a little absent from the blog world for a few weeks, mostly because of the news I shared in my last post. Who knew that the most stressful part of buying a house would take place AFTER finding the house and getting an offer accepted? There’s so much to think about and still more agreements to negotiate with the sellers after the fact. It’s really a whole post on its own.

But in the midst of all the chaos, phone calls, negotiations and packing, I’ve been attempting to revamp my workout routine. It was a little bit of bad timing, but the week we bought the house was the week I had scheduled to start my new workout plan, and thus it didn’t go 100% as planned, but it certainly did help me get a jump start on things. I decided to go back to the bootcamp program that I did at the beginning of the year and attempt to do it all the way through. I put together a (printed out) calendar and wrote down each workout every weekday for 8 weeks. I figured printing out the calendar would help motivate me because I would be able to cross off each workout as I did it and be able to see exactly how much I had done and how much I had left at any given point.

Before this new plan, I was working out on a pretty consistent basis, but I had fallen back into my pattern of all cardio all the time with dancing being my primary form of exercise, sometimes throwing in some pushups and reverse crunches. But this bootcamp program, just as it did before, kicks my butt in a way that is hard to believe. After every single workout, I’m crazy sore. The last bootcamp workout I did was on Thursday, and here I sit on Saturday still feeling the pain in my thighs from the dozens and dozens of lunges and squats I did during that particular workout. I never push myself as hard on my own as I do when I’m doing these workouts.

I haven’t been following the diet plan that the bootcamp program recommends, but I might look into adding that to my routine this coming week. I’d really like to see some significant results this time around, and as always, my love of food and drink does tend to get in the way of that.

I’m about 3 weeks in, and I’ve been doing about 3 of the bootcamp workouts per week. There were days, especially during the first week, when I really desperately wanted to get a workout in on one particular day or another, but there was just no humanly possible way it was going to happen. Getting the house stuff in order was the priority that week, so I’m happy that I was able to do what I could at the time.

What are some exercises that you love to hate? What’s your least favorite exercise of all time?

Mine has to be doing lunges with an overhead press using weights. They always make me feel like I’m going to pass out!

I had a series of posts I was going to do this past week, but then something completely unexpected happened…

I bought a house!

This all began last weekend when we had a full two days of house hunting planned. On Saturday, we had planned to go to two houses with our realtor that we had seen online and thought were worth taking a look at. The first had some potential: it was very big, the kitchen was amazing and it was in a good location. However, there were just some things that weren’t what we were hoping for so we moved on to the next. The second house was just ALL wrong. It had potential on paper, but the rooms were tiny and half the house was located in the basement.

On the way home, D brought up how discouraging the process had been so far and was trying to talk me into expanding our search to include condos (something I had ruled out long ago for many, many reasons). I told him to hang in there and that we had just begun and really hadn’t even seen more than 14-16 houses tops so far. From the start of the whole process, I had been anticipating it to take several months for us to find something, which is the reason we started looking in April when our lease doesn’t expire until October.

Sunday we had planned to go to one open house. This house had looked amazing online with a brand new kitchen including granite countertops, an island with a wine fridge built in, four bedrooms and at least 2 baths. We had been eyeing the house online for probably 2 weeks and we had high hopes. When we got there, it was pretty nice, and did live up to the pictures online. There was only one problem: it was old. The house was built in 1915 and though it had been thoroughly renovated, the age did creep in. The staircases were scarily narrow, the floors creaked and the ceilings had dramatic slopes to them to the point where you risked smacking your head climbing up and down the already scary staircases.

Before leaving for the day, we had written down a list of 3 additional houses that were having open houses in case we felt like visiting a few more. The next was in the same city as the first, but way closer to where we currently live. I wasn’t really enthusiastic about this house on paper because it was on a busy-ish street. However, when we got there, this house was amazing. The rooms were huge, it had a formal entryway, 4 very spacious bedrooms including a master suite with walk-in closet and bathroom. 2 additional bathrooms, a dining room, central air, 2 car garage and it was built in the year 2000! It had everything.

We knew we’d have to move fast, so the next night (Monday), I went back alone with my parents and my realtor and we did another walk-through. We put in an offer that night, negotiated through the next day and they eventually accepted our offer. I can’t even believe it happened so fast. We had the inspection yesterday and they found no problems at all, which isn’t surprising given the age of the home.

So if you’re following the timeline here, within 6 days, we found a house, put in an offer, negotiated, got it accepted and had the inspection. Things are moving SO fast!

We will be moving in July and there are still a lot of logistics to work out in the meantime, but we’re both extremely excited about all of this. I’m sure I’ll be writing more over the next few months as we figure things out and get ready to move.

Tell me about something exciting that’s happened in your life recently!

Having been a vegetarian for 13 years and counting, I have no trouble navigating the food choices available to me. In addition to that, I have also become well acquainted with certain “challenges” that come along with the title of vegetarian that can be both amusing and annoying.

• I started thinking about this a few nights ago when D and I went out to pick up some food from Chipotle for dinner. As we were standing in line, I suddenly started laughing to myself. D asked me what was up and I told him that I had just been thinking about how funny it is when you go to the counter and as for a vegetarian burrito bowl and they ask you what kind of meat you want with it. Sure enough, when we got to the front of the line, here’s how it went down:

  Chipotle guy: Hi, how can I help you?
  Me: I’d like a vegetarian burrito bowl to go please.
  Chipotle guy: (Asks about rice and beans)
  Chipotle guy: (After adding said rice and beans, slides my order down the counter to the meat selection). What kind of meat?
  Me: Just the veggies please!

  Behind me, D had a good chuckle.

• When meeting someone for the first time and the subject of food comes up:

  Me: So, I’m a vegetarian…
  Other person: Oh! So does that mean you’re a vegan?

  Wouldn’t I have said I was a vegan if I was a vegan?

• A big pet peeve of mine is certain restaurants that have NOT ONE SINGLE thing on the menu that doesn’t contain meat. This doesn’t come up too frequently, because at the very least, most places will have salads. What kills me is when going to a restaurant (this happens most often with chains) that has no entrees, appetizers or even SALADS without meat.

• People who think you must starve and not eat any protein if you’re a vegetarian: I think I covered that myth pretty thoroughly in this guest post.

• People who think it must be impossible for a couple to include a meat eater and a vegetarian. It really isn’t all that difficult! In fact, I have no idea what it would be like to date another vegetarian as it has never happened. I also talked a lot about that in yet another guest post here.

• A lot of my friends and people I know in general are big fans of this philosophy:

  But that one just makes me laugh

If you’re a vegetarian, what are some of your pet peeves? For all the meat eaters out there, tell me your pet peeves about food in general!

Alisha from Musings of a Maniac Mama was kind enough to recently nominate me for the Versatile Blogger Award!

Thank you Alisha!

Receiving this award means that I need to share 7 random facts about myself. Seeing as how I recently gave you 11 random facts, I figured I’d switch this one up a little bit and instead I’m going to give you 7 random things I’m looking for in a house. My house hunting journey has just begun, and here are some of the things I’m looking for:

1. My number one priority in a house is the kitchen/dining area. I’d ideally like to have something that has a nice, open, modern kitchen and a separate dining room that would be big enough to host family gatherings during the holidays. The kitchen I have now in my apartment, is tiny, narrow and can barely contain two people without a fight breaking out.

2. Outdoor space: Having lived in apartments for my the entirety of my independent adult life, I’ve never had an outdoor space of my own. It doesn’t need to be anything big or extravagant, but a nice deck or patio would be awesome. Maybe having an outdoor space of my own would lead to me getting more sun and thus help out with my vitamin D problems.

3. LOTS of space: Between D and myself, we have way too much stuff and currently, nowhere to put it. D is a comic book collector and music/movie/video game enthusiast. This leads to having lots of media storage issues. Not to mention, I’m a big pack rat myself. Extra rooms or a furnished basement would be a great bonus for us. Plus a walk-in closet

4. Location: As is always the case in real estate, location is the one thing you can’t change about a house, and it’s the most important feature. We need to make sure we’re not too far from my work or D’s work, plus that we’re still close enough to our families.

5. Age: Okay, so here’s the thing. We live in Massachusetts and apparently that means that every other house you look at was built before 1900, and some are shockingly even older than that. Old houses come with nothing but problems, not to mention they generally don’t have many modern conveniences. We may have to pay more for it, but I want a new(er) house.

6. Bathrooms: D and I have been living together in the same apartment for the past 2.5 years and there’s one thing we’ve become accustomed to that we just don’t want to have to live without: Having two full bathrooms. In the mornings, it doesn’t matter who’s getting ready when, because we have two showers and we don’t have to budget time around each other. This is something we’d love to carry over into our new house.

7. Quiet: I don’t want to live on a noisy/busy street, and I can’t wait to have some privacy away from the hordes of neighbors that currently live in our building.

Thanks again, Alisha, for nominating me for this award!

This has been one of those weeks where I’ve felt like I had no time whatsoever to relax. Between thinking about/planning house stuff, dealing with a very aggressive work deadline, fitting in workouts and trying to keep our home running, it’s been a little on the crazy side. I can usually deal with stress pretty well, but when everything goes crazy at the same time, it can be a little difficult not to go crazy yourself.

Here are some things I do when I’m feeling overwhelmed with life to stay sane:

Video Games

I’ve been a fan of video games since I was a little kid, and there’s nothing that takes you away from your own troubles more than throwing on a game and losing yourself in another world. D and I recently downloaded A Link to The Past on the Wii (pic above) and have been playing that for some nostalgia. I love the Link and Mario series, but we also love to throw on newer games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and variety of others.

Just Dance

Speaking of games – and I’m sure this is not a shock to anyone who’s read my blog for more than a few entries – one of the best stress-relieving games out there is Just Dance. When I’m having a stressful day at work, sometimes I’ll come home for lunch and throw on the game for a little while. I also love that this counts as a workout, and I really get my heart-rate up when playing!

Get Out in Nature

I’m lucky enough to live and work in an area that, while still close enough to the city of Boston, has a quiet, somewhat naturey feel to it. Sometimes I’ll just go for a walk and look at the birds, the geese and whatever other wildlife happens to be out that day. It helps remind me that whatever problem I’m trying to work out on the computer isn’t the end of the world.

Plan A Vacation

There’s nothing like getting away from it all and taking a luxurious vacation, if it’s something you can swing. Last year, D and I went to Disney World and Vegas and each trip was amazing in its own way. The best part is, it’s not just the act of taking the vacation that helps relieve stress, but planning one and knowing it’s on the horizon is a great way to stay motivated during long, seemingly endless work weeks. We’re going to try to go to Disney again this year (it’s our favorite spot), and once things are a little more figured out with the house, we’ll start planning the details.

Relax

And there’s nothing wrong at all with sitting back at the end of a long day, throwing on a care-free movie or tv show and having a glass of wine.

How do you keep yourself going when life is stressful? Any big vacations planned for 2013?