and a week goes by

After churning out the blogs Claire and I got rather busy with real life. I guess that happens when you have friends in town for the weekend and you are organizing a three day trip, there and back, to Phoenix.

We finally finished up our detox diet last Monday, a week ago. We did have a splurge meal at Sushi Caliente to celebrate. We made it a light/sort of healthy meal though. You can read about it here. Anyways, both of us feel much better and can tell a noticeable difference when we eat "fatty" foods compared to when we stick with the diet's plan. After this weekend of eating out with friends, we both came away wanting to just eat vegetables. It's weird how that works. As of tomorrow we will have both gone 28 days without sodas, and for the most part without caffeine. If you knew either of us before we had a very high Diet Coke (Claire) and Dr. Pepper (Myself) consumption. We have challenged ourselves to stick as closely as possible to the diet, with a few splurges here and there. You can't just give up your favorite frozen yogurt place, MMMMM....Tomunchi. So far we have both lost some weight and I can't believe I am saying it but I would suggest the diet to anyone looking to feel better and have the extra benefit of losing weight. You can still cook great things like my own creation: eggplant stack. We used a chicken sausage from Whole Foods stuffed with spinach and feta. All you do is grill up your eggplant, cook the sausage, slice up some avocado, grill some thin strings of onions and stack it up. I served it along side some steamed broccoli and okra with crumbled feta on top and some candied pecans for a little bit of a sweet kick.


Claire also set out on a mission to re-organize our study closet. After visiting Ikea, twice, we had picked up enough organizational tools that she could get started. She set out on a weekend/week of organizing, sorting, adding new books, removing old magazines, and creating general destruction of our study floor. But in the end she did an amazing job and we now have a fully labeled and accessible closet. I am still of the opinion that Claire would make an amazing personal organizer for people.

After working most of the week Mark and Amanda came in town and we had the chance to relax and hang out. We ate at Kerby Lane, ate at Sprinkles (the arch-rival of Tomunchi) and we played Rock Band over at John and Sara Vershaw's apartment. It was a blast and who knew I could sing so well. Yesterday we had some free time after work and headed out to one of our favorite Austin parks with the dogs, Walnut Creek Park. We hiked around down in the creek bed, which, contrary to the picture below, is completely dry and barren due to the lack of rain this summer. Yet it made for a fun, 2ish mile hike as well as good exercise.


Brooke is coming into town this week and then we head out to phoenix for the weekend so hopefully we can get a few more updates in for you loyal readers about how exciting our suburban lives are.