me running about .4 miles in.   I get very camera shy and I thought I was telling myself to look at the camera but obviously that is not the case.  The course is easy, its Florida, straight shot on A1A.  To my left is the ocean and to the right is beautiful houses so it is pretty easy to keep yourself moving.  The only negative is it is a run out, 1.5 miles and run back.  I like seeing all the fast people run  back but it gets a little boring on the way back.  I had my Garmin 305 on and I was not keep to close track of my mile marks just trying to keep moving and once I turned back and hit 2.5 I realized that I would beat my time from last year.

I saw it on Megann’s amazing blog Meals and Miles, which I highly recommend readying.  She is a great blogger and always has interesting, inspirational and funny things to talk about.  So she picked this up because she is training for an Ironman because she is badass.  While I am not training for anything like that I have been looking to, I was going to say tone Lou Schuler the narrator of this book would not agree, so lets go with make my arms look good for my strapless wedding dress, which I am picking up in CT in a few weeks and flying back with me.  So anyway, I got the book from the library so I could see if I like it and very quickly I really started to enjoy it.  Stage 1 takes 6 weeks if you do it 3 times a week and I was banging it out and upping my weight and feeling great.  I finished stage 1 and was starting stage 2.  My loving fiance decided he wanted to join in, we are ignoring the title of the book now.  Last Wednesday we got up at 6:30am and went to the gym to start Stage 2.  We did one move and then we moved on to the step up, which was part of stage 1.  A step up is basically exactly what it sounds like.  You hold some weights and you step up on to something higher and step down.  As we were doing them I called out “last one” and as I placed  my right foot on the ground I heard a crunch and fell over.  Vin immediately threw down his weights and I fell into tears not as much from the pain but just the fear of what this could be, broken ankle, crutches at the wedding, little to no working out.  We decided that the best thing was for him to get the car and then we could decide if I would need to go to see of professional from there.  In the end we decided that I would just not move from the couch, and according to Vin no going to the bathroom, for one whole day and see how I feel from there.  Thankfully after taking 2 days really easy I am back to normal with a little pain in my foot.

Unfortunately,  because of this I did not have a very healthy week.  I am looking to re commit myself to focusing on the greater goal and not so much immediate gratification, such as beer, friend chicken and donuts, so it goes.  I walked and slowly jogged 2.5 miles this morning and will be doing a relaxing flow class today.

After all that I got home and it was already 2:00pm and I was pretty hungry.  So I made a green monster and had some pretzels, peanuts and raisins on the side.

and my first smoothie in a bowl!  i liked it.  the green monster included, spinach, soy vanilla protein powder, water, ice, banana and mango.  it was very good.

I had a portrait lens which is great for photographing people but really hard for still lives since I had to be on the other side of the kitchen to get anything in focus but I was to hungry to waste time chanting lenses so that is that.

So what was I saying about focus?  I find that I start something get distracted and then move on to something else and while sometimes that is necessary, like when firefox will not stop freezing other times it leads me to meander through my days.  I love schedules but it is hard to schedule a day when a big part of my day is answering the phone and replying to emails.

The pin i picked seems easy enough but I have been meaning to do this for about a week now so that is great motivation to just do it.  It seems to be a simple old shirt into tank top which seems perfect for this summer heat.   Will share on August 2nd by 7am!

i decided to run outside because it was cloudy so i would not have to fight to much with the sun and i am having a hard time finding a slow enough speed to run at on the treadmill.  i went outside and ran an easy 3 miles at about 14 minutes a mile.  as soon as i walked into our complexes gate i started to hear thunder.  i got back dry but as i was making my smoothie it started to down poor though the sun decided it come out as well.  nice and bright and stormy.

since it has been very hot i have had major craving for smoothies.  i also added some spinach.

it was yummy the whey protein is chocolate flavored which is fine but gets a little yuck 3/4 of the way through.  I am trying to get through this before i buy another because it does take us a while to eat this much protein powder and they are not cheap.

tried to sneak outside to get some ok shoots of the crazy florida rain.

totally got soaked.

Chelsea Market

Kim, Kevin and Alex debating what to order.

The High Line is the one thing i did get to document because I walked it twice.  The high line is a old railroad track that has been converted into a lovely above the streets park where you can some amazing views of the hudson as well as cross town.  If you live in the area and have not been over there it is totally worth an hour or so and if you are visiting its totally worth it for the views and a little outside central park

Kimmy and I

Hello NYC! Oh how i miss you, even with your summer stench.  so the second leg of our summer vacation took up to the big apple for two very important events.  The first one being be big bros birthday!

The other thing is our bachelor/bacholoarette weekend.  Since we were staying the weekend we check into our hotel.  We stayed at the Hampton Inn Chelsea which we greatly enjoyed.  Not only the hotel but the location as well.  We choose it because my brother lives in Chelsea but it is really close to a ton of subways and an easy walk to a lot of major tourists stuff including the flatiron building which is one of my favorite buildings ever though we did not make it there this trip.

so once we checked in we headed over to my bros apartment and gave him his gifts.  this is how her normally looks.  he has gotten quite good at playing for the cameras since he spends most his days with photographers.

my mom and i.

my brother and i both love top chef, i mean who does not.  so i was thrilled that he picked Colicchio and Sons We ate in the Tap Room and had the prix fixe lunch menu which was amazing.  Everything that we hate was some of the best food I have ever eaten.  I did not take any pictures of the food, my family already looks at me weird, and I wanted to enjoy some quality family time.

  I did take a picture of the main room which was gorgeous.  More NYC to come!

Also while we were up at the lake house which is in the Berkshires we got to finally have our engagement shoot with our amazing wedding photographer, Christopher Duggan.  I met Christopher in 2007 when I was interning at Jacob’s Pillow under his wife Nel Shelby both still work at the Pillow in the summer and just bought a cabin near by and have the most adorable almost 3 year old.  It is pretty cool to see people, like my cousin Amy, become parents.  I have always loved Christopher’s work and since going into photography full time look at his work for inspiration constantly.  So I was thrilled, nervous and excited to have our pictures taken by him.  I am so happy with the results and the over all experience and am in even more envy of how amazing a photographer he is and how happy I am to be able to have him capture such a special time in our lives.