I have two weeks worth of workouts to catch you up on today. Whoops.

Here’s how the last two weeks went:
Monday: Rest
Tuesday: Revolve Rip Ride (7:30 pm, 60 min)
Wednesday: Barre Fusion (7:45 pm, 60 min) – I really wanted to love this class, but there really wasn’t as much barre as I’d hoped for. I was expecting a pretty typical barre class, with slightly more time spent on stretching and maybe a sun salutation or two but instead it seemed more like a straight vinyasa yoga class to me.
Thursday: Bowchickawowow Flybarre (5:45 pm, 60 min) & Revolve Red Hot Rip Ride (7:30 pm, 60 min) – I normally don’t double up on weekdays but I couldn’t resist this particular day! Two of my favorite classes were doing Valentine’s Day themes. Flybarre had a bowchickawowow class full of sexy music and Rip Ride had a ladies’ only class and playlist. Such a fun day!
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Rip Ride (10:30 am, 60 min) & Flybarre (1:15 pm, 60 min)
Sunday: Flybarre (4 pm, 60 min)

Monday: Flybarre (9:30 am, 60 min) & Body Ride (12:30 pm, 45 min) – Can I have every Monday off, please? It’s too fun. The Flybarre class was a blast with Shay, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite Flybarre instructors. She’s so cheery but with a laidback cool vibe. And Christianne’s class after that was incredible too. I was really feeling that day’s music.
Tuesday: Rip Ride (7:30 pm, 60 min)
Wednesday: Body Ride (7 am, 45 min) & Flybarre (6:45 pm, 60 min) – After a lot of back and forth on Jason’s Body Ride on Wednesday morning, I’d decided not to go the night before. But I just so happened to have insomnia that day and woke up at like 6 am so I went and rocked it out. It was an awesome way to finish out my unlimited month at Revolve. I would’ve skipped Flybarre after work but I was already past the free cancel period so I went anyway. I tried a new-to-me instructor this time, Amanda, and she was really upbeat and fun. No regrets.
Thursday: Rest – This is what the title refers to. I reluctantly took this planned rest day, even though I didn’t want to.
Friday: Revolve DJ Ride (7:30 pm, 60 min) – I really liked this ride. They had a live DJ and both Christianne and Kristin were teaching. Both are amazing and it was awesome!
Saturday: Rip Ride (10:30 am, 60 min) & Flybarre (12 pm, 60 min) – Rip Ride was amazing as always. I tried another new-to-me Flybarre instructor, Khori, and she was awesome! The triceps work was especially tough.
Sunday: Flybarre (4 pm, 60 min) – This class is quickly becoming my Sunday afternoon staple. Love it.

Recently, I’ve had a lot of trouble with rest days. As in, I don’t want to take them because my workouts are the perfect form of stress relief and too much fun. Though I really should take more for the sake of my bank account. Those expensive classes really add up.

Anyway, last week, I’d planned to take a rest day on Thursday but I wasn’t too excited about it. What made it even harder to stick to taking my planned rest day was my schedule for that day. My boss and I spent the day recruiting for interns, which meant the day started early and ended early. Usually I’m busy with work so I jump at any chance I get to get to classes during work hours and beat the after-work or before-work crowd. I got home around 3:30, so of course, I was so, so tempted to squeeze in a late afternoon Flybarre class, but ultimately, I decided it would be better to stick to my rest day.

I felt like I was wasting my free time, which annoyed me at the time, but in retrospect, it was a really smart decision. It gave my body time to recover from from my workouts earlier in the week and I felt strong at Revolve’s DJ Ride on Friday night.

My lesson learned for the week: rest days are your friend!

And just to include some color in this post, last night I went to Plataforma in the city for a work dinner and their salad bar is just as unbelievable as people say. For those who haven’t heard of it, it’s a rodizio (Brazilian BBQ) place, but their salad bar is supposedly so great that it even draws vegetarians. Truth!

Silly Chrysanthe and Angela in a photobooth say hi!

I was up in Boston to visit Chrysanthe and go to #HLS12 this past weekend. I’m still recovering from the lack of sleep a bit, but it was a blast and totally worth it.

I’m not going to do a full recap of the conference because I don’t have a lot of pictures and honestly, there are better places you can find that. But can we talk about my new favorite town to eat in for a second? We went to two restaurants in Cambridge on Friday and Saturday night and both were amazing.

The first was Veggie Galaxy, a vegan diner. It’s adorable!

And they’re apparently well-known for their vegan desserts, which were on display. We both wanted to try the sweet potato carrot cake and tried to save room for it, but there was just no way that was going to happen after our meal.

I had the black bean burger with sundried tomato pesto, portabellos, and goat cheese, which came with a side of lightly dressed arugula and red cabbage slaw. The burger was delicious. I’m talking heaven in my mouth, people. I need to find a way to recreate this at home.

Chrysanthe went for their Harvard Square burger with a black bean patty. It came with tarragon basil pesto, red cabbage slaw, and sweet corn mash.

We finished up the night by going to BerryLine for froyo! I had a small passionfruit with mochi on top. It was basically the perfect night of eating. Let’s just say that I already can’t wait to visit again so that we can recreate this night!

After a day of conferencing and snacking (thanks to all the wonderful HLS sponsors!), we were wiped but not yet hungry. We headed back to C’s place to hang out and then change before going to Thelonious Monkfish, a sushi place that was actually just a few doors down from Veggie Galaxy.

I immediately made my usual chopsticks holder out of the paper they wrapped in.

The girl at the table next to us gave the Sleeping Beauty roll of the restaurant’s Fairy Tale sushi a stellar review, so I was really excited to try it. Chrysanthe and I also decided to split the Rising Sun roll. Not bad, but neither of us realized it had tempura in it, which we’re not a fan of. I thought it would have been better without the tempura.

I absolutely loved the Sleeping Beauty roll. It was delicious and so unique! I’ve never tasted anything like it, but I adored it. Ooh, do I love me some fruity sushi!

Some good eats were enjoyed in Boston, let’s just say that. And don’t think I forgot about posting my Hawaii eats either! That post is on it’s way.

1. My new camera and photography

My dad just got a brand new D7000 a few months ago so I bought his D80 off him. Then around Father’s Day, I saw a Groupon for two photography classes in Central Park and bought one for each of us so we could take it together. We just took the second one together on Saturday and I loved it! I learned a ton. Here are some photos taken on my D80:

Look forward to some better quality (AKA not taken on my iPhone) pictures around here soon!

2. Qi

Qi’s the name of a Thai restaurant in New York with two locations. I went to the one in Times Square last last Saturday and my dad and I went to the one in Union Square this past Saturday after our photography class. It’s official – this is one of my new favorite restaurants. I love the atmosphere and decor of the place and the food is awesome and reasonably priced.

On Saturday, my dad and I started with the Herbal Coconut Calamari. I feel like calamari is usually a hit or miss for me – I either find it really oily and heavy or light in a you-can-barely-tell-it-was-fried way. This was the latter and I really liked it! Super flavorful and the sweet chili sauce it came with complemented it perfectly.

My dad ordered the Gai-Yang & Som-Tum. It came with two huge pieces of perfectly tender chicken with a dipping sauce, a pickled vegetable and papaya salad, and black forbidden rice. It was delicious!

I had the Triple Mushrooms Gravy. I absolutely love mushrooms so I knew this was what I wanted when I saw it on the menu. It was really flavorful and full of mushrooms, so of course I loved it. I will say that it kind of struck me as just a generic Asian dish though, and not particularly Thai. But it was still good and we finished every bite.

3. Eating clean

The last two dinners I ate at home were both clean and tasty. First up, a roasted zucchini cucumber hummus wrap:

And a black bean burger with zucchini fries. Yum!

I also bought this Muscle Milk last night so I could get my protein fix this morning and it’s not bad! I still prefer my own protein shakes, but this isn’t bad for when I’m trying to clean out the fridge.

4. The fact that I will be in Hawaii in less than 48 hours!

This is why I’m working on cleaning out the fridge. I cannot tell you how excited I was to put on my out of office and get out of the building yesterday at 6 pm! Hawaii, here I come!

I’ve been getting a little behind with blogging lately, but I still wanted to share some photos from my sister’s graduation last Wednesday.

We got there about an hour early and if you remember, Wednesday was hot hot hot! Sitting in the bleachers with the sun beating down on us was absolute hell. Literally everyone around us was sweating buckets! I can’t even imagine what it would have been like to be one of the graduates in their navy robes and right in the middle of the football field. They must have been dying! My dad got this shot of my beautiful sister in the procession.

And we took some more photos on the field afterward.

Then we got in the car to go to Red Lobster for dinner! My sister loves it and we hadn’t been there for a while. Unfortunately, the hostess skipped us at least once when going down her list so we were waiting for a pretty long time. We were all starving by the time we actually sat down to eat! Despite our sweatiness, I still got everyone to pose for some photos.

How cute are my parents?!

Please ignore all of our sweaty shiny foreheads. Ick.

We started with the Cheddar Bay biscuits, my sister’s favorite! She was uncontrollable with them.

Our meals came with soups for my mom and sister and salads for everyone. That was fairly uneventful though, and a good amount of it went uneaten. For her entree, my sister ordered the Cajun Chicken Linguine Alfredo. It was huge!

My mom went with the Garlic-Herb Shrimp and Chicken. It was good, but a little salty for my taste.

I don’t remember exactly what my dad’s dish was called but it had lobster and shrimp scampi. A little heavy on the butter in my opinion, but not bad.

Lastly, I had a half-size portion of the Island BBQ Salmon. It was a topped with a papaya barbecue sauce and pineapple salsa. So good!

My sister and mom’s meals came with dessert, so we also each tried a bite of the apple crostada and key lime pie. Loved them both! The rest of my family could barely get down a bite of each, but I of course saved room. I took quite a chunk out of that key lime pie.

Such a fun day with my family! Congrats again to my baby sister for graduating.