I ran a 5k for the first time ever on my 30th birthday. Holy crap.

You guys, I can’t believe it. I ran 5k. It’s been a long time coming, but I finally did it.

I don’t even know where to begin this blog. I am sitting here, in my living room, having just scooted back home from Golden Gate Park, high on life and wanting to cry my eyes out. I know 5k isn’t much to a lot of people, but this is huge for me.

I’ve struggled with my weight and health all my life. Remember those presidential race things in elementary school? I dreaded those all year long because even in the first grade I couldn’t run a mile like everyone else in my grade.

Then over the last few years I’ve tried to get in shape and accomplish this life list item of running a 5k, but I kept failing. It wasn’t until I had lunch with my cousin Morgan 9 weeks ago that I got re-inspired.

Over the last nine weeks I’ve been training with this app that he suggested called Get Running. BEST THING EVER. There’s this nice australian lady who coaches you in your ear along the way. Week one we started running 1 minute, walking 1 minute. We gradually ran longer and longer stretches until today: I ran 35 minutes straight. 5 kilometers through Golden Gate Park on this unusually sunny and warm June day.

When I finished my run this morning, just as I exited the park onto Stanyan, and that little voice from my app said, “Congratulations. 5 kilometers, completed,” I cried, like, a lot. I punched my fists and grunted and cried in sheer joy. This might be the best birthday present I have ever given myself, ever.

Here’s what I’ve learned along the way:

When it comes to getting in shape, you can’t just rely on inspiration. I have made this mistake for years. I get all inspired, ready to conquer my goals! I buy new running gear and start off with a bang! Then when that inspiration is gone, I trail off.

Instead this is how you have to think about it:

There are inspiration days, and there are determination days.

These days are very, very different. On inspiration days I feel like I could run forever and then some because everything is wonderful and I am amazing.

Then there are determination days. These are days I just straight up would rather eat a pile of dirt than put on my running shoes and actually move my body. But you have to do it anyway. And people say, “Oh those endorphins will kick in and you’ll be so happy once you’re out there!” No. Some days that just doesn’t happen, and the only happiness you feel about your workout is it being OVER.

Here’s another thing I learned:

Keep coming back, it works if you work it. 

How many times have I tried a couch to 5k program? Too many to count. How many times have I failed? One less than that. I am not an out of shape person to my core. Yes, I have struggled most of my life, but here I am turning 30 today and I’m in the best shape of my life. If you keep at it, little by little you will get to your goals.

And now it’s time to celebrate.

Homemade Goat Milk Yogurt

Over a year ago I started a couch to 5k training program. But like every athletic goal I have set for myself, I failed because I got sick, lost my progress, and got discouraged. I was getting bronchitis several times a year and it needed to stop. I had no idea what was causing it, but I needed to figure it out otherwise I wasn’t going to be able to acheive half the things on my life list.

Over the last year and a half, I have done just that. I got a doctor, I had my wisdom teeth removed, I started to learn how to handle my stress, and most importantly, I changed my diet.

I experimented a lot. I googled things like, “What should I not eat if I have sinus and lung problems?” One problem food for sinus issues that I found over and over again was milk– specifically cow’s milk. A lot of folks replace cow’s milk with soy, rice, or almond milk. I tried all of those and I didn’t like any of them. I researched more, and found that goat’s milk doesn’t have the stuff in it that cow’s milk does that seems to aggrivate the sinuses and mucus production. Mind you, I found this stuff on homeopathic websites and natural health blogs – so I didn’t see the science for myself.

But I can tell you this, I largely took cow’s milk out of my diet and I have only been sick once this entire YEAR. After having bronchitis or sinusitis four to six times a year, this is a major improvement. No more Fage yogurt, no more bowls of cereal with Strauss Creamery whole milk, no more mac and cheese.

One of my life list items is “Make your own yogurt.” I put this on the list before I discovered I shouldn’t have cow’s milk anymore, so it was going to need to be goat’s milk yogurt. Taken from this website, this was how I made it:

Here was my set up:

This is everything you need. Goat’s milk, a little bit of yogurt to act as your “starter,” a sterilized jar, a thermometer, and a pot.

Step one: Pour the goat’s milk into the pot. Heat to 180 degrees and not a degree over.

Step two: When your milk gets to 180, take it off the heat and cool it down to 115. I stirred it by an open window until it got to about 117 (to leave room for it to lower a little bit more while I did step three).

Step three: When the milk is cooled, put a tiny bit into the sterilized jar along with one to two teaspoons of the yogurt. Stir it up real good, and pour it back into the pot. Stir.

Step four: Pour everything into the jar and seal it up tight.

Step five: Put the jar into an “incubator.” Because I didn’t have a professional yogurt incubator, I put it into a dutch oven filled with warm water from the tap and placed it in the oven (The interwebs said it was the same thing). 

There you leave it for eight hours or more.

I’m not going to lie, this was the second time I attempted this recipe. I failed the first time because I overheated it and it never got to the consistency of yogurt.

The second time, it worked. I pulled this out after about ten hours and it was the thick consistency of yogurt. I was so excited! I had made milk into a different thing!

I made a big elaborate show of my first bite to everyone in the room and it tasted….gross. Positively awful. Those of you who have tried goat’s milk, know that sometimes it can taste rather… goat-y. Something about cooking it made this quality more prominent. That first bite of my homemade goat’s milk yogurt tasted like a full-on petting zoo in my mouth. I just couldn’t jive.

Alas, so much for that idea! I am kind of a wuss when it comes to things tasting “not normal.” Like raw milk. I *want* to like it. I believe in everything there is to believe in about having raw milk, but I just can’t get past my conditioning of what milk should taste like.

There are some brands of already-made goat’s milk yogurt that don’t taste like an actual goat, so I think I’m going to stick to those. Either way, still staying on track for health! Yay for that!

Road Trip! Oregon Coast Edition.

Some of my life list items are placed on my list for my own good, like getting my wisdom teeth removed, or running a 5k. Good-for-me, gatta-do stuff. The rest of my life list items are for the other part of life– enjoyment, excitement, exploration, FUN. My most recent life list item to be crossed off the list is for the latter.

Go on an out-of-state road trip!  CHECK!

In March, over my spring break, I went on a 5 day road trip up to the Oregon coast with my good friends Blake, Priscilla and Jason. I had taken plenty of tiny little road trips within California, like when I camped in Joshua Tree alone or headed up to Tahoe. But I had never gone out of state. When Priscilla came up with the idea of heading to Oregon over spring break, it was a no-brainer HELLYES from me.

Priscilla put together our whole entire trip in one night. The plan? Five days on the road, staying in motherfucking yurts all along the Oregon coast, with one night in an airbnb apartment in Portland. Awesome.

They picked me up at 5am on a friday, and we were off.

My view for most of the drive

We passed Mount Shasta:

Right about here is where I realized I left one of my bags at home. TYPICAL. Fucking typical. The bag that had my one pair of jeans, my warm hat, my gloves and armsocks, my books, journal, earbuds, sunglasses and WALLET. Yup, basically everything. I am officially the worst packer ever as it is, and then I forgot an entire bag. I fumed for like twenty minutes but the gang pulled me together. This was going to be a real adventure now. I had to detach from my things and appreciate the time with my friends and these new experiences waaaaay outside my comfort zone.

We got up to Oregon that day, and stayed in the most adorable little camp grounds in the most AWESOMEST yurt possible. Well, actually, every yurt looks the same but since this was the first one I had ever seen it was especially adorable.

Glorious!

These campgrounds were amazing. Right on a little creek, with a playground and a discgolf course.

Playtime!

Hilariously enough, when we unpacked this evening and I opened the one bag I did bring, I saw that my hair stuff had exploded and got everything soaking, dripping, sticky wet and awful. I seriously always do this. My god, this trip was going to be a challenge.

This is me dressed in other people’s stuff, enjoying the simple things I did have! A cup of coffee and a beautiful view from your yurt can make anyone forget their troubles.

Me and my cuppajoe the next morning behind the yurt

Next stop was Portland. We had an airbnb apartment waiting for us, and an evening with Blake’s family too. (I wrote about them a little on my last beer post here. tl;dr: they are my heroes and I want to be them when I grow up.)

We had a great time in Portland. I bought myself some new purple armsocks, I visited a homesteading store and saw some chickens (omg, sooooo portland….) and  had a super fun night with the gang.

Us in Dan’s Apartment

Why is there a frozen Kenny in his freezer? So we would make an “oh my god, he killed Kenny!” joke? Possibly.

<3<3<3<3

From here, I’ve actually forgotten the chronology of the journey. So I’m going to give you some highlights from the trip:

Epic bloody mary with bacon in it.

We got to drive on the Beach! We decided to write Jason’s name in the sand with the car…. and only succeeded in doing so because of Jason’s supreme car maneuvering skills and his knack for cursive. Why oh why didn’t I get a picture of that?! Well, here’s us parked next to a shipwreck:

On our way down from Astoria, we passed through dozens of tiny little coastal towns that reminded me of the travel sections in Sunset magazine. So picturesque, so quaint, so exactly what I imagined the Oregon coast to look like. Sadly, the only picture I really got that captures that mood is this house that I wish I lived in:

The best part about road trips, in my opinion, in being on the road. I love moving, I love being in the car or on trains or anything in motion. I love maps and tracking where I am. We all did.

Road trips are fun because they leave room for spontaneity, like when you see a gigantic T-Rex on the side of the road and everyone screams “pull over! pull over!” because you simply must understand what the hell that is about.

And how could we forget porch breakfast? Priscilla, our road trip master chef, made us breakfast on the yurt porch the morning that Oregon finally decided to rain.

I didn’t get a picture of it, but there was one evening where Jason suggested we all take a hike up behind our yurt in the night’s bright moonlight. We found a small gulch, and we all laid down on the soft mossy ground and stared up at the stars between the trees. That dark silence, the slight breeze moving the trees around us…it was so beautiful and magical, I will never forget it.

I won’t really be able to put it all into words, but the trip was powerful for me. I usually travel alone, so I didn’t really know that friendships can grow and deepen so much on these kinds of journeys. We laughed, we cried, we fought, we sang, we danced, we overcame obstacles together, and I am so grateful for every minute of it. The intense times, the chill times, I really loved it all.

Thank you Priscilla for being the perfect trip planner and camp Mom. Thank you Jason for bringing me out of my “BUT I HAVE NO STUFF” funk and being my buddy. Thank you Blake for being your awesome, entertaining, lovely self and letting me do some crosswords alone first

Love you guys.

Beer, Beer and more Beer! #32-52

Winter/early spring is that time of year when I abandon my love of wine and dive into the wheat-y, filling, delightfully diverse world of beers. And ho-momma did I get a lot of new beers under my belt (St. Patty’s day and camping will do that to a lady).

Normally I take my time and explain each one, but today we’re just going to hit two high-lights because there are FAR too many to talk about each one.

While visiting Portland, Oregon, I had the pleasure of meeting my friend Blake’s cousins, Brett and Laurie, and their adorable kids. Brett and Laurie were the most awesomest couple that ever were and I want to be them some day. They kept bees in their backyard garden, bought entire animals to eat, made things like head-cheese and had the most beautiful and quirky (purple!!) Victorian in the neighborhood. We had dinner at their house, and we were invited to drink some of Brett’s home-made brews. He served us a Belgian, a lager and a stout.

Jason tasting Brett’s Belgian, and of course the Bees!

Of course they were amazing, and I would repeatedly purchase that Belgian if Brett sold it. So delish.

Another highlight from my Winter-long beer journey was a beer that I actually hated and loved simultaneously. Every sip was, “What is happening in my mouth right now??!” I didn’t understand it. It confused me. I hated the taste and yet I wanted more. I suppose curiosity will do that to you. This beer was called Strubbe’s Flemish Red Ale. 

I can tell you right now I will never buy this beer again but it was an experience I fully appreciate. It was tart, very tart. Like an actual tart. Fruity and sweet and a little bit sour. Interesting stuff.

So with those highlights, here is my winter/spring-long list:

• Poppy Jasper
• Strubbe’s Flemish Red Ale
• Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar
• New Belgium Trippel with Coriander
• Pyramid Heffeweizen
• Kona Brewing Co.’s Coco Loco Toasted Coconut Brown Ale
• Stella Artois
• Bridgeport Hop Czar
• Harp Lager
• Blue Moon Valencia Grove Amber
• Blue Moon Sunshine Citrus Blonde
• Smithwick’s Irish Ale
• Gordon Biersch Maibock
• Mirror Pond Pale Ale
• Rogue Brewery’s Dead Guy Ale
• Red Chair Northwest Pale Ale
• Lost Coast Tangerine Wheat Beer
• Shiner Ruby Redbird Summer Seasonal with Ginger
• Brett’s homemade Lager
• Brett’s homemade Stout
• Brett’s homemade Belgian 

I’m over half-way to the finish line! I have to thank Casey and Josh for hosting St. Patty’s day and buying variety packs of beers. You guys really helped my little list along! 

Framing things, like an adult would do! (Plus my sweet new beer poster!)

Nearly every teenage bedroom and college dorm has posters taped up to the walls. Try to imagine a Scarface poster nicely framed and hung on the exposed brick of a college dorm, and you just can’t picture it. I am still in that phase. At least I was until this past week.

I added “Frame my prints, like an adult would do” to my life list about a year ago. I have a big beautiful apartment and I haven’t hung anything up. It’s a damn shame too because I’ve collected some cool stuff to frame over the years, but something always gets in the way of me actually getting it up on the walls. As soon as I attempt to start the framing process, my brain starts chattering away at me, Eh, frames cost money… You’ll have to put holes in the walls…may as well just not do it, yeah, the walls are fine empty….

I decided to just quit that cycle, and get going on this project. I took a friend who has framed and hung lots of things in his house with me to Cheap Pete’s on Geary which, in my opinion, is the fucking bomb because they have this wonderful little corner they call the bargain bin. I bought a nice gold frame for ten bucks! Just my style. If you buy from the bargain bin, and then mat and frame it all yourself instead of having them do it for you, you can save a boatload of money.

So over the last week I framed and hung a TON of stuff around the house. My house is feeling warmer and more beautiful than I could have imagined! Here are some shots of the process and finished product:

This one’s in the bedroom, and by far my favorite framed piece. I got this print from a 2003 art nouveau calendar for one buck at SCRAP.  It’s a beautiful jewel of a framed print, so I put it right by my bed so I could stare at it:

Here are a few from the living room:

P’s beautiful puzzle and postcard from Sierra

And here’s my favorite room so far, the kitchen. I have had the most AWESOME poster ever, sitting unframed under by bed for a year. Now it’s framed and hung, and it’s a beer chart!

Because my iPhone camera can’t do this amazing poster justice, here is a better picture of it from Pop Chart Lab:

It’s basically a chart of all the types beers that exist, how they’re related, and what glass to use with what beer. I love it.

So there you have it! I have more framing to do, but now that I have done the process once and learned that you can still do it in a “bargain” kind of way, and that putting holes in your walls is not so scary after all, I have a feeling framing things won’t be quite as daunting as it has been all this time. One small step into adulthood I go!

Successes and Failures in Adulthood

I’m on school break! Blog time, yeah!

I see this blog of 100 things I want to do before I die as a living document of my experience stumbling my way into this moving target of a phase they call “adulthood.” So today I am going to share with you some successes and failures I’ve had recently in being an adult.

Failure #1. I have so many awesome artwork prints that I have bought over the last ten years, yet I have not framed a single one. That is what lead me to add “Frame my prints, like an adult would do” to my life-list. So, as I have done several times before, today I went into a frame store, got super overwhelmed with choices and decisions to make, and I left without buying anything. GAH. What is wrong with me? I have a mental block on buying frames. I have this one hella cool ‘beers of the world’ graphic poster that I have been wanting to show you guys but I want it framed first and I just can’t bring myself to navigate the frame buying process. Why is this so hard? The sizing, the mats, the stud finding and wall destroying – apparently it’s just all too much for me. Help.

Failure #2. I laughed at this penis-man Michael made out of the Settlers of Catan pieces.

I think that makes us both failures at being adults, but whatevs, it was funny.

Failure #3. I cannot seem to set up a personal savings account. This is something all responsible adults have and I can’t do it. It’s not because I don’t save money. I literally went shopping for new clothes for the first time in FOUR YEARS last month. It’s not a spending problem I have, it’s more of a “money ignoring” problem. I just kinda pretend it doesn’t exist. The strange thing is, I am totally adult and responsible about my Kafe and IT has a savings account– but I just don’t do these things for myself.

Failure #4. Children. I go so back and forth between wanting little Michael/Christinas running around the house, and feeling like that’s the most absurd idea ever. I was kinda half planning on starting to have kids around this age…but I get scared and put it off a year or two more every time I think about it. A lot of people say they don’t feel like adults until they have kids….so maybe I’m still not an adult?

Ok…now for some successes….

Success #1. This first one is more of an over-coming of a previous adulthood failure. My friend Sierra accidentally left a pair of wool socks at my house eight years ago. I adopted them and they have been my only pair of over-the-ankle socks for these last eight years. I literally wear them over my tights and under my boots every.single.day. It’s gross. They practically have zero wool left on the bottoms of them. So, today I went to target and actually bought several pairs of cute socks!

I consider this an adult success because 1: I have been meaning to do this task since I was 22 and obviously it wasn’t supposed to happen until I became an adult; 2: I went to target for socks, and I succeeded at buying them even though they were considerably less cute than the sequin skirt that I tried on and looked super cute in and wanted to buy really badly (but seriously didn’t need.) and 3: because I actually bought something rather than collecting that something from what people have randomly left at my house and failed to collect.

Success #2. I finished my first semester of grad school! It was HARD WORK. Running the Kafe and doing school work– it was crazi-zani-ness. For example: I scheduled precisely three hours to read three chapters in my text-book one Wednesday morning before class. I had to do this reading before that class, but the kafe’s main competitor flooded with sewage so the town all came to us instead and we were thusly hella busy and we literally ran out of a week’s worth of quarters, whole milk, half and half, and tea bags in ONE MORNING. So who has to go running all around town, buying these things during that three hours I was supposed to read three chapters? Me!

But heck, I got it all done– the crazy kafe purchasing and hiring and art show setting up AND all my schoolwork. I feel pretty awesome juggling all my responsibilities and since I’ve heard the words “juggling responsibilities” come out of more adults’ mouths than I can count, I think this was officially a successful adult moment. Yeah.

Success #3. We’ve already covered this one, but it was a biggie: I got my wisdom teeth removed!

Success #4. This is going to seem like nothing to you guys, but, I BOUGHT BLUSH. This is something I wear every single day and, much like my sock acquiring habits, I have never bought my own– I’ve just used ones that my sister has left in my car or a friend left at my house when getting ready for Halloween. Not to mention, I will use the blush down until it’s merely a residual dusting on my vanity countertop and then I will use that. I can’t believe I admit these things on the internet, but there you have it. Grossness, overcome.

Success #5. Dairy makes me get sick so I actually stopped drinking it. Seems simple enough and yet, all these years I knew this and I still wanted those cappuccinos and lattes like everyone else and suffered the awful punishment of repeated bouts of bronchitis and sinusitis. But no longer because I’m an adult and take care of myself!

Success #6. I know most people don’t really consider this part of “adulthood,” but considering my social awkwardness growing up and literally not being able to make a single friend in college – I have decided that my current ability to create and maintain deep and satisfying friendships is part of my own personal journey into this fun and confident adulthood. I’ve grown out of being a socially inept person and turned into a normal person who thrives off my relationships.

Thanks for making this year awesome, my loves! From emoticon Fridays, to cuddle cloud kingdom, to weddings of loved ones and costume parties– you guys all make my almost-adulthood worth every glorious minute.

<3 <3 <3 <3

Beer #31 and Tortilla Soup

Hey Friends! So the story is I basically have zero time for anything these days. Grad school plus relationships plus a kafe to run means Christina barely has time to breathe. I have to figure out how to slide in blog stuffs when I can. When I decided to make some tortilla soup tonight, I thought that was the perfect slot to fit in some more beers to inch me ever closer to 100. Gatta keep working through that list, yo!

I came home from work and started making Pioneer Woman’s Chicken Tortilla Soup in time for when Michael got home from his work trip. I put on my friend Kato a.k.a. DJ Wolf Princess’s spotify mix of awesomeness (90′s Mariah Carey remixes and MC Solar? Yes please…) and cracked open Triple Voodoo’s Inception Belgian Style Ale.

The beer was a total impulse buy at the checkout lane at Faletti’s when I was getting the stuffs for the soup. But what luck–this beer is so meant for me and my taste buds. It is everything I love about Belgian Ales: it’s malty, it’s bright, it’s thick and full of rich yumminess. I loves it!

And now I’m back to putting my nose in the books…..’til next time y’all!