movie - AnnaTheApple

June 25, 2015

Rants and Raves #14

I don’t have a huge amount to rant about this week. How can you when the weather is so fantastic?? I thought I’d also tie-in some updates from what’s going on with my living situation going forward (sounds rather illicit…but I assure you it’s not that exciting).

Rant: *Sighs* I am so accident-prone it’s ridiculous. I think I’m genuinely lacking in the eye-hand coordination department, especially when I’m rushing around. This is mostly happening in the morning before work; sorting out my breakfast, tidying, and getting my lunch together. I take my own home-popped popcorn to work (I just put kernels into a plastic box, add salt and pepper and then microwave with the lid on until the lid starts opening). In my haste to get the pepper on it I dropped the grinder.

And all those little pepper corns went EVERYWHERE. Alfie thankfully turned his nose up and wandered off. Clearly not his snack of choice!

What was most annoying was this when I was a) already running later and b) had someone coming over to view our house later that day to possibly buy it. GARGH. I had already hoovered and tidied up everywhere but now had to sweep (and bin the peppercorns – what a waste!).

Sometimes speed isn’t the best way forward when you’re late!

Rave: It’s been very busy around here lately with all the house stuff. A few weeks ago we got the ball moving to value the house. They valued it substantially above what we initially paid for it which is MARVELLOUS obviously, but we still needed to get it sold at that price. As the house was a new build when we moved in (3.5 years ago now) it’s still in very good condition. I also regularly clean it so I didn’t have to do anything crazy before people came to view it apart from just general tidying things away to make it look more minimalist and hoovering.

At the same time I needed to look for a flat to move into. Juggling lots of balls from viewings of our house, viewings for my flat, mortgage appointments and solicitors…it’s all fun and games I assure you not.

Long story short, our house went on the market on Friday (my birthday, happy birthday me…). Our first viewing was Monday and they put an offer in for our asking price. Within this time I also found a flat I loved, put an offer on it and got it accepted. WOW. Luckily the guy buying our house is an investor so has no chain his side, and the person I’m buying from is also an investor and I only need to wait two months for the current tenant to move out (I’m buying, not renting). So actually things are looking (finger’s crossed) to go quite smoothly.

AND (this is like an UBER rave) my flat is still within the same area, still close to my gym and even closer to my running club. Fabdiddlytastic.

Rant: The flat is tiny. Really it’s a studio. I call it my Carrie Bradshaw (but smaller) apartment. One bedroom…But it’s well within the budget I have, meaning I can still live quite comfortably and enjoy my current lifestyle, and it’s in a nice, nice area. I looked round two bedroom flats in not so great areas and it just didn’t feel right – plus it added so much time onto my already long commute. The flat in itself is lovely – it’s only three years old, and funnily enough the kitchen is bigger than my current one and it’s just beautiful inside. There’s more than enough storage as well. So despite it being very small, it’s actually perfect for what I need at the moment and my day-to-day life won’t change vastly.

Rave: The day after the Liverpool marathon I had the day off, as did my parents. So we decided to go for a Nando’s and cinema trip to see Jurassic World.

A whole chicken really hit the spot post marathon. Runger? Adequately defeated.

And a whole screening to ourselves for Jurassic World (for about 15 minutes until a few others came in…damn them!)

Rant: Well not really a rant, more of stating the obvious. Jurassic World is not Jurassic Park and is no where close to being as good. It’s good for mindless enjoyment but there was no ‘pizzazz’…no rippling water, no Ian Malcolm, no goose bumps…I could go on but I shan’t bore you (the Empire Jurassic World spoiler special podcast does a great review).

Rave: After reading Claire’s post about her buying colouring books to relax I promptly decided to do the same. During university my friends and I, for a laugh, bought some colouring books as a way to have down time between revision and exams and found it was very addictive and a great way to relax while still being able to chat to each other or watch TV.

I got one from the post office, one from Amazon (called Indian Summer <— not an affiliate link) and some colouring pencils. Honestly, I am fully addicted. In the evening I watch TV while colouring and I’m so relaxed. Normally I’d be on my phone or iPad and wouldn’t really be relaxing my mind. I also wouldn’t be able to concentrate on what was on TV. But with colouring I can now watch TV as well. I even took a book with my on the train. OK people did give me a few funny/curious looks but the time flew by.

Rave: I was in the paper for the Southampton Echo for the Romsey 5 mile Beer race (bit delayed on this one as the race was a good few weeks ago now…). What was nice was that it mentioned me being part of the top three females the previous two years and now finally securing the first place this year (top left paragraph).

Needless to say my parents are very proud 😉 Sorry bragfest over.

Rave: I hate going to London in general and I especially hate going for work, which I had to do for a big meeting on Tuesday (funnily enough I’m going to London again on Saturday to meet some fellow lovely bloggers – but I’m sure this experience will be far better!)

The one saving grace of it being in London was the amazing catering at lunch time.

It was a buffet and there was just so much food. And not a chip or fried food in sight. It was all fresh, good ingredients and lots of vegetables and salad. I sort of went overboard…but then buffets are my weakness. The bottom left sweet potato and lentil curry was VERY nice indeed.

What are your plans for the weekend? (Yes I know it’s only Thursday…) I’m off to London on Saturday and then doing a 10k race (which I’m racing but not looking forward to – going to be riding the pain train!)

Do you go anywhere exciting for your job? In a previous job the best place I went was Sweden.

Colouring – yes or no? I’m not creative at all so this works well for me as it requires no real skill above what a five year old could do.

April 8, 2015

Easter fun – part 2

Soo continuing on with my Easter weekend (catch up HERE for part 1).

After running 14 miles on the Sunday (and enjoying a very tasty smoothie) I zipped off to Winchester to meet up with a friend to have a mosey about the shops and have lunch (I suppose the theme of Easter for me really!). Not all the shops were open as it was Easter Sunday but it really didn’t matter as we just walked and walked chatting away – actually it was wonderfully quiet which is just brilliant for Winchester as it’s usually rammed. The weather was lovely and the scenery very pretty so it was rather pleasant!

When we stopped for air after chatting so much we realised it was probably a good idea to get some lunch (runger was attacking with a vengeance)! We stopped at CaféMonde which was surprisingly good as it looked quite small and non-descript from the outside. I went for a salad…surprise surprise! And not just any salad, but my favourite…the Caesar of course.

At first I was a bit disappointed as it wasn’t huge and from experience usually the main bits of a salad in restaurants are all on the top. However, on digging deeper there were just tons of olives, slices of parmesan and chicken, along with a boiled egg and pitta bread. This is up there with one of the best Caesar salads I’ve had in a while (and I’ve had a lot!). My friend had a crayfish and avocado salad which also looked very tasty. Very reasonably priced as well (around £7 for the salad and a drink).

We then did some more walking (and shopping). We also found Jane Austen’s house which I’ve never seen before, despite going to Winchester many times…

And we went on the hunt for cake of course. My friend chose a banoffee cheesecake slice to take home to share with her son, which I thought was immensely saintly and selfless of her – I however do not share cakes. I found the last slice of simnel cake in a little cafe and was over the moon because not only have I not had this cake before but because it was the last slice I got all the crumbs from the platter too!

It was pretty much like Christmas cake but without icing and perhaps not as dense. It was delicious! Big fat juicy bits of dried fruit, marzipan topping, moist sponge…oh it was delicious and I very much enjoyed gobbling this all as I sat watching Masterchef that evening at home.

At the end of the day I couldn’t believe how many steps I’d done! And my legs definitely felt it. I had that pleasant drained feeling of a very busy but good day.

This included a walk with Alfie when I got back from Winchester but I was truly shocked at how far I’d gone even knowing I’d run 14 miles. For the day of the Berlin marathon I ran/walked 55k steps!

And guess what I was doing Monday? More walking!! I met up with a bunch of friends to enjoy the Queen Elizabeth Country Park with Alfie. One of the couple’s brought their whippet, Willow, and I think Alfie felt a bit chunky alongside her 😉

Willow bounced along so daintily and was incredibly fast. Alfie was a little apprehensive (he’s a friendly but shy dog) and kept looking back to make sure I was there, bless him.

The walk was lovely – though tough at times for my friends who brought along their little baby boy in a pram. We all took turns to push the pram and I got nominated for the hilly sections because I “run lots”. I’ll accept that weird compliment I think!

The views were fantastic and the weather superb. I even took my coat off and walked in my T-shirt! I have every intention of going there again soon as it’s not far from me at all and Alfie loved it.And what a day for it! I even think I caught the sun! Beautiful 😀

Not as many steps as the day before (I think it was 25k which isn’t bad!) but Alfie was well and truly pooped. We settled down for the evening with The Imitation Game and though I really thought it was going to be dull and not my thing, I was hooked instantly. The acting was superb and the story was fascinating but tragic. It made me so angry about the way Alan Turing was treated, though I felt woefully ignorant to what had happened. I learnt about the Turing test during university when I studied psychology but knew nothing about his life. I also found out that Alan Turing achieved a 2:43 marathon time – how incredible is that?? Brains and speed!

Do you enjoy walking?

What’s your favourite salad?

If you have a pedometer, what’s the highest number of steps you’ve achieved in a day?

March 9, 2015

Feeling strong and an uncomfortable watch

The weather this weekend! It gives me good vibes 🙂 OK it was still a bit nippy, and very windy on Saturday but the dark days are behind us!

Friday morning I had one of those gym seshes that just felt AWESOME. I got in some plié squats, box jumps and scorpions amongst other things. If you’ve never done scorpions they are killers – THIS link is from Runners World and it gives a good demo and also a good list of strength moves.

Rocking the Helly Hansen leggings with my ankle weights – hot stuff 😉

I’m still enjoying the gym and maybe it’s all in my head but I do feel stronger in my running and in general. I’ll need to think carefully about how much gym I do when I get into higher marathon mileage though. But that’s ages away!

Waking up on Saturday morning and looking out the window to decide what to wear for parkrun made me smile. No jacket required! Long-sleeve top yes, but no double layers. Woohoo! Though I was wrapped up fairly warm for helping the guys set up the course.

Let’s not get too optimistic yet. And we’re still on the winter course until the cricket pitch gets drier *sighs*.

8am and the sun is peeping through

My parkrun went well. I put in a good amount of effort but the wind made this feel so much tougher. We run alongside the waterfront for a bit and the wind was just awful. But I felt strong and though I wasn’t that much faster than two weeks ago (my last parkrun effort) I’m starting to feel more confident that I’m going in the right direction. I got 21:57 and first lady (but a many of the speedy girls weren’t there to be fair).

Mentally I feel really good about running at the moment. I’m loving it! Though, as ever, I do feel there is the Sword of Damocles hanging above my head for my next injury but so far I’ve not experience any niggles or issues during or after, bar the usual and normal aches of running. I think I just need to continue thinking positive and keep being sensible.

The rest of Saturday involved looking after (or at least, leaving be) my very hung-over husband who had gone out the night before with work. It was mildly amusing but I did feel bad for him. He remained on the sofa the majority of the day.

For lunch I whipped myself up a stir-fry style meal.

Basically it’s a load of veggies (kale being a big contender here) stir-fried in coconut oil with fish from a frozen fish pie mix (random but gives a nice selection of different fish and something I always have in the freezer). I then added a dollop of cream cheese to give it a delicious creamy sauce. All on a bed of courgette noodles (or at least what I can attempt with a vegetable peeler…). I don’t think the picture does it justice to how huge this portion was! Got my 5 a day in one meal 😉

That evening we watched Nightcrawler which was a really uncomfortable watch.

Source

It was really good, don’t get me wrong. Just very intense and I spent most of the movie cringing and shouting at the telly. I do recommend though. Jack Gyllenhall…I see you very differently now!

Sunday I got up feeing refreshed and ready to hit the road for a nine mile run. I decided to just run whatever the hell pace I wanted (within reason as I did need to finish the run in one peace and not destroyed). More like, I just wanted to run at a pace that felt comfortable and not pushing.

I didn’t feel totalled at the end of the run which was nice, but I was so thirsty. Quite funny considering my post about hydration last week! I think it’s going to be a lot sooner that I’ll need to take water with me. On my last mile I was just visualising a cold glass of water. When I got home I quickly downed about 500ml. It wasn’t a pleasant experience as it hit my stomach quite badly and I felt quite sick (that sloshy full sicky feeling). Too much water too quickly – lesson learnt!

On the subject of long runs, one of my running club friends, Michelle, pointed me to an article (HERE from the Guardian) regarding long run paces when training for a marathon which I found highly interesting. It made me wonder how much I’ll slow down for my longer runs. I will slow down, but not dramatically for the 10-15 mile runs as I know I’m confident in those distances. It’ll be the 16+ runs where I take it nice and gradual…but then I’m hoping by the time I get there I’ll be naturally faster anyway? Well, it’s all a guessing game for me and whether I even do an 18 mile run is a bit of a question mark anyway!

The rest of the day involved the usual: lots of walks with Alfie, housework, seeing my mum and just general chilling! Lovely 🙂

How was your weekend?

What pace do you run for your long runs relative to your shorter runs?

What movies have you seen lately?

January 12, 2015

Being ill sucks and {giveaway winners}

Happy Monday everyone. I’m glad we got that rather nasty little week out of the way. The week where you just resent that you suddenly have to work again after eating mince pies and doing whatever you fancy 😉 The routine is back and we’re go go go again.

After my optimistic post on Thursday about all my lovely workouts planned for Friday and the weekend I promptly became ill. Sod’s law. Throughout Thursday I started feeling worse for wear: achy, tired and just not right. Then after a terribly night’s sleep and a failed attempt at the gym Friday morning (I ended up doing 15 minutes before realising I shouldn’t be aching and sweating as much as I was) before going home and back to bed. I was supposed to be working from home but I just called in sick instead and spent the rest of the day comatose on the sofa under a blanket watching crappy TV and films. How depressing!

Saturday I wasn’t much better (despite sleeping for 12 hours solid!) so Spin was definitely out of the question but I refused to let it ruin the whole day. We’d planned to go to Nando’s and then see The Hobbit with our friend, Nathan (who’s just returned from an epic month-long trip to Indian and Thailand). I wasn’t up for sitting in a cinema for hours so we just did Nando’s instead.

First Nando’s of 2015! It went down very nicely. The waitress laughed at me and my whole chicken but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

We watched two films at home instead: Guardians of the Galaxy (very funny) and XMen: Days of Future Past (love the XMen films and really enjoyed this one). But I struggle with sitting down and not doing much else so I made sure I dragged Ben on lots of walks with Alfie despite not being 100%. I found the fresh air helped a bit, though it did shatter me more than usual. It’s funny because Ben and me are so different in that respect. He can spend the entire day just watching movies or playing the Xbox whereas I can only sit about for a while before I need to get up and do something. I drive Ben mad at times because I’ll get him to a pause something while I go off and do something to stretch my legs. I’m just an antsy person I think.

Sunday I managed to get a workout in the morning as I started feeling better. We had another lazy day (with housework of course…) which basically sums up our weekend! Next weekend will be busier with Ben’s mum’s birthday meal on Saturday evening and also we’ll probably going to the shops. We’ve done a bit of online clothes shopping before our holiday and I imagine we’ll need to take some items back or exchange for different sizes. But I much prefer to do to it this way than go to the shops hunting for clothes. I am not a natural shopper as I get fed up and frustrated. At least online you can just flick through stuff quickly and they usually have your size.

Well I really wish I had more exciting stuff to say but being ill doesn’t really give me much! I’m feeling much better this morning thankfully. Annoyingly I woke up at 4am (whhhhhhhy??) thinking it was almost time to get up (my alarm was set for 5am) and was in that weird hazy dreamy state for an hour so when my alarm did go off it wasn’t hard to get up thankfully. I got in a good hour’s workout and worked up a good sweat (I did a slight variation of my Strength Routine A and my running strength stuff).

And lastly, the two winners of the Nathan hand-held torch light giveaway are *drum roll*:…

Ken C and Liz!

Please can you send me your address to my email annatheappleblog@gmail.com and I will have the torches sent to you.

[Full disclosure: I gave each competition entrant a number and then used an online random number selector to determine the winner so it would be a fair selection]

How do you cope being ill? I hate it. I hate not being able to do anything and being useless. I tend to drink lots of squash as well as I find it quite easy on the stomach and comforting!

What restaurants do you always go back to? Nando’s is one of those easy restaurants where it’s close, it’s easy and it’s relatively inexpensive – and they do tasty whole chickens!

What films have you seen lately? I can’t wait to watch some good movies on the plane.

January 5, 2015January 5, 2015

Christmas and New Year

Yes I’m so behind on how my Christmas and New Year went… I decided to take a good break from blogging during that time so I could chill a bit.

So here’s a recap of how my Christmas and New Year went. Sadly Ben was ill pretty much from that day before Christmas eve to New Year’s eve. He had lots of fevers and a horrid cough. He had barely any appetite for food or alcohol (which is totally unheard of for Ben) as well so it was a bit of a downer on the festivities. But we still had a good time regardless.

On Christmas day we headed to my parent’s house with Ben’s mum and Alfie. My parents have three dogs of their own and they all get on together really well so it was a fun time for Alfie too, bless him. My dad and me were in charge of cooking so we got down to some preparations and putting things in oven. Thank goodness they have a double oven as the amount we needed to put in there was ridiculous: the turkey, two different sorts of potatoes, two types of stuffing, sausages wrapped in bacon, parsnips and carrots. There was a lot of food!

While that was cooking away we had some buck’s fizz and opened a few presents. This year Ben and me didn’t do big presents for each other because we’re going to the States so soon after Christmas that we thought we’d rather find something out there instead. I received a lot of lovely gifts from my mum and dad and Ben’s mum though.

Then time for lunch!

We had a nice light starter of melon and prosciutto ham. Though I just stuck to melon purely because I wanted to maximise stomach space for the good stuff 😉 For me it’s all about the main course.

Christmas lunch is one of my favourite meals of the year. I adore turkey, cranberry sauce, all the veg, stuffing and gravy. I’m not a potato fan but everything else is fair game.

I pretty much went back for seconds of everything. So good. And because my parents are amazing and they know how much I love this meal, they let me take a good amount of turkey and leftovers home with us so I could enjoy the meal again and again. Heaven.

After lunch we went for a nice walk down the beach with the dogs. I say “we” but I mean the females in the family as Ben wasn’t up for walking and my dad felt he needed to stay behind with Ben and keep him company on the Xbox *sighs*.

The walk was lovely. There were so many people out and about as well. We kept Alfie on his lead purely because he has a tendency to run after anything that takes his interest.

Then when we got home we had some pudding. There were profiteroles, panacotta, Christmas pudding and trifle. I went for trifle which I’d been looking forward to for ages. I was bitterly disappointed to find that I find I really didn’t like it. Apparently I don’t like sherry trifles, only strawberry ones! So I settled for my dependable two apples.

We later played the best board game in the world. The Logo Board Game (not an affiliate link – it’s just to show you how awesome it is). It’s basically asking lots of questions about brands and logos, from Heinz to Fairy Liquid. It’s brilliant and so much fun. While playing that I had some stollen after feeling so cheated from the trifle and it was lovely. The wholemeal flour had made it quite dense though so definitely will keep to white flour next time!

And that was Christmas day. The following days were spent just chilling and really not doing very much. Ben was still ill so we used this quality time to catch up on movies (Edge of Tomorrow – brilliant!, Maleficent, How to Train Your Dragon 2 and some old favourites like The Mummy and the Mummy Returns) while also getting through loads of True Blood (really good, but fairly raunchy and gory).

New Christmas socks and my liquid of choice, Fanta Zero

I made a lot of use of the leftovers as well, recreating the Christmas dinner twice.

And when all the trimmings were used up I made a BBQ turkey stir fry. LITERALLY the best thing I’ve eaten in ages.

So good. I then ran out of turkey. I’m very tempted to buy a turkey crown just to relive the experience again…too much? Maybe so.

We also went to Windsor to see Ben’s dad before New Year as well and had a lovely meal in Bella Italia and caught up with him. Though we had a nightmare journey there; it took three hours in total to drive a one hour fifteen minute journey because of an accident on the motorway and then having a mare finding a parking space. But it was a lovely day regardless.

New Year’s eve we went to my parent’s house for a cheeky Indian take away and another round of the Logo Board Game. We had planned to go to a friend’s house for a party but Ben still felt ill so we felt it best to have a quiet one with the parentals. My granddad was down from Stoke-On-Trent as well so it was lovely seeing him and he really enjoyed the game too (honestly, it’s a game for everyone because it’s all stuff you could know).

New Year’s eve day we met up with Ben’s mum for a lovely 5.5 mile walk through the New Forest. It was a lovely walk. Not too cold but lovely and crisp. Alfie loved all the mud.

When we came home we gave Alfie a good scrub in the bath and dried him off with my hair dryer (he couldn’t work out if he enjoyed it or not I think) and then we headed back to Ben’s mum’s for lunch. Round two!

This time it was a bird in a bird in a bird, which is always very tasty as you get three different types of meat.

One of my favourite vegetables are broad beans and it’s become a funny tradition to have them around Christmas. I could literally eat them forever.

Then we played Rummiekub which is a number game sort of like cards, sort of like scrabble (see HERE for a good explanation). We all decided a games day was needed as we only ever play board games and games like this around Christmas. This needs to change!

Aaaaand that’s it. I really enjoyed our very low-key holiday, though I was sorry Ben was ill. It was nice though to curl down and watch lots of movies and True Blood. I did lots of walking with Alfie (keeping my steps over 12,000 a day) and enjoyed the gym as well so I definitely got a good balance of relaxing and keeping fit. Mentally and physically I feel fresh and ready for the year ahead!

What’s your favourite part of the Christmas meal?

How do you celebrate New Year’s Eve?

Do you do anything on New Year’s Day?