II.

Well, I’ve made it to day two as a blogger. (Do I count as a blogger if I don’t have any readers?)

Today was a more eventful day than most for me, since I’m pretty much a stay-at-home girlfriend these days. It’s a little like I hit the pause button on my life – I went from working 40+ hours a week, or going to uni, or both, to doing none of those things. The funny thing is, I’m all set up to resume my old life next year. But yes, back to today.

I began with a bowl of oatmeal, only because I was out of soy/rice milk to go with my usual weetabix. I love plain weetabix, but can’t stand plain oatmeal, so I made a few additions: half a banana, a few raisins, a bit of cinnamon, a spoonful of muscovado sugar. It was…pretty good. I still prefer my oats in non-porridge forms, like the absolutely stellar oatmeal-cardamom pancakes from the Minimalist in the NYTimes. Let’s pause a minute to mourn the Minimalist column. Oh, Mark Bittman, I just want to see you cook, not emulate Michael Pollan.

Then I went off running through my newly-discovered field. It wasn’t as foggy as it was yesterday, so I was able to see all sorts of things: various farm buildings, a flock of fat white geese that I at first mistook for sheep, the busy road I live on, the nearby park-and-ride. There was also traffic on my little farm road. Two trucks passed me, and I kindly stepped off the path for them. I checked a map and apparently went somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.04 miles, but who’s counting? I’m still a little sore, and that two miles drained me more than it would have last fall when I was more active, but I’m pretty happy to be back outside, getting all sweaty and mussing up my hair. In a week or so I’m going to try to get back up to 3 or 3.5 miles a day, 5x a week or so, which I know is still a terribly small amount for some people – the people I like to refer to as “runners” – but is a good amount for me.

Lunch was a few eggs from the nearby organic farm, with some cherry tomatoes also from that farm and a few basil leaves plucked from the plant on my windowsill.

I did some grocery shopping in the afternoon in preparation for dinner on Monday (which is Valentine’s Day) because I have a big weekend planned. More on that later.

Dinner had to be early and quick because, well, I have a confession. I drink a lot of wine. Or should I say, a lot of wines. Today was wine tasting night, so while I sampled 8 wines, I probably only drank a couple glasses-full. (I’m not a spitter!) In order to make it to our tasting on time, we had a simple pasta dinner. Spaghetti with a sauce made with tomatoes, olive oil, garlic, onions, anchovies, a bit of red wine, and some capers. I would have thrown in olives if we had any.

I guess that’s all for now.