A great day in the city

First of all, I successfully participated in another Buy Nothing Day. All I purchased was breakfast and lunch for a total of $14. I did not set foot in a single store.
I finally went to Occupy Wall Street. I marched. I chanted. I was (and still am) incredibly inspired, and a little more hopeful than I was this time yesterday. I stood in front of the New York Stock Exchange and exercised my First Amendment rights and it felt so liberating. My first time on Wall Street, and I was protesting the very existence of Wall Street. Perfect. I wish I could write more about it but it's difficult for me to put into words. Here's a photo:

I also saw my first opera today, Faust. I didn't love it but I liked it a lot. The Met is pretty impossible to describe but I'll try: breathtaking, gargantuan, sparkly. Haha. Sounds like I'm talking about a diamond. My best friend is in the student ambassador program at the Met so he gets free tickets to dress rehearsals and performances sometimes. We went to the final dress rehearsal of Faust. I'm thinking about asking for tickets to see The Barber of Seville (don't feel like typing out Italian, sorry) in February. Hmmmm.
My Thanksgiving was great. I ate reasonable portions and enjoyed every bite! Also, the only things I ate that weren't vegan: whipped cream and a tiny sliver of apple pie. My 5K didn't go quite as well as I hoped it would (I finished in 37:06) but that's alright. It's still much faster than any of my 5K training runs have been in the past month so I'm not too unhappy. All the participants got free apple pies! Here's a photo of my boyfriend and I from the morning of the race:

I ate as close to vegan as I could today. The only things I ate that weren't vegan: a pat of butter and a little bit of whipped cream. I ain't even mad. Calories are way too high for a rest day but I didn't binge and I made good choices while eating out. Sometimes that's all I can ask of myself.
Tomorrow: hitting the gym (or the pavement for a walk) early, breakfast with a friend from high school,  cleaning and packing, possibly grocery shopping, visiting grandparents, heading to my boyfriend's for an entire week (yay!)
This week I am going to the elementary school his mom works at (she's a speech pathologist). I'm going to shadow her for a few days and then volunteer in some classrooms. I'm really excited! I haven't spent time with kids in a long time and I'm hoping spending some time in elementary schools over break will help me start to figure out whether I want to get my elementary or secondary teaching certification.
Going to read a bit before bed. Goodnight, whoever is reading this! :)

Food/exercise, and control

Vegan pumpkin pie is baking in the oven! About 20 more minutes until it's done, and then it has to cool for an hour and set in the refrigerator for a while. It (hopefully) will not be touched until dessert on Thanksgiving day. It wasn't too hard to make, although I did have some issues with the consistency of the crust. Anyway.

Ran 2.5 miles today and felt so great! Tomorrow I'm not sure if I'll have much time to work out, but if I do it'll just be some light cross-training at the gym for 30-40 minutes. I need to rest up for my 5K on Thursday morning (SO EXCITED). This is by far the biggest race I've ever participated in- over 10,000 runners, INCLUDING: Joan Benoit Samuelson and Bill Rodgers! I'm hoping to get their autographs tomorrow when I go to the race expo and pick up my number.

I finally feel in control of my eating again, and of course it's because I'm at home and I get to decide everything I eat. I have some control at school, I guess, but it's not like I actually get to choose what to cook, from a seemingly infinite number of options. I get to choose from the options someone else lays out for me. I wish I had more willpower, and I think I can try and make better decisions, but ultimately I  know that I will inevitably eat better/healthier foods and more reasonable portions when I cook at home. I do cook for myself on the weekends at school and I don't have the money to cook for myself during the rest of the week, especially considering that my dining hall meals have already been purchased.

Today I had oatmeal with a tbsp of apple butter, a coconut-milk yogurt with blueberries, and herbal tea for breakfast. For lunch I had a slice of sprouted wheat bread with a little peanut butter and cinnamon (weird combo but one that I adore), baby carrots and hummus, and leftover roasted brussel sprouts. I felt hungry after eating all that so then I had a clementine. I also had 16oz water with lunch.

While baking the pie I had a couple spoonfuls of the crust dough and filling but I'm not stressing about that. I had another 16oz water after my run. Dinner will be 1 or 1.5 bowls of roasted vegetable soup and possibly a piece of tempeh with ginger-soy marinade.

I'm really enjoying planning my meals again and I know I won't be able to at school so I'm trying not to get too comfortable with this...but I so badly want to be close to 150 when I go back at the beginning of January, because I know I'll have no issues maintaining my weight. And as my half-marathon training gets more intense maybe I WILL lose weight, who knows?

Veganism: Day Two

• Breakfast: tofu scramble (tofu, carrots, onion, artichoke, veggie sausage); home fries with ketchup; small apple; black coffee with (vegan!) sugar
• Lunch: pomegranate-cranberry tempeh; quinoa; kale; vegan broccoli-almond soup; apricot-almond bar (also vegan! I love that I go to a school with an abundance of vegan baked goods!)
• Snack: raspberry zinger herbal tea
• Snack: two vanilla-almond energy squares
• Dinner: stuffing; vegetable stew; asparagus; applesauce with cinnamon; vegan gingerbread (was not very good, btw)
• Snack: tamarind almonds (just asked my friend to take them away from me...addictive) 
• Exercise: 1 hr elliptical; upper body strength training

Veganism: Day Uno

• Breakfast: none...my bad, my bad
• Lunch: whole-wheat penne with broccoli, tomato, garlic, Italian seasoning; mango fruit leather
• Snack: green tea with organic sugar; 1 piece ginger candy
• Dinner: Nile lentil soup with brown rice; two carrots with garlic hummus; an apple with peanut butter (too much peanut butter!); glass of unsweetened vanilla almond milk
• Exercise: 5K run!

Oh hey there

Last night I dyed my hair reddish brown. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision but I'm happy with how it turned out. The first time I ever dyed my hair it was a similar color.
Things have been okay these past few days. I'm having food-related anxiety again. It's so weird- I'm either bingeing mindlessly or feeling like I don't want to eat at all. Today it's the latter, but that certainly has something to do with the fact that my stomach is in knots and that no one has emptied the trash in the kitchen for a while and it smells horrible. Like, it made me gag several times this morning when I was having breakfast.
I'm not even going to start listing all of the reasons why I want to live off-campus so badly, but there's one of them. Anyway. My closest friends are all going to Washington D.C. this afternoon (to participate in a protest). They'll be back Monday morning but I'm still going to miss them a lot. Hopefully I'll be productive in the meantime. I have to spend all day in the museum today and I'm hoping to finish the program I'm designing. That's pretty much my only goal for today. Also to do the rest of my laundry and work a little bit on another project.
I think I might drive to Ellsworth because I want to make sure my car is running okay. Thinking about stopping at the Goodwill since I haven't been there yet.
Okay time to do things! Bye.