lanny's blog

Races.

I've decided I want to do 50 races before I turn 30. This includes, 5k, 10k, 15k, relay, half marathon, and full marathons.
I want to have 50 race bibs collected by then.

I am going to do two more races before the year is out. a 15k race and a 10k race.

More on this later.

blog...

i'm still alive. haven't felt motivated to write anything. 

Breathe

I feel as though if I don't breathe and slow down, everything is going to pass me by. Everyday has become a series of flashing images that seem to barely register in my memory.
Moments are slipping through my fingers and I don't know where they're off to.
I can't remember things like I used to, and I don't feel as close to people like I used to.
Am I stretched too thin to be able to fully focus on those who are important?
I want to remember the moments the shared moments, but I can't remember what meal we shared together.
I have to slow down. Shut off some things, focus on one thing at a time and get back to my center.
Breathe.
Breathe.
Acknowledge and breathe.

I've Been Baking And Cooking

Homemade Spicy Chocolate Cupcakes 

For this I chose two recipes from the Food Network to make. However, they're not on the site anymore. I then combined some ingredients and added my own. I decided to go with cayenne pepper powder because it has more heat and last time I baked these, the heat was almost undetectable. I wanted to really get a sense of chili this time.

Also, this time I boiled the cayenne, chili powder and a stick of cinnamon in the black coffee and then strained it. It really extracted all the flavorings.

Results: Very spicy. Some people were taken back by it, but I thought it was very good. Some people were not used to and and said they want it less spicy. I will reduce the amount of cayenne and make my own frosting next time. 

Cajun Craw Fish & Fried Rice

For this semi homemade meal, I bought 1 pound of craw fish and 1 pound of shrimp from The Boiling Crab in Westminster. I chose he medium seasoning, which is spicy with the whole shabang of garlic, lemon, and all the goodness.

I peeled both the crab and craw fish then reboiled the craw fish heads and corn with some more seasoning and let it reduce into a sauces. I then started my fried rice with onions and garlic, added the rice, the craw fish and shrimp, some soy sauce and a dash of fish sauce. I then finished it with some peas and scallions.

I placed everything into the oven to bake a little and poured the sauces over it after.

Results: Delicious. I will buy the powder to make this more often. 

Home Made Phe Sua Da (Vietnamese Iced Coffee) Cupcakes With Home Made Condensed Milk Frosting

These cupcakes are dear to me because Vietnamese Iced Coffee has always been a part of my life ever since I was younger. My mom always had the filter and hot water boiling, ready to begin the slow process of filtering the coffee. She then mixed the hot coffee with some condensed milk, make some crushed ice and poured the coffee over it. The smell is synonymous with my childhood mornings and to this day, when I smell it, I think of home.

I couldn't help but lick the spoon of condensed milk after I scooped it into my mix, it brought me back to my childhood when my mom would let me eat it with saltine crackers. Sounds weird, but the salty and sweet made it a great snack.  

The company in which I work for, makes their own ground coffee and their iced coffee is very good and very traditional. I bought the Lee's ground coffee and my own filter. I then filtered 4 tablespoons of coffee and waited for it to drip. In the mean time, I prepared and sifted all my ingredients.  

I added extra coffee grinds to the coffee to bring out the taste and smell.

For my frosting, I created my own using butter, confection sugar, condensed milk and filtered coffee. The frosting tasted like condensed milk, but not overbearing. It really rounded out the cupcake.

Results: Wow, my absolute favorite. I thought everything came together quite nicely. Everyone loves the frosting and you can't help but want to spoon it into your mouth.  I will add more coffee grinds next time to get that smell of coffee, but this cupcake is pretty much there. I will bring some back for my parents when I visit them next weekend.

  

25th Year

Onto my fourth month of my 25th year and I have decided that for every month of this year I will do something for myself. This could be a variety of things, but it has to be something that is slightly bigger than ordinary. It can be taking a trip, taking on a challenging activity or learning something new. So here's what we have so far and what I have planned.

January

• Turned 25
  
• Started photography class (Something I've always wanted to do)
  

February

• Went to Santa Barbara for the first time. Went wine tasting and learned how to appreciate wine. Discovered I really like Shiraz wines. 
• Developed my first roll of film
• Started Half Marathon Training
  

March

• Went to Vegas for the first time with a group of girls and had tons of fun.
  
• Started to do yoga daily and take on meditation.

April

• Visiting Joshua Tree Park -done
• Taking on Half Dome! - done
• Britney Spears concert with the one and only Mochi Ball -done
  

May

• Half Marathon Race
• Going back to NYC!!!
  
• Going to Seattle for the first time!
• Learn how to body board and surf  
• Kayaking!
  

June

• Paint balling

July

• Comic Convention in San Diego (Dressing up and going all out!)
  

August

• Seeing No Doubt for the first time!! I've been waiting for this for FOREVER!!!
• Rock climbing outside  
  

September

October

• Running Women's Nike Half Marathon!!! 

November
I want to go to Europe 

December

• Complete a photo  book of pictures I have taken and developed over the year. Including portraits of my friends and families, scenes and moments. 
• Finish my family pictures book. Scan, edit, lay out and make a book for each aunt and uncle.
  

Any ideas for these months coming up?

My ultimate goal is to remember I matter and that I can do anything I put my mind to and I am worth it. I promise to look out for myself and treat myself with respect and love because then I can love people even more.

Thank you to all my friends who have helped me so much through all these years, I would not be the same without you.

Half Marathon -Done!

Yesterday I ran the OC Half Marathon with my friend Kim. It was amazing. I hadn't ran for about two weeks prior to the half marathon and that made me nervous. The last time I ran was the 11 mile run and then we had the 14 mile Half Dome hike so for the two weeks I spent time recovering from the hike and just being lazy.

Saturday:

I spent the morning watching King Kong. Never had the urge to watch it before until it showed up on TBS and I sat there watching it even though I should have gone to the horse stables to do my photography homework. Sigh. Will get to it, will get to it. I finally made it to lab and worked on four photographs. I wanted to do more, but it takes a lot of time to get the right exposure time and technique for photos and I will not move on from a photograph until there are no dust marks on there and the blacks are actually black!  

After lab I picked up Kim to go get our race packets. When we got there, the parking lot was pretty empty which was nice because we got good parking. We made it inside and were given our bibs and t shirts for the race. I remember thinking, OH No, this is real!! Kim was really excited about all the events that were happening and I was nervous. 

We headed to Road Runner after to pick up some last minute things for the race. I bought a track jacket, some socks, energy boosting chewies such as gatorade jelly belly and Cliff's gummy blocks. Road Runner is where I had been fitted for my running shoes a few weeks ago and they are amazing!

We then made it home and I had to pack my bag because Kris and I were going to stay over at Kim and Walter's so we can all make it to the race at the same time.

We finally made it out the door to go to dinner at 7:30, a little later than we had expected and didn't get seated at Bucca until 8:30. Eeek!!

Carb loading was fun, but I was also paranoid about not being able to digest everything and may need to go number 2 during the race so I also loaded up on plenty of veggies to aid the system. Everything was really good.

Kim and I left early to get home to shower and prepare ourselves. We laid out our clothes and pinned our bibs. Attached the shoe tag and packed our backpacks with a change of clothes and some other essentials. We stuffed our running jacket pockets with our energy blocks and jelly beans. We then spent some time stretching and didn't get to bed until 11:30pm.

Sunday

My alarm went off at 4am and I was not having it. I justified that we were only down the street from the start line and would not need 1 hour to get ready. I stayed in bed for another 20 minutes until that nagging feeling crept up on me. When I opened the door, Kim was opening hers at the same time.

Breakfast for me was one English muffin with crunchy organic peanut butter and slices of bananas on top. One glass of OJ and lots of water. My stomach started flip flopping and I became nervous.

I got dressed and my mouth became dry with anticipation.

We piled into the car at 5:30 and headed to the start line. We got there at 5:45am and the boys were so kind to come and wait with us for a bit while we jumped around and stretched out.

When I got out of the car I was nervous like no other. I've done a few races before, but this was the big one! Once I got to the starting line my stomach stopped flip flopping and my breathing patterns became normal. I was pumped! I started jumping around and laughing. We couldn't believe it! We were finally there!

The boys left around 6:05am and we kept stretching and talking. By 6:20 we got into our corral line and waited. Photos were taken by a helicopter and speeches were made. When they started singing the Star Spangle Banner, I had goosebumps and slightly emotional as I was about to embark on the final leg of my training.

The fast runners went first and 2 minutes after the horn blew and we were off. It took about 2 minutes to get to the starting line and once we stomped our foot across that line, we were off!

The first mile was unreal, we kept saying, "Wow! I can't believe we're doing it!"

When we finished mile two, we said, "Okay, that was just a warm up. We've done 11 miles before. Let's do this!"

Mile 3-5 was relatively easy. We were about to enter into the Upper Newport Ecological Reserve so we chose to wait in line for the porta potty. I went even though I did not need to go at all. It took about 5 minutes to wait in line. GRR!!

Miles 6-10 were really long to me because we were in a valley in the reserve and it was really quiet. Furthermore when you look across the reserve you can still see runners. This made the run seem even longer because it felt as though it was never ending. By mile 9 I was ready to get the hell out of the valley.

Once we hit the mile 10 marker, I was pumped. 3 more miles! That's nothing!

When we hit mile 11, we stopped so we can stretch out. My muscles were going to cramp if I didn't. That took about 2 minutes.  Then we hit it to mile 12.

Mile 12 marker was one of the most memorable moments of the run. I remember getting emotional because we were almost done. The goosebumps came back and a burst of adrenaline surged through us. We decided to sprint the last mile. It was a straight shot to the finish line and it was the fastest mile I had ever ran.

When we reached the 13 mile mark, we held hands and sprinted even faster to the finish line. It was the longest .1 I have ever ran and we finished together with a huge smile on our faces.

It was amazing!! I felt so incredibly happy and excited. We got our medals right away and we were just soaking in the moment.

We met up with the boys and had breakfast at the pancake house after. I was still high from it all.

I am still high from the moment and I am fired up for running. I am ready to start training for the October Half Marathon and get my time better and attack those SF hills.

Keeping my momentum up, I have signed up for the Huntington Beach Full Marathon in February! This is the same event that I had done my 5k in. Imagine, 1 year later coming back to do a Full Marathon.

Spacing out, I will be training this whole year and I am so excited!

I have that renewed sense of, well I can fucking do anything!!

Thank you to all my friends near and far who supported me. Throughout the race I thought of everyone and their encouraging words and I didn't stop because of that. I thought of my grandma and how she was strong enough to do a triple bypass and is doing everything she can to stay strong for us all and that got me through all my miles. Whenever I thought I should stop, my will kept me strong and my support system, which is all of you guys, kept me going. My will fought hard and it won.

I am thankful.

I can't believe there's a site dedicated to this girl's style...

http://www.vanessastyle.org/

Really?? Is she really an icon?

I will not live for Fridays.

I've been trying to do more on the weekdays and thoroughly enjoy what I do and it's worked really well. It also helps that we're on a rotating schedule of working one day on weekends so some weeks I get a 3 day weekend, which works out great for me to take small trips such as next week's Half Dome and next month's NYC trip and Seattle trip.

I use my weekends to get other things done that I probably wouldn't have a chance to during the week such as take pictures during different times of the day. I love my weekends, but I'm definitely loving my weekdays as well. Also, it helps that work is actually going really well. It's a lot of work, but I don't stress, I just use the time I could be stressing and thinking about it to just doing it and making sure I do the best I can. Sometimes we spend more time worrying about something than actually doing it.

So here's to rewarding day, everyday, not just Fridays.

It must be spring....

wedding season is in full spring and all I want to do is hear all these stories about it. Crazy, I know, but it's all so beautiful!

We helped my friend's friend put together her invitations the other night and it was a lot of fun.

No thoughts on getting married, but all the festivities leading up to it seem really fun and I wanna design and do big craft projects.

For now, I will design samples for wedding invites and hopefully someone will want it.

I've always loved rainbows...

I want to make this cake because:

It's pretty darn cute! It reminds me of childhood and sometimes the one colored cakes or cupcakes get pretty boring....

http://www.omnomicon.com/rainbowcake

what do you think? no eggs too!!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ameadowlark/3178964286/sizes/l/in/photostream/