Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Day 3 Raw Food Detox

still getting used to this new lifestyle...went to order breakfast; raisin bagel toasted with cream cheese. I got all the way to my desk when I had Homer Simpson 'doh' moment. I was like this darn cream cheese I forgot its a 'cheese' lol and a dairy product. I hope this wasn't cheating but i scraped the hell out the bagel got all the cheese off no white residue left and ate the warm bagel as my 1 hot meal today. I have to chill with the heavy carbs yesterday I had bread with my soup; I don't normally eat too many and I don't want to substitute breads to make me feel full because I have all these dietary restrictions

Day 1 started off harsh because my girls and I went for a brunch/b-day celebration at this new trendy DC restaurant called CoCo Sala. CoCo Sala is a chocolate boutique but of course they serve regular food but cacao is their speciality. Now I gotta give myself a pat on the back for resisting the tempting items. My friends and I felt like we were on foodnetwork the way the chef's platted the food and the interesting mix of desserts (homemade marshmallows) ingrated with brunch items. One of my girls had a french toast blend with some Smore stuff in the middle. Poor Caplady ate salad (no cheese) and I did get Mint Hot chocolate (made with water) both were yummy so I'll will be going back after the raw food detox is over.

Move over Teavanna..quietly I haven't even gone there in a while anyway. My fave loose leaf tea spot is Ching Ching Chang in Georgetown, but I may have a new #1 Teaism. I've ate at Teasim a few times food is good, tea was straight nothing to get exicted over. The last time I went to Teasim I stopped at the store and picked up two types of herbal loose tea:
1. Mind & Body-Lemongrass, apple, rooibos, ginger, ginseng, cinnamon, bean peels, mistletoe, cardamom, clove & black pepper. Energizes, rejuvenates, boosts the immune system, creates physical balance
2.Now & Zen-Gingko, St. John's wort, lemongrass, birch leaves, bean peels, mistletoe & nettle leaves. Relieves stress, improves memory, strengthens the heart, and calms without tiring you. Also contains antioxidants.
Man these teas are good like the taste rocks. I haven't had any loose tea this good in a long while so I'll be going back soon because the 2oz package I got will be gone soon. I'm trying to cut down on my caffeine consumption which means chillin out on green tea as much as I love it so I'm constantly looking for other teas I can drink that will supply energy.

Anyway time for me to get lunch fruit and a grain bar *yay* 18 more dayz to go

Friday, September 26, 2008

Rep for the hometeams

I finally made it to the new beautiful Washington Nationals Stadium. I was determine to make it the inaugural season and I did lol the next to last game. I had tickets to the last 2 games of the season but Thursdays rain prevented me from attending the last game. I sat in section 308 but folks weren't lying when they said you get a good view from all seats at the Nat's Stadium.
Some Pics:




Ignore the books posted on the blog for now lol I am still reading them but slowly.. meanwhile I just breezed through Faith Evan's memoir Book- Keep the Faith (read <3 days)




This book was GREAT!! First of all in the late 90's Mary J was my #1 and Faith was my #2. Those two ladies are the reason I streaked my hair blonde in 1996 OMG memories!! I can remember in high school at night I was either playing Mary My life cd or that first Faith CD- talk about some classic R&B cds. Plus in the mid - late 90's badboy had everything on lock! I'm not going to spoil the plotlines because I suggest everyone hit up Amazon and cop this book. I learned alot about Faith one I have much respect for her being a mother she cares deeply for all her youngins; I had no idea she did so much song writing (where the real money is in the music industry) for other artists in addition to her own projects- [Sidebar bout to look into that forreal my homey is always telling me since I'm scared to recite my own poems I need to sell them to people looking to make song]; I learned Fay loved the ganja and would beat the $hi out of a chick quick, was 'pro' choice lol; she went through alot for her man, but check the book out definitely a good read. The co-author did a great job writing Faith fair and open retelling of her life, she wanted to clarify as many rumors as possible- Lil Kim, Tupac etc.

Sunday starts my 21 day Raw Food Detox; This is going to be challenging for me, although I'm vegetarian I do eat seafood which I'm trying to remove from my diet. It's hard when you are from the state of the bluecrab/crabcakes. Here are the guidelines for the diet.

1. Diet will consist of healthy, whole, primarily organic Super Foods! These foods and beverages are to be consumed in their natural state (unprocessed and uncooked). They are:
  • Fruits and vegetables
  • Nuts & Seeds
  • Beans
  • Legumes
  • Dried fruit
  • Freshly juiced fruits and vegetables
  • Young Coconut Milk
  • Herbal Tea
2. You are allowed ONE (1) cooked meal per day before 12 noon. However, this meal should meet vegan standards (i.e., no meat, no dairy, no eggs or other animal products). This meal should also be organic.
3.
Aim for 30-60 minutes a day, at least 3 days per week, and vow to get that heart rate up by doing something fun and fitness related.
4.
Aim for just 5-15 minutes per day of reflection.
5.
So, commit to have 7-8 hours of sleep each night.

I'm not doing this as a way to loose weight I'm looking forward to the discipline it will require to carry out each of these goals for the raw foods detox. Again I'm hoping it will propel my eating habits to change to more traditional vegetarian/vegan blend. I can't be a pure vegan cuz a sista is not throwing out her leather handbags and rocking clothes made from hippies lmao. The hardest part of this diet will be the dairy, mainly cheese & yogurt that's my weakness. Most of the time I eat salad and fruit smoothies every other night for dinner, so that's a filling meal. I plan to pick up my hummus and pita bread consumption as that's also a filling meal. My niece did this earlier this year with her girls, they normally try to detox twice a year. I mos def will keep the blog updated with the progress- it starts on Sunday which I already got a problem going some restaurant called Coco Sala in the city; a chocolate bar my friend wants to have a birthday brunch there. I don't like chocolate like that anyway, but now im really gonna be struggling with alternative menu options.

Anyway before I roll let me say Go Skins beat Dallas! I will be rocking my Portis jersey tomorrow for all the hataz!

Saturday, September 20, 2008

long time........ i kno i kno

what up folks been a min..was battling a sinus infection for a week among other thing anyway

want to take a quick moment to say RIP for those who lost their lives 9/11.
I didn't start working at the d-dpt until that next year 02, part time at that but let me tell ya.. had I been around during 9/11 I would quit the next day talk about scared for life.

my LLC license came in so I feel jive official..now the real work beings in terms of being a small business owner; business growth and maximizing profit! I'm excited and ready to begin the journey.

I went to the spa first time ever with my BFF last weekend. I've always declined going with my older lady friends just because I'm not comfy with a random people touching me, but I just allowed myself to be open minded plus I was tired of ppl sicing getting massages so I had to see what the big deal is for myself. We had the full works package; hour massage, facial, mani/pedi cure. The massage was cool, kinda hurt at times but I do think I will try it again based on the message therapist recommendations. He said a source of my many tension headaches is due to the knots in my neck & shoulder muscles, and my tendancy to hold my shoulder up instead of letting them naturally fall. Anything to help my headache burdans ease up, I'm so naturally tense maybe these massage sessions can help with stress management. The facial was fun- every 10 mins she was throwing gunk on my face and pointing the steamer at me. Got a nice lil happy glow going... We did some slight shopping at Columbia mall afterwards. I hadn't been there since like 2001 entire mall transformed. Not recapping the whole shopping trip but I picked up a new shade of my fav mac product slimshine lipstick nice fall color: Prudeaux- Dark rich burgundy plum.
I also picked up an 'mineral make up' (MMU) product- Bare Minerals I.D eyeshawdow. I wanted to see what the big deal of this MMU craze. All make up is made of minerals but the MMU is striped of some harsher chemcials and most people opt for Mineral based foundations etc because its less harsh on the skin. the MMU eyeshadow I got is a cute color but its sooo light and fluffy when I put it on my brush its like falling all over the place like dust. I really don't like the texture of it compared to my other shadows so I don't think I'll be switching over the MMU because I don't have sensative skin and I really don't wear foundation anyway.

I did cop the Chanel nailpolish mentioned here on my lunch break this week when I snuck over to Pentagon City for a few since my boss was gone hehe. I will be testing out the Blue Satin shade this week, hopefully it won't be chipping like crazy.
Coach has a vicious fall line up of kicks coming out. I like their tennis shoes; I only have one pair because I feel like once u have one pair of Coach canvas shoes no need to keep buying more and more, all they do is change the color of the C's. However they have some high top joints that are effin vicious that $150 got me pondering so we'll see...

some quick comments on the financial crises of the country..honestly I don't pride myself with knowing alot of about the economics principles & finances of the country besides 401k 101, but of course I followed the housing & subprime mortage crises. Once the gov't starting bailing out big corps I became addicted to reading the daily news about Lehman, AIG and the commentary backlash. The whole situation is making me look up and learn all these investment terms so I'm aware, but its funny yet not shocking how USA gov't allowed companies to wheel and deal with fake money (meaning invesements backed by subprime loans= debt and not profit). Sooooo many bammas got rich off the last few years of mortage mis-management its not even funny. Is the gov't gonna man- up and change the rules?? Who knows because this is a country where debt is looked as OK- hence our nation's deficit, the war spending, and now the new bill congress racked up bailing out corporations. I'm trying to target 09 to buy a house but I'm not going to force it and be house poor and though I'm working hard to pay down debt I shouldn't have racked up in the first place. I make sure that I'm drilling into my neices and other young folks I mentor heads not to abuse credit because not only is black america in debt but again the nation operatates as if it runs off an unlimited credit source. I'm just sayin you can't be mad at the folks who got mortagates knowing they couldn't afford the payments when the entire countries operates like debt is ok, chap 7 is ok- no problem. Keep in mind I'm not financial expert just venting about what I read in the post.

My last rant and it cringes me to type this :( but MAJOR F-U to the Wizards. First of all I did not agree with signing Arenas to 111 miyon$ deal; that's my cappy dude and he been great for the franchaise but right now (and I feel he can mature into) he's not the kinda guy that will lead this team to the ring- no offense. But com'on Abe Pollin, slim had 2 knee surgiers and yall max him out and what comes out of the wiz camp this week an annoucement: Gil to undergo a cleanup procedure out until at least Dec. I'm so pissed like I had my Wiz Tix hook up ready.. now I'm only going to games this season when I want to see the opposing team stars. yes I love Caron but no Gil makes everything boring and like other teams in the east improved- D.Wade is back. I hope we can get back into the playoffs but right now errything is looking sus' oh well :( My skins better keep me happy with Wins cuz imma be pissed off at the Wizards for a while!

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

how much stuff does one have to manage?

I got an email from a friend who's using twitter now.. for those of yall not familiar. Twitter is another social type application where you post updates on your life via phone, net etc. People subscribe to your page and basically read about your life updates. Its been out a for a while but now that a few famous people post on twitter everyone's hopped on the site.

So I'm like a person can have a blog, facebook/myspace/linked-IN page, twitter, regular email (personal and work), RSS feeds to manage. I refuse and mark my words here in this blog to join Twitter nation (no matter how hard my friend pressures me). I can barely find time to keep the blog rollin...luckily I can handle my facebook via blackberry... myspace is boring now but I keep it open to communicate with those who only have m.space . Linked in- my coworkers are pressing me to join to be hooked up with other professionals. I add new sites to my RSS list everyday-such a junky (49 subscriptions)

All I'm saying though is how fascinatated the world is with having your life posted on-line, and having your friends/strangers comment on the life that you post on-line.
I enjoy such sites too, but as infosec professional I read a story about someone's identity stolen through scrounging details about this person from all their social sites pages. That info was used to guess passwords and comprimise other senstive information. Its not like you have to be nicked out here but since everyone's updating their statuses every hour or so- "Having fun at mall" during that time someone who e-trailing you could use that as oppourtunity to ruff your house while your out. I'm just saying we need to be concious of what we say and do on-line because its a war going on (on-line) and that data breeches are happ'n constantly so just be wise when using such sites.


Email- gmail all day long- I actually decline to push this to my blacbkerry just cuz I don't want the joint buzzin all day long.

I have 3 work emails- my main joint i just had to dump half my emails into a .PST to bring my inbox from 500 down to 150 just so I wouldn't keep getting the " you are over the limit" email daily from the sysadmin. And then bammas want to send messages to both my gov't and contractor email- do you know how annoying it is to have daily dupes and while I'm kirking I don't understand how ppl can send attachments over 5mb! Someone sent me 2 emails totaling 10mb in attachments. I sure enough went down to their cube like- is there any reason you couldn't ask me to bring my thumb drive over to get the attachments. Like if I had not cleaned out my inbox those joints would been bounced back- anyway ppl please THINK before sending big attachments especially over work email. And let me add video forwards are not appropriate for work or person email - I HATE THOSE!

Google released their own web browser last night called Chrome. I have to give it up for google they are the internet Microsoft. Quick review of the browser IT IS FAST like zipping FAST, but until the product matures some by having add-ons etc it will not replace my FF3 with adblock and flash block= NO ADS at all while surfing. so what by 2012- Google take over the world?

Just venting about the state of the world we are truly in the information age- OVER LOAD!!