Playing Hookie

Today I skipped class! Hah. I hardly ever do that so it was strange. I only had one class today and my Professor made it clear that we weren't going to do anything, so I just went for it. I ended up sleeping in and having brunch when I woke up: 2 eggs (one dippy and one cooked), a piece of very burnt toast (grr) and a small salad with some feta cheese on top.
After brunch I went for a run! The weather was beautiful and I'm terrified I'm going to lose my running skills so I slipped on my old sneakers and headed out for a short run. I ran about 4 miles and it was tough! Whyyyy do I lose my running stamina so quickly? I didn't really care because the stress related to racing is gone, but I do plan on running more! My feet didn't hurt at all which is good. I'm not sure if it's because they're recovered or because I went back to my old shoes. I guess I shall see. After the run I went to Trader Joes and picked up lots of treats, likeee:
These are sooo adorable and of course I had to have one as soon as I got home :) I also then proceeded to strategically hide them in my freezer so my roommates can't find them!

Last night I made something slightly new -- roasted potatoes! I sliced up 2 mini red and 1 mini white potatoes and coated them in olive oil and a bunch of herbs, heavy on the rosemary and black pepper. I cooked them at 475 for about 30 minutes (I like things well done) and flipped them halfway through. They were so good but shrunk a lot! This is a before picture:

(Why do my pictures always look so blurry?)

I ended up eating a serving of them with a burger. I made a very small patty out of lean ground beef on the George Foreman grill, topped it with cheddar cheese, and poured pickles and ketchup onto a slice of toast. You can see how small the patty is in comparison to the toast...haha! I probably should have just used 1 piece of toast. Oh well.
So as I mentioned yesterday I went to an AWESOME event on Tuesday night. I write restaurant reviews (for free...haha) and was invited to go to the opening of a new up scale Mexican restaurant by Boston's waterfront called Temazcal Cantina. The restaurant was so beautiful and all of the food was amazing.

I drank a few margaritas and a few glasses of sangria -- this was a raspberry margarita, sooo good.
Everything was served buffet style and the first spread included chips with guacamole and a bunch of other dips, and a ton of exotic fruit. The fruit was possibly the freshest I've ever seen and I absolutely loved the prickly cactus pear! You can barely see it but it's that little pink thing peeking out of the top left hand corner.
The next course was full of meat! We have a chicken taquito type thing, bacon wrapped shrimp, a bacon wrapped quail stuffed with sausage, some sort of fried cheese chorizo thing, and pork which was scraped from a full pig! The taquito was definitely my favorite but everything was delicious and I love trying new things.
And dun dun dun...DESSERT! I am a chocolate lover so I wasn't too crazy about the desserts offered but of course just had to try them all. I absolutely loved the fruit thing and of course ate the chocolate covered banana, but that cheesecake covered in sugared corn kernels was just a little too weird for me!

I do need to briefly give myself some props on how proud I am that I went to this thing alone. I'm definitely not a follower, and am always happy to spend time by myself (i.e. I have no problem going out to eat alone), but I'm just not a great networker. Over the summer I went to one networking event for wok by myself, walked in and almost had a heart attack. I had a really hard time starting conversations and didn't feel confident enough in myself to talk to people who were so far in their careers. I'm not one of those people who can show up anywhere and "work the room". I tend to find one person and stick to them. I don't necesarily think this is negative because I end up having much more thoughtful and deep conversations with the people I meet, but I do get that it's not really conducive to networking.

When I RSVPd to this event at Temazcal I figured I wouldn't end up going. But I made myself! It's important for me to step outside of my comfort zone and even more important to meet new people who share my interests. I ended up meeting a lot of really nice people and am SO happy I sucked it up and went! Yay!

I need to get some reading done then it's off to bed. Good nighttt!