So I was reading the D.C. United blog this weekend, to get the scoop on the game last night (tied the Red Bulls 0-0) when I happened across this video.

Pay special attention to the picture that's shown after the dude says, "She's wholesome." You may recognize it.



(P.S. if you missed how I ended up in this random video, you can read all about it here and here.)

Your Google Reader is exploding with close to 200 unread items and you haven't had a chance to respond to any of the birthday notes you got on Facebook. (P.S. Thanks to everyone who left me messages! It made my day!) Eekk! I have been a busy bee lately.

Let's catch up shall we.

Tuesday I went for another four-mile run after work. It felt good for the most part, but my legs were definitely tight afterward no matter how much I stretched and rolled them out with the Stick.

Wednesday I wanted to do another four miler, but my super tight legs would have none of it. I did manage about 1.5 miles of running and another half mile of walking before they were too bad.

Yesterday was my birthday. (So long 21, hello 22.) I celebrated by going for a sports massage, which was a little wimpier than I needed it to be. I'm used to a massage therapist who will really work those knots out, unfortunately, the lady I had last night didn't hit them all.

I spent the rest of my birthday night listening to the radio broadcast of my friend's football season opener until they cut it off to air Obama's speech. (Sidenote: Yes, I'm following the presidential race pretty closely, but don't cut into my football time with it. That's almost as bad as all this bird porn stuff Vanilla keeps telling us about.) My friend's a punter and I missed him having a great game and even making a tackle, which is something that punters don't get to do very often.

Then of course was the Half-Fast fantasy football draft. (Geeze two Vanilla plugs in one post, what has the world come to?) I got some good players and some really not so good players. I'm just going to have to cross my fingers and hope a few rookies have really awesome breakout seasons.

As for my weekend plans?

Back to D.C. tonight for birthday dinner with my friends. Then heading to a bar to catch the Terps soccer game against UCLA. Saturday is our football home opener so I'll be tailgating the day away.

It's a good thing it's a long weekend. I have a feeling I'm going to need it!

First off, you all convinced me that I should definitely enter the soccer contest....so I did.

You had to submit a picture (I used the one below) and answer a bunch of questions like if you prefer cats or dogs (dogs), what your favorite books is (To Kill a Mockingbird) and what your hobbies are (training for marathons, rec league soccer, tennis and reading). I felt like I was on some ridiculous dating game show, but if nothing else it's good for a laugh and maybe I'll get some free D.C. United tickets.


In other news, I ran 4 miles last night in 41:38. I went out at around 7 p.m. and although the temps had definitely dropped, it was still warm. There was a pretty strong wind at points and lots of hills, but I felt good for the most part. My legs were definitely tired at the end though. I stretched out and relaxed afterward, and this morning I made an appointment for a sports massage on Thursday evening because I got a $10 off thingy in the mail for my birthday.

My weekend was awesome. I was in six cities and three states in three days. Soccer unfortunately pulled blew their lead late in the game and lost 2-1. Good thing it was still preseason.

I got to see my friends' new condo in Crofton. They have a super comfortable sofa, great for sleeping on. I went to see another friend coach his high school soccer team's game on Saturday afternoon and then headed to Arlington Saturday night to see my three other friends' new apartment.

Saturday night we went out to Mr. Smith's, a piano bar in Georgetown, and then Sunday I came home, had two friends visit for a few hours and then played tennis that night with another friend.

I was definitely busy, seeing tons of friends (and their new apartments) and watching/playing lots of sports.

I was reading one my favorite soccer blogs (yea, I'm a nerd, I know...) this morning and stumbled across this post.

Yes, Devon McTavish is my favorite player (followed closely by Marc Burch...duh he's a former Terp).

Yes, I'm a female.

Does that mean it's my lucky day? (This will only make sense if you read the link.)

Seriously though, I'm half thinking about entering the contest. I mean, what the heck, why not right...right? OK obviously I'm still not sold on wanting to upload my picture to a radio station Web site for people to vote on it.

What do you guys think? Should I do it?

Also....why is Devon having a hard time finding women? Have ya seen him? He's not exactly hard on the eyes and from what I've read in various D.C. United articles and stuff, he comes across as a nice guy...sooo what's the problem?

There are so many reasons I'm in a fabulous mood today.

1. It's Friday.

2. I'm done work in 30 minutes because I came in early today.

3. Soccer tonight!

It's the last preseason game, which means the real season is upon us!

As I've stated many times before, I have a soccer problem and so do many of my friends. So tonight we are celebrating preseason in style -- with an awesome tailgate. (I won't be eating the tailgate food, but I'll certainly be playing the tailgate games.)

The rest of the weekend will be spent bouncing between my friends' various apartments in Maryland, DC, and Virginia.

I'm also excited to be playing tennis for the first time since my knee injury on Sunday afternoon with a friend back in PA.

So it looks to be a fun-filled weekend for me. I'm wishing all the same for you!

Catch ya on the flipside!

To make sure everything on the next round of bloodwork comes out OK, the doc gave me strict orders to limit sugar intake and make sure I keep my carb level to fewer than 40 grams per day.

Now he told me that in the middle of the day yesterday, after I had already eaten more than half the food I eat in a normal day, so I decided I'd put that practice into effect today. (To be read: I went home yesterday and ate a big bowl of chocolate ice cream topped off with whip cream and peanut butter sauce because who knows when, if ever, I will be able to have such a yummy treat again. Seriously, I'm not being melodramatic, it's a possibility.)

But today, I'm all about following the doctor's orders.

I've realized that 40 grams of carbs is not a lot. For example, a single serving of whole wheat pasta has 41 grams of carbs. A piece of wheat bread has 12 grams of carbs. Kellog's All-Bran (the cereal I used to eat) has 20 grams of carbs (For the record, 13 of them are fiber).

I can only eat 40 in an entire day. Yeeesh that's tough.

Here's my plan: Two eggs for breakfast (about 2 carbs total), cottage cheese for the morning snack (8 carbs), salad with fat free Italian dressing and chicken or tuna for lunch (4 carbs in the dressing, 7 carbs from salad) and then chicken/fish and veggies for dinner with the option of celery sticks and hummus as a snack too (5 g). 

Good News: My laptop came last night!
Bad News: It took a lot of tries before it finally accepted the password for the wireless network.

Good News: My thyroid levels are totally fine.
Bad News: Other levels are not so fine and I have to go for another blood test next week. Boo!

My new laptop is awesome and I love it. I uploaded my music last night. Took forever, but it's done. Just need to recreate all of my playlists in iTunes.

Had the follow up doc appointment today to go over bloodwork from last week. Almost all of my levels were freakin' awesome, including but not limited to iron, cholesterol, triglycerides and thyroid. Unfortunately a very key one was not in a happy place, which means I have to get another test done to see if it was some sort of a fluke.

Yea, I'm not looking forward to it.

So as not to freak anyone out, fluke or not, I'm still healthy and fine. I'd most likely just need to make a few dietary changes to correct things.

Blech I'm so not looking forward to getting stabbed in the arm again though.

Can you tell I'm a little bit excited about the five miles I did yesterday?

It was hot and gross outside when I got home from work but I told myself I really wanted to run for an hour. Or at least run as much as I could and mix in walking when needed for at least an hour because it had been such a long time since I had gone for that long.

Around 6 p.m. I threw on shorts and a tech top, grabbed my watch and iPod and headed out. The heat and humidity didn't bother me too much during the first two miles. I went slow, clocking them in about 21 minutes.

I had brought water with me, but it was really warm and gross, therefore not doing much to cool me down.

I stopped and walked a few of the hills during the third mile. Ran a bit more and then walked some more of the hills.

I did sort of a fartlek-style run for the rest. I'd pick an intersection or mailbox or something and then run to there and then walk for a few minutes before picking the running up again.

In total I did 5.15 miles in about 1:01: and some change I think.

I'm happy with it. It's the longest I've gone since coming back from the knee injury and while it is by no means fast, the run served a few purposes.

First, it got me used to being on my feet for long periods of time again.

Second, it got me used to be in the heat for long periods of time. Being injured in the beginning of summer really killed my heat tolerance this year.

Third, it was a solid test for my knee.

Quick update on the computer status: Yesterday I got the free iPod Nano that came with the computer, still no computer though lol. It should be here in a few days I hope!

I hate sitting in traffic on I-95, but that's pretty much what I did this weekend.

My Terps had a pre-season game against Virginia Commonwealth in Richmond, Va., so my friends and I hopped into some cars and headed down for our first soccer road trip of the season.

We didn't get very far out of D.C. before we hit massive stop-and-go traffic on 95. The trip is about 115 miles. It took us more than three hours. Ew.

The worst part though is that game ended in a 0-0 draw. After sitting in all that traffic, we didn't even get to see a goal scored. (We had two really good chances, but our player pushed the ball wide both times...should have been two very easy goals.)

No I take that back...maybe the worst part was having to pay $3 for parking and $5 for admission...for a pre-season game. I mean...really?

I got in a four miler on Saturday morning. Ran the first two and had to walk the second two because my calves were really tight and because it was mighty warm outside. (Guess that's what happens when you sleep in.)

Friday night I saw Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 with a girl from work. It was cute. I was a bit confused at first because I didn't realize it was mostly based on the third book. I had expected it to be based on the second, but I must have missed that memo somewhere along the line.

And of course, I've been watching tons of the Olympics. We made it home just in time Saturday night to see Phelps swim his last race. There was lots of fist pumping and in general cheering at the television involved.

The first parts of my new computer came (mouse, keyboard, some software) but not the actual computer yet. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping it gets here soon!

I bid my computer a sad goodbye last night when I think it finally crashed itself to death.

It's been acting up for a while now and I think tonight might have been it's last little bit of life. So that means I'm computer-less until my brand spanking new MacBook Pro gets here.

No computer means limited blog reading ability. I'll try to keep up as best I can until the new 'puter gets here.

On tap for this weekend: Catching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants tonight and then heading to Richmond tomorrow for some soccer. Hopefully try to fit in some runs there too. Oh right and lots of Olympics!

Hope you all have a rockin' weekend!

Next thing ya know, Jess passed out and had to be revived.

Ok clearly my lyrics aren't as rockin' as Flo Rida's, but they more accurately sum up what happened to be at the doctor's this morning.

Yesterday my doctor ordered me to get some blood work done to test my thyroid levels. Two years or so ago, when I was tested for mono, my thyroid levels came back borderline low and my doc at the time said he could have put me on the medicine but opted not to.

Lately, I've been thinking I need to get rechecked. I've been experiencing some of the symptoms that are associated with it so this morning I went to get the blood work done.

I have always been terrified of needles and often break out in cold sweats and start hyperventilating a little bit when I have to get blood drawn or get shots.

But this morning I was super calm. I read my book in the waiting room, got a little nervous as the nurse first stuck me, but closed my eyes and was doing OK.

Or so I thought...

Next thing I know, I hear all these people calling my name and I'm trying to figure out why people are being so loud. Can't they tell I'm asleep in my bed? They are interrupting my really great soccer dream featuring one of my favorite players.

Sooo turns out I'm not in my bed at all, but in a chair in a lab with a bunch of nurses huddled around me calling my name. I'm really disoriented when I wake up because the first thing I say is "Where am I?"

Then I realize right away and one of the nurses asks me if I know my last name, which I did.

And then it alllll comes back to me and I realize that if I just passed out that means they probably need to re-do the blood stuff. So I ask if that's the case and get an affirmative answer.

My response, "Oh crap."

The nurses were really nice about everything though and I apologized profusely for passing out. I've never ever ever done that before and it scared the be-jesus out of me. The second time they got everything they needed and I babbled the whole time to the nurse about how sorry I was.

I've felt really shaky at work the entire rest of the day. One of the nurses suggested getting some sugar in my system and keep it going steadily throughout the day. So I had Poptarts from the vending machine with a Gatorade for breakfast and then a little piece of birthday cake in the afternoon with my salad for lunch and then three pieces of salt water taffy for about an hour ago.

I have some FroYo at home that I'm definitely going to treat myself to after I eat dinner tonight. I'm not expecting to drop any huge numbers this week in the Worth the Weight challenge, but life happens and I've got other weeks to work on it.

So right, as if that didn't make my day crappy enough, my soccer boys lost this morning and got eliminated from the Olympics. Seriously, I wake up at 5 a.m. to watch them get a red card in the third minute, play a man down the rest of the game and then lose. Ugh! Talk about major frustration. (P.S. In my passed out dream, I was definitely dreaming that we won the game lol lol!) (P.P.S. You can catch more of my work blog about the soccer game here.)

Needless to say, I will not be doing any running tonight. I'm still not feeling that fabulous.

I got in a most glorious run last night. It was 3.8 miles in 38 minutes and change and I finished with some lunges, squats and agility drills that I learned in PT.

And I felt great.

Probably because I ate the bread bowl at Panera that my soup came in during lunch. My muscles were singing the praises of carbs and were so glad to have them back after the little hiatus I took from them during the last week of PT.

This is my longest run to date since I've been injured and I was really pleased with it.

I know I'm supposed to be going to the gym to lift, but I just haven't yet. It's been so nice out that I don't want to spend time in the gym. That's bad, I know, and I need to get back to it and I will. But for now I'm OK with sticking with some of the exercises they showed me that don't require the weight machines.

ORN:
3.8 miles 38:and something

But one U.S. Men's National Team jersey richer.

I have a soccer problem...I know....

(I got Robbie Rogers' number 14 jersey...gotta represent my MD boys!)

That's all for now. Going to try to get a run in later tonight.

Well it's official, I am now a successful graduate of Drayer Physical Therapy. Whooo to the hoo.

To celebrate, I baked choc. peanut butter chip cookies to give me my PT's on Thursday (I kept a few for myself...they were yummy.)

Then after work I promptly went home and took a nap at 7 p.m. that turned into going to bed at 7 p.m. That's kind of embarrassing lol.

I blame it on getting up at 5 a.m. to blog live about the U.S. men's Olympic soccer game for work. (You can check that out here.)

As a general side note I'm really excited about the Olympics. Here's why:

Left to right: Robbie Rogers, Maurice Edu and Chris Seitz.

I'm in a futbol frenzy.

Could be because three of the players on this year's roster, Chris Seitz, Robbie Rogers and Maurice Edu, are all former Maryland Terrapins like me.

These three guys were a huge part of the reason Maryland won the 2005 College Cup my sophomore year, and I'm looking forward to watching them bring it on the pitch in Beijing.

The team won its first game Thursday, beating Japan 1-0. Robbie and Mo got the start, which rocks. The next game is Sunday at 7:45 a.m. You know I'll be waking up to watch.

Hope everyone has a rockin' weekend. I'll be home in Allentown, where my mom and I are hoping to get some tennis in now that I'm all PT graduated! (I'm going to try to get a run in too!)

(Thanks to the DBK for the photo!)

Quick PT update: It's official, this is my last week! Whooo hooo! Parttttay over here!!! (No for real I'm going to need to find a way to celebrate this. Maybe with a nice run at the end of the week when I'm officially done!)

In other fun news, I'm a big lover of social media/social networking and I've been lax with sharing my linkys with you.

If you've checked out my sidebar lately, you'll notice that I've added my Facebook info, but for those of you who read me through an RSS feed (duh that's like everyone) here's some links.

You know you want to Facebook friend me.

Or if not, you'll at least want to follow me on Twitter.

My mom and I went to Baltimore this weekend to check out the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the science center.

It was the coolest thing ever.

The Body World's exhibits are the ones that use real cadavers to show how all the parts of the part fit and work together. I was fascinated.

As a runner, it was really neat to see all the little tendons and muscle fibers that engage to make me run.

As an injured runner, it was fascinating to see the knee displayed with all of the parts the influence it. I could see exactly the areas where I am having problems and see all the muscles that affect it. It was really eye-opening to be able to see exactly what I've been working to improve in PT right in front of my eyes like that.

In other news, I got in a short run Sunday morning. It was only two miles for a few reasons. First off, it was warm when I left and very sunny. Second off, I've been really trying to watch what I've been eating while injured because I'm not burning as many calories so I shouldn't be eating as many either. As a result, I've gone kind of low carb for the past week because I wanted to see if cutting down on carbs really made that big of a difference in the speed of weight loss. Turns out it sort of does, but it also has major negative affects on running.

My legs were so super heavy and my muscle felt so dead tired because they had nothing fueling them that I couldn't push past those two miles. Physically I was running on empty.

In some ways that may be positive for my recovery...as in, it physically won't let me push myself too far so I will avoid more injury. But running like that sucks.

So I'll do the low carb thing for the rest of this week, while I'm still in PT and should still be keeping my runs short. Then after that I'm going to be adding the carbs back to fuel my runs. And I'm hoping I'll be released from PT at the end of this week, which would line up perfectly with the end of the low carb phase and my increased workouts.

ORN:
2 miles, 21:something