Take it away, Schoolhouse Rock...

"A man and a woman had a little baby,

Yes, they did.

They had three in the family,

And that's a magic number."

We're 'having' the baby, rather than 'had' the baby, but you get the drift. Come June 27th, +/- an unknown number of days, the Himes family welcomes its newest member. Baby Himes(name still subject to change) evidently has a penchant for strawberries and likes to do backflips once Alison attempts to go to sleep for the evening.

I'm not really sure how I'm handling the transition to fatherhood. It's a stressful and uncertain time. I'm doing all the things I think I'm supposed to be doing: I read the articles my wife tells me to, I go to Babies 'R Us with her, I've started weighing child care options, read about 529 plans, helped pick out furniture and color schemes. I ask people about parenting, and invariably, I get this response: "Ah, you'll figure it out" and "get some sleep now". Really instills confidence, doesn't it? But, WHAT IF I DON'T FIGURE IT OUT??? And fat chance getting sleep now, I'm geeking out here people! That's a bit of an exaggeration, but I do worry, because, well, I'm a worrier.

By and large though, I'm super excited about the baby. I'm confident in my ability to play daddy and I'm happy to trade in the party boy lifestyle for a diaper bag. Prom dresses and pom poms, here I come.....

P.S. - drop your name suggestions in the comments puh-leeze.

Spring is Officially Here!

YAYYY! Welcome back to Spring. My dear old friend... now that you're back, start acting like it...permanently! No more of this 30 degree weather please! I can't wait to spend more time with you.

Have a very happy weekend everyone!

I still hate running.

Well Day 2 of week 2 came and went yesterday for the c25k program...and one thing is for certain......I still hate running. I didn't expect to love it after only a week or half or anything like that, but I guess I thought some of my extreme hatred would go away...no such luck... yet. (encouraging comments on this topic....please!)

Rob and I went to the running spot on Sunday to get out of the old, random shoes we'd been wearing and see what the fine shoe experts there had to say. He asked me to stand up and walk a couple of steps ahead of him and then said, "uh oh" I heard a lot of negative things about my legs.... severe pronation, bad ankles, "special" shoes... whomp whomp. He gave me some new shiny purple shoes that are supposed to correct my pronation and in my head make all my painful problems go away....but I've run in them twice and each time was worse than the other. I'm really trying to be positive, but I'm starting to think running is not the thing for me.

I was telling my parents about what the shoe guy said, and my mom decided to throw in that, come to think of it, you had to wear orthopedic shoes for a long time when you was a toddler to "correct something that was wrong with your ankles". She said "all the other kids had these cute little pink nikes on and you had on these big white nurse looking orthopedic shoes that you had to wear" (as she laughed hysterically). Thanks Mom, I'm glad that after all these years of me complaining ....you finally decide to tell me this now! But I digress....I'm going to keep at it for a while longer and hope I hate it less... go running!

On the upside, there were some fun things that happened on our run yesterday.

1. It was a gorgeous day to be outside doing ANything... even running. ( I guess)

2. Maggie saw a duck in the fountain at Eden Park and without even thinking about the fact that the fountain is filled with water, just JUMPED over the wall into the fountain and then immediately turned back around and looked at me like wtf just happened!!...while I pulled her out of the water.

3. I saw a couple getting engaged by the fountain. This weather brings out the love in everyone!

After the run, shower and healthy dinner...we met up with some friends for a few green beers and some Irish fun.. Hope everyone had a great St Patrick's Day!

The Culinary School Diet

School has kept me pretty busy in the last couple of months. Twice a week I go essentially straight from work to school (with a 15 minute stop at home to let the dog out, change my clothes and shove a granola bar in my mouth) before heading to school until 8:30 and not getting home until 9.

The first week or two I thought, what a great "diet" this will be! By the time I get home I'm too tired to even eat. I'll just eat an apple or pop some air popped popcorn and call it a night...but then we started cooking. Heavy cream in this, a pound of butter in this...even on vegetable day one of the things we made was "glazed carrots" which consisted of carrots in a pan with a ton of butter and SUGAR....until it reduced down to a sugary glaze. (first of all, gross. second of all- at least lets have a healthy day on vegetable day!) A raw egg on the Caesar salad, handmade full fat mayonnaise on the cole slaw...goodness gracious. French cooking is fattening!

There are many things I can try my hardest to not eat, especially when I haven't had a real meal since lunch. Avoid them, pretend they are not there....but there is one thing I can not avoid. Lately, we've been practicing our knife skills...on potatoes... and why would you waste all those potato scraps when there is a deep fryer, right in the room? Why not make french fries every night? Fresh right out of the deep fryer french fries with every spice you can imagine right there to put on them while they are still hot...with a bunch of eager to experiment foodies ready to get creative..... trouble. Last night there were bowls and bowls of fresh, hot french fries with different seasonings in each bowl. Salt & Pepper, Cajun, Jerk, Rosemary and Garlic, Paprika.....etc etc. I volunteered to help cook them so I wouldn't be just standing there eating them, but I still ate my fair share...and being that I don't really eat anything deep fried anymore (with the exception of stealing a fry or two off of an occasional friend's plate) my stomach was not happy. At the end of the night I felt too guilty for all the calories I must have eaten in deep fried potato goodness to eat anything real for dinner. It was fun, but from this point on I'm going to try my hardest to avoid this late night fatty snack. Wish me luck.

Wednesday, among other things, we are moving on with potato week and making, duchesse potatoes (which I am excited to do because I love the pastry bag), parsley potatoes, stuffed baked potatoes and potatoes Anna (which was apparently super popular in the 80s, I have never seen nor heard of this dish)

Potatoes Anna

Duchesse Potatoes


I should bring my camera to class to see if my culinary creations look like either of these two old school potato favorites. Today the most common potato eaten- even in fancy restaurants is the good old fashioned no frills mashed. Delicious!

Happy Birthday Emily!

This has been a big birthday week for my besties... happy birthday to one of my favorite people in the entire world... my sister Emily!

Tonight we will be celebrating with a delicious dinner party at her house...followed by eventually going out in Mt. Adams for celebrating...if you want to meet up, call me and I will give you our exact location at the time.. I just decided today I am taking a half day because....well because I haven't take a day off this year and I don't really feel like being here...and I want to get a jumpstart on tonight's big dinner...

So have a wonderful Friday everyone! and get excited for a dinner party update on Monday :)

Spring, where did you go?

With the beautiful weather, it was hard not to be out and about over the past week or so, so Rob and I have gotten in all our week 1 runs and are going to do it one more time for good measure tonight, then it's on to week 2! I still kind of hate it, but I feel stronger everytime we do it and not to mention pretty proud of myself for doing something I wasn't sure I could do. Also- since we've started people have come out of the woodwork saying how they went from never running to running all the time on this program...including Lindsey and Emily who added a marathon or two to their resumes so far. While a marathon is not in my future, it's still inspiring to know that they started in the same place I am now.

I also wanted to wish a belated birthday blog wish to another dedicated reader of RR, my good friend Tracy who entered the wonderful world of 28 yesterday...Tracy, I wanted to put the picture up of us celebrating your 21st birthday during Finals week our junior year, by getting one drink in our pajamas after studying all night.. but apparantly it's not "scanned." Our kids are gonna think we're sooo old. "In my day when we took pictures we had to take "film" to a store, wait two days and then the pictures came back on paper!...if we wanted to look at it on the computer we had to use something called a "scanner!"..anyway. Happy Birthday Tracyhead! I couldn't love you anymore if I tried...and hopefully we can get together soon!

Tomorrow night I am making dinner for a birthday dinner party for my sister at her apartment. I have a recipe for macaroni and cheese that will make you gain 10lbs just by reading it...and she's requested that we double it... Hey, you only turn 25 once!

Get out and Vote!

Marybeth, a coworker/friend of mine, as well as a a loyal reader of Random Ramblings is entering her band to get into the Vans Warped tour and play at Riverbend!

If you have some free time today and in the coming weeks, vote for her band and become a fan!

Instructions below:

Help Kid Jupiter get an opportunity to play on the Ernie Ball stage at the Vans Warped Tour as it comes through Cincinnati!!

Go to www.battleofthebands.com - click on the Warped Tour logo (left)
Create an account as a fan - this will require email varification

Once you have created and unlocked your account, you can vote for us once a day until the contest is over on 7/08/09.

To vote:
1. Log into your Vans Warped Tour account
2. Click Competition
3. Search Cincinnati for "Kid Jupiter"
4. Vote for us

Send MB an email (mbcamp1@gmail.com) if you have any questions.

You can vote for as many bands as you want, but only once a day. I hope you all choose to vote for Kid Jupiter at least once a day. :)

Send Kid Jupiter a fan or friend request on the site. This creates buzz and buzz = good. :) Thanks everyone!

Rock On!

~MB

Run #1 & (kind of) secret fun

Week 1:

Brisk five-minute warmup walk.

Then alternate 60 seconds of jogging and 90 seconds of walking for a total of 20 minutes.

Five minute cooldown walk.

Well last night's run came and went and while I will never say it was fun, I will say that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. The random podcast guy was encouraging, and the 60 second runs didn't (always) feel like 60 seconds. I think Maggie was completely confused as to why we were running and then walking and then running and then walking, but she was just happy to be out and about. The next run is scheduled for this Sunday.

Tonight we plan on having a low key night and doing one of my favorite things! I don't like to tell many people about this because...well it's just more fun when it's not super crowded..but anything for you guys.... it's the 5 for $5 Friday nights at Whole Foods.

Basically for $5 you get 5 glasses of wine and 5 super tasty hors d'oeuvres to go with them. You can kind of just wonder around the store, sipping on your wine, chatting and eating your yummy food. Also, the best part is that the $5 includes a wine glass and if you bring that back next time, you get $1 off...making it $4/person and seriously the best deal in the city!

Afterwards we usually either grab some fresh food to make for dinner at home or grab a bottle of wine and head over to asiana for some sushi...which I'm sure is exactly what they want you to do...but I am happy to oblige!

On Saturday we are "Giving Back" by helping to fix up/paint the Emery Theater downtown...with a volunteer appreciation party at Bockfest afterwards....should be an interesting day... Happy Friday Everyone!

Back in Action..

I’m still alive! I promise.
This weather takes its toll on me every year. After a couple of months of cold weather and little to no sunlight, I lose my desire to do almost everything…including but not limited to getting out of bed, going to work, being social and….blogging. Wow, that sounds really depressing…basically I’m just not a winter person. I need a little warm weather in my life….

When I’m not at work, at school or writing papers on Oregano and eggs… I’m searching for tropical places to go on vacation this year. So far our front runner is this beauty. Just the thought of being there for a week makes me so excited…..and also, there is nothing to whip a girl into realizing she needs to boost her getting in shape efforts like the thought of living in a bathing suit in Mexico for a week…which brings me to my newest weight loss addition… I am going to run a 5k. (hopefully)

I am NOT a runner….at all. I had a pretty bad knee injury that involved a full leg cast for 3 months and surgery way back in the 8th grade, and it has never fully recovered from that…so I just don’t run. And I have come to the realization that I am constantly babying that leg which is never going to allow it to be any stronger. The other day I re-took the fitness test on my wii fit and it told me to stand with my feet apart, balancing my weight evenly on each leg..which I absolutely thought I was doing and after the test it told me that my “center of balance” was completely to the right… which fits with my theory that I subconsciously baby my left leg…and could also explain my slight clumsiness issue.

ANYway…enough of that, my point is tonight Rob and I are starting the Couch to 5k Plan, which is apparently supposed to help complete non-runners, be able to run a 5k in 2 months… I looked for an awesome 5k that is about 2 months away and found this one.. yesssss…party at the Great American Ballpark afterwards…sounds good to me! And last night we downloaded podcasts that go with how you are supposed to run…60 seconds jogging, 90 seconds walking for the first week, and the music on the podcast is slower when you should be walking and faster when you should be jogging… I’m nervous, probably desperately need better shoes and a sturdy knee brace, but we are going to try the first run/walk tonight and take care of any necessary details this weekend.

I’m going to give it at least a full week or two to see how my knee holds up on running on cement…and just stretch that leg as much as I can. Looks like we’ll actually have good weather for our first day! Wish us luck!!!