2008 is definitely off to the right start!

After a really fun NYE, we woke up fairly early on the 1st to get the new year started. I caught a little of the Rose Parade and then it was football, football and more football on the TV for the rest of the day. However, it was also time to finally take the tree down, pack up the Christmas decor and get the apartment cleaned and organized again. This took us most of the day, but by the evening our place looked fantastic and it was nice to know that the holiday clean-up wasn't hanging over our heads anymore.

Hubs also finally got around to transferring his itunes music from our old computer that was barely revived enough for him to get the music files off of it (really, the poor thing is begging to be put out of it's misery) and onto the new pretty pink one. We picked up gigantic back-up hard-drives during our latest Costco adventure so we can have all of our important music and pics stored on another, separate location in case the new computer ever decides to randomly bite the big one. As he was getting this all organized, it was time for a trip down music memory lane. Seeing my very white husband bumpin' to Tupac and then crooning to Frank Sinatra within seconds of each other is beyond hilarious.

For dinner, we tried out a local Chinese restaurant for takeout and sadly, it was just okay. :( We're still trying to find a good Chinese takeout place that is close to us, but so far, we're failing miserably.

Yesterday it was back to the grind. Not much to report here. Everyone is still trying to get back in the swing of things. After work, I hit the gym to meet with my trainer for an hour. The first 30 minutes were pure hell. It went beyond that burning sensation in your chest to full on 'OMG I'm gonna puke'. And yet, as awful as it was, I felt really good afterwards, like I had really accomplished something. We're keeping this schedule up until at least the Peru trip, but I might just vote to keep going like this even afterwards. We'll see....

And now, to the best part of last night -- dinner! In order to make the healthy eating a bit less boring, I told myself I was going to try out a bunch of new Cooking Light recipes that I've had my eye on for the past month or so. Last night it was Pasta with Vodka Cream Sauce with a simple green salad on the side. I followed the recipe to the letter with the exception of using the Barilla Plus penne instead of just the regular stuff. I cannot tell you how absolutely amazing this dish was!!! No pics of my version because we dug in as soon as it was done, but this stuff is just so good. And it doesn't taste like you're eating a "diet" dish, which makes it even better. I highly recommend trying it out for yourself. Easy enough for a weeknight meal, but fancy enough that you could even make it for company and they'd think you slaved over for much longer that it actually takes :)

While I'm sore this morning, I feel really good and slept like a baby last night. So far, 2008 is shaping up to be a pretty good year.