When The Boyfriend’s Away…

…Ali will play. And sing along at the top of my lungs listen to Justin Bieber. And clean.

In other words, I’ve been wildly productive tonight, and I’m pretty psyched about it. Not that I wouldn’t have been as motivated if ABS had come home earlier, but it was nice having the place to myself for a few hours while he worked late then went to the gym (good boy, ABS!).

Let’s backtrack.

Work was really, really busy today. Again. I’m not complaining. I’ve gotten a lot done today, and I’m out this Friday (road trip to Vermont!), so I’m trying to stay ahead of the game.

The snow was really pretty today in NYC, but I’m glad it stopped around mid-day. By the time I had to run out to grab lunch — a prosciutto/pesto/mozzarella whole wheat panini from Whole Foods — the snow had stopped and it was, dare I say it, comfortable outside. There were little hints of spring in the 40 degree air today!

After work, my motivation to go to spinning was quickly getting away from me. I got to the gym around 5:30 not sure what to do with myself. My legs didn’t want to spin, and I just wanted to do a little something to break a sweat.

Bar Hoppin’ was on the Crunch menu. Um, OK?

I went ahead and signed up — along with about 30 other women. The room was packed! And I instantly saw why.

The class is basically your standard Rebounding class that uses mini trampolines for a low impact workout.

I loved the instructor (Carol J.), and I think that’s why people go to the class. She has amazing energy, she’s hilarious, she dances in between the rebounders and her music is awesome. At one point during class she pointed at me and said, “This, this right here — this is beautiful!” Needless to say I rode on a personal high for a little while after that compliment.

The “Bar Hoppin'” tagline is just a gimmick Crunch is using to jazz up the standard “Urban Rebounding” name. Basically we would do 15 minutes on the rebounders, then hop off and use a body bar to do some strength training work. Then we repeated that cycle twice. Personally, I would have rather stayed on the rebounder the whole time and gotten more cardio in. The body bar movements all felt rushed to me.

OK, let’s get personal here, if that’s OK with you… Rebounding makes me have to pee. All that jumping and bouncing around. My bladder goes insane. I went three times before class because I was so paranoid about having to run out of the room in the middle of an exercise! Does anyone else get this? If it’s just me, lie and tell me you’re in the same boat — then maybe I won’t feel so weird.

Aaaaaanyway… Hehe.

After my workout, I stopped at Duane Reade to pick up my latest food obsession:

Peanut butter filled pretzels. I was craving them, and I ate about a dozen on the walk from the drugstore back to my apartment (and no, it’s not a far walk at all).

Dinner was homemade pizza and some cantaloupe. I’m aware these two things don’t seem like they would mesh well. But I wanted both, so darn it, I had both!

I watched “Glee” while I was eating, caught up on emails, then started tackling the ol’ To Do list.

I cleaned the bedroom (I hadn’t unpacked since my trip to L.A. Oops), did the dishes, vacuumed my “office” area, and made a CD for Friday’s road trip to Vermont.

I’ll talk a bit more about the Vermont trip as the weekend gets closer, but for now I’ll just share the playlist. I’m driving up with one of my college roommates — she has a car in the city, so the deal is that she drives, I play DJ. Fine by me!

Here’s what we’ll be jamming out to:

These are also the songs I’ve been running to lately. I highly recommend you start downloading if you haven’t already.

Now ABS is home and I’ve been instructed to go finish The Fighter. We started watching it last night on a special release DVD, but naturally I fell asleep after about 45 minutes in. Now that the Oscar nominations are out, I have lots of movies to see!

LET’S DISCUSS: What are you working out to these days? Any good songs I should know about?