1989 flashback

When we weren't zooming around San Francisco, we spent a good long time lying around Soren's house in our pajamas, drinking our weight in Sun Drop and Diet Coke, and playing a mountain of board games.

This is what weekends were like when everyone was in Jr. High, and it's what happens now whenever a bunch of us get together. In 30 years, when we're all retired, with grandkids and AARP memberships, we'll be doing the very same thing.

Not everyone is running around today with the same kids they ran around with 25 years ago; we're lucky and we know it.



This is what domination looks like :)

I, for the record, am the worst Clue player ever. If I say it was Professor Plum in the study with the lead pipe, the safe bet would be to guess Miss Scarlett in the kitchen with the rope.

San Francisco

Just yesterday we flew home from a whirlwind trip to the Bay Area. It was our last chance to visit our old friend Soren before he moves even farther away to the east coast, and we took it.

And away we go!

Eating at In-n-Out right after Soren picked us up at the airport = a requirement.


We spent Thursday and Saturday lolling around Soren's house, but Friday we drove into San Francisco and played tourists for the day. Our first stop was the Painted Ladies - the boys very graciously indulged my little whim - and then we made our way to Golden Gate Park. Soren and Bill wandered through the Picasso exhibit at the de Young, but I couldn't resist the pull of a 15-foot albino reticulated python named Lemondrop, so Jan Michael and I beat feet for the Academy of Sciences. After our fill of paintings and snakes, we hiked to a waterfall, drove to the other side of the park to visit the buffalo paddock, and then on our way out, stopped for a peak at one of Golden Gate's famous windmills. We drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, happily shivered our way through pictures in a blanket of fog, and then zipped back to the other side for a drive-by of the Palace of Fine Arts. We ate dinner at Ghiardelli Square with a lovely view of the bay and Alcatraz, and ended the day with a trip through Chinatown.

It was super fun from start to finish, and we have the pictures to prove it :)

The road to the run

Run #4, Monday:
Distance: 2 miles
Time: 19 minutes 7 seconds
Color of my face each time I finish: MAGENTA
Fun running trivia: In 2007 an astronaut named Suni Williams ran a marathon tethered to a treadmill on the International Space Station.
Song of the run: Machinehead - Bush

"Sweat silently. Let's have no squawking about a little expenditure of energy." Martin H. Fischer



Run #5, earlier today, brought to you by the following:
- One ankle brace
- Two knee braces
- A finish almost an entire minute slower than #4
- The dropping of my ipod, somewhere between the track and the walk back to the car; it is lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry, Clementine...
- A massive and very un-ladylike nosebleed in the bath after we got home

All of this = a very cranky me. I'm cranky just typing about it.

But. I finished, and I'm healthy enough to try this in the first place, which I'm sensible enough to recognize even in a raging temper. Besides, there's always #6, coming up in a jiffy.

The official stats -
Distance: 2 miles
Time: 19 minutes 55 seconds
Now reading: Runner's World Guide to Injury Prevention
Very grateful for: a husband who will run with me, listen to me gripe and complain, drive all the way back to the track to look for the missing ipod, and stand as a human toilet paper dispenser while I bleed all over the bathroom
Song of the run: Round and Round - Ratt

"Little by little does the trick." Aesop

More summer fun

At the beginning of July, when the calendar plainly said summmer but the weather indicated otherwise, I decided we needed to up our entertaining game. I announced that we would have real, live, lots-of-cooking-and-cleaning-beforehand get-togethers at least once a month, and for at least a year.

We have lovely friends, and it's a treat to celebrate them with a little root beer and croquet. Besides, getting ready to welcome special people into our home is an infinitely better use of time than sitting on my behind for half the day, trolling around Facebook.

We managed two soirees in July - one was a breakfast bash; such a fun change of pace and something we will repeat! - and just last night, we spent the evening with six of the dearest people. It's such a privilege to have friends that we can laugh and be silly with, and who also share beliefs that make true fellowship possible.










Now, a Road to the Run update:
Run #3, just this morning -
Distance: 2 miles
Time: 19 minutes 3 seconds
Best encouragement as I was huffing around the track: Jan Michael, who was loping ahead of me. Jan Michael, who told me what a good job I did when I ran in 2 minutes after he finished. Jan Michael, whose pace I aspire to catch. Someday!
Song of the run: 1, 2, 3, 4 - Fiest; nevermind that it came on while I was in the middle of my cool down. It made me want to skip around the track, but I exercised self control and snapped my fingers instead :)
Likelihood that I will eat a cupcake this afternoon and reverse any caloric burn I accomplished earlier: Very, very high

"Believe that you can run farther or faster. Believe that you're young enough, old enough, strong enough, and so on to accomplish everything you want to do. Don't let worn-out beliefs stop you from moving beyond yourself." John Bingham

Hot time, summer in the city

Yesterday I went to the library and the grocery store. I made dulce de leche and baked a batch of graham crackers. I jumped around in the garage to a step aerobics DVD. I even managed both a bath and a nap.

As a reward for such an insufferable, grueling schedule, I spent all evening lolling around on a blanket in the sweetest little park. I read magazines, had a nice, long chat with my sis, and ogled my husband while he tore it up on the court.

Summer and I are very, very good friends.




And now, in The Road to the Run news:
Run #2 this morning went something like this -
Distance: 1.5 miles
Time: 14 min 14 sec (21 seconds faster than Monday! Zoooooooooooom!)
Song of the day: Right Now - Van Halen

"In running, it doesn't matter whether you come in first, in the middle of the pack, or last. You can say, 'I have finished.' There is a lot of satisfaction in that."
-Fred Lebow, New York City Marathon co-founder

The road to the run

There's a 4.5 mile run in November with my name on it. Today, because there's no time like the present, and because November is closer than it seems, I began to train. I'm training for an 10K, which is 6.2 miles; I'd much rather sail across the finish line with a perfect ponytail and a healthy glow on my cheeks instead of crawling across, all disheveled and gasping for breath, because I didn't train enough.

And I'm afraid. Afraid that the lazy, boo-hoo-I-can't-do-this part of me will win out somewhere along the way, and I'll give up. But dadgummit, if the 80-years-young lady I read about last week can lace up her shoes and run (in her 12th marathon), so can I.

So. can. I.

Now, on with the stats:
Trips to the bathroom immediately proceeding the run because I was nervous: 2
Distance: 1.5 miles
Time: 14 minutes, 35 seconds
Conditions: 73 lovely degrees, and not a wisp of a cloud in the sky
# of complaints from my old-lady knees: Zero!
Song of the day: It's All Right by the Traveling Wilburys - my Dad is cheering and my Mom is cringing about this :)

"If you run, you are a runner. It doesn't matter how fast or how far. It doesn't matter if today is your first day or if you've been running for twenty years. There is no test to pass, no license to earn, no membership card to get. You just run."
John Bingham