Whew!

We survived crazy April! It’s so lovely to sit here on a Saturday morning, with a cat on my lap and a big dog “sharing” the couch with me, watching TV with no big agenda. May is not without it’s hurdles, (next weekend I head down to Oregon for my grandmother’s memorial and have to interact with a sister I haven’t spoken to in a year and a half. Fun!) But I’m sure I’ll survive (alcohol to the rescue!) and there are fun plans on the horizon as well. In the meantime, we’re settling in to our little house and slowly but surely restoring order from the chaos of the move. As soon as we finish up the last touches, I’ll take some photos for ye ol’ blog. Because a blog post without photos just sucks. (D’oh!)

Progress…

Incredibly, I’ve managed to not only keep my tomato plants alive, but they are actually producing fruit. Voila!

You can expect that apocalypse any old time now…

Three years

Happy blogoversary! When I started this blog three years ago, I had no real mission statement. I liked reading friend’s blogs and wanted to write my own. It was just for my random musings and observations. Initially, I was constantly on alert for things to write about. Nearly every day, I’d think to myself “Is this blog-worthy? Should I write about this?” Now, I’m a little choosier (or lazier, take your pick… ) but I still really enjoy writing about my various adventures. And hopefully my tens of readers continue to enjoy reading about them!

Rollercoaster week

This week went by really quickly and was a bit of a roller coaster. My big goals for the week were to get back on some kind of training schedule and get some job stuff taken care of. There’s a full-time design job that I’m really excited about and I’m very fortunate to have a friend who works there helping me out, so I spent the early part of the week getting my application materials finished up and sent in, but I knew it might be a while before I heard anything back. I had a few leads on contract work that some friends had sent me, so I diligently followed up with those as well.

Late last week, I’d started talking with my former company about doing some contracting work for them. (Yeah, I know.) On Monday, I had a phone call set up to discuss what I thought were the specifics of the arrangement, but it turned out the powers that be hadn’t given their final approval yet and instead here’s a long pitch about possible future opportunities to come back and work for them in October. Yeah, right. The whole phone call opened up all of the layoff emotions and the whole encounter felt like a bad high school break up. “No, baby… this time I’m totally going to change. I’ll totally treat you right this time, I swear!” Sigh.

As far as training went, it was pretty ugly. Monday, I went for a bike ride with T and felt like crap. Tuesday, went for a run and felt like crap. Wednesday, M & I ran some errands down in Renton and treated ourselves with a trip to the best pool ever – Colman. I was expecting the swim to be horrible, since it had been over a week since I’d swum last and that was a disaster, but it was okay. (Maybe the fabulosity of Colman makes a bad swim more bearable, who knows?) Encouraged by my Colman efforts, I came back and sent off a quick e-mail to a Craigslist contracting lead. They responded within 20 minutes with a request for a few more samples and we set up a phone interview for Friday. Since I still hadn’t heard anything from my former company, it was good to see some kind of work on the horizon.

Thursday, I woke up blue for no really good reason. The weather was gray and cloudy and it was just one of those days where it’s hard to see anything working out and everything just seems doomed to failure. I have enough experience with this state of mind to just sort of ride it out. I forced myself out onto the bike for some hill repeats in the neighborhood. (Maybe some external pain will shake up the internal blahs… ) T was nice enough to go with me and we had a decent 45 minute ride. (Legs still not 100% but better than Monday) After some lunch and a nap, I went back out for a run. Going out sucked, but coming back actually felt pretty decent.

We ended the evening having M & J over for pizza. Wally decided to help us manage our carbs by eating one entire pizza dough. Bad, bad dog! T was forced to improvise and divide the remaining pizza into two smaller doughs. It all turned out okay, the pizzas were small but delicious and our guests claimed to have gotten enough to eat. It gave T & I an excuse to go out and get a cupcake later in the evening, so it all turned out okay.

Fingers crossed that things will start to feel normal soon…

Taste of summer

With Pacific Crest looming on the horizon, (Ack! Two weeks away!) this weekend was all about training. It’s good timing since T has finals this coming week and I needed to stay out of his hair. Plus the weather forecast was G O R G E O U S. I needed to do a long ride on Saturday and had scoped out a route on the Eastside so that I could avoid the crowds on the various multi-use paths. Unfortunately, I was too lazy/stupid to look at the organized century ride that was on said route on the same day. (I thought it was on Sunday, despite it being written on my training plan for Saturday. D’oh!) This meant sharing my quiet country roads with hundreds of other riders of varying abilities. I’d originally planned a 62 mile route, but there was a looped section that was so congested that I ended up skipping it and riding about 50 miles instead. The upside was that I didn’t have to look at my little cue-sheet, I could just follow the crowds. Plus, I got to pass people which is always fun and good for the ego.

I wanted to take a ton of pictures on my ride, as the weather was beautiful and the scenery was outstanding. Unfortunately, I had to focus on training and not hitting/getting hit by crazy people so I didn’t have the opportunity. Later in the summer, when I’m not in hard-core triathlete mode, I’ll do this ride again and take some photos. After I finished the ride, I treated the local Target to a visit in my sweaty, smelly bike clothes to pick up cat litter & toilet paper and inhale a soft pretzel & diet coke. Not a pretty spectacle, but a necessary one.

Then it was home for about an hour before heading over to West Seattle with M for the summer’s first visit to the raddest pool in the world, Colman pool:

(Cue sound of angelic choral music)

It was every bit as awesome as I remembered. The weather was still beautiful. I shared my lane with four normal people, who when spread out across a 50 meter pool weren’t even noticeable. It’s still an adjustment going from 25 feet to 50 meters, but it was still heaven. Afterward, I went over to M & J’s place for dinner and a little RockBand, which T was able to join for a little while.

Sunday brought more bike riding, this time with M. We headed up north for a little break from the Burke Gilman for a 20 mile ride followed by a short, hot run. After all of the riding on Saturday and the hills of Sunday, my legs were not psyched to go for a run, even a short one. (Hence the reason for doing it in training.) I was pleasantly surprised that after five minutes or so, it actually didn’t feel too bad. Hopefully, that will carry over to race day. Usually, starting the run leg is just horrible.

After the ride, I hit up a produce market I’d been wanting to check out and got the idea for skewers for dinner. In my limited energy window, I managed to get groceries for the week and frozen yogurt with T before crashing on the couch. T helped me with dinner and we turned out some delicious steak skewers (Sorry vegetarians, you may want to avert your eyes.)

Paired with some awesome corn on the cob and homemade bread a la T:

It was pretty much the perfect summer dinner. We’ve had these cool skewers for years, but are only now getting around to using them. I’m thinking that will change as we realized how unbelievably easy skewers are to make and how freakin’ delicious they are. It was a busy weekend, but a really enjoyable one. What a difference a little sunshine makes!

We now return to our regularly scheduled blogging

Sorry for the lack of posts, folks! Between the new job, the holidays and then being sick for the last week and a half, I just haven’t been very good at keeping up on the blog. For those of you who use a RSS reader, you probably already noticed this, but for the rest of you, I’ve written back-dated posts to catch you up on my various doings (mostly so I can post some photos) so enjoy!

First post on the new blog

Hi everyone!  This is the first step in the creation of my new site and my first venture into the “blogosphere.”  I enjoy reading friend’s blogs so much that I thought it only fair that I provide my own.  My goal is to have a little something for everyone, so I’ll categorize my posts accordingly.  (So, if you only want to read my random musings on design or are crazy enough to want to read about my triathlon training, you’ll have that option.)

The look of this site and blog will change much in the weeks to come, so please stay tuned.

M