Sailor Sue Sells Photos

As many of you know my Dad and Stepmom live aboard a 40' sailboat in the Caribbean. Sue (the stepmom) takes tons of beautiful pictures down there and has now started to post them to a smugmug account for purchase. Please check out her site here :

Sailor Sue Takes Photos!

and enjoy the beauty of the islands...especially for those of us up here in the midwest where we are looking at another 3 months of cold.

Unplugged...For A Bit Anyways

Today, I unplugged myself from the interwebs for a few hours while I walked around my neighborhood and did some shopping for the hubby. It was kind of nice. I didn't even have my trusty iPhone with me as it was without charge and thus hanging out in my apartment.

We are have another big snow storm here in Chicago which is both awesome and a little nuts. There is no way that we can get our car out of the parking spot it's in due to the snow....and surprisingly I'm ok with that. I believe there are plans in place for us to have a rented car to go to the in-laws with on Friday so we won't have to worry about getting the car out. If that fell through at least there is a shovel in the basement of our building so we won't be digging our car out with spoons and hot water as we have done in the past.

While I was out shopping I saw this guy and realized there isn't even an excuse for not running. He was pretty awesome and a big thank you to him for looking right at my camera. Happy Holidays All! (As usual click on the photo for a smugmug gallery of my walk! I'm in the middle of Lightroom withdrawal so all the pictures recently are just the jpgs out of the camera so they aren't going to be as sharp as they have been in the past....the dude below had minor changes using CameraRaw which I am starting to learn)

10 Cookies + 3 Marshmallows = Fun + Busy

This weekend was my annual cookie bake off. This year I added 2 new kinds of cookies to my repertoire bring the total number to 10 types. This year I also made marshmallows which added some fun. I made three batches of those.

The baking crazy started on Friday night at my Aunt's and continued through the weekend, ending a few hours ago. Although there were a few naps thrown in there, just for good measure. Here are some pictures of the baking in progress and click on any of them to go to a gallery with more pictures. Ignore the pictures of me....no sleep....lots of baking = me not looking *awesome*.

Just a Bit Too Crazy

So last night there was a real "winter storm watch" going on in Chicago. Usually it's all, "WINTER STORM WATCH" and then you go outside and there is a 1/2" of snow on the ground. Yesterday afternoon however it was really coming down....and kept coming down, faster with the flakes getting bigger and bigger. Jason and I wisely decided to take the train home instead of run home as is supposed to be our plan on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And you know....we live in Chicago, shitty weather like this is going to happen which is why making training plans in December is always rough. We met friends out for dinner at Sheffields last night and had we not I think we would have gone out later after the snow had stopped coming down.

In other news. I made homemade marshmallows on Monday night. I am super excited about them and am looking forward to giving them out along with cookies that I bake. I need to find some cellophane baggies that have christmas stuff on them...any ideas out there on where I could find some? I am thinking like The Paper Source....or something along those lines. Anyways let me know if you know what I'm talking about at all.

Other than that just preparing for a big baking/shopping weekend. I am going to my Aunt's on Friday night to bake some cookies and watch Christmas movies. Jason is coming to get me on Saturday morning, probably pretty early and then we'll go back home and I will start baking cookies/marshmallows etc. I think we are going to hit up the Border's tomorrow night to get a chunk of our shopping done. Big surprise everyone is getting books this year! WHAT. I know. Crazy.

That's all from here. Hopefully Thursday will be better for running than yesterday was.

OH and here is some Christmas cheer from our tree. Click on the photo to go to my smugmug gallery filled with all kinds of decoration pictures!

Well A Fine Run It Was

So....yeah, you know how your training Day #1 arrives and no matter what you are going to get that fucking workout in? Yeah, me too!

Yesterday was Day #1 of our lets run home from work on Tuesday and Thursdays plan....you cannot miss Day #1, you just can't and so with a howling wind and snow/sleet/ice/whatever coming down we headed north. The snow/sleet/ice whatever was so bad that I literally couldn't open my eyes as the snow/sleet/ice was cutting my eyes. Seriously. We were laughing pretty hard as *of course* this was the first day of the "plan".

But we made it, it's about 4.8 miles door to door and so a great distance for a run. We realized too that we were meeting a friend out for drinks at Local Option at 8pm, so we came home, cooked dinner showered really quick and then we headed back out. Because we are cool ("cool" = "crazy") like that we decided to walk to the bar which was about 1.5 miles from our house. In a snow storm. And then back home. Ah well. It's always kind of pretty when it snows in December and I like to be out in it. I'm sorry...for Christmas time there should be snow.

On the walk home Jason and I were singing Jingle Bell Rock and as we fell asleep trying to remember the words to the 12 days of Christmas.

Yeah, so a very busy evening. Tonight we are cooking dinner and I might make some thumbprints. Tomorrow we are going over to the Lovely Lisa's apartment for our annual candy making evening and we are going to make some cut out cookies as well so that should be fun. This weekend we are going to get our Christmas tree, and we might go get it on Friday night. If we do that then we need to rearrange our apartment a bit tonight to be ready for it. I'm looking forward to the holiday season and getting ready for my annual cookie bake off next weekend.

Alright, the coffee is done and as I am rambling I'm off.

Tomorrow is run home from work Day #2!

Gotta Be Organized for the New One

So today is the day to start running plan #857, well it's not really #857 but Jason and I have had so many deals and plans and whatevers to get us organized to run more that we have to be close to that many. The NEW and improved plan is to run home from work on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

So we "got our stuff together" last night, but really putting running clothes into a pile and calling it "ready to go" isn't really ready to go. So this morning was spent throwing shit into bags and hoping that it's all there.

The running home from work plan is always a good one...however there is always one thing you don't think of. This time around it was the, "Oh yeah it's winter....we need coats". So Jason only has one winter coat so say he wears it today and then runs home, then he has no coat for Tomorrow. BUT luckily today, while shitty and rainy and horrible out it wasn't too cold so he was able to wear just a rain jacket and keep his warm coat at home for tomorrow. I have a few coats including one of those ones that has a fleece and waterproof shell that I can separate out which is what I did today.

I think it's a really good plan and I'm excited to try it out. The idea is then to run on Saturdays and Sundays as well and then that will be 4 days a week. Plus on Saturdays and Sundays we could run in the daylight and so it won't be as bad. Coming home from work, then going back out running is just never a fun idea and we are really bad at doing it. So I'm excited to try this out.

There is a gym by our house that we are thinking of joining after the new year as well. For now I just want to do the free thing. So we'll see how this works.....I think it'll be easier to keep me honest cause really...I love our apartment and after getting home after a long/cold winter day....I do. not. want. to. leave. it. :)

So, that's the plan. Day 1 is today.

Laughed Until We Cried

Last night Jason reminded me that we have money budgeted for bars and that Sheffields was a bar and so we could go there after work and STILL be in our budget. I know I married that boy for a reason. So on the way home from work we went there for beers and dinner and had a great time. We invented a new version of rock-paper-scissors and I'm not kidding you when I say had you been at the bar and seen us doing this and laughing so hard we had tears rolling down our faces you would have thought we were the biggest nerds in the world. Which we are of course. You also would have wanted to be our friends because we must have looked like we were having a great time.

The owner of that place was there and if you thought in your mind what the owner of a Chicago bar should look like that would be the image in your head. He seems like a really nice guy and knows what he's doing on the beer and food side. We found out that he started working at Sheffields in 1988 as a door man...now he's the owner, funny how those things work.

Tonight Jason and I are going home eating dinner and then driving to Fermilab to clean out our office. I don't want to do it, but it has to be done, and we'll be fast about it. I'm looking forward to being done for reals with that part of my life.

Alright, well happy friday everyone. Enjoy your weekend!

New Dress and a Patient Husband

Jason's company's holiday party is on saturday night and it's a pretty fancy affair so I needed a new dress. I had plans to go shopping with my aunt last Sunday morning, but she called in sick and couldn't make it. Therefore with no time left to meet up with her, Jason and I went last night. He's so patient which is nice as I tried on a bunch of dresses and then I was like ok I'm going to get this one....then I walked around the dresses one more time and found another three I wanted to try on. I ended up getting one of the ones from this second scan of the dresses so it's good I looked. Jason was great though as he helped me decide and was patient will all of the options which was nice.

The dress is pretty too :)

My cousin is coming to Chicago this week too which should be a really good time. He's coming with his girlfriend and I was like, oh but we aren't going to be home on Saturday night....then I remembered that he's 22 now (or close) and not 12 and so doesn't need to stay home and watch Spaceballs with me while I babysit him. I guess they have friends here too so they are going to hang with them on Saturday night. It will be really fun to see him.

We also have to go to Fermilab to clean out our office this weekend. We might just go on Friday night as things are starting to get busy for the weekend. I am not looking forward to that to say the least...I'm guessing we'll be pretty quick about it though so it shoudln't take *too* long. As apparenlty we don't need any of the stuff in that office......we might be "donating" it.....and by "donating" I mean "scraping" it.

So that's all from here. Our weekly mileage is heading towards a big fat zero as we didn't run on Tuesday and it's freezing ass cold here today and we are big babies.

We do have an idea though...on Tuesdays and Thursdays we are going to try and run home from work so that we don't have the built in excuse of, "oh but we are home and it's so warm and comfortable here" as when we get home we will already be done with the run. Given that we live 5 miles from work to home it would be a really good solution I think. We'll try Tuesday and see what happens.

Thus this is the end as lunch is now over.

8 > 6 > 0

Oh yeah, that's right. These two running kids ran a whopping 8 miles last week. Now while I can lament on how horrible that is and how I really wanted to run 12 miles and blah blah blah, I am choosing not to and instead be happy that we are out there again, AND starting to enjoy it again. So it's more than last week which is also good. Just gotta keep moving the stick.

We were going to do another 4 mile run on Sunday, but after looking outside and noticing rain/snow ugliness and then looking towards our fireplace and decided that staying indoors and watching a fireplace and reading would be a more enjoyable way to go.

We had a great thanksgiving weekend that included aside from the wonderful thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's house (thanks again to the Hender gang for having Jason and I over) a ton of reading, moving watching, general relaxing, crashing high school reunion parties, having friends over for dinner, karaoke and napping. On the reading note, I read four books in the month of November. I am really enjoying getting back into reading novels and especially enjoying getting through some pretty quickly. I'm currently reading Blindness by Jose Saramango which is good aside from his difficult writing style.

So we have three weeks until Christmas which is of course very exciting. Now that Jason and I are starting our own traditions I am starting to really enjoy it again. I think we will start doing some decorating this weekend (everything besides the tree) and then probably get the three the weekend following (don't want it to dry out you know).

Our running plan is to run tomorrow, Thursday and then saturday. I don't know if we'll get out there on Sunday because Jason's holiday party is on Saturday and after a night of dancing/drinking I can probably safely say, running won't be high on my list of things I want to do.

That's all from here. Onto a busy week!