Still here and warm

Well, I am looking at the 10 day forecast in Chicago and I am thinking I could use a bit more sun before heading back. More show showers and garbage. But not here. Here it's 79 and partly cloudy every day.

The winds are a bit strong and so we are just going to stick around St. Maarten instead of trekking down to St. Barth's. No need to bang into the wind for 12 miles.

Alright, well I don't think that stories of lounging and reading and sunning and swimming are all too interesting so I'll leave you here. Oh we did take my dad's new cat swimming yesterday to teach her hot to get back onto the boat. The first try she just threw herself against the boat (just so you know my dad and I were in the water in case something happened. After she tried to launch herself on the edge of the boat we put her on a bumper that is covered with netting. She could easily attach herself to that and then we pulled her up. We made her go one more time to see if she would go for the mesh covered bumper and she did right away which is good. So baby mismo can swim and knows what to do if she falls in. See I'm working here.

Good times in Paradise

Day 3 of the vacation is going well. I have managed to get two runs in in the past two days. I use the word runs loosely as the first one was more of a 30 minute running/walking tour around Grand Case with my dad. Then this morning I decided to try and get some hill work in. So I found a hill that was pretty long...1/4 mile...1/2 mile maybe. I thought I could run up the hill and walk back down it about 10 times. Then I realized that the hill was really really steep and so I changed to 5 times....THEN at the end of the 4th repeat I was dying (there are no hills in Chicago) and figured no need to kill myself while vacationing. Plus I always figure something is better than nothing.

We went snorkling today which was fun. I love the other world that happens when you put on the snorkel mask. Even if there aren't a ton of fish, it's still amazing.

So as I sit in a bar with a sand floor and finish an El Presidente I'll leave you with this picture (tons to come of course when I have faster internet upload). This is the scene when you are leaving Simpson Bay in St. Maarten.

Congrats all around

Just a few reasons to celebrate:

Yesterday my brother, Jamie, took and passed his first actuarial exam. He's been studying awhile for this exam and the hard work obviously paid off. Apparently, 2/3 of people who take the test fail (a rather skewed curve, I' d say), but not surprising he was in the better 1/3. Congrats!

And this weekend my mom kicked off the release of her latest album, Emergence, with a CD signing. Congrats to her on yet another musical achievement and I can't wait to get it in the mail. Congrats!

And, I'm guessing Leah probably finished another chapter in her book while sunning herself so...Congrats, I guess. Did I mention the snow here in Chicago?

And me? Well, yesterday I got to work and discovered that my boxers were on backwards. Yes, that's right, I can't even dress myself without Leah around. And, more importantly, there was no one around to see my look down at my backwards underwear and exclaim "Why didn't anyone tell me my ass was so big!"

Anyway, nothing too exciting to report from me. I'll start the running program tomorrow as I'm pretty much just hitting healthy and tomorrow should be a good day to get back into it.



current underwear status: forwards.

I'm here

and I might never come back.

RICK...I'M KIDDING :-)

It's great here and after a few crazy airports tramas (only tramatic to crazy fliers like me and my dad who is currently reading over my shoulder :-) )

It's hot and sunny and wonderful here.

Stay tuned for pictures and more!

Leah's off to the airport

And, assuming everything's going smoothly, is sitting in a cramped seat between some guy who's way too sweaty for 6 in the morning and a lady who won't stop clearing her throat. And, if this is the case, she's wishing she had someone with whom to exchange an annoyed glance. Ha, that'll be the last time she goes on a trip without me.

Hey, wait, she just called. Apparently the plane is being delayed because the flight crew "has to get some sleep." Wait, what? a) I've seen Airplane, there's three pilots for a plane. Sleep in shifts. Treat it like a road trip and b) maybe hire another pilot so the night crew doesn't have to become the day crew. She already only has an hour to catch her next connecting flight and now it looks like that is going to turn into 40 minutes or so (if everything goes well).

I bet she's glad she's a runner now.

So, a lady who's:

• already a nervous flyer
• hates to be late
• prefers to be a 1/2 early
• can't stand being completely powerless
  

is stuck reading her book waiting for a pilot to show up. Fun. Good luck!

Time to Sun and Sail

Yo people, this runner girl is heading out tomorrow bright and early. I don't know why I always do this, but my flight is at 6am, meaning that me and my big ball of crazy will need to be at the airport at 4am, meaning I am needing to be up at 3. So I'll go to bed early tonight and then stress out worrying that I won't wake up on time. SO I'll end up with a few hours of sleep.

BUT THEN.

THEN.

I will land in St. Maarten and join my dad and stepmom for some sun and sailing. I am making my dad go running with me. He'll run and he'll like it. I am hoping to get enough miles in to keep up the streak I had going this week. I'm going to do some swimming too obviously. I don't know what the sailors have planned for destinations, but I have lots of books with me and I'm looking forward to not being cold!

On the running front, yesterday I had 3 miles at marathon pace. I thought I was feeling just bad in general, but when I finished and checked my watched I clocked in at about 24 minutes, so 8minute miles. This is not going to be my race pace and so I'm going to have to slow that down. Today I had 6 miles and I went out to the lake front path. I love Chicagoans. When I went out to run it was 30 degrees out. Several people on the lakefront had shorts on and a few were just in shorts and t-shirts. I don't think it's warm enough for that yet, but as soon as it's not 10 degrees and the sun is actually out and shining, we are so ready for spring time that if it even looks like spring time we dress for it.

Alright, well I will try and blog while out having fun on the boat. Enjoy the end of February everyone!

Shoes

I love shoes, especially running shoes. When I worked at Sportmart back in the day I ended my summer working stint with hardly any money saved up as it all just went right back to Sportmart so I could get those super fab Nikes that had come out.

Now my love of shoes is obviously a necessity. With all the miles we put on shoes, especially in the summer we go through a new pair every few months (40 miles per week x 10 weeks = 400 miles...about time for retirement for me). I tend to stick with Brooks Adrenalines, because I know them an they have served me well but I went through a wacky path to figure out that those work for me.

There is a new site that has been recently launched that is a shoe guide. You can search for shoes by brand, type, weight of runner, surfaces & off road use. It's an extensive listing of running shoes each of which has an overview of the shoe, features as well as reviews. I think this would be a highly useful site and so I'll be adding the link to my sidebar. The link is : http://www.shoeguide.co.uk/

I think many runners share the love and need for new shoes, so stop on by and check it out!

Hills & He's Almost Back

Yesterday I went to the gym for my 3 miles + strength work. I forgot my headphones yet again and so to make the run more interesting, I pushed the "hills" button after I had warmed up for a few minutes. I then increased the incline so that I was at level 10 (I believe that you can do the hill program between 1-20 so I was about half way). It was basically run at an incline of 1.5 for about .1 miles, then it would increase to say 3.5 for .1 miles, then back down to 1.5, then up to 4.5 and so on, until it went to 7.8 (went above 7.5) and then back to 1.5, then it restarted itself with jumping to 3.5, 4.5 and so on. I don't know if that makes *any* sense, but it does to me so read it again if you don't get it. I had the pace at 8:47 min/mile until the last 1/2 mile where I pushed it to 8:34 and then 8:27 for the last 1/4 mile.

In short, treadmill running is more fun if you have more to play with during your run. After the running I did some strength work and then some situp type things. Today is a rest day which is nice.

Jason is feeling a lot better and went back into work today. We have a busy weekend with hanging out with our super cool friend Jake tonight, then college friends tomorrow afternoon and then going to the IU game at Northwestern with them, THEN my cousin Chris is turning 30 (how is that possible) and so we are going to meet them out at a bar in the loop after the game. They said that they would be there long into the night so I hope they are still there after the game.

On Sunday I am going to rest up and pack and get ready to head to St. Maarten to hang with my dad and stepmom for a week. I have lots of stuff to bring them (they would kill for Stewarts coffee and I'm on a mission to find bulk Atomic Fireballs...plus a few surprises that they don't know about...I heart secrets).

I am busy today trying to wrap up the last piece of my analysis which has gotten so super complicated that I want to never ever ever see anything about this analysis again as soon as it's done. Alright then. I'm off.

Another Sick, Tempo & Ice Cold

So Jason is uber sick. I went to pick him up after my run at the gym around 10:30. He went to bed and woke up and got out of bed at about 4pm. Then he went back to bed around 7pm (took some Nyquil) and woke up with the alarm at 6:15 this morning. He debated going into work today but realized he didn't feel any better and so is now back in bed....probably just about asleep. This sounds similar to whatever The Lovely Cousin Lisa recently had as when I talked to her on Monday she said she basically slept through the weekend.

SO we are hoping that he's back to the fun lovin' guy we know some time soon.

Yesterday I went to the gym around 9:15 and it was *great*. It was just about empty which was nice. There was a 30 minute tempo run on the schedule. Higdon describes this as a 10 min warm up, speeding up for about 15 minutes then cooling down for the last 5. He mentions that your top speed should be about 2/3 of the way through the work out. As much as I loathe running on the treadmill I have to say for this workout it was nice. This is how I broke it down :

Minutes 0-5 : 9:31 min/mile
Minutes 5-10 : 9:05 min/mile
Minutes 10-13 : 8:12 min/mile
Minutes 13-16 : 7:47 min/mile
Minutes 16-19 : 7:30 min/mile
Minutes 19-22 : 7:03 min/mile
Minutes 22-25 : 7:30 min/mile
Minutes 25-30 : 9:05 min/mile

So you can see the first 10 minutes and last 5 minutes are cool down times, then between 19-22 minutes (20 minutes is 2/3 of the way through) I pushed it to 7:03. I felt great on this workout and it was probably the first time I have run fast since marathon training. Yes, I realize this would have been better done outdoors because it's obviously much harder to keep speed up when you don't have a moving belt helping you BUT with the temperatures I wanted a quality workout and not having a my top speed be 9:00 min/mile because I couldn't feel my toes during the run.

So yes we are still icey here in Chicago and to make matters even more exciting we lost our hot water last night. I thought maybe a miracle would occur and we would wake up this morning to things working but no such luck. I mean this isn't just luke warm, but rather Ice ice ice cold. So lucky me gets to call the rental people in an hour or so. I wonder if they are competent enough to fix this before noon today.

Today is just 3 miles and strength which I will do at the gym. I think I might take shower stuff so I can shower at the gym since they will probably have hot water there and who knows when this apartment will be up to snuff.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

All around the Chicago blog-o-sphere there is much bitching about the weather. Yes we are all tired of bitching and complaining and yet can't quite help ourselves. Why? BECAUSE IT'S SO BITCH ASS COLD OUT. We live on a first floor apartment with the worst heating system ever. I mean I am sure it's "legal" because we have a heater, however it should break some kind of code because there is a large disparity in temperature between the living room (no vents) and the kitchen where the heater is. Add to that the fact that basement girls have been evicted and so there is no heat coming from their apartment and so our floors are like ice. My dad said it's like camping in our apartment and he's not too far off.

Despite the cold we did go outside for a 3.5 mile run when Jason got home from work. Those people that don't shovel when it snows now have about an inch of solid ice on their sidewalks. So we ran about 3.5 miles in 32:32 for a 9:09 mile which is pretty good considering the fact that we were doing a lot of careful running on the ice to keep from falling.

Unfortunately, Jason woke up today feeling all kinds of miserable. Seems like he has gotten himself some kind of flu bug. He woke up with a bad headache and was sore. Part of the soreness should be from working out on Monday and the really hard run last night, but I don't think he should be as sore as he was. He made it into work today but won't be doing any kind of running today. Since running outside in this cold crap is less than fun, especially alone, I am going to go to the gym during the day today to do my tempo run on a treadmill before it gets too crowded over there. It's only a 30 minute run so it shouldn't be too bad. Plus I'll be able to control the speed pretty well.

And now just to make you laugh. Dooce of dooce.com had this video posted yesterday and Jason and I were crying we were laughing so hard. I wish we had game shows like the Japanese have as they are *hilarous*!!

Awesomeness

Yesterday was a great day. I went to the lab and got some work done, I went shopping with a family friend and then Jason and I had a great session at the gym. We did our usual assortment of upper body stuff and then finished off with some ab work. Cheetah Gym is great, but there is no one area to do situps and stuff. There are a few small tiny areas that are always jammed. So Jason and I found some mats right by where they have washers and dryers (yep you could do your laundry at the gym) and so did our stuff there. It's good to keep up with the strength work as we always let that slip when we work out because running is more fun.

Today we have 3.5 miles on tap. I think we are going to eat dinner and then go to the gym around 9pm or so when we can be more sure of getting a treadmill. Although, it's not going to be all that windy tonight so maybe we can just bundle up and do the run outside even though we are looking at 16 degree feels like 5 degree temps. We'll see. This has been a really bad winter. I think I always say that at the end of February, it just seems that we have had way more snow and cold crappiness than we usually have.

Then on Wednesday we have a 30 minute tempo run. This plan is funny because when we did it the first time we were so excited to be doing speedwork and it was really tough. This time around it's awesome because after 2 years of doing Pfitz for marathon training it doesn't seem all that bad. The tempo runs are about 10 minutes of warming up then the middle part your ramp up until you are going the fastest you want to go about 2.3 of the way through the middle part and then slow back down, but not too slow and then take the last 5 minutes to cool down. Well that's what we did last time anyways.

I sent and e-mail to our friend Joe to see if he would be interested in the Flying Pig half and I think he just might be. I was thinking it would be fun for all of us to run it together as I think Joe could easily keep a 9min/mile pace and that's all we are looking for in this race. My bff Bridgette is doing the race already and so it will be a nice little IU reunion.

Crazy Good

After a horrible week of being sick and stuck on the couch and feeling super ill, Jason and I made up for it by have one of the best weekends.

On Saturday we had plans to meet up with my old friend Jean downtown for dinner. We left our apartment at about 1pm and since we had just missed the bus we decided to walk about a half a mile to a local Starbucks and get some drinks. It was so nice out and by that point were just about a mile from the Blue Line Chicago stop which we were going to grab to get downtown so we decided to walk there instead of riding the bus. Then we got to the subway station and said, you know...it's still nice out let's keep walking. So we ended up walking all the way down to Millennium Park to catch the Museum of Modern Ice exhibit. I have to say that on first glance I was less than impressed. We were getting cold and tired at this point so we did some back and forth walking trying to find a place to just sit down and wait for my friend. A cafe across the street from the Bean served that purpose and some coffee and crossword puzzling was done.

After meeting up with Jean we all headed back to the exhibit and it was a much cooler thing at night when it was all lit up. So if you are going to go check it out I would recommend going at night. I would have pictures, but I actually came into the lab today and the pictures are on my computer at home. After hanging out a bit there we walked north to the House of Blues neighborhood and went to a place called A Mano for dinner. It was so super delicious and we would all highly recommend it.

THEN after dinner, we walked back to Millennium park and the four of us went ice skating. Jason and I were noticing all of these nice couples holding hands and blah blah. Of course when we held hands I would just whip Jason around as fast as I could (not that fast but I am a better ice skater than he is) and let go and watch him fall. I am *such* a good wife. I do have to say that Jason is so much better on ice skates than he was the first time we went about 6 years ago.

After ice skating we walked back north to get some stuff we had left at Jean's husband's school while we were ice skating, and continued on foot north to Chicago Ave where we had planned to take the bus. However, getting there and seeing a large crowd at the Michigan bus stop we decided that by this point (10:30pm) we had been walking for about 9 hours with a dinner break and treated ourselves to a cab ride home.

On Sunday we didn't do much of anything except go to the Blackhawks game. By far the most exciting game we had been to yet. The Hawks played some great defense the entire game, holding the Avalance to no goals in a 5 on 3 power play as well as the final minute of the game when the Avalance pulled their goalie and we had a penalty so we were playing 4 on 6. Hawks won 2-1. We have one more game in our Holiday season ticket package and I'm sad because it's been so fun. We'll have to do that again for sure next year.

I had a lot of trouble falling asleep again last night. I don't know what the deal is. I mean I had gotten up kind of late on Sunday morning, but I just stare at the clock going, yep....that's right your alarm is going to go off in 6 hours. Ok, now it's going to go off in 5.5 hours...ok, now 5.25. I finally fell asleep at about 1:30 or so I'm guessing and got up at 6:30 even though the alarm had been set for 5:30. I must have hit snooze for about an hour without realizing it.

I think we won't be too bad on the running front. I am going to do the second week of the training plan as we should this week. Next week the schedule is somewhat of a cut back week with a 5K race planned. With me on vacation I'm going to run when I can. With my dad back on his running horse we'll probably do some short and slow father daughter runs :-) It'll be nice to run in shorts again. Then when I get home there shouldn't be any trouble sticking the schedule for the last 9 weeks of the training.

Making the Turn

No, not like in football when you want your running back to head up the field, but when you are so deathly ill that you feel like you know the fate of the rest of your life and you make that turn to feeling better. After so many days of feeling like death and finding myself up at 2:30 in the morning coughing and sniffling watching Cosby reruns I decided to knock myself out with some Nyquil last night. I'm still sick but not deathly so. I got a great nights sleep and I think I'm on my way back to the Leah we all know and love.

What the ASS

Seriously. I'm still sick.

I don't know if I have ever been this sick for this long. Like I think back to times in my life when I was sick...there was that time freshman year of college that I got Mono, and that sucked big time. But other than that....5 days of being sick. Never has happened.

This is the main week we are supposed to start training for the 1/2 marathon and while I know that a week off won't kill your training, it's still annoying not being able to hit the ground running. Oh well. I am not hoping for any PRs at the Flying Pig, especially considering how many hills there are. Hell it might be a PW.

So that's that. I am sitting here in my PJs coughing and sniffling because it has yet to be *really* annoying. Oh wait. no no. It's SUPER ANNOYING.

Feeling Lousy

Well on Saturday morning I woke up and thought my throat was a little sore. By Saturday night I was feeling really bad. I hardly slept that night because I kept waking myself up.

On Sunday I woke up early, spent the entire day on the couch trying to get a nap in but just could never fall asleep. It's. So. Annoying. Last night I slept more even though I woke up several times during the night.

I don't know know what I have. Runny nose, sore throat, but that's it so hopefully it'll pass soon.

On Saturday we went to the lakefront path and ran about 6 miles. We tried to run around the neighborhood but as there are those people that don't shovel and then have icey sidewalks. So about every other house had ice on the sidewalk and there is no way to run on that. Luckily the lakefront path is shoveled in the winter.

It's currently 1 degree here. With yet another snow advisory on for tonight. What the hell. WHEN DO I GET TO GO TO THE ISLANDS? Only 2 weeks now!

Best. Running. Hat. Ever.

We Made a Valient Effort

We got had a good light dinner.
We got dressed.
We packed up a gym bag with dry shoes and socks.
We bundled up.
We went to the car to drive to the gym.

That's where it ended. The car was covered in about an inch of ice/snow.

We went back inside. I reiterate. I hate the month of February.

IU beat Illinois in double over time. And I can tell you that the Illinois players are dirty little assholes as they were being so mean and nasty to our players. That's so childish and bad sportsmanship. I also say that's on the coach for even allowing that behavior happen.

Anyways.

Upstairs neighbors were noisy again. However, it was later (about 6:40am) and ended up being good because I forgot to reset the alarm to 6:15 from 8am. So the noisy neighbors woke Jason up and off to work he went.

3 Miles in Snow & Wind

Yesterday after Jason got home from work we went out for a run. The weather was hideous but I had been in the apartment since Monday afternoon and so it was time to get out as cabin fever was starting to set it. Not many of the sidewalks were shoveled and so it made for lots of funky looking running. Our 3 mile loop goes by the Cousin Lisa's apartment and I needed to stop by quickly so we did that before continuing on our way. I am guessing she was holding back all kinds of laughter after looking at me in my winter running gear which is consisting of normal clothing and this ridiculous green and yellow stocking hat which of course has the little ball at the top. Awesome.

But we made it through the run without any drama and it was nice to get out of the apartment. Tonight we are going to go to the gym and try and do some speedwork on the treadmills since there is no where that we can go to do 1/4 mile repeats. When we followed the Higdon 1/2 marathon plan before we frequently just used the sidewalks to do them (Chicago blocks are almost all 1/8 mile long...so run for two blocks and you got yourself 1/4 miles. On this note, the streets are eerily accurate as I have been like, oh that should have been about 6 miles and then when I have either run with Garmin or mapped out the run later it's almost to the T. I heart cities set up in grids). Alright moving on. So we are going to try and do 5x400m on a treadmill and see how that works. Should make treadmill running more interesting anyways.

The Coffee Report : It's going alright. I am down to one nice cup of coffee in the morning before I start doing physicsy work. I am sleeping a bit more though which annoys me because I would rather only sleep for 6-7 hours. Oh well. More sleep never killed anyone.

Work stuff is going really well. I am almost done rerunning my analysis. I have one new systematic to take care of and then I can focus in on writing my thesis full time.

Lots of that White Stuff Coming Down...Again!

Aperture : f/13
Shutter Speed : 1/60s
Focal Length : 50mm
ISO : 400

Time for Change

I saw this on Runner Susan's blog and in case there are people that read this and don't read that (unlikely cause she is like the coolest in the blog-o-sphere) I wanted to post it here as well. Wonderful.

It's Still Exciting!

Well Obama and Hillary are still within sight of each other. I think that Obama's camp wanted to be within 100 delegates of Hillary by the end of super Tuesday and it looks like they made that happen. This is such an exciting time to be voting! Plus, it looks like McCain will win the Republican nomination, which is good because even though I don't like him he's probably less conservative than most republicans...but 100 years in Iraq? Really? I told Jason if Huckabee wins the Republican nomination and then the presidential we are moving out of the country. That guy is so annoying. When he speaks he sounds like a minister with dramatic (and too many!) pauses....oh that' right, BECAUSE HE IS A MINISTER. Yeah that's what we need in the White House.

I'm excited that both democratic candidates are both so strong and good. Jason and I are pulling for the Illinois Senator, but Clinton is also so amazing. So either way we are going to have a good team going up in November.

Yesterday after some frustrating calls with my parents (oh shit, they both read this blog...but they know that I was frustrated so no shocker there) one being resolved (although now I am having panic attacks based on the content.....yes I am going to be that secretive...fights with parental units should be... I LOVE YOU MOM) and the other ongoing since I was basically hung up on which always thrills me....when does this sentence end....Right, after the calls Jason came home and I was one big pile of cranky, it was raining ice and so I stayed in my cocoon. I told myself after last year that I would never train for a race in the winter again. Why didn't I listen to myself? Depending on the weather we are going to try and either get to the gym or run 3 miles outside tonight.

And thus we start Wednesday.

I Wish theTrip to St. Maarten was sooner!

Mid-Winter Blues.....big time! WHERE'S THE MOTHER F'IN SUNSHINE.

Return of the Noisy Neighbors

O. M. F. G.

What the ASS are you doing up there. SERIOUSLY. Are you getting back at us because we had a bit of a screaming match the other night? Although our screaming match was probably due to us being tired because you AND YOUR LOUD SELF IS RIDICULOUS AT 5 IN THE MORNING. Apparently us beating on the ceiling, screaming or blasting some Q101 Alternative loud music is not helping or you are choosing to ignore us.

I get it. I get living in apartments. I have lived in many loud apartments. And yes the idiot boy neighbors at our old place having parties every day of the week and our bell getting rung by mistake at 2am wasn't much better. BUT THEY WERE DOING THAT BECAUSE THEY WERE BEING EVICTED SO IT ONLY LASTED A MONTH.

So Leah's a bit cranky today. It doesn't help that I now have a one cup of coffee limit as had I decided to stay an addict I could medicate throughout the day.

Last night Jason and I were so good. We went to the gym, even though our couch and apartment were much more cuddly that the outdoors. But it was a "stretch/strength" day and so we went. We just did a small amount of arm work and headed back home. I had troubles falling asleep and so didn't get to bed till about midnight which makes the assholes upstairs doing whatever it is they are doing at 5am all the more frustrating.

But up at 5 it was. I made some muffins for breakfast and Jason and I headed to our polling place to cast our votes in the primary. This has been such an exciting race (everyone go vote!!!! Remember 8 years ago when we said, oh it doesn't really matter who we vote for as they both seem about the same and neither one sticks out...yeah) and I'm excited to see how it plays out tonight. I might have to take a nap before Jason gets home so that I can stay up late and see the results.

Today is just a 3 mile run which we are going to do around the neighborhood as soon as Jason gets home from work. Then it'll be settling in with some CNN for poll returns.

And just because I really like this picture, I'm repeating it here since it's already up on my photoblog :

Aperture : f/2.2
Shutter Speed : 1/1600s
Focal Length : 50mm
ISO400

They Did IT!!!

That's the game that I wanted the Bears to play last year. When everyone picked the Patriots and there is no way the Giants can win and blah blah blah. Jason and I went over to my our friend's Corey and Danny's house to watch the game. Danny is from NY and a huge giants fan so it was really fun to watch the game with someone who really cared. I mean we cared because we have a huge hatred of The Patriots (yes yes, because they cheated against the Colts like 5 years ago, and some of us aren't over it). Well that and they are...a bunch of cheaters.

So Yaya for NY!

In weekend news, we had another great one. On Friday night we just watched a bunch of movies and stayed up really late. On Saturday we went downtown and did some shopping, including spending more of our Macy's gift card. I couldn't decide on what I should get and then on the way out there was a Clinique display of the Happy perfume. I love that stuff and I would never buy it for myself, so gift card to the rescue. And now I am oh so happy when I am wearing it. On Saturday night, we ... yeah you guessed it watched movies and stayed up really late for the second night in a row.

On Sunday we went out for our long run, logging 5 miles for the second week in a row. Many of the sidewalks were way still covered in snow, but we were able to do the run averaging 9:11 min/mile which was good and a bit surprising. Jason and I were also noting that were were starting to feel more in the running groove...which is good because our 1/2 marathon training plan starts this week, but it doesn't look too bad.

Alright, time to get the week started.

Are You A Fan of Delicious Flavor?

That's what Jason asked me today as he pulled this out of the grocery bag :

It's a Psych thing :-) New shows are on Friday nights.

We ran 3 miles tonight outside when Jason got home. Many of the times we were running through about 6" of snow, but we laughed and laughed. It's not so bad running in the evenings or in the cold. And while I know this, I seem to forget it frequently in these early months.