Quiet Around These Parts

Yikes. It's been awhile.

I have been keeping myself busying with my photoblog http://leahcphotos.wordpress.com, traveling, work, preparing to go travel...and travel :).

Tomorrow Jason and I are going to Zurich to visit some of our best friends from graduate school. We haven't seen them for about two years I think and so we are really looking forward to seeing them. Bonus that we get to see them in in Europe. We are also going to go to CERN (in Geneva) to visit some of our friends from our Fermilab days as they have gotten positions working on the new detector there.

We've been running on and off and found a perfect 3 mile loop that goes around the neighborhood that takes advantage of running around the neighborhood, the lakefront path, around Wrigleyfield...you know all the high points.

I suspect that when we get back from this trip we are going to tighten our belts and budgets and calm down a bit. Alright, that's all from here. I will update this with stories and pictures from Zurich when I get the chance!

Long Cold Walk

Well apparently we don't run anymore. I have desires to run, and then I'm like....cold. It's cold and snowy out. We did go to the gym on Tuesday and it was so crowded I barely got a locker and there was a line for the treadmills. I found some other kind of machine and did it for 10 minutes before I was so bored I had to stop. So yeah.

Instead of working out yesterday Jason and I went for a long walk. We put on our winter running clothes....but just as base layers. I want to learn how to take some night time pictures with long exposures/tripod blah blah blah. So I know...let's go walk to North Avenue Beach from our house, and take pictures when it's 11 degrees feels like 1. I just get so stir crazy in the winter having to stay indoors, that I will do anything to get outside. So we did walk over to north avenue beach. I think all the pictures I took are bad, but a lot of the pictures I took when I first got my camera leave a lot to be desired and there might be a gem in there somewhere. Given the long exposures it was a lot of open the shutter...then sit and freeze, check the image, try again. I didn't get a lot of pictures either...but anyways, it's all just practice.

After the picture taking we walked until we found a cab, and we had him drop us off at Sheffields where we enjoyed the company of our favorite bartender Matt, some delicious food, and some reading I had to do for work.

We have a fun weekend planned. Next week I'm off to sunny florida to visit theMom and then the following weekend Jason and I are off to Zurich to visit old friends for a week. I'm getting excited as I really love to travel!

Bad Night

Well it was just one of those nights. With a new project on the way at work, snippyness between Jason and I, basic unrest feeling makes for a long, sleepless night. I layed awake for 2 hours, then I woke up at 2:18am (and not just like opened my eyes, looked at the clock and rolled back to sleep...oh no it was one of those bolt awakes with your heart racing...and so you get up, get something to drink, check your e-mail and question whether you should just stay out of bed...I didn't...but I thought about it). Finally I woke up for reals at about 5:30, and was in the office by 7. I do like being in early before anyone is here though.

My photoblog is going really well. Mirrored is the post for today:


if you haven't checked it out, stop by : http://leahcphotos.wordpress.com as there some other good stuff over there.

I have a dentist appointment tomorrow morning. I am *not* looking forward to it. I have really bad teeth genetics (thanks mom and dad!) and in grad school aside from having no insurance, I didn't have any money for the dentist so let's just say I haven't been for awhile. I'm really going to get yelled at I'm guessing. I sort of hate this dentist too as last time I went he told me that if I get the jaw surgery I need, they might be able to give me a chin implant at the same time to take care of my weak chin....I was like..what? Really? Dude...could you be more vain? And really...giving me advice on my looks. thanks. But the place is close, and maybe they got a new dentist. The things is there used to be two dentists there and one of them was awesome, then I went back and I got the old vain dude and I was all, what happened to the nice one? Anyways. That was a lot of ranting about the dentist.

Alright and I'm off.

Fitnio

Yesterday at about 4:45 pm, I was looking out the window at work and noticed that it wasn't dark out. I mean it was *dusk* but it wasn't black as death out. It was that day, when you realize that the days are in fact getting longer and that April is right around the corner (when I mentioned that to my friend Jake he looked at me like I was crazy...which I am...but I told him we were closer to April than we were yesterday and so it's right around the corner). So I got the itch to go for a run when we got home.

I noticed a post about iPhone running applications on this blog, and thought that it would be a good time to try one of them out as I didn't really care how far I went and so if the GPS got all wonky as GPS devices can do in the city, I wouldn't really care. She mentioned two apps, one called RunKeeper and the other called Fitnio. I decided to try out Fitnio (I had a reason for this....don't remember why) but as they are both free I'll give the other one a whirl as well and then I can have more accurate reporting/opinions.

So we got home, changed quickly before changing our minds, downloaded the App, and filled out the information (great user interface by the way, very clean and simple to enter all your information....they have you enter height/weight/birthday etc and it's all via menus and not typing via the keyboard which is nice and quick). Went outside, started the program and it quickly got a GPS signal, I threw the iPhone in the pocket of my running jacket and off we went. I looked at the phone after about the first 1.25 miles and it was still running, and accurate as compared to my Garmin watch (I wasn't wearing the watch, but have run that route a lot and know what the miles are). But I looked at it again at the turn around point and the screen was off. I turned it back on and had a nice message from the app saying something like, "Oh NO!!! Fitnio lost the GPS signal and has had to estimate your location" So it grabbed it again, and we finished the run, finishing up at Belmont and Sheffield. The run said about 4.5 miles which I would say was about right.

I got home and logged into my account online only to still find the welcome screen. I tried to sync things up a couple times and couldn't get it to work so I left it for the morning. Overnight the servers must have caught up with updates or whatever and my run was there. When you log onto your account you will see a listing of all of your activities :

Then you can click on one and get more details about that particular run (or bike ride as they have that too), including the pace for each mile (it got a little wonky for miles 2 and 3 where I think it lost the signal as I dont' think I was running 10+ or 7ish min/miles :) ) :

Fitnio's tag line is "We're just getting started..." so I think they are going to add in a lot of other functionality. The website however, is really slow and so that's kind of annoying. I like the idea of making RunTrackRun into an iPhone app, using it's GPS instead of the Garmin's. There is a lot of framework on RunTrackRun and it might be cool to jump on the iPhone development bandwagon. There is a lot of power in RunTrackRun and it might be cool to pair it with an iPhone App and their GPS. It would also be nice to keep in the Garmin reading functionality in there, but add in an iPhone portion. I own runtrackrun.com for the next three years and so we'll see where that goes.

I want to get a workout strap for the iPhone so that I can attach the phone to my forearm so I can look at the screen while I am running so if the GPS gets lost I can turn the phone back on.

So there's that. And if you missed this :


Head over to http://leahcphotos.wordpress.com to see more!. Leave me a comment, add me to Google Reader and Bloglines, gaze with awe at my photos. :) Thanks!

Mini-RoadTrip, Up Without Alarm, PhotoBlogging Again, New Office Construction

This past weekend my Dad and I went on a mini road trip to Indiana. I had worked extra hours to make up for time, taking off all of Friday and three hours on Thursday so we could get out of Chicago around 1pm. We went to Indy to visit my Dad's sister and on Friday afternoon we went into town so my Dad could meet up with an old band member of his that he had found on Facebook. That was a really funny trip and it looks like 5/6 of the band could get back together in the fall which of course would be hilarious.

While at my Aunts house, I sent an alarm on my phone....even though there was no need to, I had nowhere I had to be. It went off and I turned it off immediatly. I haven't been feeling so hot the last week or so and thought maybe it was because I hadn't been sleeping enough, or whatever. I didn't set an alarm on Saturday night (yes. I turn an alarm on every day of the week because I hate wasting one second of my weekends by sleeping...but then I'm always off a bit during the day because I go to bed at 1 in the morning and then get blasted by my alarm at 6am...but goddamn it, I'm up). I got up at 7:30 on my own, and felt great the entire day. Jason and I had a great day, we took a walk to the lakefront and walked north to Fullerton. We stopped a few times along the way to get breakfast and then some coffee to warm up our toes. So...yeah, I'm going to not set my alarm on the weekends. I also woke up at 5:55 this morning...5 minutes before my alarm which was nice... I don't think that will be a common theme as I just had a super relaxing 3.5 day weekend...but still nice.

Apparently the shock of working 9-5 has worn off (seriously...going from Grad school to real work was tougher than I had thought) and I have a nice setup at home to get back to photoing, and more importantly I'm going to really try and keep a photoblog going (yes....really...not just for a week and let it fall to the wayside). I really enjoy it when I'm more organized about it and don't just end up with 200 photos on my camera that then need to be dealt with. SO. You can check out new things at http://leahcphotos.wordpress.com. Leave comments...let me know what you think. For example...here is the newest picture :


While my Dad was in town, I couldn't not put him to work. I saw these magnetic photo wires on the interwebs and I thought it was a great idea...except the price of them. Seriously...$99 for 12 freakin' wires...I don't think so. Dad and I talked about it, and thought that it might be better if the wires themselves came out of shelves to hide the tops of them. He put fishing weights at the bottom, and just got galvanized cable at a home depot along with the shelving. The whole project cost about $50 bucks and I think it looks great. Really fun to put pictures up quickly. I just need more of those little strong magnets. Here is a picture without many photos on it, to get the idea. I'll get a better one tonight, as the wires have been filled in a bit.

It's a *really* easy project and a nice way to display pictures in a fluid kind of way. Thanks Dad!

So that's it. We have no real plans for about two weeks now, which is nice. But then I have a busy two weeks because I am going to Florida to visit my Mom and then going to Zurich the following weekend. I'm going to have to make some time up so I don't take extra vacation days. Today we have the first of 6 hawks game tickets. We were going to go to the gym but obviously Blackhawks trumps everything. We have another game on Wednesday, so we'll try and run home from work tomorrow.

So that's it. Happy Monday All!

Dad in Town!!!!

Wheeeee my dad is in town for the week.

I'm working extra hours so that I can take of Thursday afternoon and Friday for a Dad/Daughter roadtrip to Indiana. We are going to Indy to visit my Aunt, and my Dad has recently hooked up with his old college band members who still live in Indy and so we are going to stop by and see them, and there is talk of driving to Bloomington as well....just cause...well Bloomington is cool.

We have a bunch of projects for my dad to do including a DIY photo wire wall and some shelving which I think is going to be really cool and I should have some before and after pictures.

Other than that things are fine. Big demo for work stuff tomorrow, setting up the Apprentice program at Obtiva to be a bit more rigid with a senior developer and yeah...that's about it.

We won't be working out this week (Well maybe on Saturday and Sunday) because with Dad in town I want to spend time with him and not at the gym....but we'll be back on that horse next week.

A Good Example of Sucktitude

Last night Jason and I played racquetball and while it had been awhile since we had played...holy hell are we sucky. Both games ended 16-14 in Jason's favor, although after discussion on the way home we decided that the first game should have ended 15-13 in my favor as he hit me with the ball and we had the rules of interference a bit wrong. Anyways...it took 1 hour to play two games. A lot of not scoring on the serve and a lot of really weak playing....BUT I did remember some stuff and had some nice shots for a point. I think we are going to try and play once or twice a week.

We were supposed to run home today according to the plan that I set in motion...but there is no way. After no working out for months and months...working out three days in a row is exhausting. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I didn't move at all last night in bed as when I woke up my ear was sore as if I had slept on it, in the same position all night.

In the future we might take Wednesdays off so that we can still run home on Thursdays without being an exhausted puddle but we'll see. Maybe we'll try that in the next couple weeks and then slowly add back in Wednesdays.

The plan of course will fall apart a bit next week as my Dad is in town and so I will foresake working out to spend time with him. Plus we are going to Indy at the end of next week to visit my Aunt and my dad found his college band members on facebook and so we are going to go visit them too I guess. We might even make a run to Bloomington as my student ID is still valid, and Lightroom for the student liscense is a lot cheaper than the non-student price....but we'll see on that one, as it's still a pretty long drive from Indy.

Extra work hours this week and next so that I can take off the afternoon on Thursday and then Friday....so I best be getting on it.

Better About Bed Time

Tuesdays is run home from work day which Jason and I did...not with flying colors maybe, but not too bad. Working out two days in a row is *crazy*. Tonight we have racquetball which I'm guessing in our current state of exhausted and sore will be quite the funny sight.

I set up an older laptop at home to run photoshop/lightroom stuff (woot! another 30 day trial!) and forgot about all the updating that it needed and so I was up fighting with it....and didn't get to bed till after midnight....getting up at 6am (even with my iPhone alarm which is labeled, "Keep your ass out of bed!!!!!") was not going to happen.

So a bit tired today and no work in the morning which frustrates me. Ah well...tomorrow is another day. Looking forward to the YMCA tonight.

Oh yeah and stomach still store from the Pilates on Monday night.

Alright, time for work.

A New Year...A New...You?

Oh screw that. Why do the new plans always want to start on January 1st? I mean I'm totally a sucker for it, but why not like October 12th or something? And why does it have to be a *new* you. How about A New Year....and a more improved you.

Anyways, that being said. Happy New Year to everyone out there! Jason and I had a pretty good 2008 with only about 6 rough weeks. But seriously our little family unit is 180 from where we were last year so that's always good.

A more improved JasonLeahRun is starting with a new membership at the YMCA. We heart the Lakeview YMCA and all it's quirkyness. Our plan is to cardio + pilates (leah)/weight lifting (jason) on Monday, Run home from work on Tuesdays, racquetball + weight lifting on Wednesdays, run home from work on Thursdays, relax + lazy on Fridays, racquetball + pilates/weight lifting on Saturdays and run longer on Sundays. That's the idea anyways.

Also LeahC is doing a lot more photoshop work this year. It's a beast of a program but I am learning a ton from Scott Kelby's 7-Point system book. He takes 21 photos from out of the camera, and takes them through the steps he would use to make them a final product. You can download the photos used in the book from his website and follow along. The theory behind the book is that all photos out of a camera are a little dull, could use a little sharpening, etc. He found that most photos used similar steps, all deriving from these 7 basic steps outlined in the book. Not all photos need all of them, but the idea is that at the end of the book you'll be able to look at your photos and be able to get to the output using different varieties of the 7 steps. Anyways, I highly recommend that book (and any of Scott Kelby's books for that matter). Eventually I am going to buy Lightroom2 so I can take advantage of the photo workflow that it provides.

LeahC is also going to be working with a senior developer over lunch on various programming tasks.....still working out what that actually is...but looking forward to it.

LeahC and JasonR (although we might need to get a 2nd copy if we want to include the JMan) and ScottSails are all going to read I'm a Strange Loop by Douglas Hofstadter. This reading will probably be slow with the photoshopping/work reading + working we need to do (We are going to have a study group at work and JasonR is starting at class at his company tomorrow).

LeahC and JasonR will also find themselves in Zurich in about 5 weeks visiting old friends and a city we have yet to see.

So 2009 is starting off with a bang and sore core muscles and thus it's time to enjoy the rest of the evening.

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!

So.....6 is More than Zero?

Well technically that's true. But it's also much less than 15 which had been my running goal for last week. Ah well. This is another week and another chance to get over 10 freakin' miles. Remember when I would run 50 miles a week. YEAH. me neither.

So today the plan is to go home and run 4 miles. It's pretty nice out right now, and if the wind stays down it won't be too bad. Plus we can really enjoy a fire and reading/old DVR if we feel like we earned it.

We had a great weekend going to see a concert on Saturday night (Did you know that Tom Morello went to Harvard and got a degree in Political Science and worked in a senators office for a few months or something after he graduated....very interesting). Tom Morello was awesome as was Steve Earle.

Yesterday we went to Indy to visit with Jason's family and have an early thanksgiving dinner. And as I'm at work, I will quickly demonstrate why Jason is the best uncle in the world.

Happy Monday all.

Cold

I'm such a weenie. Walking home last night after a long day in the office Jason and I just *happened* to walk by Sheffields...which happens to be warm and have delicious beer and we just happen to magically gravitate in there if we walk by. So we did that instead of running.

We spent the rest of the night at the Elbo Room. An old friend of mine from college recently contacted me on Facebook and he happened to be playing there last night. So Jason and I went. It was really fun to see him again as I realized the last time I had seen him was at a New Years Eve party for the millenium.

The best part of the night however came at the end of the night when my friends sister told me I should join the Windy City Rollers because I looked athletic.....we walked out and Jason was all excited and all, "OMG YOU'RE GOING TO BE ON A ROLLER DERBY TEAM". I kinda feel like if someone asks you to join Windy City Rollers...you have to give it a shot. So we'll see if I actually do that. I could hold my own on the roller rink when I was like 8 so maybe some of those skills are still looming around. So I might be checking that out. Fun to be asked anyways.

I'm really excited that today is Friday as it's been a long week. Tonight we don't have any official plans yet but there is talk of hanging out with Jake and LaurA!, and tomorrow our new couch is being delievered and we are going to see Steve Earle and Tom Morello at The Vic on Saturday night which I'm really looking forward to. On Sunday we are driving to Indianapolis to have a thanksgiving dinner with some of Jason's family which should be a good time. Next week Jason and I both took the day after thanksgiving off and so it will a nice short week although a busy one as we have a demo on Tuesday and then Wednesday I have a review here at work.