Fresh Fruit Season

Isn't spring grand? I know buying local has gotten a lot of hype lately but I LOVE when fresh fruit from all over the world appears in our grocery store in the spring. This week my Studly Hubby bought a Maui pineapple and it was SOOOOOO GOOOD.

If you would like to order some fresh fruit for yourself from Hawaii, you can get the above basket for $42.95 from The Fresh Fruit Company.

Li'l Tidbits

My Studly Hubby and I went out to buy some pretty new pillows to go with our new furniture. We rushed home and put it all together and were so excited we took a picture. Isn't it pretty?

The pillows definitely tie the whole room together. Once we got it all set up we realized we had a beautiful afghan that was like frosting on the cake. I was so pleased I clapped my hands! (Sorry Peggy but we never found any celedon green and brown pillows - if you ever find those again tell me exactly where they are and I'll fly right out and buy them).

Our neighbors like to surf, and hung their wetsuits off their deck to dry, so now every time we look out our kitchen window we see this:

It's a little scary.

And my Studly Hubby and I are finally getting (semi) serious about getting a dog. We got an encyclopedia of dog breeds from the library and have been studying it closely. So far my favorite breed is the Poodle and my Studly Hubby's favorite breed is the Puli:

The SH wants to name it "tongue." I'm not sure what we're going to end up getting but I'm pretty sure it'll be scarier than those wetsuits.

Speeding up

In preparation for next weekend's Beat the Bridge race, we tried to speed up on Sunday. Since my Studly Hubby is a boy, he is much faster than I am, so we decided to split up and meet each other at the end. He took the watch and ran 7-8 min/miles for three miles (yay SH, I'm so proud of you!), but when I got to the end point he was nowhere in sight and since he had the watch I have no idea how fast I ran. It turns out he had come back to find me, but we figured out later that right when we passed each other there was a loud and distracting altercation between some dogs (instigated by a ferocious 12 lb terrier) so we passed each other without either of us seeing the other. We tried to figure out my time based on how long I waited around and we think I was running just under 10 min/miles. So I'm still pretty slow (dang). Maybe by next year I will have sped up some. We are considering repeating the deal on Tuesday except each of us taking a watch so I can actually keep track of my time. That might help me figure out a good pace too - I kept running too fast and wearing myself out, which seems would make me slower overall.

It was a good weekend - we hung out Sat with our neighbors and went to Olympia WA (the capital) Sun (more on that later), plus we baby-sat for pig-dog again, who it turns out has redefined the concept of "morning" - it seems 3:15 am is the new 6 am and there's no arguing with him about it. Fortunately he was cuter than ever so we didn't shoot him for it (we almost did though).

J & D go to the DENTIST!!

After some hedging and reluctance, my Studly Hubby and I finally convinced each other to find a new dentist here in Seattle and actually GO THERE for our dental cleaning. All Seattle dentists must have united together to form a Front of New Customer Deterrence, because they all require TWO initial appointments - one to meet the dentist and have your paperwork filled out (1 hr) and a second to actually get a cleaning (another hr). The appointments cannot be scheduled together. Each must be made at least a month ahead of time. And you have to do it between 9 am and 5 pm (sorry if you are crazy enough to work during those hours).

So I took some time off work, and weaseled my Studly Hubby and I into a cancelled time slot during the day last week. We went in, met our dentist (who was incredibly bland, although friendly enough) and the staff (who were all so friendly they must have been on speed), but the magic happened on our way out the door - they called our former dentists for records, called the insurance company for info and they wrote it all out and explained it to us, and made a super-huge effort to get us both in together the next time. I have never been treated so well by a doctor. The cleaning went very well too, and we were even convinced to floss (what? you can tell we haven't flossed? dang). So if you're ever looking for a good dentist in Seattle, try Roosevelt Dental - they are great!

Speedy Recovery

Thanks to all that walking we did after the half-marathon Sunday (no cabs), I've had a very speedy recovery. In fact, I'm tempted to arrange for myself to have to walk a mile or so after every long run. The problem is, I recovered so fast that my Studly Hubby, who was still totally pumped about the half-marathon, convinced me to go out on our regular route on Tuesday and even charge up the hill in the middle. Tuesday night I was exhausted, and I was still exhausted on Wednesday. It may have been too much. Tonight he wants to go out for five miles. I may let him go without me. We have another race in two weeks, the Beat the Bridge race. They raise a bridge at mile 2 if you don't get there within 20 minutes (so you have to run 10 min/mile for the first ten minutes). I guess if you don't make it they have a little party with a DJ and some dancing, then put the bridge back down after a bit. It's five miles total. I think I could do 10 min/mile for two miles if I really put out some effort but it's a very popular race (8,000 people did it last year) so getting past all those people may be a bit of a challenge. Therefore the Studly Hubby and I will be training over the next week and a half by doing tempo runs and going to crowded concerts where we can practice pushing our way through large crowds. I still have a lot of room for improvement on both those things.

Thanks for all the praise from all my blog readers on my last post - I really appreciated that! You made me very proud of what I did and it was nice to hear from all of you.

J-Funk Does the Vancouver Half-Marathon!!

We did it! We survived! No pictures for a few days (oh yeah, we're going to buy the professional ones for sure) but I'll give a little re-cap of the race:

1) I'm a slow runner. I'm talkin' SLOW. Nobody believes me when I say I'm slow, because I think I look like I would be faster (and I exercise a decent amount, so I really am in pretty good shape) - but my basal athletic abilities are very low and I have to work my way up from there. In addition, I'm one of those people that is really sensitive to the elements - heat, dehydration, even muggy spring air will knock me out flat. With that in mind, let me tell you this:

2) I was FREAKED OUT before the race. I nearly had a full-blown anxiety attack on two separate occasions. I think I was truly afraid of killing myself in the process of this thing.
and
3) Our time was 2:35. This was good for me, especially considering we had to climb a mountain at mile 8 (which we did at a walk). But when you think about it, this was very slow (just under 12 min/mile pace). I'm considering trying to speed up for the next one.
but
4) We still had a great time. It was a very high-energy race, and a beautiful route through the city and a big park off of downtown, and they had chocolate milk and big plastic "Vancouver marathon" capes waiting for us at the end. We enjoyed (almost) every minute.

And a re-cap of the city of Vancouver:

1) Vancouver is ok. It's in a beautiful location, with the mountains very close and even more water everywhere than Seattle, but the traffic was BAD (I mean BAD) and it looked slightly more run-down or something than Seattle - maybe the architecture was just boring.

2) We quickly discovered that the city prevents anyone in a vehicle from making a left turn - either by altogether forbidding it or by not giving left-turners their own light (a more subtle form of forbidding it). We learned very fast that three rights is much faster than a left, in every case except for one, when we actually wanted to turn right and couldn't and ended up on a highway leaving Vancouver with no way to get turned back around for about five miles.

3) The race route took us through the International District and the low-income East Side of downtown - and a highlight of the race was definitely running past the homeless shelter and getting cheered at by a bunch of drunk homeless people with open bottles of booze (at 8 am on a Sunday).

4) The food in Vancouver is FANTASTIC. We had Malaysian food for lunch on Sat, Italian for dinner Sat, an unbelievable mango bubble tea in between, and then a delicious brunch on Sun. Plus we filled up our trunk with Canadian ketchup chips at a grocery store before we left town.

5) Our hotel was not so great. It was near the beach and the park in downtown, which was pretty, but it was a far ways from the finish line, as we discovered when we had to walk back because there were no cabs (it was about a mile and a half). Our room was also in the middle of the Saturday Night Party of the City and we had to go out and buy some earplugs just to hear ourselves think.

6) Watch out crossing the border - it took almost an hour both times through, and I guess that's pretty good. They put a nice park nearby though so you at least have something pleasant to look at while you wait.

So it was an exciting weekend! And now I can brag about running a half-marathon in another country. Plus, we are going to be feasting on ketchup chips for at least another month (or maybe just a few days, my Studly Hubby is a large-volume snacker).

Thirsty Thursday

In the early days of graduate school, a crew of people would always go out on Thursdays for what they called 'Thirsty Thursday'. They would pick a bar in Minneapolis, send out an email with some sketchy directions, then head out there around 9 pm or so. I joined in a few times and thought it was a lot of fun - a good crowd, an excuse to get out and explore a new part of the city, and a good time of the week to drink. Unfortunately as I've gotten older I've become less and less able to do stuff like that. Now I can't even imagine going out to a bar on a Thursday night. What has happened to me? Although don't get me wrong, I still go out every once in a while. I just do much better on Saturday nights, at a quiet bar, and prefer to go home before 9 pm instead of heading out at 9 pm.

The bar thing has always been a pretty infrequent interest for me. Most of the time (even in college) I preferred staying in over going out. I think I get over stimulated and wear myself out. I almost have too much fun. So I spread out the fun and give myself lots of recovery time in between outings, and that seems to work out ok.

So here I am on another Thursday, staying in as usual. Usually I at least watch Thursday Night TV (it's back baby! and it's better than ever!) but this week I'm taping it to watch later and instead getting laundry and dishes done in preparation for our weekend trip to Vancouver for the half-marathon. Thursday night in its most extremely boring form. At least I can shake things up with a little blogging.

And tomorrow, it's FRIDAY!! Happy Friday everyone!