Late For Dinner

Last night was a typical work night for me. I planned to get out of the office at a specific time; I called my fiance and made plans to go running together; then got held up by one or more little things that just had to get taken care of or wrapped up before I could leave the office, which made me late for everything else I had planned for the evening and my fiance was rather annoyed with me that it ultimately pushed back dinner by over an hour - again.

The simple fact is that I only work out after work. That's just the time that works best for me and my schedule and I like the "mindless" physical activity after a [sometimes stressful] day at work. But that means I need to be more creative when it come to food prep and be able to get dinner on the table within minutes of walking in the door. Something one of my [soon to be] In-Laws does is pre-cook all her hamburger meat. She'll do 3-4 1lb. batches for Hamburger Helper and freeze it, or a half dozen hamburger patties, She even does taco meet and divies it up into single servings. (I focus on ground beef here because it's cheep, but I know I could do this with other foods).
This means a shift in my weekend lifestyle to spend most of an entire day once a week cooking. But this may be a good thing because then I will have meals for the entire week planned out and I'll spend less grocery shopping.

Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

On Wednesdays the dog and I have an Obedience Training class together.
One of the expectations for the class is that we will work together, not only on the required tasks (sit, stay, lay down, etc.) but also on a "trick."
My mother trained our dog to sit and stay, and balance a treat on her nose until she got the release command, then she would flip the treat off her nose and up into the air and catch it.
I'm not sure my little Franklin is quite there yet, but I would like to teach him a "trick" that I can use when I take him running with me. I have no ideas yet, or if that will even work, but I'm brain storming... I only have 4 weeks left of class so I'd better get crackin' on it!

One of My More Embarassing Moments

So, I've been house-sitting for a coworker. This person is something of a Neat-Freak; I am not. Which is just fine because I make sure everything in immaculate before I leave the morning he gets home. Except he didn't get home the morning I thought he was going to - he got home the night before!

Now, it could have been much much worse. It was late, and I could have been at the house in my jammies (or maybe wearing even less!). As it was I wasn't even there when he got home; my fiance was there (and they've never met) and Thankfully he was in the process of cleaning the kitchen. I was half way across town on my way to bug-bomb my house. Luckily I got the call a few blocks away from the house, before I let anything off, and I just turned right around and sprinted back across town.
I had plenty of time to be Mortified in the car on the way back. So when I got there I just put on a smile, made my appologies, and kicked it into super high gear cleaning and packing, while chatting with my coworker about his trip as he unpacked. I got the place in order and all my gear out in about an hour, and I'm going back during my lunch break to do some of the deep-cleaning that I wasn't able to get done (while my coworker is still at work) and if I'm very lucky he won't have noticed a few things I hadn't gotten to yet (like poop-scooping the yard).

In running news, I wore my new shoes to the gym yesterday and they gave me A Blister. It was on the back of my heel where the top of the shoe rubbed. I have some different socks I'm going to try next time, the kind that has some extra padding at the heel specifically for that. Hopefully that takes care of the problem, and if not then I'll have to make another trip to Fleet Feet to remedy the situation.

Trying this Blogging Thing Again

Still running - in every sense of the word.

Life at the office is Pleasantly Hectic. I feel like I'm just barely keeping up, but don't feel like I'm about to go under either. It feels good to get to the end of the day and know it was productive.

Life at home is BUSY. House-sitting for a co-worker, and his cats take great delight in getting my dog in trouble. Also planning for a big push to get some painting done upstairs and the floor refinished soon. My goal is to have that done in time for a party mid-November. The week house-sitting and enjoying my neighbor's Cable has been great for morale because I get to watch entire evenings of HGTV! The dog and I are enrolled in the Huntsville Obedience Training Club where we are learning good things (and un-learning bad things) and going through lots of bits of hotdogs in the process (my dog will do anything for a bite of hotdog). And as if that wasn't busy enough, one night a week I'm going to RCIA through my church in an effort to get myself Confirmed.

Life on my feet has Been Building Up according to plan. I'm registered for the Rocket City Marathon on December 12th. In the mean time I have a personal training plan with running 3-4 times a week and I'm signed up with a training group Saturday mornings. The theory there is that if I know someone is waiting for me Saturday morning, I'm more likely to get out of bed and go running (those that know me know how very much I dislike getting up early on the weekend).

I ran the Monte Sano 10K last weekend. My goal was to finish in 1 hour, but I came in at 1:11:50. However, it was pouring rain the last 15 minutes of the course, so maybe I would have come closer to my goal if I wasn't swimming the last mile and a half. (Personally, I loved running in the rain. Having been a swimmer for years, getting all pruney doesn't bother me in the slightest. But I would never have guessed my socks could hold so much water!).
I also tried to do some interval pacing. 60 seconds running, 60 seconds fast walking. All-in-all it worked pretty well, but I have a competitive streak in me which is about a mile wide and it was really really hard to let people pass me when I was walking and I pushed myself too hard running to try to cath up to everyone that had passed me. *roll eyes*

My next planned race isn't for another 6 weeks, but I think I need to find at least one more race between now and then just to challeneg that racing instinct. But in the mean time, I have new shoes and new orthopedics to keep me happy! I'm still running with the Vibrams, but only short training runs because my ankles are still pretty weak and I don't want to blow my training plan with a half dozen twisted ankles like last time!