Daylight savings. I guess it makes sense.

I was born and raised in Hawaii and we don’t have daylight savings time there.  It’s just Hawaiian time all the time, HA!  What that usually means is people just roll on in when ever they get to it.  I didn’t really follow that rule – even though I’m half Hawaiian….must have been the Dutch side of me.  🙂

Back to the topic.  Last night I did what I’ve been reminded to do from all sources, which was move the clocks in the house forward an hour so that when we woke up this morning we would be on time.  I need to do 13yo and 11yo’s alarm clocks, the clock in the office and the clock on the coffee machine.  I’m trusting HunBun can move his own alarm clock forward, I guess I’ll see when I go back and check.

I think daylight savings makes more sense the further into the “savings” we go.  Right now it’s still dark in the am and dark in the pm – but I know how quickly that will switch.  One morning I’ll wake up and be like “dang did I oversleep?” and at night I’ll say “dang, is it 9 o’clock already?”.

This week I’m prepping to be running around like a nutter.  I’m headed off to So. Cal this week for work.  For someone who didn’t plan any meetings I’ve sure booked up my calendar.  It was my good friend Ann’s birthday last week so we are celebrating Tuesday night when I come in.  I’ll be taking her to Natural Café for a celebratory dinner – see we’ll eat a healthy dinner so we can go find us a not so healthy treat for dessert.  We’re smart like that.

Today I was very productive.  I hit the treadmill for an iFit run through Solvang, CA.  I tried the Beta version of the map feature – it worked fine for the first half mile then got hung up on the rest.  So I just stared at my route without seeing the street view as I would have liked.  Bleah.  I hope iFit get’s its technical issues fixed soon.  It’s been a real pooter.

Solvang is a bit hillier than I thought.  I was able to maintain the 6.0 at 6% incline – but when that sucker kept scooting up to 10% incline I had to punch my speed down to 4.0.  Every now and again I have a fear of flying off the edge of the treadmill – usually when my thoughts start wandering and I forget I’m on a moving belt.  Whoops.  That would be no bueno for sure.

After getting my healthy on I decided to get my spring cleaning  on – by tackling the office.  We have one of those 5×5 shelves from Ikea.  I love the clean lines but also the volume of space it has for us to fill.  I went through and put a bunch of stuff into 2 shred piles – a personal shred for our home shredder and a business shred for the shred bins at the office.  I also tossed a bunch of stuff into the recycle bin – you know magazines that I had been saving for years (oh, yes the date was from 2009) and some Dummy books for Visio & Excel that I had bought for work.  Those?  Oh, those were from 2008.  Good Gravy!

I also have a lot of books which I rarely part with.  I did a double shelf on some of those just to not spread them through the entire 5×5.  I found some old photos of HunBun and I when we first started dating.  Man I dressed like a schlub – Gee Whiz!  I mean I’m no fashion plate but Yikers.  We have a lot of new photos from our many Disney vacations (hee hee – planning for another this Summer, if I can get him to agree – which I will, Bwahahahahaha) and in those I think I’m looking ok.  Sometimes clothes just don’t fit like you think they fit while you’re wearing them – it’s only when you see a photo you say “is that how that shirt hangs…eeps”.

My plan was to clean the whole office – desk and file folder and stuff on the walls.  I was only able to get through the 5×5.  It seriously is a lot of work to go through all these boxes and see all the stuff that I’ve been hoarding for no reason.  HunBun was pleased.  Whee.  He’s the clean freak of the couple – so for him to be happy about how much I threw away was a gold star for me.

 

 

Oh and my weekend started with a great success – I finished the hardest (worst) puzzle we have ever done.  HunBun gave up weeks ago.  Yes, you read that right – WEEKS AGO!  We started this puzzle before our trip to Florida and I just finished it Saturday night.  UGH!  It was one of those puzzles that is a picture made up of teeny tiny pictures.  So each piece was made up of 4 individual pictures.  Geesh!   I made it my mission to finish it this weekend.  We had not eaten on the dining table for so long that I had had enough.   See that piece of paper at the top?  That was my best friend during this puzzle-palooza.  It was a picture of the completed puzzle and I literally folded and unfolded that thing so often to find where these darn pieces would fit.  The easiest were the pieces with people on them…then after that it was a bunch of rockets and shuttles…then I had to deal with just splotches of blue, green, yellows, pinks, purples and black/whites.  Oh my!  So glad I finished it.  This is NOT one that I will redo.  It’s going into the “To Donate” pile.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night….  Now it’s off to bed – to start a week with more daylight in it!

See ya later!

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

Disney World’s 2013 Princess Half Marathon recap

I should have just saved this until tomorrow then it would have been a 7 day anniversary of completing the race.  I didn’t get a PR…didn’t even stay close to my existing PR.  I even gained a minute from my pooty performance at the Tinkerbell Half this January.  BLEAH!  Guess I need some motivation –

You gotta love the creativity behind those eCards.  Not sure if I totally need to have the bloody knife – the clown alone would freak me enough to make my legs keep moving while my brain kept telling them to slow down.  I did get my Coast to Coast medal at the end, pretty dang cool.

I promised you all a photo montage of the race and our family trip to Florida – so here it is.  Enjoy – we sure did.  🙂

This was the first trip to Disneyworld for 13yo and 11yo.  Sometimes it was hard to figure out if they were having a good time or not.  Teen & Pre-teen boys are on their own communication wave length.  HunBun gets more out of 13yo than I can…11yo likes to talk about randomness all the time so I have the patience to figure my way through and out of conversations with him.  😀

13yo’s favorite park was Epcot.  He loved the countries and Living with the Land.  He wants to be a scientist of some sort when he grows up.  I keep reminding him that Disney has really cool intern opportunities, so maybe when he’s old enough he’ll get into Disney (so I can reap all the benefits of 13yo being a future employee – WHEEE!)

11yo’s favorite park was Animal Kingdom and Epcot too.  They both loved visiting all the countries – although we didn’t get to all of them even with being at the parks for 5 days.  Weird.

We spent a day and a half at the Magic Kingdom.  There is a lot of similarity between Disneyland in California and the MK in Florida.  We do like the Haunted Mansion better in MK – the entrance is super cool and we totally loved the Escher-esque stairwells.  We took the boys to the Hall of Presidents – HunBun and I think that’s a great “ride” that has a great place to wait when you’re trying to escape the parade crowds.

Yes.  That’s me and the 13yo at MK.  Sometimes I can’t even believe how tall he is.  I have to remind myself he’s still my baby.  🙂

It was a great mini-vacation for us.  If you go to Disney World be sure to download the Disney My Experience app for your phone or iPad (although I think lugging an iPad around would be annoying after a while).  It’s like a lot of apps where you can see ride wait times and places to eat – the bonus is that if you sign in you can make dining reservations.  It was really helpful since the first time we tried to eat in France (Epcot) we were told we needed a reservation – DOH!  So I used the app and got us a reservation for the next night, much to 13yo’s great satisfaction.

Anyhoo…that’s about it for our trip and my race.

See ya later…

Cathy

 

Starting Saturday off with some Brisky Behavior.

Brrr…it’s chilly beans out there!

That’s at 8am!

Let me finish off my Friday before I get to the brisky behavior.  Get it?  ‘Cause it’s brisk out there?  He he he

Every other Friday I pick up 10yo from school.  He lives with his dad and it’s about a 40-50 min drive over to where they live, depending on traffic.  Lucky for me that on Friday’s 10yo’s school gets out at 1:30pm so that means less traffic that I have to deal with.

I usually eat lunch before I drive out there, but since they just opened a new outlet mall halfway between our house and the school the news has been showing the ridiculousness that is people trying to get there to spend money!

Parking lot to get to the parking lot

So being the smarty that I am I figured I’d leave 40 minutes earlier than normal just in case…which meant I needed a to go lunch.

They make some fancy boxes now

 

Open sesame

I put together a whole wheat wrap with roast beef slices (the new healthy version from Oscar Mayer), hummus, arugula, goat cheese and olive tapenade (I love that stuff).  On the side I had baby carrots and a mix of gluten free crunchy stuff – Blue Diamond Almond crackers, GF pretzels and some cinnamon almonds.  Well the traffic didn’t even exist, so I got to 10yo’s school an hour earlier and sat in front of it like a creepy person eating my lunch.  I did bring my work computer so I got a bunch of stuff I needed to get done – done.  Hoorah for multi-tasking!

10yo and I picked up 12yo from school and we booked it home so I could finish up my work day.  Then while the 2 boys plyaed XBox, HunBun and I dropped my car off at the dealership for a 5K mile service appointment.  It gets so dark now!  It’s like we were on a date – but actually just driving home from Toyota.

I was lazy so for dinner I made everyone GF pancakes.  Wheee!  I used Pure Pantry’s all purpose GF flour and added some vanilla and cinnamon.  This mix makes really nice pancakes that hold their shape – although I am the worst flipper ever.  Kept slapping them against the side of the pan or on the pancake next to it.  Utter ridiculousness.

I like jelly on my cakes

After dinner I spent the rest of the night reading all my bloggedy blogs I subscribe to and cleaning up my email bins.  Since I can’t just sit there, I was also “watching” Tattoo Nightmare followed by InkMaster.  Those tattoo artists are SO TALENTED!!!!  Tattoo Nightmare is one I’d watch again.  They help people who have janky tattoos and turn them into beautiful new ink.  It was crazy how they made the old tattoo just disappear.  Check it out on your boob tube when you get the chance!

Saturday’s brisky behavior

So last night I tell HunBun, “hey lets walk to Starbucks tomorrow morning”.  Well he tells me that he was already going to wake up early and do that since he had more work to get done.  So I, being committed and all, said “oh, well maybe I’ll just run on up there and meet you”.  So that’s what I did.

Rise and Shine

I used my new Timex GPS watch and apparently need to go back and read the manual again.  I kept pressing all the buttons on the side and FINALLY got the GPS on along with the run feature so I could get a move on.  Then off I went….then back home I came after realizing I forgot to take my medicine (I have a hard time remembering I need to take on an empty stomach)…then off I went (take 2).

I should have taken a picture of my cold weather running outfit – fail.  I don’t have long tights, just mid-calf length.  I wore a pair of those with my long sleeve “thumb-hole” Lululemon jacket’y thing and my awesome new Champion beanie I got from Target.  I looked so cute – you’ll just have to take my word for it. 🙂  That hat was the best $10 I ever spent on running clothes.  Kept my ears nice and warm which helped control the speed my nose ran.  HA!

Even with the chilly air wooshing in & out I kept a nice pace of 8:45.  Sweet!  I could see HunBun sitting at a table drinking his Starbucks and pecking away on his laptop.  It was warm when I got in there so I got a cool drink to start.

Chilling with my lady friend

I just read that caption I wrote.  I meant the ‘Bucks mermaid, not the banana.

HunBun and I sat there for a while and then walked back home together.  Grabbed a tall Soy Misto for the road since I had cooled down quite a bit.  Thank goodness I did because it was hecka chilly outside!  Round trip its about 2.5 miles from home to the ‘Bucks.  Nice walk for him and nice run/walk for me (not the true application of Galloway‘s run/walk method 🙂  ).

To close out the morning Sweats I did a bunch of planking….

Not this kind

I started with some Chaturanga then a quick plank flow to engage my abs.

Click the link above to see in action

Here’s my quickie ab routine

Now I’m off to feed my belly as a girl can not live on a banana alone.  🙂

Engage in some “brisky” behavior yourself today!

See ya later

Cathy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Race Bib Pickup – Brazen Rocky Ridge

LiLo and I are “running” the Brazen Rocky Ridge 5K this Saturday.  I say “running” because this is the hilliest place we have ever seen!  (We didn’t know what we were signing up for, that’s for sure.)

Being the two supersmart gals that we are, this morning we met at the race spot to get a ‘lay of the land’ only to find that they closed the trail we’ll actually be on to set up for Saturday.  To feel like we didn’t waste our time we hit the Elderberry trail instead.  OM-stinken-G!!!!  If this isn’t the most vertical race route ever created! (Apparently it’s not, I ‘oogled “most vertical race route” and it spat back at me Badwater Ultramarathon, which starts at 280′ and ends at 8500′; so I guess I should stop acting like a baby.)

Las Trampas Regional Wilderness Park

We were huffing & puffing AND trying to carry on a conversation – like all good gal pals should.  We did look around (to make sure we weren’t ambushed by a cougar or a crazy person (I did watch The Hills Have Eyes you know) and the views are absolutely GORGEOUS!  I’ll be sure to take photos while we are “running”.  Ha!

Here’s a video of 2010’s race so you can have an eyeball into what I’ll be doing on Saturday morning.

After our morning “hike”, we drove to downtown Danville’s Forward Motion Sports to pick up our race bibs and so I could check out a pair of Mizuno’s for my upcoming Half’s.  With our race entry we got 15% off any purchase at FM when we picked up our stuff so I figured I would try to take advantage of saving a little dough.  In addition to my sweet new kicks I also joined the cult of water belts.

MIzuno Wave Rider

Yes I drank the water…while I carry my own water… HA!

I know, I know…why’d I pick the most obnoxious looking one?  Well the others looked weirder AND didn’t sit right on my waistline.  But really, the real reason for buying into the water belt idea is an article I read recently (Runners World or Active.com or some other super smartsy place) where a tip to reduce your run time was NOT to stop at water stations.  DER!

I always have to slow down to drink my water/’ade otherwise I will literally drown myself while standing up right on dry ground. (I think that was a CSI episode).  I mean have you ever tried to guzzle a dixie cup full of liquid while jog/running?  Your nose holes will be clean as a whistle if you try.  So I can totally agree with the article’s opine that if you don’t stop your race time will decrease.  (insert head smack here).

I won’t be using the belt for this weekend, but I will be using it for the Tinkerbell Half in January and the Princess Half in February…in addition to practice runs with my meet up group.

Anyhoo…super cool swag again and really neat-o t-shirt.  Enjoy the pics…beam your “fast” thoughts my way around 830am pacific time.

That’s me!

There’s the Swag’ger baby!

See ya later!

Cathy