Boo

So I'm sitting here in my Halloween finest - Black yoga pants, orange trick-or-treat shirt, jack-o-lantern on the front porch, lights on, Halloween flags-a-flyin. So why have I only had 3 small groups of trick-or-treaters? Somebody save me!!! I'm about to have to dig right into the candy bowl. I allocated myself 5 pieces of candy. I'm up to 7. Oh wait, there's a knock at the door.

Ok - I'm back. Make that 4 groups. These guys just really made out. I think I gave them half the bowl. OK I can have 7 pieces of candy cuz tomorrow I'm gonna do my longest run since Vineman. Here's hopin my new shoes are nice to my right foot. Don't tell anyone, but it's been bothering me since the half marathon relay on Sunday.

See ya on the roads tomorrow!!!

Roll the Dice, It's Bunco Time in Texas

Bunco - I think in Webster's it's defined as a Texas phenemenon better known as an excuse for women to get together, eat, drink and gossip thinly disguised as a mindless dice game. I'd never heard of this until I moved to Texas. I've been part of my bunco group for about 10 years now. It's a group of special girls most of whom I worked with at Texaco many years ago. Tonight was my turn to host.



Being allergic to cooking as I am, I ordered dinner from Pappasitos for the girlz. Well, if there's one thing my Mamma taught me, it's never run out of food for your guests. I ordered 5 pounds of fajita meat. When I got home, for some reason it just didn't look like it was enough. So I went to Lupe Tortillas and got another two hunks of beef. Ahh, now I felt better. Well, needless to say, I have about 4 pounds of meat and fixins left over.



In past years when I hosted, the chef of the family, Mr. Smarty Pants always cooked. This year, he decided to focus on dessert only. What a hit! He kept to the Fall/Halloween theme and made pumpkin pie and the most delicious caramel apples (drizzled in white chocolate) you have ever tasted. Man that boy can create some tasty vittles.



Sunday is the big Houston Half Marathon that June and I will be relaying. It will be my longest run since surgery. I'll do the first leg and then hand off to June at mile 6.5. Since it's another 2 miles back to the car, I'm going to run alongside June for the first 2 miles of her leg. I'm pretty excited about this since this will get me closer to the mileage required to do the full marathon in January.



So, who's up for a fajita leftovers celebration lunch on Sunday after the race?

Junk Food Carbs

It was my last night with Sweetie so what did we do? NO I'm not gonna blog about that! We went to the North Carolina State Fair. Seems the best thing to do at the North Carolina State Fair is eat junk food. So that is what we did! Over and over again! Just one little pointer....Bloomin onion, kettle corn and cotton candy do not make for good pre-run food the next morning! Suffered through what should have been a beautiful 5 mile run around the Duke campus in 45 degree weather. Unfortunately the carbs from the cotton candy were long gone! Maybe they should make Cotton Candy flavored gels!

Amongst These Hills

Did my first hilly bike ride since Vineman yesterday. Since Sweetie is now living in Raleigh along with my rode bike, we spent our vacation day on Monday doing our first North Carolina ride yesterday. Perfect weather, perfect route, perfect company, not perfect bike. Well the ride started out really nice through the country side outside of Chappell Hill. (No not the Houston area Chappell Hill, the REAL one in North Carolina....although the terrain is about the same.) Sweetie had even mapped out a 25 mile ride that had a dairy farm about 16 miles into it that served homemade ice cream. We thanked the cows as we rode past them and stopped at their ice cream store.

Now with a sugar rush we took off. But seems my Trek didn't quite like the move and suddenly for some reason it would randomly change gears about every 5 rotations. Never knew if it would go to a harder or easier gear.

No worries, Sweetie is gonna take care of it for me and bring the baby into the doc for a tune-up before my next trip here. I foresee lots of hill riding in North Carolina during Ironman Canada training!

Fly the Friendly Skies

Remember when you thought flying on an airplane was fun - an adventure? Those days are O-V-E-R. I've decided to run for president of the FAA (or whatever organization controls the rules of the airports and airlines) and institute some new rules.

First the security lines. I declare that when I am head of the FAA, the rule will be "if you have not flown within 30 days you are required to watch a mandatory video on how to check in your luggage and go through security." How frustrating it is to stand in line at Southwest for 20 minutes only to have the person in front of you get to the check-in stand and realize that they have to fill out a luggage ID tag to attach to their luggage. What the heck have they been doing for the last 20 minutes??? Or in the security line for them to discover that they have their favorite perfurme and shampoo in the check in luggage, change in their pockets and refuse to take their shoes off? Come on people. It's just not that complicated.

Next it's the boarding process. OK we all learned how to count in kindergarten. Your boarding pass has a number on it and you line up in numerical order. Again....it's not that hard. You don't need to line up 30 minutes before boarding and you also don't gather near where you're supposed to be in line. If I'm number 58 and you're 61, I get to be ahead of you so get out of my way.

Finally, go to the bathroom BEFORE you get on the plane. Yesterday I was flying out of IAH to visit Sweetie. I woke up at 4:45am to catch a flight departing at 7:25am. I got to the airport only to find out that bad weather the previous night had screwed up all the flights coming in on Wednesday night. So, because of "crew mandatory rest" (an FAA rule that I will keep in place when I'm president of the FAA cuz I want to make sure my pilot isn't asleep at the wheel), my flight was now delayed until 9:15am. Of course that meant I would miss my connection in Atlanta, but Delta had already taken care of that and rebooked me to the 1:10pm connector. Finally at 9:00 they boarded us. We all got on the plane and pulled away from the terminal only for the pilot to tell us that the runway was being inspected (why at 9:15am I can't tell you) and all of the planes were having to move to a new runway and it would be a while. "Stay in your seats though because when they tell us it's our turn we will take off immediately" he added. Well about 30 minutes later the pilot comes on and tells us that we had our turn but that because everyone was not in their seat, we now had to wait another 10 minutes. When that guy walked out of the bathroom back to his seat I had to contain myself not to trip him from my aisle seat. WHAT A JERK!!!!! Of course when we landed in Atlanta, I ran to the gate of my connecting flight and the person at the gate said I missed the flight by about 3 minutes. THANKS MR "I GOTTA GO PEE"!!!!! I had the pleasure of waiting another hour in an airport before I got to my Sweetie. I think that man should be banned from flying for life.

Back in the Saddle Again

After 6 long weeks of recovering from surgery, I am finally able to run again. Doc says I can pretty much do anything I feel up to doing. So Saturday I went out for my first run. Of course Friday night was quite an adventure of shopping for a new running bra. After about 3 stops, I finally found one that I thought would work.

While my regular training group was starting at 5am to do 15 miles, I decided that I would rather finish with them than start with them - My Momma didn't raise no dummy! I started in teh dark at about 6:40 am. Recognized my Vineman partner June leaving the parking lot about the same time. (She's just starting back after injury too.) We started together but quickly seperated. Brought good ole IPOD along for company.

All I will say is WOW - what a difference a little surgery makes. I felt like a kid running around the playground at recess. I had planned on starting at 3 miles but felt so good I went for 4. So, I'm back in the saddle again!

Granite and Panties?

My house is 12 years old. It's time for some updates. I'm starting in the kitchen - upgraded the light fixtures and now replacing laminate counter tops with granite. Now most women would relish the idea of picking out a new kitchen, but in case you didn't notice in my "About Me", cooking and decorating are definately NOT in the list of things I like to do. I'm much better at take-out and eating.

Tomorrow I go to the granite warehouse to pick out the slabs of granite. Now I'm usually pretty calm and collected about things, but this has me very stressed out. This will be trip#4 and every time it gets more confusing and over-whelming. I thought I had it down to 3 colors and hated all of them once they pulled them out so I could look at them. So now I'm back to square one, but I'm not leaving there tomorrow until I have selected something. ARGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

As Jannelle told me tonight, "put on your big girl panties and just do it!"

Mr Smarty Pants Really Is Smart

My baby started college this semester. Yeah I can hardly believe it. He's living at home commuting to the local college. I'm fine with this as he's very independent and it's almost like we each have our own "half" of the house. He lives upstairs and I live downstairs. He's just completed his first round of tests. He took these much more seriously than I expected. I think he was even nervous. I'm happy to report that he made an A in math, an A in English, the second highest grade in the class in sociolgy and the 18th highest grade (with over 100 kids in the class) in geology. The sociology teacher told them he would curve the grades and the geology teach as well. I'm very proud of him - Mr. Smarty Pants.

So, why do teachers do this? Why do they give impossible exams? Why do they post scores for the test in the order of best to worst? I had a math professor in college who used to do this. He would hand out the tests in the order you scored. So if you got your test first, you had the highest grade and if you got yours last, you had the worst grade. Now while that motivated the anal retentive, type A, competitive personalities like me (I always wanted to be first!), it certainly did nothing but embarrass the lower scorers. I always tried to distract myself after he got about halfway through handing out the tests (of course I had already received mine) because I didn't want to embarrass anyone.

Well back to Mr. Smarty Pants....We went to the Galleria on Saturday to celebrate his grades. A man close to his mom's heart...we went shopping! He didn't find what he was looking for, but Mom bought several pieces of costume jewelry from my favorite accessory place, Charming Charlie. Oh don't feel sorry for Mr. Smarty Pants - he got home and ordered what he wanted online. Oh the modern methods of shopping!