Realization

I miss regular blogging, but once you get out of a habit, it's tough to get back into.

I've been in a nice little routine recently. Standard eats:

Fage 0, berries, peanut butter, side of loan documents.

My new favorite delivery food: chicken kabob salad (chicken, red peppers, sweet onions and tomatoes, grilled on a skewer, over a standard salad with romaine, cucumbers, peppers and fresh tomatoes), add feta cheese, with a side of hummus. Old Town Pizza/Sanna's has unexpectedly good hummus...plus, online ordering lets me be supremely antisocial, and not have to actually speak to a human being in order to obtain my hummus and salad.

Salmon burgers, crumbled feta, champagne dill mustard, side of roasted broccoli, pile of olives. I'm almost out of salmon burgers - time for a Costco run.

I've come to a realization: I don't really LIKE running longer distances. I had a lot of fun training for the Philly Half with Stephanie, but I dreaded any long runs that I had to do alone. They dragged, I was miserable, and I spent half the run wondering exactly WHY I was doing this.

I've also long since come to the realization that I don't like running shorter races, either. I hate 5Ks. You go balls to the wall for 25 solid minutes or so, and by the time you get warmed up, it's over, so it's never really fun.

But I do like RUNNING. I love, love, LOVE running shorter intervals. Mile repeats are fun. 800 repeats are fun. Fartlek-style "hmm what do I feel like running this time" workouts are fun. I dig speedwork, not so much tempo runs (though they're more palatable than long, easy distances).

But, like so many people, I got sucked into the idea that I had to race to be a "real" runner, and that I had to race double-digit distances. Um, not so much. I've been much less injured and much, much happier for the past couple of months, where I've been running once or twice a week, 3-4 miles of intervals at a time. I'm happier during the workout, I'm happier outside of the workout. I don't have any real times to speak of, and I can't hang a race bib from those workouts in my office...but...SO?

Not to say I won't ever run another long race. PhillyGuy has mentioned a few times recently that he'd like to run Broad Street one year, and I'd certainly run it with him. But I'm shifting my focus, I think. Running will just be fun and recreational, the way it was when I first started running in college. I'm hemming and hawing about forking over the chunk of cash to join one of the CrossFit gyms in the city - I dig lifting, and I'm starting to get bored with the same P90X routines I've been doing for the past year.

I'm hoping to visit a gym this weekend to see what the story is. For now, it's time to head out to Philly Power Yoga for class with my favorite instructor (Steve - I really dig his teaching style. it's the right mix of normal talk and "yoga talk" that helps me focus on my practice without rolling my eyes).

Happy weekend!

Weekend Project Part 1

Thursday or Friday I had the bright idea that I should paint my living room.

That part of my house has an open layout with my kitchen. Which means, of course, I can't paint the living room without painting the kitchen.

Last year I painted my downstairs hallway. I had a friend help for a couple hours and one portion of it, but I did the majority of it solo. I figured the time commitment would be similar, and as a bonus, I didn't have any two-story walls to deal with in the living-kitchen-room.

So. I started the day with a legitimate breakfast - sauteed up some mushrooms and spinach with a slice of ham I snagged from PhillyGuy's lunch meat stash.

I also decided I wanted some bacon, but didn't want to deal with (i) the dishes or (ii) the house smelling like bacon all.freaking.day. So I did something I've never done before (and, frankly, will never do again): microwaved bacon.

I didn't know how long to cook it for, so I googled "how to microwave bacon." I found an EIGHT STEP TUTORIAL. Considering one of the steps was "find a microwave-safe plate. The plate will usually say in small print on the back of it whether or not it can go in the microwave," I guess it was designed for a different audience.

Verdict? Not so great. I mean, it satisfied my bacon craving, but I ended up feeding most of it to Cosmo. I'll stick with the frying pan from now on.

Scrambled eggwhites with the sauteed veggies were delicious, however.

I really needed that breakfast to get me through the next SEVEN FLIPPING HOURS. I severely underestimated some things - like the fact that it's been a thousand years since I've wiped down the baseboards in that room. And how much stuff I had on the walls. And how many outlet covers/switchplates/vent covers there are to be unscrewed from the walls. And how my dogs shed like mad and I had to clean the floors AGAIN. And how there are a WHOLE LOT OF EDGES IN THAT ROOM OH MY GOD THERE ARE A LOT OF EDGES. I went through a massive amount of blue painter's tape.

Before (pardon the awful state, I didn't think to take these pictures until I was halfway through the setup):

The prep took close to two hours. Then I went around with my trusty little angled brush and a hand-held bucket of paint and did all the cutting-in and edges. Yeah. There are a LOT of edges. That took an additional THREE AND A HALF HOURS. That means that, five and a half hours after I started, I was ready to pick up a roller. Thankfully, the walls went much faster than the edges, though I still really underestimated how much longer it takes when you don't have even a couple hours' worth of extra hands.

Sophie was unnerved by the whole process and went to hide down in the hallways. Cosmo was not bothered, and supervised by napping on my drop cloths.

Seven hours later (including a couple short breaks to take the dogs out), the first coat was on the walls, and I was more than ready to break for dinner. Coat number one:

I had spent the last 90 minutes or so dreaming about my dinner. I ordered delivery from the pizza place across the street from me, which also happens to have a great (for fast food) Middle Eastern menu. I ordered the chicken kabobs, with hummus, tabbouli, and garlic sauce, served over rice (which is only okay - I usually don't eat the rice):

and a "falafel and veggies platter," with more hummus and baba ghanoush.

Do you see any veggies? No? Neither do I. Unless stuffed grape leaves and a wilted piece of lettuce count as veggies. Whatever, though - the falafel was actually REALLY good tonight, even though it looked burnt. They must have changed their recipe.

When I was painting, I felt like I could have gone forever, and intended to do the second coat last night. But once I sat down and got some food in me, the exhaustion started to set in.

And so here I sit, ready to pick up a brush and put that second coat on. I am SO looking forward to this being done (and also to leftovers of last night's takeout for lunch). See you all later with "after" pictures.