Still running

Just had to post a pat on my back.

I am still running! I'm on week 9 of Hal's novice half program and have been doing pretty well with all of the run days. Not so much on the cross or strength days lately (they were casualties of the holidays).

This week will be my first week at >20miles in LONG time. So long ago I hardly remember.

I have the week off, as does M! We've been reading and cooking and playing games and eating chocolates and sleeping in. Awesome and much needed. We're throwing a NYE party and have some whispering regrets about spending our week of vacation on house/party prep. Hopefully it'll be a good time anyway.

Tonight was 5miles. I did it on the treadmill and it was awesome. I went a bit slower than I'd like but I felt physically great at the end which is a stark contrast to the debilitating  queasiness I felt at mile 5.5 of my 6 mile run on Sunday when I was trying to be fast.

I have been great about writing down the distances I've run on the treadmill but maybe I should try to chart pace and general wellness after the run to look for correlations.

The problem is that there are SO many factors that contribute to how I feel afterwards. Running controlled experiments is near to impossible!

Wedding post #5: If you plan it, they will have fun?

Now that we’re settling into a venue I can start to address my single biggest fear about this whole thing. What if people don’t have fun? It is seriously the single most stressful thought I have. Marrying M, piece of cake. Coming up with a meaningful and personal ceremony, no prob (ha, we’ll see about this).But what if we put this much time, effort, emotion and money into this event and it is a dud? Honestly this ties into post #4 very closely. I had a TiVo season pass for TLC’s Four Weddings and learned one very valuable lesson. Don’t invite people who don’t love you. But this is easier said than done and, truthfully, some of the people who love me the most will still probably be complainers. How do you tailor a party to meet the needs of guests ranging from <1 up to nearly 80? I want everyone to have a good time. Everyone. Genuinely.

The kiddos I feel will be easy. They are known to be spontaneous dancers (which ROCKS!) plus I think we should have crayons and coloring books and etc. The tweens ought to be alright too. There will be a pool table at our venue and we’re thinking about having games on the tables. Plus I am VERY excited about tasking a handful of 12-13 year old girls that we know to do some of my bidding on the day of.

Adults are a WAY different story! Will people dance? Will people talk to each other? Will everyone enjoy the food/cake/music/drinks/fill-in-the-blank?

This Friday we’re having a New Year’s Eve party to practice our host-ing. M reminds me that people just need to be fed and imbibed and they’re 90% of the way to happy (most of my people don’t drink so that puts more emphasis on food). It is that 10% that tweaks me a bit.

Will report back after NYE on how well our entertaining went.

Christmas was great and surprisingly I only got one wedding related gift.


My mom


made me that bag to carry all of my brideing (TM) necessities. It was sweet and needs to serve as a reminder that she wants to be a part of the process.

Wedding post #4: Awkward turtle guest list

I had my first awkward turtle moment about guest list. My female coworkers have been asking how venue hunting was coming and I shared with one of them our latest search results. She was excited for us to have found something and glad that things were coming together. Then she told me how she and her husband had talked about being sure they could make it. SCREEECHHH.

Now, let it be said, she is a favorite work chat buddy and sometimes venting-vent. I find her perfectly lovely and I had actually worked with her husband before (he accidentally nicknamed M as beefcake, which I still love). They are great! But they hadn’t made the guest list. Actually I only had 3 people from my current work on the list (and I worked with two of them at a previous company). It isn’t that I wouldn’t love partying it down with them but I was trying to stick with people I was just a tad closer to.

Now this feels really hard. If they want to come and are genuinely excited about sharing our day then that basically meets my guest characteristics. But they weren’t in the initial count. I guess this is why people talk about their guest lists being elastic. But I don’t want ours stretch to breaking point.

So I guess I’m left asking myself (and maybe should run it by M), is it OK to adjust the guest list if it is for people who seem to really want to be a part of our day? Should we just stick to the people who we determined to be a part of our inner community and trust that we managed to get everyone?

When we first started this wedding planning business we determined that our main goal (after getting MARRIED!) was to have an event that brought our whole community together to celebrate and to thank them for being a part of our lives. So guest list is about more than budgets and seating charts in that respect.

Hmmm, why do I think this may not be the last of this conundrum?

Wedding post #3- Summer yearnings

So a search for “Seattle Washington seasonal flowers July” led me to this:


http://diy.weddingbee.com/topic/washington-seasonal-flowers-part-2

I am giddy beyond words! My plan for flowers has always been a big sweep of the farmers market that my sweet and I frequent. All summer they are filled with the most amazing bouquets of colorful stems and creative greens and they are as cheap as the dirt they grow in. My true heart is with dahlias because they are so amazingly intricate. I figured mid-late July would be the shoulder season for dahlias so they may or may not be readily available. But my heart just about burst when I saw all of the deliciously colorful stems that may be available to me that time of year.

http://diy.weddingbee.com/topic/washington-seasonal-flowers-part-2

The one snag will be if we wed on a Friday. Then I guess the plan will be to hit up Seattle’s everyday farmers market, Pike’s Place Market, and try to clean them out.

Touristy-yes. Awesome- also yes.

The bonus too is that a bunch of these are really fragrant. I had been grooving on the idea of maybe doing herbs as centerpieces since they would smell so darn good but fragrant flowers should do the trick too.

Oh flowers…I miss you.



(side note for those who don’t live here: As the days get shorter and colder the farmers markets start filling their bouquets in with cabbage heads and other creative winter alternatives, at first I thought this was adorable but now I just see it as the first sign of winter…sigh)

Deep thoughts from the bus. Vol 5

Oh how I wish this week was not full of so much everyday stuff so I could appropriately focus my attention on huge and exciting stuff.

In no particular order:
1. It is Christmas in 4 days! I am mostly done with shopping save for a few stocking stuffers and gift cards. Some things are wrapped but still there is much wrapping to be done. I'm trying to decide who I am most excited to give their gift. Probably younger sister. She is 12 which is when there is all sorts of stuff you want SO bad. My family still hasn't decided on food for C day dinner. We gotta get on that.

2. My college Roomie is having a baby any day now! Wow! So adorable.

3. Our wedding. We made excellent progress this weekend (in part thanks to Speedy for opening my mind to a few things). Plus, I made a date to go dress shopping with my mom on the Monday after Christmas.

I am launching full speed into decor-mania which I know is still not appropriate. But I saw a possible centerpiece option on craigslist and am REALLY tempted to buy it. Gotta calm myself.

Starting with relaxing the rest of the way home.

Oh, I ran an awesome 8 miles in (relatively) awesome weather on Sunday


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Deep thoughts from the bus. Vol 4

12 days until Christmas! I am WAY more excited about a week off of work than anyone really should be.

Not sure if theCap is down for it but I am hoping we can get some wedding details worked on while we both have daytime hours to spend together during the week. Thats seriously been a bit of a challenge. Looking at venues and trying to picture a July wedding during some of the most crap-tastic weather I've seen here is tough!

Seriously, walking up to Queen Anne to catch my bus tonight there were full on sheets of water coming at me. I took refuge on this house


Ok, not really but I did pop into See's with two goals: being dry and picking up some goodies to slip into M's family's Christmas package. The fact that I thought they might lavish me with samples never entered my mind.

Again, a decent umbrella or a bit of HTFU* probably would have saved me $7 and ~250 calories. But then the FILs wouldn't have had candy.

This weekend I ran 7 (pretty slow) miles ON THE TREADMILL! (and if you have an iPhone you know what a pain it is to write in all caps). But it was pouring and we were headed to see a play. Honestly, it wasn't so bad. I watched 3 episodes of say yes to the dress (syttd not to be confused with sytycd). I am not in pain today and there was no...abdominal distress yesterday either. Success!

I'm still plugging away with Hal but I'm pretty sure they'll not be any race in the near future.

Ok, now to sit back and enjoy all the shimmery taillights around us.

Christmas is coming!

(Miss Piggy, Muppets Christmas album) That's what I'm listening to on my ride in and it does finally feel like it is!

We decorated on Wednesday night and mailed out round one of long distance packages. Still must decide on cards. We were hoping to do a save the date/announcement combo but without an official date that mayn't work.

Here are some decor pics:









The bathroom (in Birchwood Chalet by target) is my personal fave.

Feliz navidad! (that's what is playing now)


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