PNWX 10 Year Anniversary Run

It was a great day to be up at Hood on Saturday. PNWX had its first trail run about this time 10 years ago on Barlow Road, so that's where we went again. Good times. And though it was a little chilly, the sun was out, and the trees were changing color.

Steak-umm revisited

Evidently the current economic state of America is perfect breeding ground for products like Steam-umm. I swear, I thought I had blogged about them and their ridiculous slogan about sticking steak in your mouth. Now I can't find that. I've search for "steak-umm," "steak-umms," "steak," and "mouth" and can't find it. Bah. Anyway. Folks, that wonderful goodness is back. Did you know that Steak-umm is "America's favorite sliced steak"?

Really? You didn't know?

I'd like to argue that. Though I have not tasted Steak-umm before, I can pretty much guarantee that some flank steak grilled and sliced up by our friends Chris and Slimey is far superior to anything bought in a box with Steak-umm printed on it. So maybe they mean that Steak-umm is America's favorite mass-produced, sold in a box at the grocery store sliced steak. I think Steam-umm is America's only mass-produced, sold in a box at the grocery store sliced steak. And in that case, is it really fair to say it's America's favorite? Can we have a favorite when there are no competitors? Or are there competitors that I just don't know about? I'm fine with keeping it that way, really.

Slow - Cat Crossing

There's a house in our neighborhood that I drive by every day to and from work. A couple weeks ago they started putting ones of those "Slow down for kids" signs at the end of their driveway. Like this one. It annoyed me. If you know me, you know I'm not much of a kid person. I like other people's kids--especially when they're cute and sweet--but in general kids aren't really my thing. This house happens to be on a short road where you can't build up much speed. It's also right by a park where there are always cars parked and people milling around. This isn't a high-speed possible part of the neighborhood, so that sign was annoying. Of course I'm going slow. Of course I'm watching for kids. They're everywhere, Captain Obvious.

A few days later, my entire attitude toward that sign changed. Why? Because they modified it by writing "Cat X-ing" on it in black marker. Slow down for kids? Duh. I don't need a sign. Slow down for cats? Sure! Why didn't they just say so from the beginning?

Rafting

Rafting was a success! The weather at our campsite was not great... a bit misty the first night, and pretty cold the whole time. Down in Maupin for the rafting, it was sunny and beautiful. A little cool in the morning, but the afternoon was warm. I highly recommend Imperial River Company--the guide was tons of fun, and the rafting was even more entertaining. I took advantage of all the special activities on the boat (swimming through one of the rapids, balancing/standing on the front of the raft, riding the bull). Until the end of the day when some jerky kids on another raft attacked us with high-powered water guns that hit me right in the ear, everything was great. When it was over, Marc joked that he wanted to come back again next weekend. I think we'll compromise and make this an annual event.

Getting fitted in our life jackets:


Out, damn'd spot!


Marc enjoying the lack of clouds and cold weather:


Swimming (that water was COLD):


Riding the bull:

Checking something off the to-do list

For over a decade I've wanted to go river rafting. Tomorrow I'll be able to check it off my life's to-do list. We're leaving home in just over an hour for camping tonight, and I still have laundry in the machine, I haven't finished packing, and I need to take a shower. Bah.

Assuming Marc found the underwater housing for the camera, I'll have pics to post on Sunday.

One of the great mysteries of the world

Here's one for someone to explain: Why are cell phone stores busy no matter when you go into them? Seriously. It's a random Monday. I'm in a state with one of the highest unemployment rates. People shouldn't be out in masses buying new phones. But they are. We got sick of waiting and left before we could be helped. I was also starving after a 45-minute run, so food soon took a higher spot on the priority scale than getting a new phone.

Crashing a BBQ

Marc and I went over to Steve and Andrea's last night. Their neighborhood was having a BBQ; we crashed it. But we brought baked beans, which people liked, so we were okay. (Later on when Marc brought out the portable fire pit, they liked us even more.) The fire department came over with one of their brand new engines and let the kids climb around it. The firefighters were cool and it was neat seeing the engine up close. After the party split up, we went inside and did some karaoke for a bit. Good times.

Today we tried to go to Stanich's for a burger with Slimey. We have a thing going for hamburgers lately. I think we have an unofficial goal to try two new burger places a month. A couple weekends ago we had burgers at Annie's (not bad, but too much celery salt!) and Skyline (not new to me and Marc, but it was for Slimey). So Stanich's is closed on Sundays, which sucks because we drove all the way over to that side of town for their burger. We walked down the block to Alameda Brewhouse instead, where Marc and I got a decent burger and Slimey got a meatball sandwich. We'll have to make another visit over there (on a Saturday next time) so we can try Stanich's.

I've been keeping up with running. I got as high as 7th place after my run this morning, but the last time I looked, I'd been knocked back down to 9th. Gotta stay in the top 10...

Excuses, excuses

I keep not blogging because I keep thinking about all the things I need to write about, and it feels overwhelming. Enough of that. I'll start with today, and as I think about other things that have happened that are blog-worthy, you'll all get to enjoy a bit of a history-of-Mindie lesson.

The big news lately is that I started running--and in a much bigger way than I ever have before. I was spurred on by a challenge at work. There's only a handful of competitors (so far, anyway). The competition is to see who can run the most in August and September. I started the last week of July to warm up, since I haven't been running in months, and I got up early before work every day to run a mile or two. I took a break over the weekend and missed the first day of the competition while we were up in Washington for the big annual PNWX party. I got back into it Sunday, and I've been up early before work every day so far this week. Today was a double-run day--a little over a mile this morning and another three+ this afternoon. I'm going to try that for awhile. Right now I'm in 10th place out of just 19 people. I'd like to stay in the top 10. I have no chance of winning since there's more than one person averaging over 7 miles a day. I can't do that much. Yet.

The big excitement about this new running habit is that it was a reason to get a new iPod. I needed one that does the Nike+ deal, so I got a Nano. It's purple and really pretty. :) It seems a bit ridiculous that I have four iPods now, but they each have their place--except for the old classic one. It's just a brick. Anyone want to buy it?

Hair cut

I got most of my hair chopped off yesterday afternoon. It's pretty short now. This might mean that I'll spend the next few years growing it out again, but for the summer at least, I'm going to try out the short thing.

Some of my favorite things

We went camping last night for the first time in a long time. In honor of the event, a few of my favorite things:

• The smell of mountain air
• The coldness of mountain stream water (and how pink my feet turn after sticking them in there)
• Listening to the sound of the water while I fall asleep
• The campfire smell that's so hard to shampoo out of my hair

We were bummed that we couldn't get to our favorite rustic camping areas around Mt. Hood because there was still a little too much snow on parts of the road. We took a shot at Trillium Lake, but the snow outfoxed us there, too. We earned some karma points when we helped a guy who'd gotten his pickup stuck in the snow off the side of a road down near the lake though. A Jeep was trying to help, but one vehicle wasn't enough. Once we got the Xterra hooked up to him, he came out no problem. If we'd needed a third pull vehicle, some Hyundai SUV driver was ready and willing--with his own tow-strap even. That was strange.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that next weekend's weather will be just as nice so that we can get outside and do it again.

I am alive

Wow. A whole month passed with not a single blog post written. Let's just say I was a little busy at work, and every night when I got home, blogging was the last thing on my mind.

I'll be back soon. Maybe tomorrow. I'm not promising anything though.

Ohmygod what a cutie!

If you know me at all, you know I love critters. This is about the cutest little critter I've seen in awhile.

Whip it

When I drove home for lunch today, I heard Whip It by Devo on the radio. It reminded me of a nickname I earned based on that song. Here goes a pointless story that exists now on this blog for no reason other than to reminisce. (I have to admit, as I was typing that word, reminisce, I thought to myself that I've never written it before. I wondered if I was spelling it correctly. Firefox didn't underline it, so I'm guessing that I guessed correctly. Woot!)

When I was 20 years old, I got a job at Victoria's Secret so that I could have more spending money during college. Oddly, I have no idea what I really intended to spend that money on. Reality is that most of that paycheck went right back to the store I worked at. I had a thing for cotton pajamas. And lots of other stuff. Anyway, the idea of wearing black suits and standing on my feet every day wasn't so appealing, so I ended up opting for a job in the stockroom. I loved it.

My supervisor, at least at first, was a woman named Danna. She was a true Kentuckian. Take that to mean whatever you like, but beyond your preconceptions, know that she was funny, straightforward, and hardworking. At first, most of my time "in the back" was spent with Danna and LeVonya (until a year or so later when Big Al--who really wasn't big--and Boy--whose real name I can't recall for the life of me--were hired, breaking up the female stronghold). We also had a radio with--wait for it!--a single CD player. High tech. When the radio reception didn't want to come in, we resorted to CDs. One day Danna was in charge of the radio station, and Whip It came on. I immediately broke out and sang along with every lyric. Danna and LeVonya were amazed. From that day forward, I was known as Whipit. I think Danna actually wrote it as Whippet though.

It wasn't long before Danna bought a Devo CD so that we could listen, dance, and sing along to Whip It whenever we pleased, or whenever the craziness of the day forced us into taking an insanity break. (You have no idea how crazy a stockroom can get! Okay, it's not that bad, especially compared to my current situation at work, but still... I was 20. It felt crazy sometimes.)

I miss those days. I don't miss getting paid $5.50/hour, but I miss the bizarro fun we always had. Nobody has ever called me Whipit since I left that job. Alex, if you're reading this, that is *not* an invitation to call me Whipit. Same goes for everyone else, too.

That's all.

Mr. Repo Man is at the wrong house

One night a couple weeks ago, someone knocked on our door, which was a little strange. Marc answered it to find a guy with a tow truck from a repossession company asking for someone named America Lamas. He got our address from a finance company. Marc assured the guy that nobody by that name lived here, and the guy had a flashlight which we're certain he was using to check the contents of our garage, so he knew the car he was looking for wasn't here.

We thought (hoped?) that would be it.

Then one day last week, I came home for lunch and found another tow truck parked on the street and a different guy at our door. He too had our address and was looking for someone named America Lamas. I let him know that we were the only people who've ever lived at this address and showed him my ID. He said he'd let the finance company know that they had bad contact information for this person. So far, we haven't had any more encounters.

I guess this is better than having our identities stolen, but it's still quite annoying. I wonder how someone goes about picking a random address like ours for this type of fraud?

Warming the house

I've been slacker-iffic with this blog again for the past week or so. Time for another of my infamous catch-up posts:

1. Work is insanely busy.
2. The circuit board on our furnace fried a few days ago. We only had to go one night without heat before Marc located a local place with a replacement, and he fixed it himself.
3. Work is crazy busy.
   
4. Along with slacking on my blog, I've also been slacking on Jillian's workouts. I'll get back into it.
5. Work is really busy.

Hmmmm. Notice any trends there? Coincidentally, I think I set a new record for earliest bedtime not related to being sick on Thursday night when I was in bed and asleep around 8:30. I was exhausted.

Yesterday I went to Laura's baby shower, which was good fun. Then last night we went over to Andrea's and Steve's for dinner, Wii, and karaoke. Today we finally saw Gran Torino--great movie. I think it would have been even better if we hadn't had to sit in the third row. It was packed! Tonight was the perfect end of the weekend: pepperoni pizza for dinner. Yum!

Pure evil

So I had a long, tiring day at work today, and I had to stay a little late to finish some things up. When I got home, Marc and I turned right around and went to the grocery store for some dinner stuff for later this week and so I could get the stuff to make the highly addictive peanut butter fudge krispy treats for a dessert contest at work tomorrow. You may know how much I generally despise going to the store. Then we get home, get everything put away, and I start making my dessert. After asking if there was anything he could do to help and having me decline, Marc decides to play MarioKart. MarioKart! So unfair. I'm slaving away in the kitchen and he plays my favorite game of the moment that I haven't been able to play in a couple days. I guess it would have been worse if I'd been making dinner for us instead of junk for work. As a consolation, I did get to play a few rounds of MK after I was done. But still.

Workout substitute? Not so much...

When I came home from work today, instead of working out, I played MarioKart. Though it kinda got my heartrate up, I'm pretty sure that it wasn't an acceptable sustitute for a true workout.

Well, the streak had to end sometime

So much for blogging every day. Ha!

Thursday was another Wii-free day for me since we spent a couple hours after work at the food bank and I was just too tired after that to play anything.

Last night we did happy hour at Oak Hills with Greg, Kristin, and Rey, and we ran into Tommy, Lindsey, Aaron, and all their kids. Marc also ran into a couple old friends of his. Then we went to Worst Buy to pick up Mario Kart (and Greg got about 2 dozen movies) and ran into an old coworker of Marc's. It was one of those weird nights where every time we turned around, we saw someone else we knew. We came home and played Mario Kart until my thumb was sore, then we crashed early.

Jillian returned this morning after a two-day hiatus. It's amazing how the workout is so much more bearable now--just a week since I started. We'll probably move up to the Shred2 workout sometime this week.

Now that it's almost 1:00, I guess it's time to take a shower and get ready for the day.

Excitement

Our Wii and Wii Fit were supposed to arrive tomorrow. Things didn't go according to schedule though--instead Wii came early! Woot! Unfortunately, I haven't had much time to do anything with it because we worked out with Jillian when I got home from work, and then I took a shower and left to get my hair colored. Now I'm just plain exhausted, and I'm glad there's nothing new on TV tonight so I can go to bed early. I'm sure there will plenty of Wii fun in our future for this weekend though. :)

Wii is coming

Our Wii is due to arrive on Thursday. Unfortunately, Thursday is also our monthly day for volunteer work at the food bank after work, so we'll lose a couple precious hours of play time. Somehow we'll survive.

And yes, in case you're keeping track, we did Jillian's workout again today. I'm not nearly as sore now, so it wasn't nearly so bad.

Keeping it up

I really didn't want to. Really. But we did Jillian's workout again today after work. During the warm-up jumping jacks, I started wimpering and crying so much that Marc had to pause the workout so we could both finish laughing at my patheticness. (Yes, I'm making up words.) I really hope that I don't hurt as bad tomorrow as I do today.

Hey, this is my fifth day in a row that I've posted something! That's gotta be some kind of record!

Caving in to further pain

I insisted earlier today that I was way too sore to do the Jillian "Fitness Guru from Hell" workout, but then I decided to suck it up. It's only twenty minutes. Twenty minutes of the worst pain I've felt in recent memory. But we did it, and we have plans to do it again tomorrow after work (after a brief discussion about getting up at 5:00 a.m. and doing it before work). I'm currently attempting to limit my travel on stairs. Going up isn't so bad. Going down is another story. My thighs better get used to this soon...

In other news, it's snowing again. There's a good 2 inches in our backyard, but I don't think there's going to be much more. It's supposed to be in the mid-40s and rainy tomorrow, so this snow isn't going to stick around for long.

Butt-kicking

We rediscovered the on-demand fitness programs available on our cable box the other day. Marc tried out one by Jillian Michaels (of Biggest Loser) yesterday, and then we both did it today.

Every muscle in my body felt like jelly when I was done.

In our new (fruitless) quest to find a Wii, we swung by Best Buy and picked up a couple of Jillian's DVDs so that we could follow the whole program even after it expires on the TV. I guess doing these intense 20 minute strength/carido combo workouts is better than running at least twice as long. But holy cow, it sucks for those 20 minutes.

So with the Wii, instead of calling and driving all over town just to find the console--much less a Wii Fit--I think we're just going to get the whole set on Ebay for a few bucks more.

Now let's see how long this fitness kick lasts...

Long day

We had an interesting day at work today. Fortunately I found out about an issue last night, so I was prepared to go in earlier today. Unfortunately, that meant I was awake a little before 5:00 a.m. this morning. To make my especially early morning even crappier, I walked outside to find my car covered in a light blanket of snow. More snow? Sheesh. I didn't even know it was in the forecast. We might even get a little more tomorrow.

I came home from work and took a nap, then we headed out for dinner with Chris and Slimey at Rock Creek. After dinner, I lost the battle to play games, but a good consolation prize was getting to watch The Prestige. Holy cow! I hadn't heard anything about this movie, but I really enjoyed it! It was one of those that we sat around for a bit after it was over, debating different parts of it. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it.

Now I'm off to bed... zzzzzzzzzzzz...

Happy New Year!

My first resolution: to get back into blogging more frequently.

We had one heck of a snowstorm here in Portland the week before Christmas, with the aftermath lasting through the weekend after Christmas. It was quite unusual. First it was ice, then snow, then some freezing rain and more snow for good measure. My office closed early a couple of the days and didn't open at all one day. Marc got to be my taxi driver on the days I did work so that he could have the Xterra during the day. My poor Civic sat on the street covered in snow for a couple weeks before I was able to drive it again (finally) this week. It only took a day to wash all the pretty snow away after it started raining, so now we're back to more traditional winter weather.

We were cat sitting for Pete and Courtney's cats while they visited Colorado for the holiday (once their flight was finally able to get out of town), and that put us really close to Grandpa's old house. We stopped by to see what progress the Park people have made--and it was weird. The garage, house, and driveway are all gone, along with some of the trees and a lot of the shrubbery from the back of the house. It made it hard to judge where things used to be. And it was sad.

It was also sad to hear from my mom that my grandma (her mom) died on the 28th. It's when things like that happen that it really sucks being so far away. Goodbye, grandma. I love you, and I'll still think about you often.

We went over to Jocelyn and Neil's house for NYE last night. We had a good time playing Guitar Hero and discovering our "Wii age" on the Wii Fit. And the food! There was soooo much food. I left feeling like an overstuffed whale.

Speaking of food, Marc has quite the hobby going right now. He's turned into a baker! From pumpkin bread pudding to apple cranberry cake to pumpkin butterscotch cookies to turkey meatloaf with bacon and cheese to lemon olive oil cookies to apple crisp... every day it seems like I come home to a different treat! We owe a lot of this to Joy the Baker's web site, which also aided me in making peanut butter fudge krispy treats (YUM!!) and pumpkin pie bars. I think it's so inspiring as a site because the pictures make all her food look so incredible. So, yeah, we've been eating well lately. Now I need to start thinking about getting back into a running routine. Blah.

Happy New Year to you! May the coming year bring you happiness, laughter, and plenty of good memories.