Bring it!

Here's my question - how in the WORLD is the snow going to stick when they keep putting ALL THIS SALT on the roads??? I was so disappointed when I left work today and saw salt on pretty much every road between work and home. I even crossed paths with one salt truck this morning. BOO! I mean, all the schools will close, why shouldn't work??? Adults NEED a snow day, too! Not that we will actually get any snow, and even if we did it won't stick! But a Southern girl can dream.

One thing I won't have to worry about is the mad grocery rush. My sweetie drove me 15 miles to a north Nashville 'burb to shop at Publix last weekend. I was in **heaven**. Man, I miss my Publix. I have no desire to live in Goodlettsville but I do have a desire to return to their Publix. We saw a FoodTV show on making fish tacos and we had a strange list of ingredients we needed, on top of our regular list of strange ingredients. I found several of them and the only thing we needed was tempura batter. We checked around the sushi section and asked an employee. He didn't know, but he grabbed another employee - eventually several employees HUDDLED and together they found the tempura batter. Literally the most amazing thing I've ever seen at a grocery store. The checkout person and everyone else in between was SO nice. We were on cloud nine when we left with EVERYTHING on our long list. I love living in East Nashville/downtown but our grocery stores are crap. Neither of the Krogers near us has ANY lamb and their "seafood" is pathetic. If you want catfish nuggets or chitlins you're in luck. And if you literally want your produce dropped on the ground and then stuck in a sack you're in luck there too. We asked them if they had fresh mint a few weeks ago and an associate had to ask Brent what that was. We stocked way up on our groceries and we'll just drive to the northern 'burbs every few weeks to Publix. I was so in love with our experience that I even took the time to leave an email on the corporate site and let them know how happy we were, and tonight the local manager called me and said my letter had been forwarded on to him and he just wanted to thank me for the kudos. I'm always pretty quick to jump on the complaint bandwagon, but hopefully I can spend more time complimenting good companies this year.

I got my final run of the month in tonight and I should end up with somewhere between 70-80 miles. Not great, but more than double what I had last month. Have a great night and keep your fingers crossed for SNOW!

Rae

WIDTW:
Mon - 20 mins toning (thighs); 15 mins yoga; .6 mile walk with Pips
Tues - 4.5 miles run;.6 mile walk with Pips
Wed - 3.6 miles run, prob some abs;.6 mile walk with Pips

Great weekend - and we have pics to prove it!

Hey everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic weekend. We REALLY did!

Friday night we never could decide what we wanted for dinner and we ended up at Batter'd and Fried. I think our dinner would have been a lot better if we had ended up with our fave waiter. I didn't see him at first so we didn't ask for him, but it turns out he was there. The food was just OK, not great. We've been making such awesome dinners lately using our new Racheal Ray cookbooks that we knew we could've done something ourselves much better with the $40 we spent on the meal. We had the classic issue of the waiter disappearing when we were ready for our bill. Where was he? Constantly bringing food to the family of three overweight people at the table next to us. They each had TWO meals, literally! And the ten year old kid drank at least five sodas. It was insane the amount of food they consumed. Lately I've had so many people mention Pippin's weight to me that I really just WANT to tell overweight people that THEY need to lose weight. Pippin's weight is all our fault, and he really just has a couple more pounds to lose. He's down to somewhere around 24-25 pounds from his highest weight of 30 over a year ago. What are these people's excuses???

Anyway, Saturday morning we went out for our long run! The local running group was doing 14 miles Sunday morning in our neighborhood (running from Bongo Java East to Bongo Java Belmont and back). We decided to run the same course ourselves on Saturday instead. Their run started a half mile from our house, so we just started at our house and cut out part of a loop they did and have 11 miles instead. Our last long run was DECEMBER 9th so we wanted to start out easy. Brent has only run once since then, too....... It was nice and warm Saturday morning, perfect for running! It was a little windy and most of the way out on our run the wind was in our face. I could definitely tell it had been a WHILE since I'd done hills! Since our last long run I've put in around 70 miles on the treadmill (primarily because we've been taking care of Pippin) and working out 6 days a week - but hills are a different story!

We had a blast, stopping to take pics when we wanted and enjoy the atmosphere and the beautiful day. We ran from our house, past the stadium (1.5 miles) then into downtown (.5 miles) down 2nd and up Demonbreun to Music Row and to Athletes House running store. When we made it to AH's we'd run 5.5 miles. Perfect! We took pics outside Bongo Java Belmont and Athlete's House and enjoyed some of the water and Gatorade they leave out for runners. I had already drunk all my Gatorade so I was very thankful for that! We popped out our Clif Shot Bloks and tried the Pina Colada and Black Cherry flavors I picked up recently. PC was OK, but I don't think I'd like it during a marathon - it was a little too sweet. BC was pretty good, I think that one would work for me. The return trip was more downhill than uphill (yay!) so we made great time. Other than two brats downtown for the circus who literally almost knocked us down as they ran out from a side entrance of the GEC as their redneck dad smoked in the corner (their DNA is probably still under my fingernails from where I grabbed her arm to keep her from slamming into me) our return trip was pretty uneventful. (On a side note, why is there no parenthood test??? I don't get that. Anyone can reproduce. Those brats could have knocked down an elderly person, other small kids, or run into traffic! And I don't blame them, I blame their redneck parents.) I felt great and picked up the speed closer to home. It was nice to know that even though it's been about six weeks since I've run anything close to double digits I can still do it when motivated. We kept a pace of avg 10:30 which includes stopping for pics and traffic lights. (I've got to get my watch back on the auto-pause so I can get our true pace again). When we ran we kept up a 9-9:30 pace on the flats and flat 10 on the ups. Not bad! And Brent did quite well for NO running in about 6 weeks! He's sore today but nothing bad.




































The next highlight of the weekend??? Taking Pips for his walk!! When we got home I grabbed the Dazer and somehow he KNEW we were going for a walk!! We walked .3 mile, 10 mins. I know we were supposed to only walk 5 mins but he does stop and pee a lot, and we did stop for about 3-4 mins to talk to one of our neighbors (J) and his dog (Y). It seems like we haven't seen our neighbors in AGES since we haven't been outdoors running or walking Pippin. Our neighborhood is wonderful - people are always walking, running, and taking their dogs on leisurely strolls around the neighborhood. Most every car you see going by in East Nashville has a dog happily riding inside with its people. Perfect. Pippin LOVED it. When we got home he sat down on the mat and pretty much decided he wanted to go again. And we did take him again today, for a slightly longer walk. And he LOVED it all over again. Thanks to a wicked cold front that came through last night it was 30 and WINDY. Normally Pippin would've turned around as soon as we hit the sidewalk but today he didn't mind it at all. He's doing great with his leg post luxating patella surgery. About 90% of the time he's using the leg that was operated on, and he's playing all the time now. He's started doing a lot of little things he hasn't done since before his accident (like attacking my feet and doing these crazy little stretches) and it just cracks us up to see him doing all that again. We're 15 days out from his surgery now and he's exactly where the doc said he would be. YAY!

This post is way long enough to begin with so I'm logging off now. I hope you all had GREAT weekends, too!

Rachel

WIDTW:
Fri: Rest Day!!
Sat: 11.2 mile run; .3 mile walk with Pippin
Sun: 3.3 mile run; 35 mins toning abs; .6 mile walk with Pippin

A year

A year ago I was packing to get ready for Miami to run my very first marathon!! As cold as it is outside right now I really wish I was packing to go there now! But, if I can't be there I'm glad Danny is. Pop over and wish him good luck in the half on Sunday. Also good luck wishes to Jack who is planning to do a 50K this weekend if it's not snowed out and Terry's running a 10 miler in Knoxville. And good luck to anyone else who I may have missed!

This week has flown by! It's been freezing cold and we've basically been in indoors hibernation. Somehow our gas (heating) bill was $300 last month. LAST month - when everyone was talking about global warming and cherry blossoms in DC. I don't think I even want to know what the next bill is going to be. They might as well just keep one of my paychecks. We've dropped the temp two degrees and have a constant supply of fleece on hand. We're supposed to have some temps in the teens next week. UGH!

Pippin is continuing to improve and today's he's really started using his leg. We downloaded a lot of the pics of his leg post surgery and I'll post them this weekend. I've been getting a ton of hits of people looking for info on luxating patella and recovery, so maybe it will help someone. Saturday is the beginning of our 5 minute walks. YAY!

I've been getting my workouts in every day and we're planning to run long this weekend. With the Georgia Marathon coming up at the end of March it's time to turn up the training. I've been upping my weekday runs all month and they're where I want them to be, now it's time to work on the weekend long runs. I still haven't signed up for the Country Music Marathon/Half in April yet. I know I want to do it - I just CAN'T for the life of me decide if I want to do the half or the full. Every day I change my mind back and forth. Today I'm full and yesterday I was half. Closer to the Georgia marathon I think I'll know which way I'm leaning, but I'm worried the half will sell out since it's capped at 17,000 this year.

Have a great weekend everyone!

WIDTW-
Mon - 45 mins Killer Butt
Tues - 4.5 mile run, 20 mins hips/thighs
Wed - 3.5 mile run, 20 mins abs
Thurs - 4.3 mile run, 20 mins thighs

5 minutes

Hey!!! And so another weekend is almost over.....blah! I totally meant to get a Powerball ticket yesterday. Oh well, I guess it will be back to work for us tomorrow.

So....we've had a great weekend. Fairly relaxing and that is NICE. We buy loads of coupon books each year to save money at local restaurants, because we LOVE to eat out on the weekends. This year we have three of the Citipass books because they have some AWESOME Home Depot coupons and that is our home away from home. And the little Italian joint on our corner is in there, plus a ton of Indian restaurants and other places we really like to eat at. After flipping through them Friday night we decided on the French Quarter Cafe. It's only a half mile from our house and we've always meant to try it and just hadn't gotten around to it. It looks like a strange, striped dive from the outside but it's always packed at night, so it has to be good, right?? We pulled in and wished each other luck. For people who have changed SO much in the past year we still hate trying new restaurants! Really just the part when you walk in and have to figure out what to do. A few times lately we've just turned around and walked out. We wandered past the bar to the back and found an open table. A really cheery waitress came over and gave us our menus and we were set. I went with the shrimp but I WISH I had gotten Brent's sampler plate. The shrimp was good but there was nothing Cajun about it. Brent's sampler had red beans and rice, a Cajun chicken dish, boiled shrimp and potatoes - it was SO good! The FQC also has live music. We love that most every little dive in our neighborhood has live music. I put my feet up in an empty chair, gorged myself on my food and Brent's, and enjoyed the 4 acoustic sets we watched. By the time we left the place was in its usual packed state. We'll totally go back. Then we went home, propped up our feet and ordered Devil Wears Prada on pay per view (with another free coupon!). It was really cute, I doubt it will win an Oscar but I really enjoyed it.

Saturday morning was a big one - Pippin's follow up appointment at the surgeon. They were awfully busy, so I was trying my best to contain hyper Pippin while we waited for the doc to finish consulting with a guy with a parrot. (Apparently they work on a lot of birds there. One told me 'bye' when we were leaving.) All of a sudden I was descended on by the two vet techs who started removing his staples WHILE HE WAS SITTING ON MY LAP!!! I was already burning up from trying to contain his hyperness with all the people in the waiting room (including one old couple who showed up at 9:45 for their 10:30 appointment. HUH?????????). When they said they were going to pull them there I said "Ummmm...ok. But I don't think I can watch." It really wasn't that bad, they just pulled straight out and Pippin didn't really seem to notice. I think I was the most uncomfortable. Once the bird guy was gone we got to meet with the doc who told us Pips is exactly on schedule and doing great. This Saturday we can take him for a FIVE minute walk. Yay!!! Five minutes won't get us far but I can't wait. He's still on strict rest until then, but he's also cone free now! And let me tell you, we are ALL happy about that. He still needs to stay crated when we're gone until Feb 10th, and on Feb 24th he's free to be as wild as he wants to be - jumping on people, furniture, exercising as long as we want. Right now his knee and surrounding tissue is still very fragile, but by then he should be totally healed and ready to take on the world again. He's already becoming more adventurous, and the jumping on furniture thing is going to get rougher before long. Both Sat and Sun morning I was woken by him standing up with his front paws on my side of the bed, staring at me. He's also starting to try to get up on the couch and just wanting to jump more in general. He's not walking on the leg yet (and he's not supposed to) but he does use it more when standing and playing - all very good signs. Our main goal is to keep him from jumping or doing anything where he might fall and injure the fragile knee tissue. SO, still no visitors or trips for Pippin until Feb 24th.

The rest of Saturday we spent cleaning around the house, organizing our guest room, and then some retail therapy. We got some amazing deals at Macy's and Express (Brent got a great jacket that was $198 for $23!!!!). I was seriously in the mood for some Greek food so we broke the coupon book out and went to Kalamatas. SO good!! I had a gyro plate with a Greek salad. I LOVE Greek salad!!! They also had a guy playing acoustic guitar with a guy playing a little drum. It was so relaxing! It was like our weekend of live dinner music. I should've made Brent play guitar while I ate my "gourmet" grilled cheese tonight. (I make them with pepperjack and feta. SO good.)

I wasn't able to squeeze in a long run this weekend, but we did get some working out in. Today it rained for infinity, and poured rain for most of that. I just got several new workout DVDs so I've been trying to kill Brent with them. (That's what he says.) Thurs night we did 20 minutes of Perfect Abs. It was tough, but not terrible. He was sore the following day and ever since then. I really wasn't sore until Saturday, and not really sore - more of a tight feeling. Today I made him do the Killer Abs DVD with me (45 minutes of tough ab work). It was pretty good but "Patch" really makes me mad when he stops working out to wander around and watch the girls. It's distracting and I'd much rather see the trainer in pain with me and not walking around. Brent is now complaining of internal bleeding. I don't think ab work can make you bleed internally, but both of those DVDs will give you a good workout. I also got a third one I need to try out this week.

Have a good week everyone!

WIDTW:
Thurs - 4.25 mile run, 20 mins abs
Fri - Rest day
Sat - 3.3 mile run
Sun - 3.6 mile run, 45 mins abs

2042

What's up???? We've almost made it through to the weekend again, yeah!!!

I don't have anything exciting to add on the workout front this week. A few short runs, all on the treadmill. I usually get my workouts in before Brent's home from work these days so I've been hopping on the 'mill so I can keep an eye on Pippin. He seems to know just when I'm not watching and that's when he chooses to try to lick his wound. If I yell at him to stop he usually leaves the room, so if I'm on the dread that means my run is cut short as I run after him. He's so stubborn.

Brent got home earlier yesterday so I ran later in the evening while watching American Idol, which is VERY dangerous. It's incredibly hard to run while laughing so hard you're snorting. What's wrong with some of these people???? I wonder what they think when they see themselves?? There was one guy who mentioned his coworkers told him he should audition. I'm totally the type of coworker who would encourage this embarrassing behavior. Sometimes you just know people so "unique" that you need to share them with the world. Once the terrible audition process is over I will no longer have any interest in the talent show portion of Idol. I'm looking forward to the auditions they're going to show from my hometown of Memphis next week. I know that's gonna get ghetto fabulous!

Speaking of, it sounds like everyone had an AWESOME time in Memphis last weekend at the Swampstomper. People called it the toughest race ever - and these are people who are seriously experienced. I'm really glad our fees were rolled to next year, and it sounds like the "Swamp" portion of the race name was well earned. My luck it will be bone dry next year! Considering the conditions on race day I'm pretty sure we would have dropped back to the 25k, but it still sounds like a blast. I can't wait til next year!

On tap this weekend - I dunno. I need to get a long run in, but we have to take Pippin back to the surgeon Saturday morning to have his staples removed. I think this is literally the 5th weekend in a row we've had to take him to a vet appointment of some sort on a Saturday morning!!!! He's doing well and his energy is coming back in leaps and bounds. He still doesn't put any weight on the leg, though. He did stand on it to hike his other leg to pee on something yesterday - the first time he's done that since before he fell. From a lot of the reading I've done it seems like around 2 weeks post surgery is when he should start using it. He's also starting to jump around a lot more, too.

So - the blog title. 2042. I got a letter this week from the former employer informing me that my many years of suffering with them entitled me to the large benefit of $92 a month in the year 2042 - the year of my retirement. $92 a month is nowhere near enough to compensate me for the pain and suffering I endured there, but I'll take it. What really upset me is the 2042. That's a million years away. 35 to be exact. Why couldn't they have just said "upon turning 65" or "at retirement"? Why further torture me with these dates???? And to cap it off - I have to keep this letter until 2042! It's my responsibility to keep up with it! Exactly where do you keep something you won't need for 35 years? Maybe I could pack it away with my wedding dress or my old high school yearbooks.

Have a great weekend everyone! Good luck to anyone racing, I can't think of any but if you are good luck!!!

WIDTW:
Tues: 4.25 mile run, 20 mins upper bpdy
Wed: 2.75 mile run, 20 mins booty
Thurs:TBD!

Jack Bauer eats people

There really aren't a lot of shows Brent and I get into so much that we have to watch them WHEN they're on. God bless TiVo for that. The Office and 24, those are our shows. Anything else is really pretty dispensable, anything else we "sort of" like is caught by TiVo. (But TiVo is also set for 24 and the Office - "just in case".) Can I just say life is better when Jack Bauer is protecting the nation?? In a crisis situation I would totally call Kiefer Sutherland. I know he's not REALLY Jack Bauer, but I'm thinking six seasons of being Bauer is close enough to handle terrorists. I hope George Bush Jr reads this blog and calls Bauer, tomorrow. ASAP. I really don't see how it could make anything worse. I'm thinking it would at least help his approval ratings a percentile or two. In honor of the season premier of 24 I had Brent track down one of the sites with all the funny "Jack-isms." Although it's truly hard to pick my fave, here goes:

"Jack Bauer's favorite color is severe terror alert red. His second favorite color is violet, but just because it sounds like violent."

Our little patient is much more active today. When I came home he was very happy to see me and very happy to get out of his crate and have his conehead removed. He and I have many similarities. One of them is a total lack of a sense of depth perception. I run into an ungodly amount of things. I don't know HOW many times I stubbed my toe on the fireplace at our old house. Thank goodness none of the ones in this house have a brick hearth. Pippin is a dog of routine. For some reason, every time we have EVER let him out of his crate he will run out and greet you, then run back in and "rescue" a toy. Even though it's been about 2 years since he was crated on a regular basis he still does the same act anytime he's crated. So strange. So, of course he wanted to do that today. His big massive conehead runs out to greet me and then SLAM. He's straight into the coffee table. And again. And again. Poor thing can't figure out how to turn around without bashing that thing into the coffee table over and over. I finally had to steer his little plastic head around so he could go BACK into his crate and rescue a rawhide before he'd even let me take his cone off. He's been really active tonight (until 24 came on and he wanted to hog the entire couch) and I can tell he's feeling MUCH better. We've had to remind him several times tonight that he JUST had surgery a few days ago.

And, I have to say I'm a little disappointed in you all. Britney at NIT posted a get well wish to Pippin....and someone finally noticed the tacky, embarrassing, "See Rock City" birdhouse in the background of one of the pics I posted yesterday. Or maybe some of you DID notice it and you're just too kind to pick??? Let me assure you it is not really ours. It came with this fine establishment, and we've taken the "See Rock City" birdhouse down from it's metal pole and it's currently in the "to be trashed" pile. (Of course if anyone wants it it would be available to the highest bidder!) However, we did find something interesting in the house last week - two pieces of coal from when the house was heated by coal. (We still have the coal grates (sealed now) all throughout the house.) Our neighbor had mentioned finding some around his house before, so we'd always hoped we would come across some. Brent found them under the house when he was running speaker wire over the weekend. We've got a little collection of random things we've found that are likely rather old to frame one day, and now we have some coal to add.

Have a great week people!!!

Rachel

WIDTW:
Sunday - 3-ish miles on the treadmill (my run was cut short by an "almost puke" situation courtesy of Pippin
Monday - 20 mins upper body toning

The Boston Patient

Here are some pics of our little conehead from yesterday.......





























His enormous cone was so big we had to trim it down because he got stuck in his crate and couldn't turn around!!! He doesn't like wearing it, and we only make him wear it when we leave and at night - (we're making him sleep in his crate in case he tries anything wild while we're asleep). He doesn't like it but he's being great and not whining or throwing a fit. We don't like it either, but it's for his best interests. It's better to follow the doc's orders for the next few weeks than have to go through all this over again. He's feeling a lot better today. I think the anesthesia wearing off yesterday messed him up because we had a few pukes. Today he hasn't had any issues and has either slept or sat in his bed licking his bed (a strange hobby he has). You can tell he isn't in as much pain today as he was yesterday.

He did sleep through 24 tonight?!?!?!? What's up with that??? I think only one BLOOP BLOOP woke him up. I mean, is Jack Bauer awesome or what???? Why do people even act surprised when he escape whatever foreign terrorists have him? I can't believe the Chinese kept him for 2 years. They're good.

Have a good Monday!

Home Sweet Home

Our boy is home!! Doc told us to call this morning and make sure he didn't have a temp, so even though I set my alarm for 7:30 I held off until the assigned 8:30 to call. They told me he was doing "great" and I confirmed that I should come around noon to get him. They close at noon on Saturday and the doc had wanted to keep him until close to that time so they could watch him and keep him rested. She said to come around 11:30, so we showed up promptly at 11:30 on the nose. We got some take home instructions, some antibiotics, paid for the surgery & related costs and she brought him out. OMG. We just had to laugh. Poor Pippin, totally hidden beneath a massive doggy cone. He has loads of personality, and we can look at him and tell when he's pissed. And he was 5 miles past pissed off. In going over his take home instructions she told us they had a cone on him "which he absolutely does not like", followed by a chuckle. She also said "This little booger is already trying to use that leg!!". I think that's probably a good sign, the doc said some dogs refuse to even try to use the leg once it's corrected, since they've gotten so used to 3-legged hoofing.

She handed him over to me and I couldn't even see the poor baby for the huge cone! We loaded up in the car and Brent had to tell me if he was asleep or what he was doing because all I saw was plastic. We came home and took him straight to the backyard to do his business. I set him down and he just dropped his conehead down to the ground and wouldn't even move. He does this same thing if you put him in a costume he doesn't like or a sweater that's too big. It's the classic Pippin "lock and freeze". We took the cone off and he did his business right away. I scooped him back up and gave him his 3 bed options and have been next to him pretty much ever since. For a while he sat up and scratched around on his head where the cone was, and then for a while he just laid in his bed with his eyes open. The doc doesn't give much in the way of painkillers after Day 1 because he does want them to be in a touch of pain, so they don't try too much too soon. That's a great approach with Pippin because he can be very fueled by adrenaline. We can tell he's in some pain, and he sort of grunts around from time to time, but he's fine. He's been snoozing off and on all afternoon and whenever I need a break from sitting in the floor next to him Brent sits with him. I've been catching up on my Tivo-d Oprahs and Racheal Rays! He had one big vomit, but other than that he seems fine. His leg is totally shaved and the whole length of his leg is stapled. It looks incredibly painful and it's tough just to look at it. They remove the staples next Friday. Part of his front leg is shaved from the IV, too.

So, the plan is just to take it easy the rest of the weekend. So far we've managed to escape the torrential floods forecasted. We are supposed to get some storms tomorrow night that are going to take away our wonderful 60+ temps! But who cares, we are going to be sitting here watching the season premiere of 24 in HIGH DEF anyway!!! Brent's been running speaker wires all afternoon to finally get our surround sound up and running. It's going to be strange to hear all the speakers again!

Have a great weekend everyone!
Rachel

WIDTW:
Thurs: 4.25 mile run
Fri: off day
Sat: 50 min Pilates dvd

Pippin Update

Hi all! We dropped Pippin off at the surgeon this morning. We were really impressed with him, and he spent about an hour going over the 3 steps he may have to take all of, or depending how serious the knee was once he got in there, he may have to do 1 or 2 of them. He seemed very, very intelligent and Pippin was a big fan of the doc. Of course he's a big fan of MOST everyone (there have been 1 or 2 ppl along the way he hasn't cared for!). I was doing pretty good until the nurse took him away, and of course there were lots of tears then. From then on I was pretty much pegged as the "obsessive mom" and I was warned about getting him too excited and wound up when we pick him up, warned about coming too early to pick him up and basically picked on. But have you seen Pippin??? He's so cute, who wouldn't want to spoil him??? We can pick him up at noon tomorrow, provided he's not running a fever or in any other sort of distress. His little leg is going to be shaved and he's going to have a fairly large scar and will be "sealed up" with staples, so doc is also sending home one of the "coneheads" in case he tries to bite at his staples. The next 48-72 hours we're to keep him very, very rested, and for the next 2 weeks also very rested. So, for us, that means no visitors because Pippin goes crazy for people and will gladly injure himself again to be the little host with the most. I called the doc this afternoon to see how he was doing and they told me he was "wonderful" and made it through surgery just fine. I have to call back in the am and make sure he was fine through the night and that we can pick him up. I got him a bunch of new toys (Christmas ones on 75% off!!!) tonight and a little mattress for his crate so he'll be more comfy.

Anyway, thanks for all the supportive comments for Pippin. I know if you come here for running there really hasn't been a ton of discussion about that lately. But really, how often can you talk about the same 6 mile or 4 mile or 8 mile run at X:XX pace??? That's really just not what's on my mind right now because there's really nothing special to report about it! I did get in 4 runs this week (so far) but there's just nothing exciting to say about it. And Pippin is very important to us, so everything going on with him is very important. Can I tell you how sweet it was that Brent's parents mailed Pippin a card today???Dogs have such personalities, and they're just about the sweetest friends you'll ever have. Any time we've ever been sick Pippin is right there to cuddle with us, and no matter how bad a day we have at work he is always insanely happy to see us. It just feels weird being here without his little body pressed up next to me, hogging the couch and snoring away. Brent has no desire to follow me absolutely everywhere I go in this house. Some people have dogs for the single purpose of having something to bark when someone drives up, but I think they're really missing out on the true love a dog can give you.

Anyway, more Pippin updates tomorrow! And good luck to everyone racing this weekend, esp Firefly taking on Arizona and everyone doing the Swampstomper that Brent and I were planning to do. I emailed the race director last night to tell her we couldn't come (since the race sold out) and she rolled our entries over to next year. YAY! And the course is VERY swampy right now! One section already has thigh-high water (and she's much taller than I am). With the torrential floods forecasted for this weekend that's going to be one muddy, fun race!

Have a great weekend!
Rae

A good weekend for a nap

Hey guys! Not much to report around here, really. I've been keeping up my mileage and have more miles already this week than I have in quite a while, and I feel good about that. New job is going really well. I do have one quirky story to share though: I was on my out yesterday and this seriously obese lady was waiting on the elevator to go down. I walked past her and took the two flights down to the bottom of the parking garage. When I saw her I thought "Man, I wish she would just take the stairs, she really is SO overweight and must be seriously unhealthy." But of course I didn't say anything because that would be rude, right??? So, we get to the bottom floor at the same time and are walking out the door together and she turns to me and says: "You know, I was just staring at your bag upstairs." And I was thinking, yeah, my purse and my briefy-bag are super cute (I got mine at Marshalls and only paid a fraction of that). She continues on and says "You must not have seen the thing on the news last night about how bad it is to carry such a heavy looking bag on your shoulder." WHAT??? First of all, it is really empty, I pretty much only have a few papers in it these days since I don't have a work lappy anymore, and seriously - I should be telling her about unhealthy!! So, I cleverly responded "Oh, it's really not so heavy, and I'm sure these heels I wear every day are far worse for me." HER clever response: "Oh, you should only wear flats. Anything else is just so bad for you." Hmmmm......so is being (at least) 100 pounds overweight. But I guess it's all relative.

The 50K we had planned to do is this upcoming weekend. After Pippin got hurt we decided not to do it, for a lot of reasons. We didn't get to train as much as we had planned for a lot of reasons, including the extra time and vet appointments we've had the past few weeks to take care of him. They also weren't able to give him his vaccinations since he was on anti-inflamms, so I wouldn't have been able to board him anyway, plus we just didn't want to leave him when he needed us the most. We were referred to the vet surgeon earlier this week and they've actually scheduled his surgery for this Friday! We're glad they're able to take care of him so soon, and it also freaks me out that he'll be having surgery. They estimate his recovery at 6-8 weeks. The first couple of weeks he's supposed to have lots of rest, so we're planning to not have any visitors and just take really good care of him. We'll drop him off Friday morning and then be able to pick him up on Saturday. This weekend is supposed to be one massive rainstorm from Friday - Sunday, so it'll be a good weekend to cuddle on the couch anyway!!! I'm dying to take him for a walk, so hopefully Friday's surgery will put us even closer to it. Send Pips lots of good wishes!!!! And chocolate. Not for him, for us. =)

Have a great night everyone!

Rae

WIDTW:
Sun - 6.1 mile run
Mon - 1.1 mile run, 30 min Ab Attack, 30 mins toning (thighs)
Tues - 30 min toning (butt), 4.25 mile run
Wed - 45 min Killer Butt, 30 min pilates (abs)

The good and the not so good

I really think Sunday nights are the worst! The weekends always go by waaaay too fast. Why does the work day seem so long and the weekends seem so incredibly short?

The rest of my first week at the new job went great. I'm becoming an old pro at the parking garage I park in, and even though I had to ask for directions 3 times on my quest to find the ice machine nearest me everyone was really helpful in trying to get me there. AND, it turns out I work with a fellow RBF-er . There are loads of runners in the company, and we get an AMAZING discount at the Y. There are also areas for walking indoors mapped out and posted on the walls, so I'm going to have to bring some sneakers to take advantage of the walking paths on my "breaks". So far, so good.

Friday night we went out for Mexican ala the Rosepepper. I tried the fish enchiladas, YUM!! The rest of the night we spent taking down all the Christmas stuff, and then Saturday afternoon we loaded it into the appropriate totes and into the attic. It's always so strange how empty a house looks when all the extra decorations are gone! Our tree was SO dry and brittle! Taking the bubble lights off I broke a ton of limbs, and our floor was covered in tree. I would share a pic of us dropping the tree off at the tree recycling center near our house but somehow it didn't get saved on the camera phone.

Saturday morning was our follow-up appointment with Pip's vet. The good news: he's already lost 2 pounds since Christmas Eve. Yay!! At one point he was up to 29 pounds, on Christmas Eve he was at 27 and on Saturday he was down to 25! Yay!! We've started cutting back his quantity of food, since he can't walk right now. (Which, by the way, totally sucks since this winter has been SO mild! I am dying to take him for a walk!!). The original goal weight set for him by the vet was 22 pounds, but we'll have to see if that is low enough, 20 might be a better size for his build. It will all really depend on how he looks, and not really a number. SO, that was the good news. The bad news? Nothing new on his luxating patella (dislocated knee), so there's nothing more the vet can do for us and at this point we're now referred to a orthopedic vet surgeon. We have to call this week and set up an appointment with them, but it seems that Pippin is going to be getting a shiny, (expensive) brand new knee. Hopefully we can schedule the surgery soon, so he can recover sooner and be back to his bouncing, jumping, running (though hopefully not quite as acrobatic) self. We were working upstairs this afternoon and since he can't jump on any furniture right now the poor little guy got up on my treadmill and sat there to try and watch us working. So sad - sort of a double irony as in "I'd really like to walk, please" and "I'd really like to come up those stairs with you guys".

I did get in a "long" run today, but only made it 6 miles instead of the 8 or 9 I would have liked. Between the vet appointment, the Christmas stuff, and my parents stopping in on their way home from my brother's house in Cincinnati there just wasn't any running time yesterday. And of course all day today was a total, pour-down washout rain event. Six is the absolute max I can do on a treadmill before I lose my mind, so I ran six while watching While You Were Out. Six is better than zero, so I'll take it. I'm still keeping up with lots of toning exercises this year because I really, really want to sculpt and tone more this year. Running alone gives me some pretty nice legs but it just doesn't tone my stomach and I hate having a muffin top. My goal for this year is to lose 12-15 pounds. I only weigh once a month, so I won't know how it's going (except my clothes feel looser already) for 3 more weeks.

We also spent loads of time organizing and cleaning our guest room upstairs this weekend. After nearly six months of looking for it we have found our plain envelopes and our extra printer paper. We're still looking for the paper cutter though!! I swear that room has never been vacuumed and I think most of the people who have lived up there have been cats with bladder issues. We're cleaning it and steam cleaning it in sections. Brent already has one section set up with his weight bench, so by the end of this week we will be have a nice guest room set up for anyone who wants to come and visit! And we spent a ton of money at the grocery store this afternoon, so we should have lots of good meals for our guests. I threw out a ton of old cooking ingredients when we moved, so we've slowly been stocking the pantry back up. I've also cracked out my Racheal Ray cookbook and picked out a ton of new recipes to try. Does anything beat a super-nice 30 minute meal??? And I love that she uses a lot of fresh ingredients. I didn't buy a single thing from the frozen section today, and the bulk of our cart was from the produce and meat section. That makes me happy!! For some reason having a gas stove has made us enjoy cooking much more. For our anniversary we decided to buy a new set of All Clad cookware for ourselves (we just have to get to the store to pick it up!) It's way too nice for our current kitchen, but in our remodel later this year they will fit in beautifully. By the way, I am IN LOVE WITH this stove. Seriously, seriously, seriously, in love. It's so hot. I heart it. It would make such a statement in this house. And it's available in EIGHT colors!! We've started shopping around for what we want in our kitchen, and we are in love with appliances! The thing we're having the toughest time with is cabinets. They're all so generic and cookie cutter, and that's just not us. We're leaning towards building them ourselves/finding some vintage ones and restoring them. I love the look of truly old cabinets. Our house would look ridiculous with anything else. There's a million things we've seen that we want for the new kitchen, we just need to sit down and draw it all out. And then multiply the cost of everything times two because nothing ever comes in at budget!

Ok, that's enough rambling from me! Have a great week everyone!

Rachel, who is going to try to be more like Racheal Ray this week. =) I get enough hits from people looking for her, anyway!

It still looks a little bit like Christmas

Hey guys! I can tell everyone is back in their normal routine because my Reader account has EXPLODED!! I think I laughed out loud today when I hit refresh and it went from something like twelve to over sixty! Welcome back!

Since I've last posted it is now 2007! Woo hoo! After finishing the gargantuan hardwood floor project we spent the rest of our week off relaxing. (On a side note, the floors costs us right at $400. The price quoted to us to have someone else do them was $700, which wouldn't have included repairing a large messed up section, so make that estimate more like $850-$1000 and either way we saved a load! If the stupid floors had not been painted the whole project would have cost us right at $200!!! I want to know who painted those floors!!) SO, we've started the fun and totally overwhelming task of shopping for new bedroom furniture. We spent Saturday going to all kinds of great antique shops on the 8th South Neighborhood and then had a late brunch at Marche, near our house. OMG, that place is so good!!! I had a spinach and mozzarella omelet and Brent had some amazing French toast. The food was SO fresh and awesome. They also have all kinds of fresh meats and cheeses for sale as well as some other specialty items. We did some other shopping the rest of the weekend and just had a good time, we even got to hang with S at our fave place (Alleycat).

And then.......it was time for my first day at the new job! So far I really haven't done much. Tues and Wed were orientation. There were 14 other people in the "new kids" class, so at least I had company. The org I work for now is HUGE, and over our 2 days we got a 2 hour walking tour of the company - and still saw very little! So far the new job has been great. Everyone is really, really nice. I still don't a clue what all I'm going to be doing, but so far so good. I was even a little "lost" in the massive parking garage yesterday and someone asked me if I was new and offered to help me find my car. Crazy!! My new company has its own dry cleaner in house and even its own zip code with our own post office inside. The only thing I miss about the old place is seeing Brent every day, and a couple of other people.

Working out.....I've been doing it. I actually haven't missed a day since before the end of last year. There's just nothing terribly interesting to say about it. I am going to spend a little less time this year just "logging miles" and more time toning and really shaping up. I've been focusing a lot on toning and stretching over the past week, as well as some light running. I've been in the best shape when I log moderate miles and also have time for toning. And with the new job I should have a lot more time in general!! I am so excited about leaving long hours and my old work lappy behind!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pippin......No real update there. He was too scared of the ramp Brent built for him to get on the couch, so Brent made a new small "staircase" for him with the pillows from our loveseat so he can now get up on the couch with us as he pleases. He's still not walking on the one leg, occasionally he will put a little bit of weight on it when he's just standing. We go back to the vet on Saturday. Since he hasn't had any real improvement I'm not sure what they will say, if we should go ahead and have surgery for him or wait a little longer.

Besides another trip to the vet this weekend it will be time to take down the Christmas tree. We don't turn it on anymore, but I haven't seen much point in taking the ornaments down when we'll have to take it to the recycle site and we wouldn't have time to do that until Saturday anyway. Brent did take the garland down from the fence today. I also got rid of all the remaining Christmas leftovers yesterday, so now there's lots of space in the fridge again.

I hope you all have a great weekend!!!