I'd say the camera adds 20 pounds

So, when last I wrote I told you how today's long run had a brilliant forecast of snow, sleet and ice. And the weather people were pretty much spot on on that one. Pippin is a dog of MASSIVE schedule. Every morning we let him out around 7, which is when we normally leave for work. So, each and every Saturday morning he feels it is his turn to wake us up at 7. And I am really not good at falling back to sleep. I eventually gave up and got up around 7:30. We'd gotten about a half an inch of snow and the white stuff was still falling in big pretty flakes. I flipped on NewsChannel 5 to catch the morning's forecast in high definition TV (they're the first station in our area to begin broadcasting their entire news in HDTV - it's quite entertaining). They started doing their "news reporters about town" segments, showing our mass quantities of snow in various areas of the city. They had the reporter north of town showing some idiot stuck in a ditch on perfectly clear roads, some other interstate camera views - and then the one that caught my eye. A reporter was standing on the James Robertson bridge showing the downtown snowfall. I jumped up off the couch, told Brent to get out of bed because we were going to GET ON TV! I know I heard him grumble something mean. I fixed breakfast for us and made him come watch the news reports. That got him going a bit more, so we geared up, set TiVo to record the news broadcast "just in case" and headed out. She was only about 2 miles from our house, and there was about 30 minutes of broadcast left to go - so we knew we had a slim shot.

Honestly, I didn't think today was nearly as cold as last week, but maybe that's because I was on a mission. The temp was 28 with a windchill of 19. We were bundled up nicely and the sidewalks were pretty much deserted. The snow had been falling pretty hard for the past hour and we were up to about an inch of snow, which is where we always max out. We booked it over to the bridge, and were starting to feel a little disappointed because we didn't see them......until.....just as we were nearing the end of the bridge we saw some lights....and then the tell-tale news satellites and the van. Sweet!! As we were reaching the top arch of the bridge we saw them get out of the truck and thought we might have a good shot at being in the background of the shot. As we got closer they motioned for us to come over - they wanted to interview us! Score!!!! We pretended to be shocked they were there, she asked us some questions about "why in the world we would be out there" and then asked if we would mind hanging around a minute to be on the air. Well of course we wouldn't mind!!! A couple of minutes later we went live and made our tv interview debut!! She asked us why we were out, how far we were running, just a couple of questions about basically why we're crazy enough to be out on a day like today when we didn't have to be. We were both SO nervous!! We've pranced around behind reporters doing their live shots before and even been caught running a time or two in news footage but never interviewed!! Afterwards she thanked us for our time and we headed on our merry way, in complete disbelief that our plan had worked!




From there we headed over to the Bicentennial Mall/Farmers Market to enjoy a snowy view of our state capital and then we decided to run down to Centennial Park to see if the lake had frozen. There weren't many people out, and we didn't see another runner until we made it to Centennial. Brent was not feeling good - him stomach was giving him major issues and he was feeling really sick. I've actually never seen him that sick on a run before, and we were a good 5 miles from home. He decided to rest for a bit while I did a few of the one mile loop paths there at the park. When we started heading back he was really cold which worried me because it had "warmed up" to 36 and I was feeling toasty. If I'm toasty and someone else is cold - something is wrong. He actually kept a great pace going back, and we stopped to walk up 2nd avenue because the cobblestone sidewalk is ridiculously slippery with snow on it. As we got closer to home his stomach was starting to rumble again so we took our time. We ended up with somewhere between 13 and 14 miles today - my GPS was constantly dropping out due to all the snow and tall buildings! A deadly combo, I guess. I know it's not 20 but my trail shoes were killing my feet (my Mizunos do NOT work on snow!!!) and Brent was feeling horrible.

As I unloaded my Fuel Belt I noticed I had a new voicemail from my parents. I had completely forgotten they get some Nashville TV stations - they had seen us on the news and couldn't believe it! Well, when I called them they had already talked to Brent's parents who had not seen it but several of their friends/family members had and had called them immediately. And my parents had called my brother - in Cincinnati - to tell him! Hilarious. My mom was concerned that I didn't have a hat on like Brent did. (I wear an ear thingie and my hair keeps my head quite warm). My dad was hoping they would replay it on the evening news. I assured him that probably would not happen. He was also quite interested to know if we taped the segment earlier or if it was actually live. It was live. We really didn't guess anyone we knew saw it, but I guess we were wrong!! We have it on TiVo, but our software to convert TiVo files to our computer is on our desktop computer that has recently crashed. Our laptop isn't in great shape either - our Office license has expired so I can't respond to any emails we get unless I log onto our email via the Internet. Very frustrating. So, we're going to have to download some software to lappy before we can post it for you guys.

Since our exciting TV appearance I've been painting the kitchen and Brent hung a new chandelier in our bathroom. It snowed all afternoon but it was 34 degrees so nothing stuck. Around dark it turned to sleet and for some reason we decided to go to Opry Mills - a horrible touristy mall. I was having overwhelming needs to purchase new bathroom accessories for our guest bath and somehow that overshadowed slick roads and the Saturday night redneck crowd at this mall that could be a city within itself. We did get some cute stuff but made a promise to each other we would only go back there on weeknights. Several salt trucks were out on our way back. In the hour we were in the store it's amazing how much ice was starting to accumulate on the roads. We had a really tough time getting our car into the garage - it was REALLY slick. After about 4 or 5 tries we were able to make it back in. (On a side note - we have a 2 car detached garage. Since our house was built in the 1890's there were no attached garages and with our historical overlay you can't build an attached one. We can have detached ones, on the back of our property. We have don't have driveways we have alleyways behind the houses, so we pull into the alley and then into our garage. I had a clicker to the garage but no key to get from our backyard into the garage if my car was inside. It was always a fear that Brent would accidentally lock the garage door behind himself and I'd have no way to get to my car in the garage!)

Brent still hasn't felt good all night. A little while ago he started to get sick again and made really good friends with the bathroom floor. He's in bed now with a wet washcloth, a glass of Sprite and a trash can. I really hope he doesn't have the flu.

I hope everyone else is having a great weekend!!

Rachel