Thanksgiving was fun. Ate too much, went shopping, did some yardwork. That's about all there is to tell. It's now past the grace-period for this to be a "post-Thanksgiving wrap up" post, but, meh!


Tomorrow I'll be leaving for Austin to teach a class Mon and Tue next week. SNG will be going to his office Christmas party without me Friday night. He'll have more fun this way- I'm always a wet blanket of a date at that event. I'll either be going to the San Antonio Wheelmen's Christmas party or hanging out with an old friend from grad school or hanging out with my brother this weekend.


Last night a municipal deer brigade tromped through the front yard making the dogs blind with madness, frothy and squeaky. Their eyes rolled in ecstacy as they stood watching from the front door. They ran up and down the stairs hoping to wear a hole through the wall that would let them out to chase the deer. Then they both ended up confined to the closet under the stairs in darkness for about 5 minutes while they shook off the hysteria.


They are currently getting turkey-shaped cookies that Dianaverse made for them. They smell good enough that I almost want to eat them myself. Perhaps it's the diet talking, but peanut butter *and* chicken broth? Drrrroooooool.


SNG is learning french! We're doing lessons in the kitchen. He has all the subject pronouns, the verb for To Be, definite and indefinite articles, and posessive modifiers. And a handful of nouns. So now he can tell you things like,


Ils sont mes parents.

Nous sommes les chiens.

Je suis un carafe d'eau.


:-D


Just ask him - he'll say all kinds of amazing things!

Another one of Cat's reminiscent blogs. With respects to Tomato Nation's Thanksgiving post.


I've never quite adapted completely to the whole Thanksgiving tradition thing. Every "traditional" Thanksgiving I've ever spent has been with the family of some boyfriend or significant other, so my picture of traditional Thanksgivings is colored by those experiences. Our family's traditional Thanksgiving was really, in my mind, the only sensible and decent way to spend the holiday weekend, but I can imagine that others may disagree.


As a kid in my family, Thanksgiving holidays were always spent at JAM, a.k.a. JAM fest, or properly known as Jambalaya Tour. If I describe it, it won't do the event justice. But here goes. People from various bike clubs around Louisiana (Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Lafayette, etc) convene at a campground near St Francisville, LA for 4 days of eating, biking, dancing, eating, and biking. Days were spent touring through the countryside, burning calories. That part of Louisiana is not the swampy willows and spanish moss so common throughout southern LA. St Francisville has lots of pine and even some rolling little hills. Evenings were spent eating and dancing to music by a cajun band that would come in just for the event. Nights were spent in a tent, listening intently for bears, aliens and snakes that were trying to get in all night long. Armed with best friend and flashlight, we usually discovered that the sound was a raccoon or an owl eating on the picnic table.


The first boy I ever had a *real* crush on was at JAM. He was in college, I was in 6th grade. It was a 1-sided romance doomed to failure, but at the time I was sure I could sway his attention away from that co-ed. I first learned to cajun dance at JAM. We did the crippled chicken, waltz, cajun 2-step, and other dances I couldn't name in a million years. We could dance all night. I had my first deep-fried turkey at JAM. Thursday night was always turkey and jambablaya, Friday was always red beans and rice, made by an award-winning chef from Gonzales, LA- the self-proclaimed Jambabalaya capital of the world. I rode my first 30 mile bike ride at JAM. Hey, that's saying something for a 10-year-old! I spent a lot of Thanksgivings riding no further than the dirt trails in the campground and scrambling around the rocks with my best friend Jennifer, and in later years with my best friend Katy. You know about the transitive property of best friends, right?


When we moved to Texas, we stopped going to JAM every year. We made it back 2 or 3 times after that, but it was the end of the era. After that, I spent most Thanksgivings with Current Boyfriend's family. It's funny how Thanksgiving has always been the holiday for the significant other. Since 1992 I've spent every (or nearly every?) Thanksgiving with SNG and Dianaverse's family. My family gets New Year's and Easter.


Easter is still spent much the same way as those old Thanksgivings. We don't have the cajun band, and meals require that we cook for ourselves, but it's almost as much fun as JAM fest. But you'll have to wait until March for the Easter Hill Country Tour...

YAY we only have ONE HOUSE!


I'm still not over the excitement of selling the old house, at last! It's like being released from prison. It's like having sunshine after 8 months of rain. It's like losing those 10 vanity pounds. It's like the departure of the airplane when you've been sitting on the runway for 3 hours trying to go home. It's like chocolate cake after finishing your liver and brussels sprouts. I think I'm taller now...


Over the weekend we did a bunch of house maintenence stuff. We rebuilt the pantry so that it's usable, just in time for the big Thanksgiving shin-dig this week. We burned a bunch of branches and stumps in the firepit in the backyard, adding to our trailer-trash mystique that we've tried to establish in our new neighborhood. The guys next door came over and drank beer around the fire for awhile, and then we made apple cobbler over the coals in the dutch oven after dinner. Let me tell you, it does NOT taste the same to cook it in an oven. Next, we've got to find a big brisket and do 12-hour-firepit brisket. It doesn't need a knife, it doesn't even need a fork. It's "need no teef to eat my beef" brisket.


I guess soon it'll be time to start holiday shopping. As usual, I'm going to do as much of it online as possible. This year my friend Peace is doing a fundraiser for an organization that she heads up through web-shopping. You shop online through their site (www.hec.onecause.com) and a percentage of the revenue goes to them. Hey, if you want to shop online, and some of the places you'd shop are on the list, you could support HEC, too. They're a pretty small organization and they have a HEC-k (:-P) of a time raising funds for their outings, which require a lot of specialized equpiment such as wheelchair-accessible transportation, medical supplies, etc. There's a link to their homepage at the top left side of the onecause website.


Did you know that during mating season, bucks (as in male deer) get so crazed that they've been known to attack people? Have I ever mentioned that we live in deer-central? Manhattan-for-deer. And our deer are HUMONGOUS. They're taller than I am. I'm starting to get a little nervous jogging home from work around sunset. If I don't blog for a few weeks, just assume I've been gored by a crazed blood-thirsty 300 pound buck, and am lying in a ditch in the state park waiting to be found.


To prepare for this eventuality, I've been practicing kicking the heavy rubber kickboxing-dummy we have at the gym. If I set him to "short attacker" height, I can repeatedly kick his jaw with pretty good accuracy with my roundhouse. I figure that's about where a deer neck would be, so if I practice a lot, maybe I can go Mr Miyagi on the attacking deer. It's the antlers I've got to watch out for. So I'm also practicing side-kicks in the ribs-- which should be about rib-height for the deer, too.


I should write one of those worst-case-survival guides: Urban Trail-Running Survival Guide. I could discuss how to deal with attacks by snakes, deer, squirrels, beavers, hawks and equestrians. What to do when your shoestring gets caught in poison ivy. How to escape a flooding creekbed. The safest way to pass a steroid-raged high school track team.


The royalties will make me rich!

The folks left this morning. (sad) It was so much fun with them here. And they came to town immediately after the house sold, so we had lots of time to do fun stuff. I also enjoyed having an excuse to take some time off work. Yesterday dad and I took a 30 mile bike ride through central and north Raleigh neighborhoods- hilly parts of town- and it was peak of fall color. Our neighborhood, being a little further from the city, had its peak over a week ago. And the sky was bright blue, so the contrast of the yellow, red, orange and purple leaves against the bright blue sky was enchanting. It was a nice way to end a terrific week.


First thing this morning I got online and scheduled our Appointment With The Devil. We're getting cable again! This time, no movie channels. We're getting the digital package with DVR, and we'll do road runner again. No more dialin. Now we only need a printer. We're so 1992.


I have vowed not to get sucked into the cable. I've told you before how TV does me. It's scary, really. But when I'm out of town for 3 weeks in a row, poor SNG has GOT to be bored. Because, well, it's probably boring without me! ;-) Anyway, now he can watch spanish-language soccer, british mystery series, shows about american's top 10 favorite lollipops, QVC, you name it.


I am going to try not to turn on BBC America and Food Network every day after work. I will continue to spend my free time enjoying the woods behind the house, reading books, playing with the dogs.


Unless Iron Chef is on. I dig Iron Chef so much.

So I went home on Friday. Right after I wrote the last post. hee. I also took Monday off. I'm taking tomorrow off. I'm at work today. What a hard worker I am! I better get a raise!


As you know, mom and dad are in town. We had such a fun weekend, once we sorted out the dog-ear business. It was so icky that I just have to share it with you.


I went home Friday and was sitting with Daisy, feeling sorry for her, and decided that I should get her ear wound all cleaned up before the vet visit because they would probably try to shave her head or something ridiculous if the wound looked messy. They love to shave animals. Then the animal looks like a rabid squirrel or like it has mange or something equally nasty.


Anyway, so I took some peroxide and cottonballs (and yes, a flashlight) and started cleaning off the black nickel-sized scab under her ear. It wiped away to reveal... pink doggie skin. There was no wound there. Hmmmmm. Then I lifted up her floppy blonde doggie ear and there I found something from an eopisode of the X-files, from the season right before they made that movie. Black sludge was oozing from her ear onto her fur, causing some irritation. Luckily, I recognized this symptom because I have one shape-shifting alien dog already-- Goofch sometimes gets yeast infections in his ear. They come from a little bit of water in the ear (usually because of a bath or swimming) combined with having big flooppy doggie ears that don't let air flow in and out freely. It's also characterized by a distinctive yeasty smell. Yes, you really DID need to know that.


The only way to know for sure, though, was to clean out the sludge, stab the dog in the back of the neck with a sharp alien-killing device, and see whether she bled green toxic ooze. OR, clean out the ear thoroughly with more peroxide. OK, you must know this-- I could hear the ear canal clearing. Aaaaah, aren't you glad you know this now? Daisy was visibly relieved. She started shaking her head, shake-shake-shake-shake-shake. She made happy grumbly noises when I cleaned out some more. Then I grabbed the doggie lamisil and voila! She no longer has that not-so-fresh-feeling. In fact, within about 10 minutes, she was entirely restored to her normal hyper-active-jumping-in-your-face self.


The quiet Daisy was kind of nice. We considered filling up her ear with vaseline for the rest of the weekend. Instead we took her for a very long walk in the park on Sunday. She was joyful. Even moreso because Dianaverse picked her up last night to take her home.


So we're having a fantastic time with my folks- hiking, biking, eating, reading newspapers from Diana's front yard, watching DVDs, you know, all that fun stuff you do when people come to town and you have no cable TV.

WE SOLD THE HOUSE WE SOLD THE HOUSE WE SOLD THE HOUSE!!!!!!


Wednesday we signed the paperwork and closed, today we get the check (it was ready yesterday, but yesterday was a bank holiday) and now we are FREE!!!! HAHAHAHA!


My parents are in town and I'm at work. I had planned on taking off afternoons to hang out with them, but now I think I should've requested whole days off. If the weather looks nice I'll take off Monday and Wednesday next week. But today the weather is rotten so I can handle working.


OK, here's something I wonder about. My office window is tinted glass. This is to keep the summer heat out, which I appreciate. But it also makes it looks like twilight when it's cloudy outside. Sunset looks like midnight. It's so gloomy. Don't they make window tint that changes with the intensity of the ambient light? Like those sunglasses? Why don't I have that on my office window?


In other news, we're taking care of Dianaverse's animals this week. The cat, Tex/a.k.a. Voldemort is staying at her house ripping up the visa bill, and the dog Daisy is staying with us. Normally Daisy drives me nuts because, frankly, she's just so enthusiastic. She weighs about 100 pounds and likes to lie on the ground until you bend over to pet her and then she jumps up so that her head slams into either your chin or your nose, which hurts. a lot. She's sweet, but she's also stronger than I am. So she's SNG's responsibility. But this week she has a sore on her head, just below her ear. It has completely changed her personality. She won't bark, jump, run, leap, wiggle, etc. No Sudden Movements. The first night I was pretty happy about that- but then it seemed to get worse. She was lethargic the second night, and last night she was at the the point where she didn't even want to come out of her kennel to walk. Now I'm worried. The sore on her ear is a nickel-sized black wound with a scab, and I can't help but think of a Brown Recluse spider bite when I look at it. Except she isn't throwing up and she will eat, so maybe I'm just paranoid. I'm taking her to the vet at 2:00 today. Poor thing.

Ahhhhhh.

That's the sound of someone who didn't have to go work on the old house Sunday.


Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.


But I was a little peaved this morning. Our agent got an email from the agent of the people who are buying the house:


"When we were in the house the other day, I noticed thare was leaf and yard debris on the carpet. It would be appreciated if it would be vacuumed prior to closing:-).



"Thanks,

(buyer's agent)"


Oh come on, I could just spit. It's not their house yet, won't be until Wedensday, and we were over there grouting tile, and house-shoppers were still doing showings in the house, and she can just take her little comments about debris on the floor and shove them.... OK, getting too worked up over this. But it was just annoying as all heck. Like we need to be told that the house should be cleaned prior to closing? Are we idiots? It's been like that with this woman throughout the entire process-- like she thinks we're trying to pull the wool over her eyes and sell them a crappy house and shirk our sellers' responsibilities, and it's downright insulting of her. I sometimes wonder whether these 2 agents (ours and theirs) have an ugly history together and they're just jabbing at each other, but it's just ridiculous. She's sent things like this, incinuating that we're trying to be irresponsible, several times.


But I will think about happier things instead.


* I've whittled my jog-to-work time from 30 minutes down to 23 minutes. Now, jogging fast and going the shortcut way to work takes the same time as biking slowly the long way to work. Woohoo!


* We had a fun Sunday afternoon spontaneous party eating brick burgers with our friends Fuzzy and Peace and our next door neighbors who we like a lot. Sorry, I haven't come up with an alias for them yet.


* Tomorrow night a bunch of friends and the 'rents-in-law will raise a toast at the old house to bid it farewell and wish it a happy life with its new future owners.


* I'm excited because later in the week my 'rents will be here to hang out and watch the fall colors on the ground (because they already missed the fall colors in the trees). They've never seen the new place and I just imagine my mom will be like Modean when she sees all the hiking trails in the forests around the house-- as in she'll run off and we won't see her for days until she returns, tired and ragged, grinning ear-to-ear, carrying the leg of a deer she chased for 8 hours until it died of exhaustion. OK, maybe it won't be * quite * like that. But she sure won't run out of fun things to do while we're at work!

Denver was FUN-- once I finally got off my lazy ass and did some stuff. The first few days were typical business trip fare, but with one nice expection-- I had someone to eat with every night which is rare) . But I was just doing the usual-- up early, try to workout (haha), go to work, go eat dinner, watch TV, read a little more Victor Hugo, go to bed.


Saturday started off like that. I went to an 8am spinning class-- all exercise at altitude is hard exercise-- and afterwards, I went to the mall to walk aroiund and get lunch. So much for my grand plans to hike a 14'er. The Locals talked me out of that because there would be too much snow, and I'd be all alone, which isn't safe in the snow, etc. After lunch I decided I couldn't stand my hair anymore, so I went to a salon that allowed walk-ins to get it colored. I thought, highlights with red lowlights! That'll be a change of pace! Well, 2 1/2 hrs later, I has a new look and I didn't like it too much. So now I can't wait to get home to see my regular hairdresser so she can fix it.


I guess I'd killed as much time as I could, and I finally decided that I'd bite the bullet and go hiking- so I went to a state park just southwest of Denver and hiked for about an hour and a half- no major elevation- only up to about 7200', but to my sea level lungs it was tiring.


Yesterday morning (Sunday) I had enough time to get up early and hike the same park and watch the sunrise. Which was awesome. I hiked for 2 hours and took a ton of pictures. I haven't been able to look at them yet because I didn't bring the camera-computer cable thingie.


So then I flew to Dallas at about 1:30 (mtn time) and got here at about 4:00 (central time) and went to my hotel. Which was not where I left it. It was across the street. so I thought. I took my 105 pounds of combined luggage into the Hilton lobby, and they said I did not have a reservation. When I showed Howdy Doody my itinerary, he told me I was at the wrong North Dallas Tollway Hilton-- I was supposed to be a the Hilton Suites, not the plain-vanilla Hilton. So I and my 105 pounds of combined luggagewent back to the rent car and drove around to find the Hilton North Dallas Tollway SUITES. It's in a better location anyway-- right next to the Dallas Galleria, which is one of the best shopping meccas in Texas. And that's saying something.


BUT- when I got in, I felt like CRAP. For a few hours I'd been getting little symptoms- loss of appetite, dull headache, chills, a little groany stomach... and then my skin started to hurt. And I knew something was very wrong. I think I have the flu!!!! :-(((((


Anyway, so today I don't feel as bad as I did last night, but I didn't workout this morning because I don't want to take any chances of making myself sicker.


Can't wait to go home!

Last week I was in Jacksonville, Crazyland. I actually had a good time- I was teaching a 2-day class to a group of statisticians and business analysts for a large bank. They had lots of questions, they were really interested in the course material, and they ate lunch and dinner with me while I was there. Which is always nice. But I still say that Florida should be renamed Crazyland. Those people drive on the shoulder, cross the grassy medians to make U-turns, and pass in the turn lanes. F'ing crazies.


As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm in Denver this week and will stay the weekend and fly to Dallas on Sunday, and stay there until Tue night. I was planning to go hike a 14'er this weekend while I'm here, but the locals have talked me out of it- they said there'd be too much snow and I shouldn't do it alone this time of year. So instead I'll go check out the hiking trails in some of the lower-altitude state parks instead.


In Dallas, I'm booked to stay at the Hilton Dallas North, which some of you may recall (haha, like you'd really recall this) was the hotel where Tony and I had our wedding reception. It's only a mile or so from our Dallas regional office so it was a convenient place to stay, and I'm looking forward to seeing the ballroom again and reminiscing a little bit.


And I'll be flying home on election day. HEY-- have you voted yet? We early voted last Saturday-- stood in line for 2 hours, but we got it done. Like it matters, since we're in a "red" state. But really, it does matter. If every single Kerry/Edwards supporter in NC actually voted, we'd take the state in a landslide. And then we'd beat up all the W supporters. And finally we'd smear ourselves in the W ketchup in representation of the blood of the enemy. I swear, the next time I see one of those idiotic black "W. The President" stickers on a car I will seriously consider putting a brick through the window. On the side with the driver. Getting a little rowled up. Must re-center and find inner peace (oooohhhhmmmmm ooohhhhmmmm ppppht).


I've been trying to keep my workouts going while I've been on the road, but for some reason I am completely unmotivated. I get dressed, go out, but on my headphones, start jogging, and then.... hmmm... nope, this sucks. Then I go back to the hotel and watch some TV. Wierd. I'm so good at keeping my workouts going when I'm home.


After the Denver/Dallas twin trip, I'll have a trip to Indianapolis, Ugh. But I've been informed that it might be cancelled. Fingers crossed. Oh, I hope. Because if it cancels, then I won't have to go anywhere until after Thanksgiving. And in December, I have 2 great trips-- one to Austin and another to Toronto. Now, maybe Toronto in December sounds pretty bad to some people, but I can't wait. You see, we close on selling the old house next Tuesday (!) and so I will be able to once again go SHOPPING! And Toronto has terrific shopping. Most of downtown can be accessed from underground (where it's warm) and the exchange rate, while not as good as it once was, is still pretty good. And they have different stores than we have here, so I can get nifty things that I wouldn't be able to find at home. Ha. Ha! Shopping! whEEEE!!

Short update-

When I bought my new hiking boots yesterday, I also bought a pair of Vasque trail-running shoes, and today I took them on their maiden voyage on the rock-and-root-roll-your-ankle trail in the state park, 4 miles. It was GREAT! I luvluvluv my new shoes. They turn rocky-bumpy terrain into smooooth pavement. nice.

Happy Days Are Here Again


Well, OK, I didn't get out and vote on Friday. It was the 2nd day of absentee voting, and I figured the lines would be pretty long. So I'll either go today or Friday. I leave tomorrow morning for Jacksonville, FL. Florida, a.k.a. Crazyland, is one of my least favorite states to go to. I don't mind Orlando too much- it's the least pretty of the Crazyland cities, but there seem to be fewer Crazies there, so it's OK. Yes, yes, I was born in Crazyland (Tampa) and lived there until I was 7, but I like to think that most of the maniacal serial-killer tendencies were washed away by living in New Orleans during the formative years (7-16) and Texas during early adulthood (16-26). It's amazing how one's environment shapes their outcomes: instead of a maniacal serial killer who drives badly, I'm a woman of relaxed moral standards with tendencies toward vigilante justice.


Anyway, if I don't vote by the 25th, I'm screwed because I'll be out of town from the 26th-Nov 2.


That'll be a FUN trip. I'm teaching in Denver the 27-29 (W-F), and then in Dallas the 1-2 (M-T), so I'll stay in Colorado for the weekend and just fly straight to Dallas Sunday night. That means I can drive out to somewhere near Georgetown, CO and hike a 14'er on Saturday morning. :-))) I hope the snow isn't too high at 14K feet! Last night I bought a new pair of gore-tex hiking boots which I'll break in next weekend. I've got waterproof ski pants. Is that enough for hiking at 14K feet in the snow in late October?


On Friday our house went under contract- Yay! -so we spent the weekend doing more work on the decks. The realtor insisted that we have both decks inspected by the city (which is wierd- nobody does this, but she was all insistent about it) and so, of course, the city inspector had a long list of things to be done to bring it up to the Residential code. Well, thing is, it was designed and built by a structural engineer, and it is more than strong enough for all the load bearing requirements, but because the inspector has a list ("building code for dummies") of specifications, he doesn't like the shape of the footings, the type of beams, color of the wood stain, whatever, and it has to be changed. The biggest project was pouring new footings for the front deck. Totally unnecessary, since what we had already far exceeded the load requirements for NC building code (according to the Structural Engineer), but it will make the inspector happy, so we did it. There was one thing we had to do that we always suspected we'd have to do-- add pickets to the handrails on the back stairs, so we did that too (and added some unnecessary X-bracing, some unnecessary anchor bolts, and unnecessary screws). But hey, it's done! :-) :-) And the house is selling. I'm glad, because it is a nice house- and SO MUCH NICER than it was when we bought it.


I probably won't blog much this week, so look for more around Friday or so!

Did You Watch Any Of The Debates?


I think for most of us decided voters, the debates were just a good excuse to go do some yardwork, take a nighttime bike ride, catch up on all the overdue loofah-ing that was ignored in the last 2 months, or go to bed early.


I mean honestly? Anyone who is not a decided voter by now has either been under a rock for 4 years or is late for a date with a straightjacket. Oh, that also goes for anyone deciding to vote Bush in '04.


Which reminds me. File under "gee, we've come a long way, and no, political correctness is NOT a bad idea," Tony is currently working on a project that was built in the 50s, and at the time was officially known as an "Idiot Colony." Idiot, for those not quite up to speed on their psychological lingo, was one of the (now antiquated) terms used to refer to the mentally handicapped. Makes it sound like "idiocy" is a communicable disease, like leprosy. And speaking of leprosy, we got to see lots of dead armadillos while we were back in TX last week. Ahhh, home sweet home.


Back on topic. We did accidentally watch about 5 minutes of the first debate. All we caught was a lot of Bush smirking, then lying, then smirking some more. We turned it off once we realized that our ears were ringing from yelling at the TV so loudly. Here's a snippet of the transcript:


J Lehrer: Mr president, question

Bush: lie, lie, lie

(JL: Mr Senator, question)

(MEANWHILE, catandtony): YOULYINGSONOFABITCHHOWCANYOUSTANDTHEREANDLIELIKETHAT!!!

B:(smirksmirksmirk snarf!!)

JL:So, Mr President, question

B:lie,lie,lie misunderestimate nookyooler lie

JL:mr senator...

(MEANWHILE, catandtony): YOUSACKOF*(&^HOWDIDANYONEELECTYOUFORPRESIDENT,YOU'REAMORON!!


(catandtony): did you ever hear Kerry say ANYTHING? No, I didn't. Did you?


Ah, I've got to go vote tomorrow. Then perahps I'll find some kind of inner peace. Hey, this is the first time I've ever lived in a battleground state! Who'da thunk NC would be a battleground state!


Don't forget: vote early and often.

True Tales of a South Texas Bridesmaid


No blog for a long time because I was away from a computer all last week, and have spent this week catching up at work from being gone last week.


My cousin Twinkie #2 got married last weekend in Uvalde, TX. I was one of eleven bridedmaids (4 junior, 7 senior), arranged at the altar by height. The only reason I wasn't in the VERY back of the line was that I was a senior bridesmaid, and the junior bridesmaids had to line up behind the senior bridesmaids. But they were all (ages 12,13,14) taller than me. grr. grr. I was, thanksfully, taller than the flower girl.


I flew into Austin Tuesday. Mom picked me up at the airport and we drove straight to Uvalde (about 3 hours). We had a nice time chatting in the car. I managed to get my workout in Tue, Wed, and Thursday. After that, all bets were off.


In spite of the title of this blog, it was a really pretty, tasteful wedding. But boy, was it a lot of work. There was quite enough to do with wedding preparations anyway (flowers, dresses, various tuille-wrapped thingies, glue-guns and ribbon) but on top of it all, we spent several days just cleaning my cousin's house and yard. I was not expecting this kind of wedding preparation, and with 3 dogs and somewhere around 20 cats in the house, it was no easy job. But she wanted the wedding reception at her house... (next time I will offer to pay for a reception hall)


Around 150 guests came to the wedding, most of them from our family. Tony flew in Thursday night (we picked him up in San Antonio) and was put to work first thing Friday morning, and had work to do up until the end. Various wedding praparation things, mostly. He was also Mr Catering, being responsible for picking up and setting up the food at the rehersal dinner Friday as well as the appetizer table at the reception. We cut up several coolers-full of cheese, fruit, and veggies. After the ceremony, he rushed back to the house, loaded up all the food onto a 3-tiered platter, set out dip, toothpicks, napkins, plates, etc. and then kept the platter replinished throughout the evening. Too bad nobody tipped. :D


In side news, dad raced in the Texas state road race championships Saturday and took 2nd place-- not bad for a guy who had prostate surgery just last June! The only guy who could beat him was a fellow who got 2nd place in the nationals last year.


Sunday, our flight home was out of San Antonio at around 7pm, so we had all day to play around. We helped a little with the cleanup, but I wanted to have some fun time as well, so dad, Tony and I drove in to SA and spent the day at the Riverwalk. We had a terrific time and just chatted over coffee for several hours.


We had some delays on our flight home, but nothing too bad, got home around 2am, slept late Monday, and I've been trying to catch up at work since.


In more news-- Someone Might Be Interested In The House......shhhhhhh.....can't count my chickens before they hatch.......

I'll keep you posted. Light a candle and say an Ave for the house to sell!

A Long, Boring Blog About Exercise: You've Been Warned! (but I had fun writing it)

OK, I've now jogged to or from work the short way (2.3 miles) 4 times, and I've gone the long way (4.25 miles) 3 times. I'm still biking too, because that's the only way I can carry stuff to/from work.

As a reminder to you who are on the edge of your seats about my work commute, the short way is all on roads-- 1/2 mile in the woods leaving my neighborhood, 1/2 mile in the woods on the road that goes alongside the state park, and then 1.3 miles on campus which is a blend of woods and farmland, so it's pretty well shaded. There is a sidewalk on campus. Not too many cars, but there are some.

The long way is 1 mile on roads (same thing- 1/2 mile out of the neighborhood, 1/2 mile to the State Park entrance) and then 2.25 miles on trails, and another mile on a busy street that crosses the interstate, but with a sidewalk the whole way.

I like to go the long way better than the short way, but I get so sweaty that I can't do it in the mornings on the way to work, only in the evenings going home. On the long route I see more wildlife. Yesterday heading home I saw 6 or 7 deer. Lots of teeny baby deer that look just like Bambi- all speckly. And dogs. People with dogs all over the park. I like the dogs. :-) Except yesterday I was chased by a hound dog whose owner was nowhere in sight and he was BIG and it scared me a little.

I've been biking to work for almost 3 years, on roads, on mtn bike trails, on routes as short as 2 miles and as long as 12 miles each way. I loooooove biking to work. Maybe I'll feel that warmly about jogging someday. Maybe. It is a completely different workout to jog than it is to bike. You can't coast when you're jogging, so there's no rest time. On the other hand, hills are way easier on foot than on a bike, so it's also less high-intensity to jog. If you see a big speed hump, you can WHOOSH rush up to it on the bike and go FWOOP!! FWOOP!! and get a thrill. On foot, it's more like --fwap--fwap--fwap--fwap--fwap--fwap--fwap--fwap. Overall, I'd say the jog is harder than the same time on a bike mostly because you can't use wind to cool you off and you can't coast downhill. I'm getting blisters on my toes. That can slow me down. I usually get a stitch in my side when I jog. I don't get that doing anything else, and I don't know how to prevent it. :-(

It doesn't help that I am 1) the most high-maintenance jogger in the world and 2) the slowest jogger in the world. Oh, you don't believe me?? If I have to pee, I hate jogging. I won't jog with a backpack. If iPod bounces *at all* on my arm on in my waistpack, I get aggravated. If my bangs bounce and touch my forehead, I get aggravated. Same with my sunglasses on the bridge of my nose. If I can hear sweat beading up on my headphones (yes you CAN hear it!!), I will stop and wipe them off. If my shorts ride up a little and my thighs rub together, I get aggravated and start running all chicken-legged to shake them loose. I've turned my ankle doing this. more than once. I don't like to run if I just ate, or if I'm hungry. Shoes too tight, shoes too loose, shoestrings too long so that they bounce and touch my legs? Grrrrr. AND- that 4.25 mile jog on the trails takes me *1 hour.* So, how many mph is that?

On the other hand, *nothing* bothers me on the bike. I can wear pretty much anything, I don't care if I'm sweating, or if my eyes are watering from the cold, or if it's a million degrees out, if I'm thirsty, hungry, just ate, have digentional distress, none of it matters. It's all tuned out by the joy and rush of wind, speed, scenery, flipping the proverbial bird at auto-commuters everywhere.

So why am I jogging? Well, like I said, I want to feel that way about jogging, too. I didn't always love biking so much. I can remember once, when I was a teenager, telling my dad (who has been a bike racer for over 30 years and is now a cycling coach) "Dad, biking is *your* sport. I just don't like it as much as you. I'll stick to aerobics. I'll never like biking all that much so just stop bugging me about it, OK?" Some of my fondest memories of age 12-15 were riding the tandem with my dad on the weekly Monday-Wednesday Lakefront training rides in New Orleans. This was a 6-mile loop that passed along Lake Ponchartrain and looped back on Robt E Lee Blvd. To get hills in there, we'd cross an overpass that took you over a canal into New Orleans East. Then, I tried racing. At the time there were no girls racing, which I now see as the major problem, but didn't realize it at the time. Anyway, I was competing in races with the 15-17 year old boys. And compared to them, I STUNK. How fun is it to always come in LAST place in EVERY race? It didn't matter that I was first in my "class" (junior women) ...biking just wasn't so much fun anymore.

OK enough regression therapy. Back to jogging. Eventually (especially if I can beat the Stitch In The Side) I'm hoping that jogging be fun, too. If not, well at least it's good cross-training. For a few years I was swimming a lot (now you want to see slow-- WHOO! 1 mile per hour, oh yeah!) and I think there's a triathlon in me somewhere. And I can ride fast enough now that maybe I won't come in LAST place...

If anyone knows what the heck that stick in the side thing is, or how to get rid of it, please tell me!