Buddah Cat at the animal shelter

We stayed inside the house most of the day & just wanted to get out so we went to the local animal shelter to visit the animals. A few of cats that were happy to see us and allowed us to pet them through the hole in the plexiglass, Nobody else was in the room so we obviously ignored the big signs posted on each cage that said do not stick fingers in holes. 

The cage nextdoor to this fellow housed a very overweight cat I am calling Mr. Buddah Cat. He was laying down on his side & then he got up. I guess he wanted to see what all the action was about when we were talking to his chatty neighbor. We tried to get him to come to the hole but all he did was stare down or look toward the side of his noisy neighbor. 

We saw some friendly guinea pigs. They were very entertaining and seemed to not mind being petted. They were quite possessive of the light greenish/yellow plastic igloo house that was in the cage. It was funny to watch because whenever one was in the house and the other would try to enter, the one in the house would charge at the other one at full steam attempting to headbutt him. The one in the igloo finally came out to get a drink & that is when the other one took advantage of the opportunity & went inside. And the whole headbutt game was re-started. 

Surprisingly, there were less than 10 dogs at the shelter and 4 of them were already adopted. Last time we visited I remember every kennel was filled with at least 3-4 dogs. Happy to see that they are being adopted. 

Cooking (1) vs. Excercise (0)

Since my last post I have been doing a lot of cooking & experimenting with different recipes. Yes, cooking is winning over exercise. I need my motivation for exercise to end it's strike because I have a race coming up but we wont talk about that today. Let me first say that before I ever started running, I ALWAYS had a love for cooking. It ranks high on the list alonside photography. Lately, I have been cooking up new recipes and making good use of the crockpot.

Pot Roast 

Tart made with egg, pancetta, Gruyere cheese & chives

toast topped with 1/2 an avocado, poached egg & salsa. Looks crazy but OMG it is so delish!

Of all the dishes I have made, this simple one with the avocado, poached egg & salsa is my favorite!

Snow Storm & A Busted Pipe

Ugh! That is the word that summerizes my long weekend. 

Saturday morning we headed south to spend the long weekend with our daughter near her college. We arrived at 4 & checked into our hotel. For dinner, we decided to try someplace new so we went El Gran Rodeo. We waited about 15 minutes to get a table which was fantastic considering it was Valentines Day. I think we lucked out by getting there just after 5pm otherwise the wait would have been much longer. The food was pretty good and the service was great.

After dinner we were greeted with an inch or more of snow. We didn't think it was that bad but once we got on the road, everything was icy and slick. We managed to get back to the hotel 45 minutes later. We spent the rest of the evening at the hotel enjoying their hot tub & pool. 

enjoying the hot tub as the snow falls outside

The snow was around for about an hour and stopped. Thankfully on Sunday afternoon the roads were clear. We went out and had pizza for lunch at a place called Sal's. It's a small place with some outdated decor and it's appearance certainly doesn't give a good impression but OMG the pizza was so good. I have had my share of deep dish pizza but this place doesn't hold back on the toppings. 

After lunch we went over to Super Walmart and bought her some groceries.  Later that evening at the hotel, Daughter and I decided to spend the evening doing a workout. I got dressed and had my Garmin footpod on my shoe ready to run a couple miles on the treadmill. We arrived at their "fitness center" and laughed so hard. An ancient elliptical trainer & stationary bike. Our workout in the "fitness room" lasted maybe 15 minutes. We ended up running up and down 3 flights of stairs 5 times. THAT was a workout!

our post flight workout pic

 The weather reports on the radio were calling for 8-12 inches of snow starting as early as 9am on Monday morning. Our plans for Monday were to go to an early afternoon movie but because of the weather reports, we decided to go home no later than 9am. We wanted to get a head start back because our area snow predictions was calling for 6-10 inches starting in the afternoon/early evening  & that would be about when we would have arrived.

I81 near Blacksburg beginning to snow

We left as planned and arrived at about 2:30pm. Thank goodness we got home when we did because it was starting to really come down. 

Tuesday ended up being another day off of work because the Federal Government was closed due to the snow. Yay another day off for me ~ sadly, that happy dance did not last long at all. 

My parents travel south in their RV for the winter months. My Dad has cameras installed in his house that are aimed primarily at all the entry points. They are motion sensitive & will send him an alert by email or text if they detect any movement. He frequently logs into his computer & out of habit will randomly check on his house every couple days. Well on Monday morning, I got a frantic call from my Mom telling me that I needed to get over there right away to turn off the water. I'm like "what do you mean water?" She said they called their neighbor & asked if he would go look at their house because they noticed drywall on part of the floor of their kitchen but couldn't see anything else. They were thinking maybe a tree or something hit the house.  Their neighbor went over there and immediately noticed water flowing out from under their basement door. He looked in the window and saw water everywhere! My Dad's first thought was a busted water pipe. 

I got hubby out of bed and he went outside and shoveled the snow so he could get his car out. I stayed home with little guy to finish making his breakfast. My curiousity got the best of me so little guy and I shoveled the snow and made our way over there too 

When I got there, the first thing I saw was a fountain of water flowing from the basement ceiling to the floor. I was completeley shocked & in utter disbelief at what I was seeing. I started crying. I felt so bad because they had worked so hard to remodel their kitchen last spring. My poor parents. I didn't want to tell them how bad it was but I knew I had too.  

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent cleaning up the house & waiting on a plumber to fix the busted pipe. 

Happy Friday Folks !

Thank God it's Friday and the start of a long weekend for me. This week actually went by pretty fast for me but I totally failed this week with exercise. I had started the week with this great plan to wake up every morning at 5am to go workout but instead I just hit the snooze button each morning. I will blame it on Aunt Flo (I know TMI) who showed up on Monday. She likes to ruin everything! I have never been an early riser so getting up at O'dark Thirty was hard enough. After sitting in traffic, picking up little guy from school & cooking dinner, I had zero motivation to go workout.On a positive note, I can say that I did pretty good with eating healthy.

I really need to get my sh*t together like yesterday! I was looking at the calendar and I have 8 weeks (not counting this weekend) until race day. Ugh- I am so far from where I was 8 months ago with regard to my fitness level.

In other news...

I have President's Day off so I plan on going to visit my daughter at college for this long weekend. I am not sure what we will do, but spending time together will be nice. Maybe I can convince her to go to the new gym at her school that just opened.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Playing Tourist in DC

Well it's Hump Day (aka Wednesday) and I am finally writing about what I did on Sunday. The past weekend was so lovely with temps in the mid 60's. I had to get out and do some kind of outdoor activity, I haven't been able to run because I seemed to have strained my calf muscle as a result of my training run last week.

I figured I could get my mileage in by walking, so on Sunday I grabbed my camera and decided to play tourist. I hate driving downtown especially on the weekend, so I took the metro. It takes a bit longer to travel to the city this way but it beats having to deal with wondering where to find a parking spot along with the obnoxious drivers. The metro station was not busy at all.

Once I got off at the Smithsonian Metro stop. The first thing I noticed was all the chain link fencing around the grassy section of the National Mall.

I finally found this sign that explained what was happening. Looks like it will be an eyesore for tourists until the 2017 year. 

Thankfully there were areas in the middle section where you were able to cross over to the other side of the mall without having to go completely around the fenced area. 

I decided to start on one side and walk until I covered at least 3 miles. 

American History Museum

homeless guy begging from some Japanese tourist 

National Gallery of Art ice skating rink

 I found the ice-skating rink. It's funny because I knew there was an ice skating rink in DC but never knew exactly where it was. I may have to take my little guy ice skating one evening. The rink is open until 11pm on Friday & Saturday and until 9pm on Sundays.

Newseum

I got to the Capitol and noticed it was under construction too. I found online that they are completely restoring the dome. Notice the water is completely frozen, the pigeons are just standing on it in the distance.

I've always wanted to ride on one of these open top buses but not in DC. Nothing wrong with DC, but it would be a waste of money since I've seen the city plenty of times. Perhaps in another city.

I had to make a quick tour inside the US Botanical Gardens. I love looking at plants and flowers.

National Museum of the American Indian

This (American Indian Museum) is one of the "newer" museums. It was built in 2004 & I remember reading about it back then. It is now 10 years old & I still have not seen it. I need to put a date on my calendar to go tour it. 

National Museum 1879

 I do not know if this is the actual visitors center for the National Mall or an actual museum. The only sign I saw was etched on the building itself at the top that said National Museum 1879.

It was 5pm when I headed back toward the Metro to ride the train back. I stopped to take a final picture of the Washington Monument and caught this couple running together. I wish my calf and knee would cooperate because I would have liked to be the one doing the running. What a beautiful day it was to go on a run ! 

Calf Cramping

So I have been trying to ease back into running without aggravating the muscles or whatever it is behind my knee that seems to insist on keeping me sidelined. Well, now I seem to have this other problem with my right calf cramping after about 15-20 minutes into my run. Whenever this happened in the past I would just stretch it out a bit or just slow down my pace and I would be fine, but lately it has been so bad to the point that I have to completely stop running. It hurts to even walk for several days! This happened last week & the pain went away after 4 days of not running so I decided this morning to go to the gym to try and run.  Everything was going great until I got a little past a mile and I could feel it tightening up so I slowed the pace down but it didn't help. The tightness got stronger to the point of sharp pain so I had to quit and go home. I went home, showered and put on a compression sleeve before heading into the office. I am wearing the compression sleeve on my right calf but it isn't helping at all. I am so annoyed because I NEED to get my training in before this race in April. If it was a regular race instead of a relay I wouldn't be stressing so badly, but I am part of a relay team so I can't just leave my teammates high and dry. Ugh this really really sucks !!!

Losing weight sucks!

 I really need to get it together and lose this weight that I have re-gained. I seem to be in this rotating pattern of doing good with exercising for one week then doing bad (zero exercise) the next. I cannot seem to maintain consistency. My eating has been better with regard to eating healthy food but I seem to have this problem with overeating. 

I have a 10k race in April & I feel like I am not going to be where I need to be at, with regard to running, by the time race day arrives. I know it's a 10k not a 10 miler and I've run this distance many times but for some reason I am leary about this one. I am hoping that my knee doesn't screw up my training. Being 30 pounds heavier does not help much either but I WILL find motivation. I HAVE to find motivation!!!

I need to repeat this to myself over and over and over again!