I put the second coat of paint on the walls, then finally took care of the rest of my oustide stuff. The weather has been crazy - no snow, and in the mid to high 40's for about two weeks. I read somewhere that this time last year, we had 19" of snow on the ground. Not that I'm complaining, but it's been a long time since we've been snow-free at Thanksgiving.

Tomorrow I'll decide if the walls need a final coat. If not, then the tape comes off and I do touch-ups. Josh wants to fix the heater vent, put in another electrical outlet and add a light switch and light to the closet, so I can't move my stuff back in until that's done. Right now, it's all crammed in the back and middle bedrooms. I'm having a few friends over for a dinner party on Saturday and hopefully they won't end up weaving their way to the bathroom through all my stuff. It could make for an interesting party game, once the booze starts flowing. Kinda like a real-life version of Jenga!

Paint!  I finally got fed up with the mauve-ish color I selected for my bedroom way back when and after much pondering, selected a really nice green/brown color called Sierra Taupe.

Saturday and Sunday were spent clearing out the bedroom, removing the outlet covers, washing the walls, scraping, patching, sanding, washing again, taping and finally putting the first coat on.

My helper

My other helper

Sierra Taupe

The first coat is on, and so far I’m happy.  Painting is always a little bit stressful for me because I’m always afraid that the color I spent agonizing over will look like crap once it hits the wall.  Fortunately I like this right away.  Tomorrow, coat #2 goes on.  Hopefully I’ll still be happy.

Later on, we made Pizzas of Awesomeness!

Mine. Awesome!

Josh's. Awesome!

My new favorite thing, pomegranates!  They take some serious maintenance to get the little seeds (avrils) out, but so worth it in the end.

They’re a little bit weird to wrap your head around - sweet, juicy and crunchy all at once.  Whaat?  But after the initial few bites, I couldn’t put them away.

 

Glamour shot!

For dinner tonight, I whipped up a tasty baked acorn squash with sausage.  I didn’t really follow a recipe and I didn’t really measure anything, so my recipe is a big vague.  This dish turned out really well – quite delicious - so I deem it a success!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ingredients

• Acorn squash
• Sausage, cudighi. Could also use ground turkey.
• Onion
• Celery
• Red pepper
• Salt & pepper
• Brown rice

Directions

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Cut the squash horizontally and scrape out the seeds.
Place the squash cut-side down on a baking sheet, bake for 45-60 minutes or until fork tender.
When done, remove from the oven and turn cut-side up on the baking sheet.

Brown the sausage over medium-high heat, set aside when done.
Saute the vegetables in the same sautee pan with a splash of olive oil until tender.
Add the sausage back into the vegetables, combine.

When the rice is done cooking, add to the sausage & vegetable mixture.
Season with salt & pepper to taste.

Increase oven heat to 400 degrees.

Spoon the mixture into the squash until full. Top with shredded parmesean cheese.

Return to oven and bake for 5-10 minutes, or until cheese is golden.

You can also find the recipe on the wiki, if you so desire.

Serve with a glass of Turning Leaf Pinot Noir or your favorite later.  Yum!

How can you know love a crock pot meal?  Get a hunk of meat, season it up, chuck it in the crock pot with a bunch of veggies, add some more seasoning and some stock, turn it on low and walk out the door.  When you get home from work, presto!  Dinner is ready!

I had high hopes for this roast, but it turned out to be too dry for me.  It was really tasty, so I had the seasonings spot-on, but I just couldn’t get past how dry it was.  Boo.

Oh well, maybe next time.  If  you want the recipe, click on the image.  Any suggestions for not drying out the roast are welcome.

In other news, holy crap do I have a serious case of camera envy.  It’s bad, people.  Really bad.

This is the Canon Rebel XS.  It’s a digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera and about a billion times better than my point-and-shoot Olympus.  The Rebel would allow me to take some seriously bad-ass pictures of, well, anything.  It’s pretty pricey, so that’s my biggest hold-up at the moment. 

 

Maybe I’ll magically win the lottery without buying a ticket?

My illustrious system administrator finally got around to installing a wiki on good ol’ feep.org so now I can have my very own recipes section!

My very first recipe in the wiki was for turkey meat loaf, which I yapped about in a previous post, but I made again last night (click on the image to go to the wiki).

The second recipe, the one I made with Josh tonight, was chicken bok choy.  I’ve had bok choy in various Asian dishes in the past, but always passed it over in the grocery store because I wasn’t sure what to do to it.  This time I decided to take the plunge and was I ever glad I did.  This stuff was like crack!  It tasted just like it does in the Chinese restaurant.

I paired that up with a glass of Little Penguin Chardonnay, it was the perfect dinner.  I’m definitely going to add bok choy to my weekly shopping list.

I’ve been thinking about getting myself a RoadID for quite a while now, but never got around to doing it.  Finally, after seeing mentions of it on two of the blogs I read and an ad in Runner’s World, I finally quit procrastinating and ordered one.

I do all my runs and rides by myself.  My previous method of identification when out running or biking was an old driver’s license with my contact info written in permanent marker on the back.  It would have worked fine, except that I never remembered to take it with me.  And then the info I wrote on the back wore off.  So much for permanent markers.  I carry my cell phone, which has my contact info in it, with me all the time most of the time, but what if my phone got smashed and my contact info couldn’t be accessed?  Or the battery went dead because I forgot to charge it before I left the house (the most likely case)?  RoadID seemed like the perfect solution.

I debated about getting the ankle ID, but I’m not really into ankle bracelets, so I passed.  Then I debated on the elite or the sport.  I thought that maybe the nylon band on the sport would get stinky over time, so I went for the Wrist ID Elite.  Then I debated about the color – there’s about a billion selections!  Okay, there’s only nine, but anybody who knows me knows that I am horrible at making decisions when there are multiple choices.  Especially when it comes to colors.  Ooh, purple!  No, that would look weird.  Pink!  No, I’m not really a pastel pink kinda gal.  Red!  Too racy?  Orange!  Nah.  Yellow!  Meh.  Green!  Ehn.  Finally, I decided that I should select a color that fits my personality.  So, I chose boring black.  Because I’m boring.  As soon as I ordered it, I wished I’d have ordered red.  *slaps forehead*

ANYWAY.

The laser engraving of my emergency info on the tag is done really well.  You can sort of get an idea of it in the picture above.  I blurred out my info because even though I want first responders and ambulance people to read it, I don’t necessarily want all of the internet to know my emergency contacts or that I’m allergic to peanuts.  Not that I’d wind up having to have a shot of peanut juice in an emergency situation, but I had one line left and didn’t know my blood type or have any witty or inspirational quotations to add.  So, I thought – hey! I’m allergic to peanuts.  That’s probably important to someone besides me! I’ll throw that on there.  I bet the person who set up the engraving got a good giggle out of that.

ANYWAY. AGAIN.

I figure the best way to get into the habit of wearing my ID is to wear it all the time.  So, I’ve been doing that for two days now, and it’s quite comfortable.  And, since I got black, it goes with all my work outfits.  Score.

As an additional bonus, the nice folks at Road ID have extended a little discount to my friends who order one for themselves.  To get $1 off your entire order in the next 30 days, using the coupon number:  ThanksNancy559738

One final note.  Accessories are pretty cheap.  If I do decide to get that red wrist band, it’s only $12.99 and the id tag is, obviously, easily interchanged.  Speaking of the tag, if my contact info changes (say, for example, if I were to give the BF the boot and wanted to remove his number..HI JOSH JUST KIDDING LOVE YA! xoxo, or I were to find out my blood type – which probably wouldn’t be a bad idea in the first place..) replacement tags are only $16.99

If you’re out working on your fitness by yo’self like me (ahem, Bad Decision Bicyclist), please consider a RoadID.  You can thank me later. 

Several weeks ago, an article appeared in the NY Times that alternately made me think and made me irritated.  I thought that I should write a blag post about it, but then I decided that I was too irritated and I put it on the back burner.  I’ve thought about this article a lot since then and it still irritates me.  But, I can’t figure out if it irritates me because I fit the profile, or because it’s truly outrageous.  I think it’s probably a little bit of one and a lot of the other.

The article is called Plodders Have a Place, but Is It in a Marathon?  and it’s all about how slow runners are bringing down the marathon and turning it into something it wasn’t meant to be – for the average schmo.

I’m an average schmo and I’m slow.  I take my training seriously.  I do the hills, the intervals, the LSDs.  I do weights, I do yoga and stretch religiously.  I do everything I’m supposed to do to get faster, but I never really do.  Oh, I’ve had my accidental bouts with speed.  Once last winter, as I was cruising down a long hill, I glanced at my Garmin and saw eight-something blip by.  I was all pumped thinking that I was fast, even for a split second.  And, I guess last winter I did see more miles in the nines than previous years’ tens or elevens.  Or my typical 13 or 14 minute miles (haha) from four years ago.  Okay, so maybe I did get faster in the four or five years since I decided to let my addition run rampant (pun intended).  But, really, I highly doubt I will never get fast enough to run a marathon in under five hours.  And it certainly seems as though in the eyes of the author of the article, I have no business participating.

But, I just don’t get it.  What’s really the problem some speedsters have with us slow pokes, anyway?  They start way ahead of us, they don’t have to contend with weaving around us on the course and they finish way before us.  They never have to wonder if there’ll be enough food left at the end.  When they say their finishing time was three hours and bla or four hours and bla, we are in absolute awe.  Holy shit, that’s fast.  Our finishing time, possibly hours after theirs, takes absolutely nothing away from them.  I don’t really see what the problem is.

The U.S. has one of the highest, if not the highest, obesity rate in the world.  I feel slightly embarrassed by that figure.  But, maybe the increasing marathon participation from the slow pokes, means that one or more of those obese folks is taking control of their lives and getting healthy using running as their catalyst.  I can’t even think of a reason why that wouldn’t be a good thing.