Category: weekending

Feel the burn

You don’t have to know me very well to know that I’m less of the track shoes and elevated heart rate kind of girl and more of the cake following by a generous portion of cake kind of girl.

Exercise and I are acquaintances, but not really friends.

Oh sure, I exercise occasionally. I walk to the train station to commute to work. I walk to the nearby grocery store sometimes. But as a structured activity, no.

A few years back when I was working hard to lose weight, a fit and fanatical friend of mine got me to participate in a 5k. She ran and liked doing 5k’s as a way to keep on track.

Let me be frank, my friend is one of those spin class in the morning, yoga at lunch and windsurfing for dinner kind of people.

So when she suggested I 5k with her, I resisted…hard.

But all 90 lbs of her is charming and a good negotiator, so she won me over.

I signed up to 5k. Needless to say, she ran, I walked.

That first 5k I did, I came in just under an hour on time, but dammit, I finished!

Since then, I’ve sort of gotten into doing the occasional 5k. Ever since The Good Man started hanging out with me, he’ll come along too.

TGM is 6’2″ with a MUCH longer stride than mine. So 5k’ing with him is all about me almost jogging to keep up. But he paces me, and that’s good…I think.

Yesterday we did a really fun 5k, the highlight was that part of the race route took you onto the field at AT&T Park, around the warning track and across home plate.

“That’s the same home plate Barry crossed,” exclaimed one of the breathless vendors at the race.

That was definitely the fun part. The hard part was that the race started at 9:00 and you HAD to be across home plate by 10:00.

Now, think back. My first 5k was just under an hour. I haven’t done a 5k in some time. So I was pretty worried I’d miss out on this fun chance to be on the field.

So I went all out on the walk. I was pumping my little arms and legs and huffing and puffing.

And I made it. I stomped on homeplate with some glee.

Sadly, I still came in the lower-middle of the pack with a paltry time of 47 mins…but I did get to scoot across home plate right behind the good man and we saw Giants pitcher Jack Taschner walking on the warning track. He’d gotten “caught in the herd” as he said and couldn’t have been nicer when I said hello. He went on to have a crappy middle-reliever outing in the game that followed, but oh well.

It was a fun day and it was PACKED. People really came out for this even and everyone was fired UP to make it across the plate.

A few lessons I’ve learned:

*There are those who believe they’ll make better time by intermittently jogging along the 5k trail. I find they will usually pass me, then they run out of gas and I pass them, then they see me pass and rev it up, then ten minutes later I pass them again and usually we finish about the same time.

So generally speaking, a nice even pace is probably a better bet.

*The body is less forgiving of random acts of exercise as it ages. I find this not amusing in the least.

*Ballpark nachos taste a heckova lot better when you know you already exercised that day. Hell, they taste good even when I don’t workout first. Ok, to be clear: ballpark nachos are nice. Maybe I already knew that lesson.

And finally:

*Man do I sleep good when I’ve worn myself out.

(yes…THAT homeplate)

Yeah, baby!

week·end (wēk’ěnd’)

n. The end of the week, especially the period from Friday evening through Sunday evening.

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I’m in need of one of them thar things. ^^

Boss Lady remains on vacation but work rambles on.

Wedding Plans have hit Code Orange. High Alert, people. We’re down to the remaining few weeks. Last minute stuff is last-minuting.

The Good Man and I are still getting along, so that’s good. I am not a Bridezilla. He’s not a Groomzilla. Mainly, we’re just two adults gonna throw a nice party.

*******

Justifiable SmackDownacide

In an attempt to get through this long afternoon, I took one crisp dollar bill to the vending machine and procured one each plain Hershey Bar.

As I turned to walk back to my desk, the Office Nosy Nelly was standing there.

Of course she was.

As I walked back to my desk, she shouted down the hall “YOU CAN’T EAT THAT! YOU NEED PUT THAT BACK!”

“No,” I replied.

“WELL JUST EAT HALF. YOU CAN’T EAT ALL OF THAT! THAT’S TERRIBLE!”

“Your issue with chocolate is not my problem,” I said.

“LOOK, THERE’S NEAL AT THE END OF THE HALL, GIVE HIM THAT THING SO YOU DON’T EAT IT” (yes, she’s still shouting, trying to shame me).

I looked at Neal and said, “Sorry bro, you ain’t getting my chocolate.”

So why exactly do people think it’s their right to tell someone what they can and can’t eat?

Please present this blog entry to the jury. Thanks.

So…what did YOU do for the Fourth?

How was your holiday? Didja do something nice? Fun? Cool as heck?

Yeah, how did that bbqpoolkidsfamilymomanddadhotdogsfireworksinthebackyard turn out?

Good? Great, happy to hear it!

My Fourth? Well.

The day was mostly quiet. As the sun was setting, that’s when it got interesting.

The evening kicked off, well, here:

That’s the, uh, San Carlos Airport.

And those there are, uh, you know, your standard issue Cessna type aeroplanes.

See…our next-door neighbor is a pilot. He started in the military then had a career piloting the “vomit comet” for NASA.

These days he’s semi-retired, making money by piloting incredibly expensive Gulf Stream and Eclipse jets for the Bay Area wealthy.

So an offer was made to The Good Man and me…see, he’d rented a plane for the evening…wanna go see fireworks from up there?

Yes! YES WE DO!

And we did!

Our original course was the big show in San Francisco.

However, San Francisco being what it is…this is what it looked like up there.

Gorgeous sunset. But miles and miles of fog. Not so swell for watching fireworks.

We headed down the peninsula, intent on taking in the fireworks near the much clearer San Jose, at the Great America amusement park.

Problem is, Great America is in the San Jose Airport airspace, and they don’t think weekend fireworks cruisers are all that interesting. Humorless, they are, as they keep busy landing and taking off a near steady stream of commercial airliners.

So we headed back up to mid-peninsula in took in the smaller shows in Redwood City and Foster City.

You ain’t never seen fireworks until you’ve seen them from up there.

Wow.

Can’t offer much in the way of fireworks photos. Between it being dark and the motion of the plane, none turned out. But damn…it’s amazing to see!

Oh, and the ol’ “vomit comet” pilot showed us what just two G’s feels like (fighter pilots get up to 9).

Feels like getting out of the damn plane and walking around on the ground again, please!

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I had a cooler Fourth of July than you did….:)

Whoa!

Had a mindblower of a weekend.

In celebration of the birth of The Good Man, we had a (much necessary) weekend away.

Somewhere where cell phones don’t work and television, p-feh…who needs ’em anyway?

We got a little wild. :)

We went to a place called Safari West. It’s located north of the Bay Area, just outside of Santa Rosa.

It’s an over 400-acre ranch that houses exotic animals of all kinds.

The owners have been working this place since the late 1980’s and it’s amazing.

I’m still processing it all…and the over 700 photos I took. (Yes, I said 700).

Highlights of the trip:

On the first night we were there, a baby Giraffe was born. It was a bit of a surprise to the Safari West folks. They knew mama Marla was pregnant, just didn’t know she was ready to go.

Here’s a photo of our as yet unnamed hero. This is about seven hours after his birth. Sssh, he’s sleepin’.

Is a hard thing getting born. Especially for a baby giraffe who plummets some six feet to the ground with a whump then is up on his wobbly pins about an hour later.

Here he is a bit knock kneed but doin’ it.

But that was not the only fascinating new thing…

That same night, Safari West took delivery of 38 flamingos and installed them in their new enclosure. I have always been a HUGE fan of flamingos. The Rio Grande Zoo used to have quite a few. Don’t know if they still do. But as a kid, they made a big impact on me.

These are “greater” Flamingos (their “lesser” and more colorful cousins will be arriving soon).

From there, it’s hard to pin down all the amazing things!

Lemurs.

Cape Buffalo (that’s some scary sh– right there….)

Cheetah

And on and on and on. That’s not even scratching the surface.

OH! And Zebra. I adore Zebra.

And Watusi cattle!

And! And! And!

It was amazing. A photographer’s dream (though tough too. Animals don’t, you know, pose).

We also slept in genuine tent cabins constructed by South African craftsmen and modeled on safari tents, including wood floors and open space. They were actually really nice and quite comfortable, though a bit cold at night.

In the dark we could hear all the animals of the safari calling and howling and, you know, doing what wild animals do.

I can’t even begin to write out how utterly geeked out I still am from the weekend…

We’ll be talking about this for weeks.

An ode

To the humble cupcake.

Not all cupcakes are humble. Just mine.

Recently, for whatever reason I can’t rightly explain, cupcakes have taken on a certain caché, especially with my fellow Gen X’ers.

And there is a big trend toward really pretty cupcakes.

Many folks are even having these pretty cupcakes for their wedding cake. (no, not mine…)

A really powerful, domestic and “womanly” woman at work makes cupcakes with some frequency. She proudly walks in the office with a trendy cool container full of lovely pink treats.

*sigh*

I detailed recently about making a birfday cake for my ownself, and since then, I’ve been pondering better icing recipes.

So yesterday I decided to make cupcakes, which gave me a chance to whip up some frosting.

The cupcakes? Well. They taste good, anyway.

The Good Man and I ate plenty.

But pretty? No. The frosting turned out an odd consistency. Yummy, but weird.

So when TGM and I had eaten our fill, I packed up the rest and brought them to work.

These wolves will eat anything.

Although, I have to say, there *is* something uniquely satisfying watching people eat my sad little creations. Something weirdly “female” to make good eats that people enjoy.

The reviews so far have been “tasty, not too sweet, but yeah, the frosting looks weird.”

Oh well.

Martha Stewart need not worry about giving up her crown to me…yet.

Here’s a blurry iPhone photo to give you the idea.

And I soldier on…