Thursday, November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hope you're having a great holiday. M and I got up early and did the 5K Turkey Trek at a local park. We didn't take pix at the race, so I lifted a logo on-line and an actual photo from the event's website. M did take a pic of me after we made it home, but honestly, we did jog the whole 5K. M did it in 35:35, which is slow for her, and I did it in 35:44, which is fast for me right now, but a month ago I did a faster time on a flat course. This one was packed with people, just under 300 I think. It was through woods and trails, lots of roots to jump over and plenty of people in the way so you couldn't jog a steady pace. Oh well. It's done and now I can eat without guilt. Oh, and the broken toe didn't cause me a bit of pain. Now the lungs, that's another story! Happy Thanksgiving!







Monday, November 21, 2011

T-Shirts

I was looking at the Signals catalog the other day and came across the following t-shirts that made me laugh. Enjoy.
























Sunday, November 20, 2011

Just for Larena

First day . . .(these aren't the clearest pix because I took them with my camera on my phone.)















two days later. The bruising is darker, looking more black than red and in fact the whole toe looks a little gray. Other than that, the toe is doing fine. Taped it up and did a short jog today with no problems and no pain. Only pain came when I tried to remove the tape. Looking forward to the 5K on Thanksgiving. Okay, I promise, I will get another post up soon so you won't have to look at my ugly feet anymore.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Ouch

Okay, so I don't have lovely feet and I have never had a pedicure in my life. My feet are utilitarian in nature and they have served me well.

That said, for everyone's future reference and for the uninformed, as I was, when you break a toe, you should elevate your foot, ice it, and DEFINITELY do not run on it.

So Wednesday afternoon as I was getting changed to go work out, I turned around in the bathroom and smashed my toe up against a wall that juts out around the tub. It hurt like a . . . you know, and I cursed loudly and sufficiently to let everyone within a 100 yards know exactly how much it hurt. That said, I thought I had just stubbed my toe. Never having broken a toe before (to my knowledge) I didn't even know what to look for, so I breathed deeply, continued cursing, and waited for the pain to subside. Then I resumed getting my running tights on and running shoes and went off to work out. I figured it would hurt for a little bit, but the pain would subside eventually, so just suck it up and do my jog. Well, about 2 1/2 miles into my jog, the pain was worse, I was having to land on the side of my foot to avoid making the toe hurt worse, and I had to finally give up and stop running.

So I go home, shower, get dinner, and M comes in from a late meeting. I told her I stubbed my toe and that I had a bruise. She took one look at it and said, "you broke your toe." M, having been a life long soccer player has broken many toes. She showed me the telltale bruise, how it made a perfect straight line across the joint and said, "right there is where you broke it." Hmph. So dummy me, I didn't elevate it, I didn't ice it, and I jogged on it. The bruise is much bigger, bolder, and lovelier today. So I'm being very careful (especially on stairs) not to step directly down on that toe. Every so often I will forget and step down off a curb or a stair with that foot only to be met with shooting pain to remind me, "hey dummy, you've got a broken toe down there." I am changing my workout to lift weights, do the rowing machine, bike and elliptical trainer to give it time to heal, because I am planning to tape it up and run a 5K on Thanksgiving morning, and broken toe or not, I am running that race. Then I'll behave after that and give it the weeks it needs to sufficiently heal. And before anyone warns me against running on a broken toe, athletes and dancers do it all the time, I'll survive. :-)

Monday, November 14, 2011

Nice dinner back home . . .

Okay, so this post is long overdue and I apologize for how long it's taken me to get it posted, but that's just how busy I've been. So about 3 weeks ago or so, M and I went back to my hometown in NY and while we were there we went to dinner with my sister and her family, plus Marilyn from Maeve's Madness and her husband.

We went to an Italian restaurant that Marilyn recommended, Little Venice. Little Venice is the oldest Italian eatery in Binghamton, NY. I didn't expect much when we pulled up, then I saw the parking situation. The restaurant's parking lot was basically an empty city block and it was full! A full parking lot is always a good sign when you pull up to a restaurant. We weren't disappointed, it was good food in a family environment, not expensive, and we spent hours there talking and eating. I believe we were one of the last tables to leave.

So here we are: me, Marilyn, and my sister, Pat.













Marilyn has a lively, energetic personality and was such a delight to talk to. It was the first time I ever met her, even though I've read her blog for awhile. There wasn't a dull moment and no awkward silences trying to find something to say. She was full of stories and very engaging.




Marilyn's husband, J, also joined us and he was equally interesting to talk to. He and I discovered a common interest, genocides and the Holocaust, and we got into some intense discussions right off the bat. It's not often when I meet people that I'm able to immediately hit it off with them, and even rarer that the spouse is equally as interesting. This was a very fortunate meet-up with very interesting, well-traveled people. So Michelle in Vancouver, you've got a high standard to match when I come out there to meet you and celebrate my 50th. ;-)


It was nice getting to see my sister and her husband, J, again as well. Though, it's never enough time and I always feel rushed. I did go through some old pix my sister has with family and thought she might sit down and go through them with me, but she had a long, cold day at the market and was wiped out. I also got lots of garlic from her and J while there. I got pounds of the stuff and within two week of returning, I needed to send for more. It seem not only M and I love the stuff, so do all our friends and co-workers. Hopefully they'll all be planting some this Fall so I won't have to bring as much back with me next time.

I also got to see my niece K, and her new baby, R while we were there. What a sweet baby! Such a good disposition. You can tell he's well-loved and loves the attention he gets from everyone. I wish I lived closer to family so we could have leisurely sit-down dinners and catch up on a regular basis, or even stay up-to-date on everyone's lives. Oh well, at least I live close enough to make visits a couple times a year if I'm lucky.

So last week, when I first loaded these pictures and began thinking about doing this post, I was fondly remembering the great Italian meal and all the scents in the air at the restaurant and got a hankering for meatballs. I decided to make homemade meatballs and spaghetti for dinner. I think it's easily been more than 10 years since I last made meatballs from scratch. I think seeing a chef's advice on-line to include ricotta in meatball recipes also pushed my craving for meatballs. So I went to the grocery store to get ingredients. I planned to mix beef and pork in the recipe, which I was just winging and came across chorizo sausage when I was looking for meat. I LOVE Chorizo sausage! So I decided I'd use beef and chorizo.

The lighting wasn't good over the stove but here are my babies. Ingredients: ground beef, ground chorizo sausage, one egg, small container of ricotta cheese, oregano, 4-5 cloves of fresh crushed garlic, parmesan/asiago/romano dried cheese, salt, pepper, olive oil, Panko Japanese bread crumbs. I think that's it. The chef said to make sure you use ricotta cheese and he said not to fry them, but to saute them in a spicy Marinara sauce, so I did. I think each batch, I did two batches of meatballs, took 20-25 minutes over low to medium heat to cook. They turned out really light and flavorful. They were the best meatballs I ever made. M really liked them too, which is saying a lot since she's a great cook. Since I made so many I told M we could just put the extra in the freezer and have them another time. She said, no, she wanted meatball subs with the leftovers. So we had spaghetti one night, two nights later had subs and then had subs for lunch a couple of days after that. Okay, I satisfied my craving for Italian meatballs.

Yeah, this is what I've been saying!

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

It's okay to bully if . . .


Just thought I'd keep you informed of what politicians are doing in Michigan.



The animals aren't safe either.

Another post is coming, just bogged down with grading right now.

For CK the book lover