What are we doing this weekend?

We're running the Nike + Human 10k Race tonight! Nike has joined forces globally to create the world’s largest running event, with the goal of helping humanity in the process through givebacks to global charities. There are over a million people signed up to race all over the world today. LA is the last race and should be a lot of fun!

Wish us luck! :)

Not trying to miss the point of it all...

Coming up to the last real weekend of the summer, I must say that this summer has really been dozy. From losing someone really close to us, having the most fantastic vacation with my best friends, watching my beautiful friend marry her BFF, running in SD with my fellow rebel child, and even relaxing by the pool, so much has happened that you feel like you were jolted out of your chair and woke up. Before the summer started, I really disliked my job. Now, the job has changed and work-life is better. Before the summer started, I just went through the motions of our daily lives, always focusing at the end result of it all. This summer with all the horrible-ness and greatness really made me wake up again.



Thanks Matt for pointing out this video!

Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend! Enjoy every minute of it and relish the time y'all have to spend with each other!

me loves paper...

my strange obsession grew at a all time high during the wedding planning. I've gotten better over the last ten months. But when I saw this, I went crazy and threw tons of it in my cart. Did I buy any, not yet! ;)



>>>>PAPER MOJO<<<<

Friendly Competition...

Yes, my friends, I've joined another challenge. After the last 7 weeks I've thrown almost all healthy habits to the side (the last two weeks I've been trying to do better but still... not as well as before) and I've realized this is not a way to live a healthy life. My buddies started another challenge where you get points for different activities and misc things you do. While at first it seems a bit daunting but now looking at how you can earn points, I feel like I can really rise up to be a competitor for medal position. (Okay, you don't get medals, you get prizes but the Olympics ended and it just sounds better)

I looks like this challenge ends the day before our Costa Rica Trip which is perfect!!! I'm truly excited and will start posting how it goes!

I do want to set a personal goal for me. To do some form of exerise everyday. It could be a half hour walk with the dogs to all out workouts. Wish me luck! ;P

Lost some weight...

.... about 4 or so inches of it...

Hair is no longer past bra strap... it is now just below the shoulder! :)

ahh, happiness!

EDIT:

Adding photo!



:) granted it's about 10pm and i can make all the excuses I want that I'm about to go to bed, no makeup, dead tired... whatever...I'm happy my head feels lighter!

Friendly Motivation...

Last weekend during the America's Finest City Half Marathon, we saw two women running with shirts that said "Amy made me do it" and "Mary made me do it." BM Kim and I let out a chuckle and said how we needed shirts for our next half in the fall.

So we made a cute design...



And on the back, the shirts had different slogans. This seems like a fun little thing to make it more exciting! Some of the slogans are:

It's all about the medal!
How does my butt look from back there?
Half the distance, twice the fun!
Running is a mental sport and we're all insane!

(Sidenote: "Junior Clan" was a nickname we were given by some friends of ours who were older class men during HS and it sorta stuck. Now twelve years later, we still call ourselves that.)

With all of us living so far away from each other, it's the little things like this or emailing/IM-ing each other to keep the motivation going that pushes us past each finish line. While none of us are true runners by definition, we still do try to give it are all out there on the pavement and have a little fun!

Anyone got any ideas of other fun slogans? Remember, we aren't fast so things like: "you just got passed by a chick" wouldn't really work for us! :P

:)

Joints...

It's day two after the half I just did. Body feels good...except for my leg joints. Hips and knees! I think I need some DW-40 for them!! :P

13. 1 miles...

We (me, BM Kim, and the hubby) completed yet another one and this time, I'm sore. SORE SORE SORE. Take it from me people, if you decide to run an for an extended period of time, train a bit... heck, walk even. I did not and now am sore. But the plus side I got another shiny medal and completed my fourth for the year. :) While we didn't break any records (I didn't but the hubby killed his PR), I'm still happy to have finished!

I just have three more this fall, and I better start training for them...

(photo taken from marathonfoto. I'm in the red, BM Kim is in the right!)

What's for dinner?

Have I ever mentioned HOW MUCH I LOVE THE OLYMPICS? I watch it all. From basketball to archery. What ever sport is played I'm a vested individual on how our team is panning out. I think a lot this has to do with the 1984 games back in LA. I was 5.5 years old and my oldest brother volunteered so he was a part of it all. I went to about 15 different events and just thought it was amazing seeing so many countries playing together. Because of that, it always gave me hope that one day we could all just get along with each other and just have fun. I know, sounds naive but still gives me hope.

Anyhow, in an effort to stay home and enjoy the Opening Ceremony tonight I decided to cook dinner. What are we grubbing on? BBQ meatballs. I made the turkey meatballs last night and threw them into the crock-pot with homemade bbq sauce. In the middle of the night, I got up for some water and the WHOLE house smelled sooo good. This morning it was soo strong and while I was jones-ing for one, I opted for my Chex cereal. Now, we figured we'd do BBQ meatball sandwiches... but we need some sort of a side. Mac and Cheese? Corn on the cob? Any and all suggestions greatly appreciated! :)

Books galore!

Linda tagged me! I love to read but I don't do nearly enough of it and this solidifies that I really need to read more... and by more, I mean more of the classics. While I might think David Sedaris is one of the best writers out there today, it's hard to compare him to Alexandre Dumas.

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Put an asterisk next to those you started but didn't finish.
3) Italicize those you intend to read (or have started and intend to finish).
4) The ones you LOVE are Green. (It orginally said underline but I couldn't figure out how to do that.)
5) Reprint this list in your own blog.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible*
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert*
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens*
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville*
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I tag Heather!

Addicted

I just made a VERY important decision.

I decided I need to quit drinking caffeine. For REAL this time. I know I know I've stated before how I gave it up... but each time I was back in the coffee area at the office within 72 hours. But I'm talking for reals this time!

And since my addiction is soo strong (4 cups of coffee...really is that bad?) I decided I will have to set an end date. (OMG... i can't believe I'm planning how I'm quiting my favorite tasty drink!) I think I will quit on November 1. This gives me all of October so I can start weening myself off it. What about September and the rest of August you say? Did I mention it is my FAVORITE tasty drink?!?!

you think I can do it?

On the bus again...

So the last 6 weeks I completely fell off the heath bus. I ate what I wanted and gave up on all forms of exercise. I was a mess. But last Sunday I realized I'm not happy like that and missed working out. On Monday the hubby and I finally went to the store and just LOADED up on food. Almost all of it was unprocessed (yes there were a few lean cuisines for emergency lunch purposes) and boy did it revive me.

Since then, I have to admit, I already feel leaner. It isn't like I'm saying I lost 20 lbs in two days... but I don't feel bloated anymore and the waisline "looks" better.

Anyone else fall off the bus and trying to get back on?

That's amore...

I can't wait to tell you about how good of a time and how beautiful that wedding we went to last weekend. Being around all my friends really had a good affect on me and I feel more like my old self than that lesser version I've been in the last month.

Onto the show....


Seven bridesmaids!


TEN groomsmen!!!


One bride + two father figures!


Me and BM Kim


Most of the Junior Clan back together again!


The amazing centerpieces


The Bride and her party crew


Isn't she stunning?!


Yummy Cake!


The Happy Couple


The Hubby and me!

~~photos courtesy of BM Kim, Frank, and yours truly!~~