Thanksgiving and Other Highlights

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. Betsey and Lucy made pie, a lot of pie. We had a grand dinner with both turkey and ham. We played a variety of games brought to us by those Cranium games people, including Ziggity, Whoonu, and Hoopla (reverse alphabetical for no reason).

Friday was super lazy. We visited with more family around Portland, and that was pretty much it.

Saturday things started to get interesting. After dropping Betsey at the mall, I finally got in touch with Nick, and we were able to hang out again. How do two guys who rarely see each other catch up? I shared the wonders of my Nintendo DS and Mariokart. Nick proved that he still has it and raced around the tracks like an old pro. Then we met Betsey at the mall for lunch, and Nick and I terrorized Borders by finding books we were curious about. We're old now. Our terrorizing has lost some of its luster. I also had a coffee if that helps. Nick drank water. Yeah we're bad. Then we took Betsey home and went to the library. We're such trouble makers.

Saturday night it was time for fun with Betsey's friends. We went to a Lebanese restaurant, complete with belly dancers, called Yasmen. Thankfully, my wedding band was able to repel the dancer that approached me hoping my dollars would help pad her outfit. The dinner was great and the company wonderful, but my leftovers smelled strangely similar to farts. Towards the end of the night the hookah smoke got a bit thick, but at least it doesn't have the awful smell of cigarettes.

Sunday, Nick called to see if I still wanted him to go running with me. I said yes. He biked over some 30+ blocks and then was ready to go. I was dealing with a headache, sore eyes, and a foul taste in my mouth from the hookah smoke. To be clear these side effects were achieved without actually partaking in the hookah, just by being in its proximity. We had a good run. I have no times to report though because I didn't have a stop watch. Then we played some more Mariokart before parting ways. Getting to see Nick was definitely great. The rest of Sunday was packing and saying goodbye.

All and all a great Thanksgiving full of friends and family.

Happy Thanksgiving

This year we're spending Thanksgiving with the Mathews and Christmas with the Catchpoles, so we're hiding out in Portland and watching and helping with the preparation. There's not too much exciting to report because nobody has arrived yet.

I did manage to get up early enough this morning to go running. I estimated a two mile run on Google using the map measurement tool and then took off for a run. When I got to the end of my run, I knew something was up because my time was too good to be true. As soon as I had finished my cool down walk and stretching, I used the measurement tool again, but this time using more and more carefully placed waypoints. My run turned out to only be 1.8 miles. That was a little disappointing, but my time still looked good. A time of 15:19:43 meant that I had run approximately an 8.5 minute mile. So I'm still showing progress, and honestly, if I can just maintain 8.5 for an entire 10k, I'll be super happy.

Hood to Coast

We've been hesitant to post anything until our wedding pictures were available, but clearly that's not a working strategy for having a blog, so I'm going to break the ice. I'll be running hood to coast in a 12 person team in 2008. That means I'll be running 3 10k legs over 36 hours.

I've been training up for a little while now, but my 2 mile time is still just sitting at around 19:25. In January, I'll be running my first competitive 10k run in Turner Oregon of all places.

So, if nothing else, I'm going to track my progress and running times here, at least until the wedding pictures are up on a website. Nobody is more frustrated than us about the picture website, believe me.

Peace,

Myles