New York, New York

 officially (of course, I still need to purchase the actual train tickets) I am heading to NYC for my birthday (which just so happens to be during the most beautiful time of year, Christmas!)

Nothing better than turning 24 in the big city. 
Shopping at Macy's done up in its holiday best.
Ice Skating at Rockefeller Center.
Running in Central Park.
Navigating to the best Thai food.



One of my very best girlfriends, my maid of honor at the wedding, moved to NYC in pursuit of her very first big girl job. Although she works crazy house right now because it is earnings season, she has been begging me to come when I could. I finally find a weekend, free and totally available, to visit. I will be taking the Amtrak train on a Friday an returning on Monday. I cannot wait! Expressing my excitement on a blog is difficult. I need more explanation points!!!!


 I am looking forward to seeing my friend, and getting a chance to talk with her. I do love being with my husband, but some times being with my girlfriends brings such happiness. And, she appreciates beautiful shoes. 


Already. I must carve a pumpkin!
 





 

Rain Delay

Long time, no update huh?

The last week has just flown by! 

I have been living up to the definition of work at my job. It is hard to sit for so long, but there is so much to do. I come in every day with a seemingly longer list of "to dos". Once I get finished with one task I immediately turn to another "hot" issue. phew.  I am still enjoying the job, and I love being busy. I have had a few extra task come across my desk in the last few weeks. I become the local expert at Excel spreadsheets since my daily work is almost entirely run in them. I am not an expert, trust me, but I think the longer I look at them every day I will get it all eventually.

I have even managed to start the creative aspects behind a new local website for our branch. The parent company has come up with the prototype for the website in terms of layout, but our branch gets to come up with the content. I am super excited as I get to be a little more creative than working on a spreadsheet all day.  I have employed a few of my fellow employees to help with the content and copy, so the task is divided up. I cannot wait to spend more time working on it. In fact, I better get more work done to have more time for it. This is the kind of marketing and sales I always envisioned.

My husband had a lot of test this last week and the stress seemed to take a toll on him. He paced a lot around the house and was antsy to take the test. I think after you study for 16+ hours on a subject you would just like to take the test and get it over with. He has been working all semester on anatomy, which is by far the hardest class so far. The entire semesters worth of work came down to this one test. There is so much pressure built into going to medical school. I know doctors need to know everything all the time, so the pressure to get it right is necessary. My husband handles it so well, I would be a mess lying on the ground crying under all that stress.

 It has been awfully rainy here the last few days (ok, its been the whole week) so I have retreated to the gym for many of my runs. Although I do like staying dry, running around that 200 meter track can be a little daunting. I put in an hour on it on Saturday, and boy I felt like a hamster. Winter here is going to be harsh, so there will be lots of indoor days for me. It takes some getting use to, and I feel like my former teammates would make fun of me for being such a pansy. At least I am still out there running. Right?

Upside of rainy days is the influx of movie watching! I do like to have time to watch a good flick, and no better time then when its pouring out. My husband and I took in a few good ones last week; Four Brothers, Franklyn, Nine and In the Land of Women. I highly recommend Nine if you are the musical loving type. I really enjoyed Four Brothers as it is set in Michigan. It has a lot of twist and turns so it is very engaging. Franklyn, um its dark, not recommended.  And In the Land of Women, I liked it and it has Kristen Stewart pre-Twilight, its kind of strange but humorous.

Until I decide I need to write more, Ciao!

wiskers on kittens

these are a few of my favorite things.

a new GHOUL-lish floral arrange for the month of October (and yes, I have always wanted to use the word Ghoul in a sentence on my blog).

Good friends to spend my time with.

                                   And the person that makes it all fit together. 





I have had a rather gloomy feeling day, and these are things that make me feel oh so much better. 
All of this and watching The Devil Wears Prada for the 500th time.

What makes your day? What are a few of your favorite things, people or places?

Side note: I saw this great blog post about non-pant outfits for spring 2012...think that will work in the work place?

Pace

I have one of the best training partners ever. He always there to lend encouragement, help me through a tough run or meet me at the finish with some water. 

Last night my training partner and I went to the gym for an indoor run around the track. It was past 8 pm and pretty dark outside, too dark for me to run outside any ways!

We started out at a nice comfortable pace, we could carry a short conversation without being too out of breath. I am taking the next few weeks to just maintain my fitness before I start heavy training again and I explained to my training partner that I didn’t need to go very fast or very far. As the minutes carried on I decided that we could go a little faster, so I picked up the pace, assuming that my training partner would naturally follow. After speeding ahead, my training partner slow down in front of me, giving me the old “let’s keep our current pace” trick. I forged on, picking up the pace gradually and trying to get in front of him. I even had to push him out of the way so I could run the pace I wanted. We kept up this battle for the rest of the run. After we finished, my training partner was quick to renounce my speedy last 5 minutes. At first I didn’t see how upset my training partner was, I thought he was just tired from a long day. It wasn’t until we left the gym that he told me what was going on.  After bugging him to run with me and then picking up the pace that he couldn’t run at, I had hurt his pride.

Both my training partner and I ran in college. He has always had such heart for running. He was always dedicated to running, pushing himself to be better each year. He had great success, and he was fast. In the last 6 months, his life has changed a lot. A majority of his time is spent buried in books, flashcards and class work for medical school. He doesn’t have as much time to dedicate to training at a high level, and some times just not enough energy. His time has passed where he wanted to compete at a high level. He has moved into adulthood where some things have to slow down, and where others pick up.  His pace of life has changed.

I on the other hand have almost an infinite amount of time to spend running and training. In fact, perhaps in the last 6 months I have gained time. When my husband is studying I want to make sure that I give him space so he can do what he needs. Being inside all day at work and sitting for a majority of that time makes me want to spend more time outside, perhaps I see running as a break, not a chore. My pace in life has changed.

Whatever the case is, time, attitude or dedication, running has different meanings to my training partner. And by assuming I knew what my running partner wanted out of a run I hurt his pride and took away some of the joy for him. I feel bad about the whole thing. I was selfishly running for only myself, not taking time to enjoy spending time with someone I love while doing something we both can enjoy. 

I learned my lesson, and will make sure to ask before I set the pace.

Birdcage

It's getting pretty cold out there. If you are in the northern part of the United States, the last few days have either been cold, rainy or windy. real fall like temperatures too. Today here in Erie its only 49 degrees! brrr. I am afraid the heat will have to be turned on for a while. 

Updates today come from the dinner party my husband and I had last week. I am not even sure it gets to be called a dinner party since it was only 4 people but it included wine so it counts! We had over two of my husband's lab partners from medical school. They are both about our age so it was nice to meet people closer to the same age as us. They came around 7 pm and stayed until way past 10 o'clock, so I guess they enjoyed our company! We talked a lot about their school and what is going on with their classes. It was so interesting to find out what they liked and didn't like about school. Although I don't go to school with them its nice to feel involved with my husband's school. I took a quick photo of the table to share!

Its been a lot of routine things going on this week for me. After taking a week off running I have started back up again in hopes to start marathon training this week. I am going to give my self over 24 weeks to prepare. I think I am going to go the Toledo Glass City Marathon. Its not until April of next year but getting a good solid base for training will be key. I really want to qualify for the Boston Marathon. My dream of running in that legendary race is what will keep my going as the days get colder and shorter. There will be a lot of miles and tons of time spent, but it will all be worth it.

A few weeks ago my husband found a new game to play in our house. He discovered that we had some pesky birds on our patio that liked to relieve themselves on our table, chairs and patio floor. He decided that he could catch one and then...you know, i have no idea what he was going to do with it but i let him try to catch it. These kind of stories are my favorite because he gets really great ideas, tries them out enthusiastically and usually they end up less than successful. The birds were no exception. He tried for two days trying to attract the birds, "bread doesn't work!", create a make-shift cage and then rig up a system. At one point during the conquest we took out the screen in the upstairs bedroom so he could attach one of the cages by a rope in hopes of dropping it over a bird (that tactic did not work). I took a photo of this event as well. I really got a good laugh out of it. He is wonderfully creative, a little adventurous and kind of silly but he always entertains me! He never caught a bird, but he did enjoy trying to. 


I suppose this awful gloomy day beckons me to read so off I go.


Until next time,


EAA