Happy 2014

I like New Year’s Resolutions. They give you the chance to get focused of refocused on something. The great thing about that something is that it can be anything.

This year I want to get back to racing. I jumped age groups last year and didn’t do a single race in my new group! Life got busy and there were a lot of changes, so I am ok with that, but I miss racing. I love having a goal to work toward and I think they are fun!

First up: Gasparilla!

I’ve been working on my running game to help my triathlons a little bit. A race focused on running is exactly what I need. I’m aiming for the 15K. No time goals here, just finishing is all I need.

I’m also trying to do better about putting things away where they belong as I finish with them to stop the buildup of junk that needs to be put away each night. It’s the little things right?

Hope the New Year is off to a good start for you!

So...it's almost 2014 you say???

I guess we can sum up 2013 in a quick whirl wind!

1. New JOB!

Working at GLDD was fun, but the travel was not fun. I was lucky and landed a job as a contractor for the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey). I run around in the woods and rivers measuring how much water is flowing through. It is fun and the travel schedule suites me much better. Being home has given me more time to focus on other things...

2. LIKE GETTING MARRIED!!!

 I was elated to be home to enjoy the rest of my engagement to The Engineer and loved planning our wedding together. We DIY'ed most if not all of our decorations and out family and friends helped up pull it together on the day of. It was an amazing night and the best part? I married my best friend and true lover :)

My Hubby and Dad built a corn hole and ladder golf set, and I painted them with The Engineer. 

I also hand made wire bikes for the center pieces, and we assembled everything ourselves. We even made the wedding favors...Love Spice (aka seasoning salt). I got so many compliments on the personal touches we had at the wedding. While we spent a ton (and I mean a TON) of time on them, it was totally worth it!

Best day ever with the best new hubby ever!

3. New House!

We haven't closed on our house, but we started looking for a home to buy immediately after we returned from our *amazing* honeymoon and after a month and a half of serious looking we fell in love with a house, which we stole right out from under another buyer. We are now crossing our fingers through escrow!

There's the smallest peek through the front door :)

The Engineer and I are now compiling our list of things we want to do to the house. DIY here we come! I know there is still a small change that something won't work out and we will be back to square one but I'm pretty optimistic about it.

One of my goals for 2014 aside from working on the awesome new house will be to get back into the racing scene. I'm thinking a 15K at Gasparilla to kick this year off right.

My other goal is to actually use the blog to document my training progress and all the DIY projects we take on. Documentation is the first step to progress ;-)

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season...Happy New Year!

California Dreams

So remember when I was in San Diego? Yea me too. Good times. I know I'm not there anymore but I still want to share the awesomeness of it. The Engineer came to visit me on my time off one week, but he couldn't be there for the entire week, so I had a few days to myself. I chose some places to explore and planned to take the train/metro deal south one stop with the intent of visiting Torrey Pines State Reserve. They are supposed to have good hiking and the park is right on the ocean. Since I didn't have a car I had to plan around walking to everywhere. In my research I noticed that the University of California San Diego was pretty much on the path I needed to take to the park (there was no direct walking route, and what google maps struggles to show you is elevation...there was a very large hill between me and the park that had no roads on it). 

I was pretty excited about visiting UCSD, I never really realized that I enjoyed visiting college campuses, but I do. They are such unique places! So I set off from the train station in attempts to semi-blindly navigate my way on dirt trails over this hill. I was a bit weary at first, but saw other runner/hikers out there and felt more comfortable that I wasn't trespassing or something like that haha! And I made it onto the UCSD campus. I bee-lined for engineering (gotta pay me respects). It is quite different from UCF (Go Knights!), there were 8ish engineering buildings. Pretty serious over there, and they had really nice architecture and landscaping.

One of the engineering buildings also had what I would call Dorothy's house from Kansas on it. 

The display itself actually had nothing to do with engineering (which was disappointing because I felt at the least someone could have stuck some cantilever explanation in there, something, anything, Buler?), but was simply an art installment on the 7th floor that was not open the day I was there. Sad face. Also of note was the super awesome library.

I also learned that UCSD houses the official Dr. Suess collection! I thought the campus was cool and wished it was sunny so I could get the true feel of California college life. 

I had a good snack and set off toward Torrey Pines. It was a nice walk to get there and there were a lot of hikers of all levels in the park. It made me happy to see it being used so much. Sadly, it was a super dingy day - I never saw the sun because there was such a heavy fog layer - so pictures weren't the greatest, but I had a good time exploring the cliffs in the park.

This park would be a great place for trail running. The paths were wide and all dirt. You could also pick between different trails, some were fairly flat and some had pretty decent elevation changes. I opted out of running since my walking total for the day was probably around 10 miles at that point. By the time I got back to my apartment I had walked just over 18 miles! And yes, I do consider that my first half marathon ;-)

I really enjoyed exploring Cali, there really is a lot to do out there and I can't wait to go back on a real vacation and explore more!

Moments

There are some moments that are worth reliving. Sometimes being away from home is difficult, but there are also some great things about southern California life. I celebrated Thanksgiving with The Engineer early since I would be in Cali working for the real deal. We only worked a few hours in the morning doing the bare essentials and got the rest of the day off and had a big meal catered for us mid afternoon. Since I was off early (read - during daylight hours) I went for a run on the beach, something I haven't been able to do since the time changed making it dark when I get off work. Before I walked over to Thanksgiving dinner I took a stroll to the cliff to enjoy the beautiful day :)

 

 

And a panoramic picture to sum it all up. Despite the way the picture makes it look, the cliff is pretty straight. 

 

 

So pretty. Another thing that was awesome when I returned from time off was Christmas lights in my complex! Made me super happy :)

 

 

One common occurrence on the beach is photo sessions. Typically families or couples. When I could run on the beach each night I would easily see 3-4 professional photographers capturing a period in time in someones life. I'm guessing the one below was an engagement session or something similar given the heart they made with the kelp on the beach. Creative, I like it.

 



 

Also captured that night, the Liberty Island (the dredge that is currently paying my bills ;-)) digging at sunset in the borrow area visible from my kitchen. 

 

 

Final thought: carnivore dinner with co workers. 

 

 

Yea, they were awesome. 

Zoo and Mini Thanksgiving

I wanted to do something fun on my time off, and we happened to have free tickets to the zoo! Now I didn't have high expectations for the zoo, but they were exceeded so I consider that a success! The animals were pretty active. Some monkeys were displaying some impressive aerobatic skills and the tortoises were walking! We saw my favorite, the giraffes  :)

 

 

There was also a giraffe with black spots instead of brown ones. Something new every day! The elephants were pretty exciting too. This one was playing with a big barrel hanging from a tree, but the mean ol zoo keeper hung it inside the metal frame that is protecting the tree from being knocked over by the elephants, thus making it a little hard to play with! Nonetheless, the attempt at getting it out was probably just as entertaining as playing with the drum would be. Maybe even better since there was a challenge.

 

 

When were leaving the zoo we spotted someone with the most expensive camera lens I think I've ever seen. The funny part was that he was photographing some birds (I don't remember what they were but it was something like a duck or a pelican...nothing crazy) that weren't very far away, and I believe they were surrounded by Disney rock....so not too sure what he really needed his crazy expensive lens for. Whatever it was, I'm sure the picture was absolutely awesome!

 

 

I decided I wanted to cook an early Thanksgiving dinner for The Engineer and myself to enjoy together since I would be on rotation for the real thanksgiving. I didn't realize that I had never cooked a turkey before! (Ok I cheated, I cooked a turkey breast, but a whole turkey would have been overkill). We made our own cranberry sauce which turned out pretty good! I was glad we took the time to do it :) 

 



 

I then had my second Thanksgiving when I got to San Diego, while it was fun, the food was all catered, so you couldn't taste the love. It was still nice to get together. And since it was Thanksgiving and all, we only worked a few hours that day. So I went for a run on the beach thus getting in my turkey trot after all :-D Getting off work early is a big treat now that the sun sets so early out here...4:45 and its below the horizon! Yeeps! Not a big fan of daylight savings. I wish we could vote on it. 

Tid-bits

I found some interesting tid-bits while browsing the interwebs recently. One that really sparked my interest was an article from CNN reporting that drinking coffee could reduce your risk of skin cancer.

Coffee could cut skin cancer risk - CNN

This mainly caught my eye because of the ridiculous number of times I put sunscreen on each day at work. My number one preventive motivator is to reduce the blazing tan lines I am destined for. The raccoon line around my eyes is already pretty intense, and though I try to wear shirts with different length sleeves each day, there is a line that is forming on my arms. I don't worry about the tan on the back of my neck too much because I cant see it. Though, I know that one is getting intense too. Note to self: make sure hair on wedding day covers back of neck! My second motivator is preventing a burn. Maybe my priorities are a little backwards, but they result in the same action.

I put sunscreen on 1-4 times per day, depending on how long I'm on the beach and whether or not the coast is completely covered by fog. It is pretty freaky when the fog rolls in because you can see it coming, and it is so intense.

Coming back to the article, I have heard and read many studies claiming positive and negative effects caused by coffee consumption, just never heard this one. I thought it was convenient that I more often than not (much more often than not) start my day with coffee at work, and more often than not (much more often than not) spend the majority of my day in the sun. If that morning coffee helps reduce my risk of skin cancer, then bring on the morning joe!

Another note on my morning coffee from work - we have a  Keurig coffee maker. We have had many types of  K-cups, and none (in my opinion) are that great. The Starbucks dark roast even forced me to put cream in my coffee which I never do anymore. And that's really unfortunate because Starbucks is my favorite coffee. Not that I'm complaining - its free. Just not something I would get for my own home. It makes the french press amazing on my time off :)

The other article I really thought was interesting was also from CNN and it reported that popcorn was a major source of polyphenols. Given my obsession with it...there is no need to explain why I fully support this claim that popcorn is a good source of some of the nutrients our body needs :)

Popcorn Rules

Ha! Win.

I am currently working on making some upgrades in the food department; mainly the transport of it so I can always have good eats no matter where on the job I am. Pretty excited about it.

Daily Dones

I wrapped up my To Do list quite nicely the last few days.

My lasagna was yummy...just the way mom makes it :)

 

We had some early cool weather roll in. I took advantage by going on a run. in. the. middle. of. the. day. Crazy talk. Sadly my tummy did not agree with that mid day run, so it was quite brief. I still enjoyed the breeze and opened the house up.

 

 The open windows made me wash the sheets because nothing goes better with a fresh breeze than clean fluffy sheets. Mmmm <3 I think my favorite thing about fall is opening the house up and letting the breeze rush trough. Today I even used it to help me clean! I didn't move anything off the counters that might blow away, instead I left everything where it was when I opened the windows and decided that anything that moved needed to be put away anyway. It worked very well even though a few extra dust bunnies blew out from under furniture the day after I cleaned the floors :)

I also made The Jump.

This was a huge step for me in life. I had admired others who had taken it but was never quite sure if I could handle it. I thought I might make The Jump someday, but never seriously contemplated it. I didn't even consider it when I bought a new pair of shoes that would support this big step. And when I finally made The Jump, it wasn't until after that I realized that it was meant to be.

I made The Jump and bought my first pair of skinny jeans.

 

That just so happen to show off the new shoes that I bought and love. 

I am now lost in the world of save the dates for the wedding. I can't decide what style I want to go with there are just so many cute options out there! Must do more research!