I’m in Los Angeles for a conference, didn’t want you to think I’d fallen in a ditch somewhere.
Internet service is great in my room but spotty at the exhibit hall which is where I am at ALL DAY :o( By the time I get to my room though I just want to pass out. So no blogging just sleeping.
Here is a recap of the last few days so I can catch up.
Saturday
4:45 – alarm went off :o(
5:45 – we were in the car on our way to San Francisco
6:30 – arrived at Golden Gate Park to meet our teams.
Since I couldn’t run I volunteered to help Lindsay Check participants in. It was a bit chaotic but all in all it went well. Rocky did his 11 mile run in preparation for the Nike Half. Afterwards we hung out and cheered in our teammates. It was a bit chilly and rainy at times but the run went well and everyone did a good job. Our course we were hungry afterwards so Rocky and I hit the Beach Chalet for lunch. It was super yummy and such a pretty view. I’d never eaten there, we’ll have to go back.
Sunday
Relaxed a little and got the house cleaned up. We headed out to Walnut Creek in the afternoon to watch Jeanette’s band play at the Walnut Festival. Quite a few of our friends were there so it was a nice afternoon at the park. Afterwards, Rocky headed home and I went over to Lindy’s for stitch-n-bitch. It was a small group but we had a good time and I even got to try some of Lindy’s home made Limoncello… YUMMY…but OMG very strong drink. Went home fairly early to hang out with my hubby and pack for my trip here.
Monday
Went home, had dinner, finished packing and hung out with my hubby and doggies.
Tuesday
Flew to Burbank, our conference is in Universal City which is a cute little area. I haven’t been here since my parents brought me to Universal Studios when I was little. I was hoping to be able to go but I won’t have time :o( oh well, I’ll have to come back. There is a cool area though called Universal City walk which is a lot like downtown Disney, it has restaurants, shops and other cool stuff. On Tuesday evening my boss took me and a few students from the California School of Mines to Bubba Gumps. It was a fun evening and the food was great. Got back to my room and passed out.
Wednesday
Sat at our booth from 9-5..BORING. My parents only live about 40 minutes from here so they came and picked me up around 7pm and we headed back up to City Walk. We had a nice dinner at Wolfgang Pucks and for dessert some yummy Almond Caramel Popcorn from a shop that only sells fancy popcorns. It was nice seeing my parents and hanging out with them. I was whipped out again so I just headed back to my room afterwards and passed out.
Now, I’m sitting at my boring booth :o( until 5:00pm. I will most likely head back to City Walk to walk around and check out the shops, grab a bite to eat and head back to watch the season premiere of Grey’s Anatomy. YIPEE, I am so excited that all my shows are back.
Meet Ava Webster
This is our friends daughter, Ava. Our friend Kathy lives in Idaho and a few months ago I sent her a box with lots and lots of goodies. I sent her a summer outfit which included a cute little white top and itsy bitsy shorts and these glasses. Kathy sent us a picture of her wearing them :o) I love this picture.
As for my good news, I can probably start running again in 2 weeks and do my marathon :o) woohooo! I had an appointment with Dr. Klein today, my chiropractor and she also works on me when I'm injured. She helped me get through my plantar fasciitis & shin splints when I was doing the Chicago Marathon and she helped me with a horrible pinched never in my neck last year. I love her. Today she helped me out with my ankle and I'll be seeing her a few more times.
The one bad thing about therapy is that it HURTS. She did a full body adjustment on me and then started working on my ankle. OMG, it hurt so bad but she helped me with my breathing and relaxing. I tend to tense up at these things. She did lots of massaging, stretching and some ultrasound therapy and it felt painful but good at the same time. She said she was really surprised it had not broken, that I had great bones. If I had bad bones or someone with bad bones did a sprain this bad it would for sure break. She wants me to keep taking the Motrin to help with the inflammation, ice/heat every day and keep massaging/stretching it everyday. The massaging will also help me not build up icky scar tissue. I already had a small ball of it forming in one area. She said that I should be good to go in about 2 weeks and sees no problem with me doing my races. YAY!!!!!! I really needed to hear that. I was freaking out. This is a great way for me to start my weekend. In the meantime I should swim or ride a stationary bike. I think I'll bring my workout clothes to the conference next week and ride the bike at the hotels gym. I am pretty sore right now which is to be expected after everything she did but I'm a much happier person today :o) Dr. Klein is also a TNT alumni so she really understands the frustration we feel when we are injured. She acutally has her own injury right now and will be having surgery on her knee soon :o( THANK YOU DR. KLEIN.
The weekend is going to be a little busy. We'll be heading to San Francisco at, ooohh about 5:45am tomorrow morning for the BIG run with all 5 TNT Teams. We are expected to have 400-500 TNT'ers there. YIKES! The 20 mile run will take people through part of the Nike Marathon course. People are pretty excited but of course nervous. Rocky will be doing 10 miles tomorrow and I'll be helping Ms. Lindsay out with checking everyone in and then helping out a mentor with a water stop. I'm sure we'll be coming home to take a nice long nap and then we have no plans the rest of the day.
Sunday we'll be heading out to watch Jeanette's band play at the Walnut Festival in Walnut Creek and then I have Stitch-n-Bitch at Lindy's house. I'm looking forward to getting some knitting in. I also need to pack for next week. YIKES.
Have a great weekend everyone and GOOD LUCK to my friends doing their 20 miler tomorrow.
Summer has come and gone although I do hear we are having temperatures in the 80's next week so maybe it's not completely gone yet. But today, it's sprinkling and we have chances of thunder showers :o(
Anyway, sorry for the lack of posts but I've just been down about the whole ankle thing so instead of whining about it I didn't write.
I am able to put pressure on it and walk but I do need to be careful. I am also able to wear a couple of my boots, just no 4 inch heels, so that is good and I'm sure my boss is happy I'm not wearing flip flops to work any more :o) I tried to wear my tennis shoes but the top part of the shoe hits my bone and that doesn't feel good. I am still having a lot of pain in that area, not sure why. Oh wait, I know, cause Olivia pushed me...haa, haa. I love you :o) Anyway, I am still having pain in that area and the slightest movements in the wrong direction are painful so running is NOT going to happen this weekend. I am very very sad about that. I was hoping to at least get a few miles in. Last time I fell I was able to run after two weeks, this time, I am no where near being able to even try. I have also been referred to a physical therapist so I can start working with him/her. That won't happen til the first week of October though because I'll be at a conference next week. The one good thing about the conference is that it'll force me to let it keep healing and not jump the gun on trying to run. I will be manning a booth so I'll be able to sit all day for 4 days. Sounds fun, doesn't it? :o( I will also be seeing my chiropractor tomorrow morning and she is going to be doing some work on the ankle as well. I'm hoping and keeping my fingers crossed that after next week things will start feeling better. I'll keep ya posted.
I had been reading someones blog and they started a Foto Friday thing, it's a nice way to finish off the week and start the weekend. A nice photo. So I will start doing the same thing except today I will leave you with a video :o)
On Wednesday my hubby had me call him when I pulled into the parking lot, he was going to help me bring my stuff upstairs. So I called him, he came down and helped me upstairs. The doggies always go crazy when they hear my car alarm, they know I'm home. We walked in the door and Patch and Daisy greeted me as they usually do but Rocky was a bit puzzled. I asked him what was wrong, he walked over to the kitchen and looked inside then looked out at Daisy.
Rocky: How'd she do that?
Me: Do what?
Rocky: I had her in the kitchen eating her dinner while I ate mine.
Me: Uhhh, I dunno, she's not in the kitchen now. Let's put her back and see what she does :o)
Me: Don't you know not to leave the monkey close to the gate?
Rocky: I didn't know, now I do....LOL!
The other day Daisy was trying to look for me and I found her on top of the monkey's head. She's a handful.
HAPPY FRIDAY!!
Wednesday's have turned out to be my Amy & Olivia nights which has worked out good at home cause it's Rocky's night for band practice. Amy & Olivia nights started out because we are running buddies but have now turned into less running and more into a fun thing although that's not really all that great except for when it involves a pedicure because we are being pampered the rest of the night is usually eating and a drink or two which doesn't go well with training. Last night it was only Amy and I though because Olivia had a few errands to run and was also trying to be a good girl and get her run in, although I see on her blog now that that didn't happen. Amy has some really bad blisters on her feet from her race on Sunday so she is having to take it easy for a few days and you guys all know my story :o( We met up at Chevy's last night and had a very nice evening.
I am suppose to be going camping in Yosemite this weekend but have been going back and forth on whether that was a good idea or not. The smart me says NO WAY, I need to stay home but the not so smart me of course wants to go. We haven't made it up to Yosemite in 2 years and we were going with our friend Lael, his girlfriend and a few other friends so we know it would have been a fun trip. We also don't get to see Lael much so it was a way to get together and hang out. I had emailed Lael yesterday to let him know that I might not be going because of my ankle, he said to see how the rest of the week went and to let him know on Friday what my final decision was. Today I made that decision. We aren't going :o(
I had a meeting this morning and decided that it was going to be a pain for me to be running around in crutches. The location we were going to has a few stairs and the building has lots of construction going on around it. I wasn't sure what the conditions would be so I figured I'd better wear shoes instead of taking a chance of falling while trying to get around on the crutches. I put my boots on because they have lots more support around my ankle.....OUUUUUUUUUUCCCCCHHHHHHHHIIIIEEEE! It didn't feel good at all. I couldn't zip the boot up cause it hurt so I left it open and just putting any pressure on my foot hurt. I toughed it out though and I'm not back in my office with no boot and my brace back on and using the crutches. There is no way that I'm going to be able to get around the campground they way I am right now. So we will have to pass this time and just stay home and continue healing. I'm bummed but I gotta do what I gotta do to get better.
September is proving to be a bad month for me. I fell, I burned myself and I had a yucky worm in my sandwich and all in the same week. Maybe I can go on vacation for the last half of this month, hibernate in my house and wake up in October and start fresh :O( YEP, I am whining.
The pain in my ankle is still there, the swelling is still there although not as bad as it was the day I fell or even on Sunday. The only way I guess my ankle would heal very quickly is if I sat on my butt for 2 entire weeks and did NOTHING but that is impossible so I guess it'll just heal at it's own pace and I try to do my best to stay off of it as much as I can and when I can't I just be very careful.
THE WORM. Yesterday I had lunch with Jeanette at Whole Foods. As usual we met up, picked up our food and sat outside. THANK YOU Jeanette for helping me out. Having crutches makes carrying things challenging :o( Anywho, I decided to go for the salami sandwich, some chips and a soda, YUMMY! We were sitting outside chit chatting enjoying our lunch, I had eaten half my sandwich and was about to start working on my second half. My sandwich had way too much salami in it so I opened it up to pull some salami out and rearrange the other yummies in it and took a bite. My sandwich consisted of Olive Tapenade, Lettuce, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Cheese, Peppers and the Salami. If you've ever had Olive Tapenade you know that it's black because it's made out of Black Olives so all of a sudden while I'm chewing the piece of sandwich in my mouth I see a black thing on my finger and of course my first thought was that it was some of the Tapenade that had spilled out. OH MY GOD, thank god that I didn't lick my finger off, it was a WORM :o( It didn't look like a worm, it sort of looked like food but then I touched it and it moved....aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.......I don't care what Jeanette says, I think she fibbed to make me feel better, she said it fell from the awning above our heads. NOPE, it did not, that darn worm came out of my sandwich :o( Needless to say I could not eat the rest of my sandwich and it went in the dump :o( I have a feeling it came out of the lettuce :o( GROSS!!
I had to eat some M&M's and drink a diet coke when I got back to my office just to get the thought out of my head that I had eaten a sandwich with a worm in it. M&M's, they always make me feel better.
THE BURN. I had a nail appointment after work and then I hit Trader Joe's in Walnut Creek on my way. My hubby was at the buddy run so he wasn't able to join me it was a challenge but I got through it. We really needed food in our house. When I got home he still wasn't back from the buddy run so I decided to start dinner so it'd be ready when he did get home, haa, haa, hard dinner, I popped 2 pizza's from Trader Joe's in the oven :o) The dogs were being unruly and were in the kitchen when I had the stove open and somehow when I put the pizza's in the oven and went to close the door my arm touched the inside of the door :o( I burnt my arm. I put ice on it right away and last night it was just a long red spot, today I have a blister on it and it's much darker :o(
Rocky is ready to bubble wrap me and not let me out of his site :o( I'm a mess and really all I wanted to do this morning after feeding the doggies was crawl back under my covers and not come out.
Everyone morning as I'm driving to work I'm blinded by the sun coming up but this morning although the sun was up it was not blinding. The skies have been very hazy and what's funny is that is not even from the few fires we've had near by, it's from a fire that's about 200 miles away from us.
Yesterday was a BAD day for being outside, breathing conditions weren't good. I had a hard time just walking to get my lunch, it was icky so for this reason we canceled our run :o( I know Amy wanted to get a run in before her marathon this weekend and Olivia and I just wanted to run since we've been slacking during the week, it didn't work out though.
I managed to get a video workout in though. I was pretty proud of myself especially since I didn't really think about it and had dinner before the video and I'd had a bad headache all day. I pushed myself though and got it done. Afterwards, I took a shower and the plopped on the couch to catch up on all my shows TiVo'd from the last few days.
Crazy Amy :o) is off to do another marathon this weekend.....GOOD LUCK AMY!!!!
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Last night Rocky and I took the evening off from running to meet Olivia and our friends Kathy & Rick and their new baby Ava at Havana's in Walnut Creek. Kathy and her family live in Idaho, they moved back a few years ago, we don't get to see them very often so taking the night off was a must. We had a great time catching up with them and visiting with cute little Miss Ava, she is adorable.
Hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. It was another scorcher :o( but we had a great weekend. This recap might be a little long.
Friday I had taken the day off to just hang out at home and do house stuff. I've got a bunch of vacation time racked up again so I was able to take an extra day for the long weekend. I slept in til around 9/9:30 and then got up and did some housework and laundry, took the doggies on a long walk. Around 10ish I headed into Walnut Creek, I needed to return some stuff to Macy's and I was meeting Olivia, Jeanette and Amy for lunch at Whole Foods. I got my errands done and met the girls on time as planned. We sat outside and enjoyed our yummy lunches and sort of enjoyed the weather. It was a bit hot and muggy :o( the weather man even said it was suppose to thunderstorm although it never did. Unfortunately, Amy and Jeanette had to go back to work after lunch but Ms. Olivia had the rest of the day off so we decided to hang out. I had been debating on what to do because I was suppose to be in Walnut Creek at 6:30 for dinner with Brandy, Lindsay, Jeanette and Olivia and I knew that if I went back home to Oakland I probably would have bailed and not driving back especially since I wasn't sure how bad the holiday traffic would get later in the evening. Olivia invited me to hang out at her house so I wouldn't have to go back and forth.
First though we had to do some shopping :o) We headed to Target to pick up a few gifts for a friend and of course when you go to Target somehow a thousand other things seem to jump in your basket and you end up spending more than you had planned. Me Love Target.
Afterwards we decided to ditch one of our cars so we weren't driving all over town with 2 cars. Then it was off to Ross for new purses. Olivia and I both needed new purses and we both managed to find some nice ones at Ross. Me Love Ross. Although purses and shoes are really the only things I shop there for. I have no patience for going through every single rack of clothes looking for decent stuff. It's always a mess in there too.
We thought we might see a movie but we missed all the movies in the 2:00ish time frame, the 4ish ones were too late and we'd be cutting it close for dinner so we scrapped the movie idea and just headed to Olivia's house to relax. We swapped out our old purses for our new ones and then watched a little TV. It was weird being in the house though, it was just like old times watching TV in "my spot" on the couch but yet it wasn't my house. Very weird.
Around 6ish we headed back out and met Lindsay & Brandy at Stanford's. WE MISSED YOU JEANETTE. We were able to get a table outside and enjoy the nice weather. It had cooled down and was much more enjoyable. We don't get to hang out with Brandy much outside of running because we all have such busy schedules so it was a nice evening with the girls.
So Friday ended up being a day with the girls, I had a great time. Then it was back home to the hubby. He stayed in relaxing with the doggies and playing his guitar. He's had a super duper stressful few weeks at work and he really needed the night of quiet, well as quiet as it can be with our two doggies :o) I brought him home some yummy ribs though. He was a happy camper.
Saturday was of course an early day for us and it was going to be a long day as well. We got up and headed out to Berkeley Marina, AGAIN, to meet the team for the mentor led run. My schedule called for 12 miles but the team was only doing 10 so that's what I did. I ran the first 2 miles pretty much on my own and was feeling good although this weekend instead of being freezing cold it was already warm. The sun had broke early and it was warming up quickly. Around mile 2 Phil had seen me behind him and he stopped to wait for me. We ran the other 8 miles together, THANKS PHIL, it helped out a lot and we did pretty good. Finished 10 miles in exactly 2 hours. I felt pretty good the entire time although I did end up with a side stitch and I'm wondering if I had way too much water. I decided to skip the electrolyte drink and have it in pill form instead. Jeanette let me have a few Thermolite pills to try out. My belly felt great even with the 2 GU's I had taken but I'm wondering if now that I don't carry an electrolyte drink if I'm drinking too much water. I will have to talk to Mama Lisa about how to use the pills and how much water I should be drinking and when. I felt thirsty so I drank but when I got back all four of my bottles were empty :o( Hmmmmm????
After the run Rocky and I headed back home to shower, pack our stuff, pack the doggies stuff and head to Granite Bay. Rocky's older brother lives up there and the whole family was going up for an overnight trip. They made some yummy bbq, they have a pool and we just hung around and relaxed. The doggies all played and were tuckered out by bed time. We were too. Sunday we got up, had some breakfast and did some more relaxing and eating :o) We headed home around 6ish and luckily enough we didn't hit any traffic. We did see quite a bit of very dirty cars though coming back, it took us a while to figure it out but it was folks coming back from Burning Man. They were some very interesting folks in very dirty cars and RVs. We got home around 8ish and put everything away and then pretty much did nothing.
With Cousin Jet
On our way home all tuckered out
Monday, we SLEPT IN :o) I love sleeping in :o) Around 11 Rocky and I decided to head over to Montclair. We needed to go grocery shopping so we could bbq later on in the day. We went over to Peet's Coffee and Noah's for a bagel first. We sat outside of Peet's and people/doggie watched while we enjoyed our bagels and coffee then we headed over to Safeway for some grocery shopping. Went home and put everything away and then it hit us it was almost 1pm. YIKES!!!
