My husband rocks like a Lazyboy recliner

Last night JD and I headed out to a party at DeLee's.  I haven't been to a DeLee party in a really long time.  Years, I think.  She was throwing it with her housemates, and it was fairly spectacular.  There was a live band (the Boozehounds) and a ton of great food.  The house is really well set up for parties, with an enormous deck.  When I say enormous, I mean it was larger than the house I lived in from 1997-1999.

Before we went I was utterly exhausted, so I crawled in to bed for some shuteye.  And that didn't work so JD and I stopped for dinner, where I had real coke.  Caffeine and sugar pretty much rock when it comes to reviving zombies.  By the end of dinner I felt mostly human.  Also mostly full, which was a bummer.  It meant I couldn't eat the yummy food at the party.  I did eventually make room for a something or other rangoon, and a tiny "pig in a blanket".  I was sad that I couldn't sample the rest.

The Boozehounds were fun.  I hadn't heard live music in quite a long time.  Sitting on the lawn with JD's arm around me, it felt romantic and date-like.  It was very happy-making.

In the morning JD went off to run a half marathon.  He had eaten a metric ton of food the evening before, so he was well fueled.  The half marathon, at 13.1 miles, was about 3 miles longer than he had ever run before.  But between the mass quantities he had consumed, and the extra rest he got earlier in the week (his training schedule had him doing only two short runs) he felt pretty good.  He was actually able to move out on the last mile and a bit when he realized he was almost done and he still had good energy. He passed people.  At the end of the race he kicked it up a notch and passed people.

I am so proud of him.  For somebody who hates running, he sure has gotten good at it.  This was his first race ever.  A half marathon!  No measly 5k races for my beloved, he jumped right in to the longer distance.  This, after only starting to run a little over a year ago.

He got a crabby medal for finishing.  I felt a crab was especially appropriate given how cranky running occasionally makes him.  Also note that the medal says "scratch 13.1 miles off the bucket list" around the edge.

I had thought about maybe going hiking today, but it was both brilliantly sunny and windy with strong gusts.  The sun is not my friend yet, and I can't use my umbrella in strong wind.  So while JD was off being athletic, I did this:

Also?  I had coffee.  And a book.

But at least I ate well:

Oh yogurt and strawberries, how I love thee.

I had a chance to go through the pictures my parents had sent me from their trip to Alaska earlier this year.  There is a lot of impressive scenery and interesting pictures of wildlife, towns, and mining stuff.  But what grabbed me the most was some really nice photos of my folks.  I'm thinking of getting glossy photo paper so I can print some out and frame them.

Aw, Dad.

Love the wind-blown look.  I hope this is me in a few decades.

They clean up nice, too.

In the evening, I interrupted JD's snacking to say that I wanted to eat dinner.  He was grabbing some chips at half time during a college football game.  He decided that he could watch the replay afterward (sadly, it turned out later that he was wrong about that assumption), and we went off to investigate Yanny's in Camp Springs.  Yanny's took over the spot that Regina Pizzeria inhabited for lo those many years.  Regina's held a special place in my heart.  Yanny's has a lot to live up to.

Yanny's is sort of an Italian/Greek/Korean place.  They had a pretty impressive seafood buffet set up.  JD opted for that, which included a variety of appetizers, salad, and pizza.  I'm pretty sure he ate an entire pizza, plus an assortment of other items.

I coveted the dessert.  JD didn't get any so I couldn't try it.  But it looked delicious.

I was not yet ready to eat pizza on the grave of Regina's.  I ordered a Korean BBQ Box.  Which is a bento box, but with Korean food in it.

The bulgogi was spectacular

I asked if they had any porter beers.  First answer was no, but when they went back and checked the fridge:

Evo Lucky 7 porter:  new to me, and good

So, all things considered, today has been a pretty excellent day.

In which I date myself

This morning I announced to my office (i.e. Marc) that I was going to take it easy.  I was just going to hang out and not do much unless somebody asked me to.  Marc had no problem with that.

Within seconds, somebody asked me to do something.  And then I barely got to sit down for the next several hours.

Everyone agrees I never should have said it out loud.

I did take a break around 3.  I swapped my hiking boots (de rigueur daily wear) for trail runners.  I found them under my desk when we were packing up to move.  Who knew?  They're pretty new looking too.  They squeak, which is probably why I quit wearing them way back when.  Anyway, wearing my new-looking trail runners of squeakiness, I took off for a quick walk-jog.  Mostly a jog actually.  It was very pleasant.  I may have said it before, but I will say it again:  I am so lucky to have found a form of exercise that I like so much.  Why do I like it so much more now than when I ran cross country in high school?  It's a mystery.

JD had plans this evening.  I was invited if I wished to go, but I've been to a car nerd event once before and it was so dull that I am still matte colored.  So I declined.  Instead, I went to see the new Harry Potter movie!  So exciting!  I haven't been to a movie in ages, and I *love* the Harry Potter series.  The movie did not disappoint.  I was spellbound.  (Hee!)  Seriously, it's a long movie, and I didn't notice the time passing.  Okay, I noticed the aches I always get in the movie theater seating, but other than that I was unconscious of time.  Lovely movie.  Can't wait to see the other half.

On the way home, apprehensive about the state of my house (because I'd left the kittens out while I was away), I distracted myself by totaling the cost of the event.  $12.25 for a ticket.  $6 for popcorn.  $1 for the Zevia soda I smuggled in.  (I feel so guilty!  But they don't offer caffeine free stevia sweetened diet soda at the theater.)  Nearly twenty dollars I spent to take myself out for popcorn and a movie.  That's definitely date-worthy expenditure.  And I must say I'm an excellent date.  I didn't hog the knee room, spill the popcorn, or burp during a quiet scene.  I was wonderful company.

The house was still standing when I got home.  I haven't counted heads yet but there aren't any trails of blood so I'm assuming everybody survived.  Tonight will also be the kittens' first night not locked up while we are sleeping.  Likely it will not be a restful night.  Those kittens can get their rumble on.  They rebound off of the walls and balusters.  It creates a tremendous racket.  How does such a small animal sound so much like an elephant when it runs?

Running while standing still: a cliche, but still true

The title will be explained later.

I got to have my boobs handled and painfully squished* by a total stranger this morning.  Combine that with waking up a little bit late, missing breakfast, and greeting the first cold rainy morning of fall, and my day started AWESOME.

I got to have breakfast in the radiology office building's deli, so I could leave behind the horror of cold hard plastic for an icy cold soda and an egg sandwich.  Oh, I do love breakfast sandwiches.  They are totally better than boob squeezing.

I didn't have any enzymes with me but I ate my sandwich anyway.  Oddly, my stomach wasn't upset afterwards.  This made me say "hmmm" and text my husband.

At work, I spent the majority of my day attempting to do something which is by all accounts vital.  However, I can't actually access the website I need to use.  Okay, I can access it, but I can't make it *work*.  Tech support is very sorry but they don't support my type of computer.  One person claims to have gotten it to work, but I couldn't get in touch with her for details.  I tried various things, but none of them worked either.  And all my usual resources didn't have good ideas.  So today I spent my whole day working furiously while getting nothing done.  Hence the title of today's post.

I don't feel too bad about this.  I still have leftover internal peace from my hike.  I can feel it eroding, but it's still there.  I wonder how many days of Agency stress it takes to eat that much peace?  Following a sand dune analogy, all it really takes is one big storm.  But a season of daily tides will also eat it away.

On a hunch I didn't take any enzymes with lunch, either, and my stomach was still good.  This has prompted me to google these terms:  andrographis, liver, and digestion.  It turns out that andrographis is particularly good for the liver and digestion, and specifically promotes enzyme production.  And I have noticed my digestion being generally happier since I started taking andrographis in June to treat Lyme Disease. 

Oh, how I wish my parents' medical comfort level had included herbalism when I was a child.  I might have known of this herb thirty five years ago.  So, so many unhappy days could have been averted.  But now I know.  And now I can digest mightily.

I still don't know why it hurts when I drink alcohol (Oh alcohol, I miss you so much.  Write soon.)  I hope the naturopath I'm going to see will be able to tell me.  I do have a completely unfounded theory, of course.  My theory is that my liver is not used to producing enzymes, so it's painful like any other unused item in the body would be after you started exercising it.  The fact that it's been over three months tends to refute my theory.  But why should I be the only (pseudo)scientist not to ignore evidence they don't like?  Everybody else does it!

JD has been doing the Couch to 5K program all summer and he did really well at it.  Just recently it occurred to me that maybe I should try it too.  I don't know why.  It's not like I don't exercise.  Or like I have extra time.  Or I like running.  But it does seem like a fairly quick way to burn calories, and that I like very much.  And regular running could help keep me fit for my less regular but still energy intensive activities.  Long story not much shorter, I decided to give it a go.

I didn't put much effort into it.  An hour before I started I was still pretty dubious that I could, or would, even do it.  I downloaded two podcasts last night that play music for you and tell you when to run and when to walk.  They were free so no loss if I bailed.  And then at the end of the workday today, I thought "What the hell."  And I came home and told JD not to fix dinner yet because I was going running.

JD looked pretty darn surprised.  And then he decided to go too.  He had skipped his run because it was pouring this morning.  We both went and put on running gear.  In his case this didn't involve any searching or decisions, but I had to find a sports bra, some shorts that wouldn't ride up, and something approximating running shoes.  I had noticed an old pair of trail runners in my hiking gear over the weekend but they had no insoles.  A few minutes and a few modifications later, I was as ready as a well rounded (hee) woman could be.

And you know what?  It wasn't bad.  I even kind of liked it.  I felt good enough that I was tempted to keep running when the guy told me to walk.  Sanity prevailed, however.  I figure whoever came up with the program is pretty smart, because it has worked for lots of people.  And I am not that kind of smart.  So I ran when the nice man said to run, and walked when he said to walk.  And I might do it again on Wednesday.

The one thing I didn't like was the jiggling.  My well roundedness was bouncing up and down with every stride.  It was distracting and awkward.  Maybe that's why they make those compression shorts.

*for my annual mammogram, so I or my insurance company paid for the pleasure