A Thousand Words

I completely forgot to mention that I signed up for the triathlon this weekend. This will be the third year, hooray! Last year I did pretty awful compared to my first year, I wasn’t in great enough shape for it. This year should hopefully be different. I have 172 days to get in the buffest shape of my entire life. Holla! Also, I need to figure out what to do about swimming. Since moving to the Eastside I am no longer close to my beloved Ballard pool. All of the pools around here charge FAR more than what I want to pay for the use of their facility. There’s a Bally’s I was a member of a few years ago that has a pool. Obviously I never used it when I was an actual member, but if they can give me a good deal on a membership, that might be the best option.

And… OH MI GAH — Heroes last night? What an amazing episode. I loved little Hiro. haha! Also, I was completely distracted the entire time radioactive dude was on screen because he looks EXACTLY like the caveman guys from the Geico commericals.

Anyone around here watch Prison Break? My boss just gave me the first season on DVD. I’ve heard some good things about it. Also, did anyone watch The Black Donnelly’s last night?

I really need to get out of the house more.

Today I received an undisclosed sum of money from the sale of 2 of my photos. It was the first time I had actually sold any of my photos, so it was pretty sweet. I had a heck of a time pricing the photos out, and really wanted to just give them away for free, but, I’m poor and would like all the extra cash possible. So, yeah, that was cool.

Also, another cool thing is that I accomplished my goal of running 16 times in 4 weeks. I’ve enjoyed the last few days where I’ve had no pressure in needing to run that day. It got a little stressful the last week of the challenge. On March 1st I’ll be beginning a new challenge, and I think I’ll do distance this time. I’m tentatively thinking a total of 45 miles for 4 weeks. We’ll see.

This weekend my mom told me the wedding will no longer be in October, but June instead. So now we have to scrap the cute wedding invites I designed and go for something a little more summery. Also, she’s asked me to help in coming up with ideas for the wedding, and can I just say that I’m absolute crap at that? It’s a good thing the mens don’t see me fit for marriage, otherwise I’d probably want to kill myself if I had to do this for my own wedding.

So, anyway -that’s about all for now. My life is boring and Growing Pains is back on. Peace out peeps.

I’m pretty sure we’ve covered this before, but let me say again that I love making little projects for myself. My current project has to deal with running. I’ve never really enjoyed running. Actually, I hated it. It’s my least favorite portion of the triathlon, as the biking and swimming come easily to me.

Since about mid-January I’ve been making more of an effort to overcome my hatred towards running. I’ve actually done pretty well. I got the Nike Sport Kit for my Nano and it is the best thing that’s ever happened to my workout routine. It’s a great motivator during the run, and even afterwards it has graphs of all previous runs and all the information you could ever want related to your workout. So, anyway last month I made a goal to run 25 miles, and it tracked my progress. I failed miserably at it, but that’s okay. My goal for the month of February was to run 16 times in 4 weeks. I thought this was somewhat agressive, but doable. I took a bit of a hit while in Hawaii, but I’ve been trying to make up for lost time. I’ve got 4 days left of the challenge and I have to run all 4 days to meet my goal. It will suck, and my leg will hate me for it, but I’ll do ‘er.

AND. I’ve also decided that for the rest of the year I will participate in one 5k (or similar) every month. January will be the only month I missed, and quite frankly I wouldn’t have done well anyway. I’ve got February checked off the list, and yesterday I signed up for the St. Pat’s Dash for March. I did some research and found races for every other month throughout the remainder of the year and I’m pretty excited. The one in April I plan on doing is an 8K (5 miles) and I’m a little nervous about that.

As you may have noticed I switched up the theme again. Sorry, Krysten! I added a little sidebar that will calculate averages of my run data for each month. I’m trying to find a layout that will make it look somewhat streamlined, but I don’t think I can get that unless I had my own domain. (I know, Ross.) I will also add a little section with the races I plan on running.

So, anyway…this is kind of exciting for me, and I guess we’ll see if I succeed, or fail miserably.

I think I’m done with LOST. I caught the encore of last weeks and yeah…NOT impressed. Also, I turned the new episode off halfway through because I was bored. AND…I’m annoyed that they moved the air time to 10pm. I can’t record it and quite frankly, it’s not worth me losing sleep over. And that’s all I have to say about THAT.

Sometime soon I will be jumping on the House bandwagon since Heids bought the first & second seasons on DVD. Ahh, yes.  And I still would like to be all about 24 as well, but that requires a significant amount of time and…well, I guess it’s feasible since I don’t have that much of a life.

1.YOUR FULL NAME shells munkalicious burnin’ love

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? i really have no idea, actually

3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY?? briefly during my trip home to seattle. i was beyond exhausted and just wanted to be home.
4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? at times – if i write nicely like we were taught in design class (remember that beckster??!)

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? hamsky
6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? maybe, but i’d probably get sick of me

7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? i’m awful at keeping them. just ask my blog.

8. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? only every second of my life

9. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? yes, we get along quite well.

10. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? i have absolutely no desire to do that

11. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? honey nut cheerios and sometimes reeses puffs
12. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? absolutely no
13. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? i’m beefy

14. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE FLAVOR OF ICE CREAM? Tillamook Mint chocolate chip

15. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? their smile

16. RED OR PINK? red

17. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF? my few extra lbs. (dr. phil moment)

18. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? grams

19. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? if they so desire

20. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? black lounge pants. shoeless
21. WHAT IS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? a Weight Watchers ice cream bar

22. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? LOST
23. FAVORITE SMELL? fresh cut grass

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? Wes

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? yep!

26. FAVORITE DRINK? water

27. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH? football

28. HAIR COLOR? brunette, slightly sun kissed. so precious, right?

29. EYE COLOR? blue, blue.

30. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? yes, but would LOVE to get Lasik!

31. FAVORITE FOOD? Hmmm… Probably a really excellent cheeseburger with fries.

32. SUMMER OR WINTER? Summer!

33. HUGS OR KISSES? kisses

34. FAVORITE DESSERT? ice cream in the summer — cake in the winter

35. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? no one!

36. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING? The Other Woman — total beach read.
37. WHAT’S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? food crumbs
38. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST ON TV LAST NIGHT?? i don’t think i watched tv last night
39. FAVORITE SOUNDS? rain (on a tin roof)
40. STONES OR BEATLES? i don’t care

41. FURTHEST YOU’VE BEEN FROM HOME? honolulu
42. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? the claw!

43. LEAST LIKELY TO SEND THIS BACK? everyone!

44. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? mora, minnesota
45. A FAVORITE MOVIE? Shawshank Redemption/ Love Actually/ Tombstone/ 80s flicks/ and so on and so forth

46. AWESOME PLACE YOU’VE VISITED? maui

47. APPLES OR ORANGES? the fuji apple is the best apple that’s ever happened to me

48. SOMETHING FEW KNOW ABOUT ME? I was asked to quit piano lessons by my instructor because i was awful

49. A FAVORITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL? probably um…yeah…i don’t really know. design something or other

50. MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU HAVE MET? Snoop Dogg and I nodded at eachother outside a Champps sporting goods store.

Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. Seriously. We heard it about every other song.

Anyway, YES I am back on the mainland. I have to say that I am rather happy to be back.. We had a great time on the trip, but all came to realize that we are not fit to travel together for more than 72 hours at a time.

I’ve got to say that I was delightfully surprised by the horse ride. Don’t get me wrong, I was scared out of my mind to get on that beast, but she was a lovely horse that treated me well, and I apologized profusely to her for being a smidge on the chunky side. Although I was the least experienced on the ride, I frequently found myself in the back of the pack because Cricket was a Sunday driver. Not that I minded. I almost had a heart attack when we started trotting.

We also took a boat ride out to the Molokini Crater for some snorkeling. I had wanted to do this the last time I was there because they had said it’s the best snorkeling around. Boy, were they WRONG. It completely sucked. There were about two different fish and essentially no interesting coral. The saving grace was that our Captain, John, was a dirty old man who was HILARIOUS. He made the trip. Also, we saw several whales and that was hands down, my favorite part of the trip. I seriously couldn’t get over it. I would now like a North Pacific humpback for a pet.

We also hit up the Road to Hana, because that’s really not something you should miss while in Hawaii. Also, when you have a Mustang convertible, you should drive it as much as possible. We saw numerous waterfalls, Heids hurt herself numerous times and we saw a dude jump into a shallow pool of rocks.

On the last Saturday we were there we had all signed up to do a 5k Run for the Whales. Unfortunately, Heids hurt several parts of her body the previous day and Buck had been having bad back problems, so I not only ran for the whales, I ran for them. The run started out miserable because it was hot and hilly. Eventually I found my groove and stumbled across the finish line. Plus, I got a free t-shirt and it’s adorable.

We spent a lot of time hanging out, reading, getting burnt at the beach, flirting with our favorite waiter, Miguel, at Cheeseburger in Paradise, and avoiding another waiter at Cheeseburger who had to help us get our parking brake down after it somehow malfunctioned and wouldn’t move. Good times.

I was really looking forward to being back in Seattle, but boy, due to several things, was it a long trip home. See Pictures of the Day for Sunday and Monday. In the past 48 hours I’ve gotten roughly 7 hours of sleep and I feel pretty miserable. I managed to get my laundry done last night, but now it’s all over my bed and my room is in a state of disarray. I’ve got loads of work emails to go through and loads of TV shows to catch up on. Hello, Grey’s, LOST, Heroes & The Office. I’m going to make it my goal to be in bed by 8:30 tonight.

There are, obviously, loads upon loads of pictures at Flickr.