The weekend. Sponsored by Twitter

Nick and I had one of the best weekends that we'd had in a very long time. Nothing in particular stood out, it was a collection of fun times, great weather and awesome friends, so much so, that it deserves its own recap. This particular weekend happened two weekends ago - and since I'm a bad blogger, I'm late on the posting of why I thought it was blog-worthy. BUT, its my blog and I can do what I want, so there.

Since it was a four day weekend, we were in to just about everything. Friday started me with a trip to Hillbilly Beach at Alum Creek. Nick got home from work and we were off to dinner with friends, followed by a rooftop viewing of Red, White & Boom.

Saturday started with some patriotic donuts from Kroger, followed by our very first Farmer's Market in Worthington.  After some shopping, we were off to Oakland Nursery to pick up some tomato plants and a few flowers. Once we got home, we planted everything before relaxing in Chino's pool in the backyard. Once we got cleaned up, we headed BACK out to see some friends downtown and to do some Gallery Hopping in the Short North. We started at Surly Girl and then hopped our way down High Street, hitting a few bars and restaurants along the way. We called it an early night, heading home to spend some time on our neighbors' patio before heading to bed.

Sunday morning, we hung out at home for a bit before heading to a friend's 4th annual 4th of July Party!  Read her post for the recap, but the food was awesome and the company was even better.  We hung out on her deck, drinking sangria and Elevator beer, listening to music and watching Wiffle ball and home run derby!  After chilling for a few hours, we ran home to retrieve the mutt and then headed to PSL's 4th of July get together.  This was kind of a big deal for Chino to get an invite to this particular function because PSL's house is typically a no-dog zone.  They must have a reputation in the neighborhood because  an unlucky feline happened upon the backyard while Chino was on patrol.  We had a near-miss before the kitty jumped the fence and was on its merry way.

The next day was spent at Hillbilly Beach at Alum Creek, lounging in the sun and people watching. Fun times, great people, awesome weather.  Perfect celebration of summer.

My Weekend Started Last Wednesday

Weekend recap (as a "single" lady, I took full advantage) thorough the lens of my iPhone and thanks to some image enhancing with iPhoto.

• Happy hour with PSL.  Took the opportunity to cook myself dinner by ordering a fish sandwich and some fries.  I also learned that my new iPhone has the capability for optical zoom.

• Lunch with the work gals.  It was Barracuda's birthday, you know.
• Dinner with the girls.  We "golfed" 18 holes on the patio at Jimmy V's.  Good food, better conversation.
• A "19th hole" beer with PSL.  I think he decided that we should date while Nick was away.  We also found out that his tie matches the inside of my change purse!  We sent the photo to Nick.

• Daycare for Chino!  Oh happy day, he had so much fun. Ran him home after work...

• Dinner with the Franklin girls.  Lost Shepherd is officially approved and will be added to the regular restaurant rotation.
• Drinks with Andy-roo!  Followed by more drinks with Mr. Beer Guys and tug of war with PJ McDuck (aka Boris)

• Hubby Returns!  I welcomed him by serenading him with Alejandro through Andy-roo's sunroof.  Sadly, there's no picture.
• Drinks with Andy-Roo and Hubby too!  The band, The Winnie Cooper Project did a pretty fun rendition of Snoop Doggy Dog.
• McDonald's.  Thank goodness for our delivery boy.  He was thrilled, can you tell?

• Flat tire repair.  I was sitting on the curb "helping".

• Chino got a pool!  Woohoo!  I wore Nick down enough and he relented.

• Drinks with Hubby!  Powell Festival was lame, so we headed to the Liberty Tavern
• Ice Cream.
• Back to the Future!  We're lame and fell asleep.
• Visit with the Grandparents-in-law.  Turkey burgers ala Nick. YUM.
• Bodega with Andy-roo and hubby too!  Youngs Double Chocolate Stout + Jeni's Salty Caramel = L O V E

• Crazy thunderstorms.  Amazingly enough, the power stayed on.

The eyes say it all

Who says that the mutt has self control issues?  If that were true, this post would be about a mauling instead of about me putting a Frisbee on Chino's head and pretending that its a sombrero. 

Crazed Lunatic

Chino's extensive vocabulary includes the words, "ice cream" and "ride".  When you put those words together, he turns into a ball of nerves and energy, crying and pacing until we get in the car and on our way.  For a change of pace, we went to Coldstone Creamery.  He waited in the car while Nick and I went in to order.  Since mix-in's aren't necessarily the healthiest option for our canine, we got him a French Vanilla kid's cone.  When I came out with his cone in one hand and my delicious Oreo somethingorrather in the other, he transitioned from crazy to focused.  We walked over to this picnic table and his little brain went to work on how he could get himself as close to the ice cream as possible.  Without missing a beat, he jumped up on the table and sat himself down (because sitting gets him whatever he wants, apparently).  Nick and I just shook our heads.  Since this wasn't our table, we let him stay.  His body language tells all:  He's sitting, but leaning in, trying to chomp down on that ice cream, neck stretched out as far as it can go, trying to take huge bites out of the ice cream and cone.  We know that he doesn't have the best manners, but please know that even this arrangement is not acceptable in our free-for-all household.

Long overdue vacation post, #4.5 - St. Goar

We woke up in our "dorm room", feeling a little rough, but thankful that we had saved that sandwich from the night before.  We were both feeling great, since we had CLEAN CLOTHES to wear.  Nick had clothes that resembled the kind that were MIA.  I had clothes that were acceptable, at best.  The jeans were atrocious.  My mom put it best when she saw a photo of me in them, 'oh....".  Yep. OH.  As in, OH, those look like Nick's pants.  Or, OH, those pants are doing nothing for you.  Or, OH, where in the hell is your luggage because those pants are ruining all of your vacation photos.  Yeah. OH.  But I digress...

After breakfast, we had some time to look around St. Goar in the daylight.  Again, very cute town, and I bet that it would be a totally different place if the weather was nicer or if we were in the peak of tourist season.  Since it was early March, things were pretty quiet.  We did get to go to the family-owned beer stein store, where Nick and I picked out a couple of beauties that will be debuting at this year's Oktoberfest, 3.0.  Two beer steins also means that there are two more items checked off of the "cradle list".

After learning a little about beer steins, we wandered down the street to snap a few more pictures before we got back on the bus on our way to Munich!

Here I am with the world's largest cuckoo clock!  

A slightly-hungover Nick with an official Biergarten sign!

Farewell St. Goar!  Next stop...MUNICH!!!!  Also - please note the ridiculous pants + gym shoes combination.  OH...I should have cropped our legs out of this picture.

Long overdue vacation post, #4 - St. Goar

When we left off, we were boarding the bus in Amsterdam, H&M bags in hand.  Next stop:  Germany!!!!!  We were both so excited to see Germany, specifically Munich (Munchen), after a brief pit stop in St. Goar (pronounced Saint Gware).  St. Goar was essentially a rest stop between Amsterdam and Munich, but was a cool little town right on the Rhine River.  Our drive to St. Goar took us on the Autobahn, where we learned that if you have a German-registered car, you can still drive as fast as you want.  However, new EU regulations mean that non-German vehicles are subject to a speed limit.  Since our bus was Hungarian or something, we had to obey the traffic laws.  No speeding for us.

The weather was kind of dreary, so most of us took the opportunity to catch up on some sleep while we traveled on the smooth highway.  Once we got closer though, we started to see castles!  It was the neatest thing, driving down the Rhine valley seeing castle after castle up on the mountains, along the river.

Also along the river, up the sides of the mountains were miles and miles of vineyards.  We took photos out of the bus windows, which don't do the slopes justice. 

The town of St. Goar is pretty small.  One main street, a hotel, some bars and a few shops.  Its definitely a tourist town and I'm sure that its a whole different place in the spring, summer and fall.  We were there on a pretty dreary, rainy day, so there weren't many people out and about.  Our bus was the only one in town and we seemed to fill up the hotel.  We arrived at Hotel Montag, a small family-owned hotel on the banks of the Rhine River and had a few minutes to freshen up before dinner and wine tasting.  Our room was pretty tiny, it reminded us of a dorm room.  Unlike the hotel in Amsterdam, it had a shower curtain.  This made us both happy,  almost as happy as the clean clothes that we were going to get to wear the next morning.  Dinner was surprisingly good - spaaten noodles, soup, meat and salad and of course, a mug of beer.  We ate and then headed to a wine tasting in a 17th century wine cellar.

On our way to the wine tasting, we happened to be walking with Johnny, our bus driver.  He motioned us down an alley and to a gate, where he said, "Stick your camera in there, make sure the flash is on, and take a picture."  Of course, I couldn't resist, so I did.  Here's the picture.  It still makes me laugh.

The wine cellar was very neat.  Definitely old.  We headed down the stairs and walked into a room with lots of empty bottles and huge barrels.  You could tell that Contiki helps to keep this place in business.  All of the barrels were filled with signatures of past Contiki tours.  I took the opportunity to capture our lack of luggage situation, "screw the luggage, we have wine!"

 

 

When the wine tasting was over, we all headed back to the hotel.  Some of us stayed up and drank some  more beer before bed.  The bar was small, but great for chatting, so we ended up staying up a little later than we had intended.  We were grateful that we had saved a sandwich from one of our rest stops en route.  I'm pretty sure that it saved us both from a hangover the next day.

Are you terminal?

The answer is no, I'm not.  But someone made a bit of a joke about it a few weeks ago when they found out that I was about to embark on my first 1/2 Marathon.  The exact statement was, "Are you sure you're not terminal?"  It was mostly because we had just returned from a dream vacation in Europe and then were planning to run 13.1 miles.  Why?  Just to say we did it.  I say we, but this little endeavor was totally my idea.  It was one of those things that I had always wanted to do, but that I could never get the guts to actually attempt.  I would come up with every excuse from, being too fat, to not having time to train, to not knowing where to start.  You name it, I thought of it.

This time though, I outsmarted myself.  I registered for the race in February.  Yep.  Early-bird registration.  This means that I was committed and had to figure this thing out.  So, I found the training plan, running shoes, running pants and finally a perfect bra configuration, and got things under way.  We ran our short distances during the week and long runs over the weekends.  Side note:  We ended up taking two weeks off for Europe (planned in the training schedule) and another week (unplanned) post-Europe as we both recovered from some gnarly chest colds.  For us, the three week hiatus wasn't the best of ideas, but it was the situation and we made the most of it.

For me, running is about 90% mental and 10% physical.  For some reason, I get it in my head that I can't do it, won't do it, am not built to do it, etc and then I start walking.  I know that I'm strong and cardiovasularly fit and able to do this, but no matter what I told myself, I wouldn't just KEEP GOING.  This was a source of ultimate frustration for Nick, because he is my #1 cheerleader and he knew I could do it.  He'd been trying to tell me for weeks actually, but I refused to listen. 

Three (I think?) weeks before the 1/2 marathon, we had to run about 7 miles.  I had a crappy day and couldn't even finish 3.  Pissed was an understatement.  I knew that I could do it, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.  That makes sense in my head.  Nick finished more than I did, but even he didn't get farther than 6 (which to me might as well have been 60). 

The next weekend was the breakthrough that I had so desperately needed.  We ran from the Hills Market, down to Antrim, around the lake and back.  I made it about 7 miles before I had to stop.  Yep!  Seven!  I couldn't believe it.  The next weekend, I was able to do the same route, but add another lap around the lake - all without stopping.  I was so proud that I wanted to cry. 

The following weekend was the race.  I was so nervous and excited and scared all at once.  Of course the weather didn't cooperate with us, and the rain started to come down.  I had started out a little faster than I would have liked, so I ran out of gas a lot sooner than I had wanted.  Originally, I had hoped to run about 10 miles before I would have to start "wogging", but I feel like I didn't make it much past 5 before I had to alternate.  Add to that the rain, and it was a pretty miserable race for me.  The important part though?  I finished.  I jogged across the finish line and completed my goal of 13.1 miles.  The thing that made me mad?  I did it in 3:04.  My goal was under 3:00.  However, I did it.  I finished and didn't allow quitting to be an option. I listened to my body and slowed down when it needed me to.  I allowed myself to enjoy the experience (as much as possible, anyway) and to inspire other people like me who thought that 13.1 miles would never be an option.  I allowed myself to enjoy running.  That in and of itself was the ultimate achievement.

Nick

  Me