A Different Friday Night Out

Last night Daniel and I volunteered at The River food pantry with our church small group.  It's an organization on the far east side of town that provides hot meals, clothing, food, basic medical screenings (like blood sugar and blood pressure) and literature about paying bills, etc a few nights a week.  If you are in Madison and are interested in doing a service project for low-income community members, it's a great place.  You just show up at 5pm- no special training or screening needed- and they'll put you to work.  Daniel was the air traffic controller for shopping carts entering the food pantry area, and I worked in the clothing room just keeping things from becoming a giant mess.

Each volunteer gets a break sometime during the evening to have some of the hot dinner being served.  The whole operation was well run and everyone was in, served, and out by 8pm.  The hot dinner was actually the thing I was most impressed with.  I thought we were going to get Hamburger Helper with sides of mac n cheez, potato chips, and off-brand Oreos for sure, but actually we had ham and bean soup with 3-bean salad and a green salad.  Not only was it pretty healthy, but it tasted good.

Three things that last night made me acutely aware that I take for granted:
1. I'm very thankful that I don't have to wear second-hand underwear.
2. I'm very thankful that if I'm still hungry after the small hot dinner at the food bank I can get a sandwich.
3. I'm very thankful that I don't live in my car- especially on a cold Wisconsin night.

I definitely plan to serve there again and donate clothes and housewares there.  And think back to this list when I'm tempted to complain about the never-ending winter.


What's something you know you take for granted but are actually very thankful for?

Mississippi

Thanks for all the comments about my long run pacing.  I guess everyone fixates on some part of their training and worries if they're doing it right.  I'll just keep doing what I've been doing.  Plus I have a half marathon fitness testing race that should help me determine if my goal race pace is realistic or not.

I've been back for more than 10 days.  The statute of limitations for making excuses for not posting is up.  I don't think this is going to get that long, but I was sort of afraid it would, which has been my excuse for not posting up to this point.

So here goes...

Two Saturdays ago (July 11), 50 some kids and 12 leaders piled into 9 rented minivans and/or SUVs.  I drove a black Chrysler Town and Country.  We took two days to get to our site (kind of near Gulfport, MS), stopping the first night at a church in Memphis.

Sunday afternoon we had orientation and learned what group we would be in and what project we would work on.  Fortunately for my pale, pale skin I was placed in a group that was going to work on flooring inside a house.  Half of my group was from my church and half was from a church from Austin, MN.

The first thing I will say is that the organization that put together our trip, Next Step Ministries, seemed to have great rapport with the community we were serving.  This was the second (I think) summer NSM was working in this community, and every interaction I saw between the staff and residents was very positive.  It seemed to me that the residents felt like someone was finally helping them five years after Katrina came through and that the NSM staff was interested in engaging with residents to solve problems- not just showing up to "do some stuff for the residents".  Obviously I was only there for a week, but I got a very good vibe from the staff/resident interactions.

Our accommodations were what you would expect if you've ever been on a service trip.  We slept on the floor, we showered in a trailer, we ate whatever was on sale at Costco.  Those weren't my favorite parts, but it does give the whole experience a "summer camp" type feel.

My group really worked hard to finish our project.  We re-floored two bedrooms, a utility room, a bathroom, and a hallway in a house that hadn't been cleaned in... well... let's say they gave up when that whole Monica Lewenskiy thing went down.  The couple was elderly, and I'm sure they did the best they could, but it was pretty gross.

Important life lesson: Never put carpet in a bathroom.  That's all (mold, pee smell) I will say about that.

But we floored:

 
We sawed

We moved a lot of stored junk

Including this guy, which was cool, but not what we wanted to find stashed behind a full bookcase!

And interacted with the residents and their family (including pets)

Friday was supposed to be a beach day, but we got rained out.  Pretty sad because some of the kids had never seen the ocean before.  I think the MN group actually went back to the beach for a little while on Saturday because it was sunny.

As for us, Saturday we packed up and made the hard drive back to Madison.  It took 17 hours, which I think is pretty darn good for a 9-vehicle caravan of high-schoolers.

So it wasn't your typical vacation, but as with all the other trips I've done, I had a good time, and I'd definitely do another one.

On our way

We're headed out to Mississippi today.  We'll spend tonight in Memphis and then continue on and return next Saturday.  A 17-miler (3 minutes faster than last week, woot!) yesterday should keep me at peace during the long car ride today.  See you next week!

Coffee bath

Is not the new spa trend but what I gave myself this morning.  Fortunately it mostly went on my robe so I didn't get burned.  Unfortunately it meant an emergency laundry run.  Back to fortunately, no one else was doing laundry at 5am.

Thanks for all the kind comments about my 20k race report yesterday.  You're right that being able to tough it out even when you feel like this

is an accomplishment in itself.

Oh!  And anonymous commenter who let me know that the 1/2 marathon course does NOT go over Observatory Hill- you made my day!

Yesterday morning was spent doing chores around the house, and in the afternoon we had Love Madison, our church's once-a-year outreach Sunday.  Our group was sent to a non-profit that takes medical supply donations, cleans them up, and either sells them or sends them out to foreign countries and uses the proceeds to support orphanages in other countries.  It's kind of a complicated business model!  Certainly something I'd never considered before.  Anyway, we spent the afternoon cleaning up beds and cribs and IV poles and chairs and walkers and canes and canes and canes and re-organizing them in the warehouse so the group can do a better job with inventory.  I never thought we'd be done but sure enough we finished a 1/2 hour early.  The group seemed very thankful to have the job done, so I'm glad we were able to help.

I also cooked two easy but photogenic meals:

Here's lunch- apricot and prosciutto pizza (see sidebar for recipe)

And dinner- shrimp taco salad

I'm headed to the gym this morning for one more recovery day after the race.  I'm feeling better, but I know it's prudent to take it easy after really hard efforts.  I'll certainly be ready to run again tomorrow.  Have a great Monday, all.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

It was hard getting up this morning.  My sleep schedule is all whacked out from my late night Saturday and late morning yesterday.  This weekend flew by, and I would have liked to add about 4 more hours to it for sleep purposes alone.

I did get a lot done, though.  We did church, and then went to a meeting about a new site the church is opening downtown (in a rented music venue/night club- gulp).  I came home, cleaned, yoga-ed, practiced piano, scarfed down a sandwich, and went to my last youth group of the school year.  (We'll be on vacation for the actual last one).  I was afraid the kids wouldn't want the cookies I brought because there was a lot of other sweet stuff donated last, but fortunately high school boys can eat anything at any time, and they scarfed them down and said they were good.

I'm not sure yet if I'm going to do it again in the fall.  I'll be honest.... I was not the greatest youth leader out there.  I'm not BFFs with any of the kids in my community group.  Plus, D and I are both pretty interested in helping out to get the downtown location going.  I guess I'll see how I feel about it at the end of the summer after I've had a break for awhile.  It can't say it won't be nice to have my Sundays from 4-9pm back again.

Well, that's all I've got.  I need to drag my zombie behind to the gym for some strength training this morning.  Have a good Monday, all.

Little pretty ones

The first signs of life are appearing in the garden!

Tiny baby spinach

baby lettuce

and baby onions

We've now almost filled up the "cold weather" crop region of our garden plot.  There's room for one more planting of lettuce and one more planting of *probably* onions.
 

May 1 is the magic date for plants that don't need it to be hot hot hot (like tomatoes), but don't do well with cold.  So in a few weeks we'll be adding in things like cucumbers, the sweet potatoes currently residing in the windowsill, and broccoli plants.

After gardening, D and I hit the gym for strength training.  I'm happy to report that after taking yesterday off from running, my shin feels completely better.  I'm going to test it out on an easy run today, but if everything feels okay, I'll do one last speed session tomorrow before the race Saturday.

Dinner was an old favorite:

Then we had our second to last youth group for the school year.  Not quite sure if I'm happy or sad about that yet!  

Last, but certainly not least, I want to give a huge good luck shout out to MarathonMaiden and everyone else running Boston today.  Enjoy the fruits of your hard work!

Let them eat cake

Tonight is Reach Feast (no good link, sorry) at our church, a dessert buffet and silent auction that benefits the church's international missions projects (mainly clean water and village development in Honduras, water and church support in Romania, and medical and AIDS relief in Kenya).  Because we have no $$$ to participate in the silent auction- one of the prizes is- no joke- dinner with one of the players on the Miracle on Ice hockey team and his wife, I did my part by baking a ton of desserts.

There are many great cookbooks and websites devoted to desserts, but you know who else knows how to make a mean cake?  Church ladies.  I used the cookbook from D's church from back when he was growing up in TN, and I can tell you from a few taste tests that the church ladies did not let us down.

Cake in pictures: 
Pineapple upside down cake

Red velvet cake

And what should you do with leftover icing?

Make brownies to go with it!

Fear not, all the deserts are still intact and ready for sampling tonight.

We had a healthy dinner brought to us by D and his mad cornstarch skillz.

Now all of the baked goods have to make it in the car with me to the church to be dropped off (and hopefully not dropped) this morning.

I had a good run yesterday am and am headed to the dungeon gym to lift at 6am so I can get back, shower, get to the church when it opens, and get to work in a timely manner.

Hope you all have a great Tuesday!

Week in Review- Going to Seattle Edition

Friday at work I found out that my abstract (and the abstracts of two coworkers who submitted them) were accepted for posters at the Society for Epidemiologic Research conference in Seattle this year.  Now I can take the (hopefully) because it is firmly in list of things I'm looking forward to.  Not only am I interested in the material presented at the conference, I'm excited that we will be near the touristy area and able to sneak in a trip to the Space Needle and Pikes Place Market in the after-conference house.

Now to the running week in review:
U- 5mi easy.  Not sure how long it took because I didn't bring my GPS.  Yoga
M- 7mi with 4x 3min hard, 2 min easy.  Didn't do my best job pushing myself through the intervals, but I'll have a chance to make up for it this week.
T- Strength training.  Yoga
W- 7mi progressive tempo.  Much better than last week.  I hit or was faster than all my prescribed paces.
R- 5mi easy.  Didn't take my watch again.
F- 12.5 mi long run in 1:58:30.  It took me a long time to feel warmed up during this run.  I was off pace by about 30 sec/mile compared to my normal long run pace, but I chalked it up to it being cold and early.  It was still in the long run pace range according the the McMillan running calculator.
S- Strength training.

Bringing the totals to:
Running: 36.5 mi
Strength training: 2x
Yoga: 2x

Not too much more to say about this week.  It had it's high points and low points, but it was a good training week all in all.  I'm still feeling healthy and motivated to run, which is good.

On the other hand, my schedule is still all out of whack.  I never got a nap yesterday, and we were eating dinner last night at 9pm.  I was back up at 5am to get in a run before church, and I have a TON of stuff to get done today: Church, meeting about our summer trip to Mississippi, bake two cakes for the desert fundraiser on Tuesday evening, and be back at 5pm for youth group.  Wish me luck!  Definitely no nap this afternoon.

Hope you all have a great Sunday.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Is what my brain feels like right now.  Unfortunately my body is not cooperating.  D and I both got up around 4am (the second day in a for for me) to get over to the church to help clean up after the lock in.  The kids had fun- I think.  They were pretty subdued by the time I got there.  Not even donuts got them excited.  The mess wasn't too bad and we were done by about 7:30am.

I took two kids home and D to work and I had just crawled back into bed when I got a text message.  Rewind for a minute... One of the kids from the lock in couldn't get inside when I took him home.  He tried to call someone to let him in using my phone, but the person didn't answer, so I took him to the friend's house.  Well, evidently he called his very concerned sister who became even more concerned when she got some phone calls from a mysterious number.  I found out later that her phone was almost out of batteries so she could send texts but not make calls.  Anyway... several text messages later she was convinced of her brother's safety, and all my thoughts of a morning nap were gone.  I feel like I've been up forever even though it's only 10:20.  I guess in a way I have.

I am very glad I did my long run yesterday rather than saving it for this morning because that's about the last thing I feel like doing right now.  It went pretty well other than being about 30 seconds/mile slower than I would have liked (and have been running the last few weeks).  It seemed like it took my body a lot longer to wake up than it normally does.  I chalk it up to a)It was cold (probably in the 20s), b)It was early (I was out the door at 5:30), and c)I hadn't had a rest day the day before like I normally do.  In any case, 9:30 min/mile is a perfectly appropriate pace for a long run for me according to the McMillan Running Calculator (with my goal half marathon pace plugged in) so I'm trying not to be unhappy with it.

Endurance Workouts	Pace/Mile	Pace/K
Recovery Jogs	10:12 to 10:42	6:20 to 6:39
Long Runs	9:12 to 10:12	5:43 to 6:20
Easy Runs	9:12 to 9:42	5:43 to 6:02

Last night we had dinner at Lao Laan-Xang, a Laotian/Southeast Asian restaurant on Madison's east side.

D had the khua nor mai, which was a garlicky chicken and vegetable dish, and I had a vegetarian peanut curry dish that I don't see on the online menu.  Both were served with white rice.  True to Midwestern form, D's dish, which he asked to be the "careful" level of spicy was totally bland (as far as spiciness was concerned), and mine, which I ordered "adventurous" had a nice mild spice to it.  Although it has super high ratings on Yelp, I was not blown away.  It was good.  It was different.  But it didn't leave me feeling like I couldn't wait to go back to try something else.  Maybe we will, and maybe we won't.

Otherwise not much else is going on.  I'm planning to head to the gym before lunch and do all the other normal around the house stuff.  Maybe I'll get in a nap later in the day.  Otherwise I'll sleep good tonight!  Have a great Saturday, all.

And back we go

The weekend always goes by too quickly. Just when I feel like I've got everything done and can chill out, it's time to go back again. Not sure how today will pan out as the big boss is back from a trip last week, but we have a collaborator coming into town, and then big boss x 2 are going on vacation for awhile.

Otherwise, yesterday was beautiful, and the rest of the week should be, too, which kind of makes up for Saturday. Yesterday afternoon I practiced piano, did some yoga, made a Target run, and went to youth group. If I haven't said it before, sophomores are a fun age. They are old enough to not be too obnoxious (for the most part), but they aren't old enough to be too cool and not listen. Well, they were kind of obnoxious at the beginning of the year, but they've gotten waaaaay better as time has gone on. We've been talking about some pretty serious "teen issues" like depression and addiction the last couple weeks, and my group has been able to maintain about 10 - 15 minutes of serious, reflective discussion each time. This is a big improvement on the beginning of the year especially the infamous Pokemon night when I couldn't get them to do anything but draw/watch each other draw Pokemon on the whiteboard.

Well, I'm off to the gym for some lifting action. Have a great Monday, all.

Oatmeal Crack

It's so nice to feel rested and refreshed on Sunday morning. Other than fixing my mittens (which got big holes in the thumbs- what?), practicing piano and running 6mi, I did nothing of consequence yesterday. I watched some Olympics, finished 1/8 of an afghan, had a nice dinner out with D at Tex Tubbs, and finished the evening off with a scoop of ice cream from The Chocolate Shoppe.

This morning we're going to 9:00am church then back home for brunch because we are DONE with 10:45 meetings (yay!). Before I went to bed last night I put together overnight crockpot oatmeal (recipe courtesy of J+A), which D has seen referred to on the internet as oatmeal crack because it's really good. The rest of the day will involve fridge cleaning, afghan making, Olympics watching, piano practicing, baked ziti making (?), yoga posing, and youth group.

Hope you all have a great Sunday!

Unscheduled rest day

Ah the URD. No one likes them... I haven't taken one in ages... but today it's time to turn in my "get out of running free" card. I don't feel horrible. I'm still going to work. But I don't feel very good either. I have that joint ache, headache, stomach-ickiness thing if that's what's going around. Obviously I feel good enough to get up to use the computer, but I felt bad enough to stay home from our small group meeting, which is something I really enjoy. Plus my run yesterday was not very good. I know trying to get back on the treadmill- especially to do my long run- would be counterproductive. We'll see how I feel this afternoon/tomorrow.

Today we're having a Mardi Gras potluck at work, which I'm using as an excuse to offload the ice cream tub worth of veggie chili I have leftover from the Super Bowl party. Otherwise not much else is going on. We have the church "family meeting" tonight, which is supposed to be a review of the last 10 years and layout the vision for the future. We've only been there for a year, and there were some major changes that happened in the years right before we came, so it should be interesting.

Hope you all have a good Tuesday.

Happy Valentines Day

Cute, eh? This was my Valentines card from D that I got last night because he's not so great at keeping secrets :). For two people who aren't into holidays that much, I feel like we're "doing" a lot for one of the sillier ones. It's more like we decided to do some things that happened to fall on Valentines day rather than we tried to make plans for today. First we have church and our membership interviews (YAY for being almost done with membership class). Then we're going to see the Peking Acrobats at 3pm and to Monty's Blue Plate Diner for dinner and desert.

I also want to send a special birthday shout out to my brother-in-law J who is 25 (I think...) today.

Yesterday was filled with phone conversation, reading, sleep, cleaning out my sewing/craft stuff (which has been on my to-do list for AGES), and speed skating (crazy wipe out in the finals!).

Have a great Sunday all.

Worth it

I'm tired and sore... I'm not sure that none toes froze off... but going to the dance was totally worth it. Yeah, there were a lot of high schoolers getting one more wear out of a prom dress, but there were older people too, and we went with a group so we brought our own party.


So now you know I ended up choosing dress D.

We started with dinner at the Great Dane and headed over for the dance around 8:30pm. It was a little lame until the band started playing at 9pm. The music at all of my high school dances were done by a DJ, but having the interactive element with the band made it a lot more fun. Plus because most the members in the band actually do the music at church on Sunday, you felt like you "knew" them. They played a good mix of old and new stuff to keep everybody happy. At 11pm, we were all pretty tired and ready to call it a night. Why do so many songs require jumping?

Now I'm taking this morning slow and easy. I slept in until 7:30am and am not planning to run until before lunch. Yes, I like to keep myself on a regular schedule, but I'm working on convincing myself sleeping late and running late one weekend morning won't ruin everything. Otherwise this weekend I have some errands and chores to do, but I want to take at least a little chill out time. Yoga and piano are also on the list. I think part of my problem is that (and I'm sure I'm not alone) I have a hard time transitioning from work mode to weekend mode. It's hard to get back in the swing of things on Monday, but by Friday I'm still ready to work the next day so I'm feeling a little anxiety about all the things on my work "to do" list that are waiting for me Monday. BUT I know that mixing work and weekend time is counterproductive. Let work time be for work and rest/recharge time be for resting and getting ready for the week to come.

Well, I'm going to go make a good-faith effort at relaxing + being productive. Happy Saturday, all.