A Little of This, Some More of That

I am not a huge Halloween fan. A couple years ago my in an attempt to get in the spirit of Halloween, my coworkers and I dressed up for the holiday.

I chose to go to work as a mouse. My logic behind this was that you could still get your work done with homemade ears and a foam tail, and it was relatively original. I spent a couple of days working on my costume i.e. ears and tail. Well I made the ears just fine, but the tail ended up looking more like an elephant's trunk than a rodent tail. So I switched it around and went to work as a pachyderm. I tied my trunk to my face and tried to breath through my mouth the rest of the day. It was fun, and I got a lot of laughs.

The plan this year was to dress up like a bull’s eye. I would wear a red shirt with white circles on my back and have on an arrow headband. I didn’t really think it would fly at work, but I was hopeful.

Which brings me to my original reason for posting this.

"Costumes are not acceptable work attire, certainly not to conduct business with the general public. It’s a state agency, not a carnival".

Chock it up to one more reason why I love my job! Maybe I will just go as a disgruntled employee instead.

Saturday morning started out early. 6Am early to be precise. This is not unusual during the work week for me, but knowing it was a Saturday made it very difficult to roll out of bed and get ready.

My goal for the morning was to run the Live Strong 5K in down town Austin along with a bazillion other runners/walkers. The previous day I had picked up my running packet with running bib and Live Strong T-shirt. I was most disappointed to find out that they had given me a size medium when I had asked for a small. I even tried to shrink it the night before, but it was still HUGE and a little damp the next morning. So I opted to forgo the Live Strong paraphernalia and just wear my Gobble Wobble 5K shirt from last year's race. I didn't want a parachute effect from the ginormous shirt ruining my time!

Paul and I met up with our friends Rebecca and William and we car pooled down together. Since there was a soccer game that day, Paul opted out of running with us so he could be refreshed and energized for his soccer game. It worked out well because he took our pictures and also held all of our stuff while we ran (he also scored a point later in the soccer game so his plan worked). He must love me, because he woke up early and stood in the chilly morning air waiting for us to get done. What a guy!

I loved the run! The first minute of it was difficult as we tried to maneuver around people, but once we got clear of the walkers, we could really take off. I attribute the ease of the run to the fact that I was passing people. It really felt like I was this amazing runner, when I passed them (granted they were probably cancer survivors or something, so I am now just a cocky jerk). Towards the half way mark I lost Rebecca and William. I knew they were planning on slowing down somewhere in there, and since I was on a roll I just continued my pace.

I was pumped to find out that I had beaten my Gobble Wobble time, and hadn't embarrassed myself by tripping and falling flat on my face (it wouldn't be the first time). It was a neat experince and I look forward to many 5K's to come!

5 hours later our soccer game started. Paul had given me permission to miss it if I wanted since I had run earlier in the morning. But I couldn't leave my team another girl short and possibly make them forfeit. I played a whole 90 minute game and even had a few steals and good passes.

That is where my amazing-ness ended. The rest of the afternoon I was in a zombie like haze, and had very few complete coherent sentences.

In the end I slept well...real well!

Here we are before the race (yep we were taking pics during the National Anthem).

No kidding there were a lot of people. It took us over 3 minutes just to get to the starting line once the race had started!

This is what the finish line looked like for the die hard runners. Wide open!

Aren't they cute holding hands at the finish?

Tired, but so worth it!

Apparently enough of one to reply to this tagging thing.

3 Joys
1-PAUL
2-Cruching Leaves (sadly the leaves don't fall here like they did in Laramie)
3-Popping bubble wrap

3 Fears
1-Parnormal stuff
2-Being all alone
3-Big dogs running at me

3 Goals
1-To be happy where ever I am in life
2-Be a better birthday acknowledger
3-Create a better prayer and scripture habit

3 Current Obsessions
1-lurking on blogs
2-Paninis
3-The Last Lecture

3 Random Facts
1-My sister and I have each other's toes
2-I still collect pencils
3-I have a new niece named Ella. Happy Birthday Kiddo (See I am already doing better on one of my goals)

This is going to be a random post.
Last week I finished up my swimming lessons. I am pleased with my level of comfort in the water now. I like jumping in the deep end and trying to touch the bottom. My actual swimming technique needs work, but now that I am comfortable in the water that is more likely to come. I can't give too much credit to my instructor because she spent most of the time talking to her friend about who they were dating etc, but she did show us that as long as our lungs are filled with air, we are not going to sink. She also encouraged the class to purchase goggles, which was a huge confidence booster. A lot of my swimming fears come from the fact that I have always had to close my eyes while under water (it is what I do). So with goggles now I can see what I am doing when I jump in. Woohoo!

Paul and I are in love with Panini’s. Last year my parents gave me a griddle/Panini maker for Christmas. We had used the griddle a bunch of times, but this weekend was our first attempt at Panini’s. We LOVED them! Being General Conference, we feasted on the good word and soup and sandwiches with friends. I have to say that these trump the regular melted cheese sandwiches I used to make my family eat Sunday afternoons.

Soccer. I cannot believe I am going to write this, but I really enjoy playing soccer! I am not a die hard like Paul, who would play it every second of every day if he could, but I am actually enjoying the game now. It helps when we win, but I think I was enjoying it even when we were losing. I told Paul that before every game I should come up with one goal to work on so I have something to focus on while I'm running spastically on the field.

Is anyone else having a hard time accepting that it is already October?!?!?!

This week marked our 8 month anniversary here in Austin, TX. We realized that it was one year ago this week that Paul was down here interviewing at ARL! Austin seemed so far away and unknown. For the most part I think we are handling living in a big city pretty well.

Last week I realized that it was already the end of September and we had hardly done anything with our summer. Sure we had gone to Barton Springs for our anniversary, but that was about the extent of our summer activities. Summer has always been a time for vacationing, with camping, or traveling or something. Since Paul and I both have new jobs we couldn’t take any vacations until our probationary time had ended. Plus who wants to be out in the 100 degree heat? I really wanted to feel like we had done something with our summer so I suggested we go camping.

So here are the lessons learned from our first camping trip in TX.

#1. Prepare yourself for small sized wildlife in your camp sight. I am not kidding when I say less then 20 minutes into our camping adventure we had spotted a very much alive armadillo rooting around in the bushes, and a skunk passing through to see what was on the menu for dinner. Later in the evening, I saw something dart by our picnic table, but I couldn’t tell what it was. I can only guess that we were camping right on the migratory route for all small animals in TX.

#2. Prepare yourself to be gouged just to get into a State Park. You would think with so many more people here in TX, that they could lower the price for state parks. We had only looked into how much it would cost to camp; we hadn’t thought about the entrance fee.

#3. To camp in TX one must call ahead to reserve a campsite. Paul and I are used to just packing up and heading for the mountains and looking for a site. We know you have to pay, but reserve? Sure for Yellowstone or something. I guess I should have done a little more research. We almost had to turn around and head home because the campsite was booked. They did give us the option of hiking two miles in the dark to get to the “Primitive” sites. HA! Thank goodness someone had canceled at the last minute.

#4. Set your new tent up a couple of times before trying to set it up in the dark with only car headlights. I was in charge of getting dinner ready and spotting wildlife, and Paul was in charge of the color coded tent.

#5. Even though you are in TX and it still gets up to the 90’s during the day, you still may need more then a blanket and a few sheets at night. We chose not to take our sub zero sleeping bags because we figured we would roast all night. (Note a blanket and sheets might have been sufficient if lesson number six had a different outcome).

#6. Check to make sure your air mattress is leak free before you head out to camp. After Paul had his battle with the tent and successfully won, he filled up our air mattress. Later that evening we walked around the campground, stopped to look up at the stars (something that we hadn’t seen since we left Laramie), and marveled at how many people had set up Christmas lights, or tiki torches near their campers. It had already been quite a night so after our walk we decided to call it quits and go to bed. We stepped into Paul’s masterpiece of a tent to find a completely deflated air mattress at our feet. No good. We filled it up again hoping that once the two of us laid on it, somehow the air wouldn’t be able to escape. As we laid there we couldn’t help but notice the hissing sound at our heads, and the undeniable fact that we were sinking towards each other.

I kept telling Paul that we were young and that we could handle a night on the ground. I think we could have done it if we didn’t pick the rockiest part of the campsite and if we were ok with replacing our hips at age 35. Paul had the idea to take our one and only blanket and fold it up 4 times and use it as a sleeping pad. I then used our pillows as my sleeping pad. We used our sheets to cover us and attempted to sleep. So there we lay, shivering bunched up on our makeshift beds with our clothes as our pillows trying to enjoy our end of the summer hoo-rah. I am really surprised we lasted as long as we did. By 6:30 in the morning, we were both freezing, and decided to call it quits. Which leads me to our next lesson learned.

#7. Honda Accords, though they boast of their comfort and quality, were not made for camping trips or sleeping for long periods of time. We turned on the car and slept in there for a couple hours; Paul in the front seat and me in the back. I woke up a few hours later with my leg completely asleep due to being scrunched up in a ball so Paul could lay out in the front.

#8. You are more prone to find odd bugs and insects in the bathrooms while camping then in the great outdoors. While I was changing in and out of my swimming suit I found a scorpion and a praying mantis. Didn’t see anything cool outside, but indoors while I was in my bear feet… that’s when I saw the really cool bugs!

Well there you have it! We did see some cool rivers and rocks on our trip, and we also felt like we were able to get away.

Will we go camping again? Definitely! Will we have more lessons to learn? Of course!
Will you spend time reading about our adventures? Who wouldn’t?