Monday, January 21, 2013

Monday Miscellany #3

Monday Miscellany is for recounting my weekend (in totally non-chronological order) and whatever thoughts are swimming around that may not make for great standalone posts. Enjoy!



This morning I was on the phone arranging travel for an employee, when suddenly I took a breath and apparently inhaled a microscopic speck of dust that landed at the back of my throat and caused me to start coughing uncontrollably. The poor travel agent was like, "Do you need to hang up and get some water?" And I was like, "I *cough* have water *cough* here *cough cough* just gimme *cough* a second *cough cough cough cough*..." I got it under control after whispering through the rest of the conversation, and then no fewer than six people came by my desk later, asking if I was dying. So, that was fun!

***

Friday night we went to OTT for karaoke, but only stayed till 9 because Amy and I decided to get up Saturday morning for a 6 AM run. Crazy as that was, I'm so glad we did it! It was fun running in the pre-dawn light, and running with a partner always makes me push a little harder. We did 3 miles in about 35 minutes, which is significantly faster than my pace during my solo run last week. And getting that morning workout in meant we could enjoy the rest of Saturday with a little less guilt over calorie consumption! Haha.



***

Speaking of Saturday: We had a planning session for the young employees' group I joined, followed by a fun outing to Los Olivos for wine tasting! We had about 20 people in the group, and a whole street full of tasting rooms to choose from. Naturally, I chose to start at my very favorite place, Saarloos and Sons. Why is it my favorite? Because you get to have mini cupcakes with each of the wines you taste!



And the cupcake flavors change every week, except for their signature flavor -- the one in the lower left corner -- a blackberry syrah-infused chocolate cupcake. All of the flavors this week were divine, but my favorite was the top center one, which was a heavenly vanilla-caramel one. And of course, the wines are always delightful here, too!

We also checked out two other tasting rooms which I hadn't tried before, and both were lovely. The last stop was a bit rushed since we had to catch our bus at 4 PM, so Amy, her friend Madeleine and I had to kinda guzzle down the last few tasters. Oops! But it was a fantastic day. Here's a few more photos as proof.

Joe and I enjoying one of the reds at Saarloos & Sons.

Me with Amy and Madeleine at the last spot: Daniel Gehrs!

Dignified women drink wine while playing bocce ball.
(This was at the second stop: Coquelicot)

***

Yesterday I filled in for Amy in the nursery at church, and we only had two little ones! That meant I got this precious guy all to myself:


After church, I spent most of the afternoon and early evening re-organizing my bookshelf and logging every single hard-copy book I own into a cool cataloging app on my phone (which I can export to Goodreads, LibraryThing, etc. if/when I choose). After setting aside about 20 books I'm going to get rid of, I now have about 130 books in my "library." And of those 130, there are about 55 that I have never read (and if you clicked that link and saw that there are 47 books listed, keep in mind that two of those books are actually sets of multiple books in one!). Um, book hoarder much? So my goal is to read at least half of those unread books in 2013. I'm also planning on not buying any more books (hard copy OR for my Nook!) until I have read ALL of my owned-and-unread books, with the exception of book club selections, which I'll buy if I can't find them at a library or borrow from a friend.

Believe it or not, this is my bookshelf AFTER being organized.
It may look cluttered, but it makes perfect sense to me!

***

Tonight I'm going to try out a new at-home workout that I saw on The Biggest Loser last week. Bob had his team do a "Deck of Cards" workout, where each suit was assigned an exercise, and the numbers represented how many reps they had to do. (Face cards were ten and Aces were 11.) You shuffle the deck and do the exercises in whatever order they come up, and you'll end up doing each exercise for a total of 95 reps if you go through the whole deck!

I'm going to mix up the rules a little bit, though, and I will share the details tomorrow after I've successfully (I hope!) completed this workout. I'm dragging Joe along to try it with me, too. (Muhahaha!)

***

In addition to the 10K I'm signed up to run in March, I think I've also mentioned that I am planning on doing the Super Bowl 4-miler next Sunday. But as if that wasn't enough motivation to put my running shoes to work more often, I am ALSO signing up to do a charity run this Saturday! Amy's soon-to-be-roomie Ashlee is hosting a benefit run called "26 on the 26th" as a fundraiser for Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. It's simple: you register for $20, and the local running store sends that $20, plus an additional $6, to Sandy Hook. Then you run or walk for 26 minutes (or more if you're ambitious). So it's not a race since there is no real finish line, but it's a cool opportunity to team up with other runners/walkers in support of a great cause.
Oh, AND! I am also signed up for my friend Tyler's DietBet challenge, which starts later this week. The basic premise is: you pay $25 and attempt to lose 4% of your starting weight in four weeks. The more people who join, the bigger the potential winnings! Everyone who successfully loses 4% will split the pot with all the other winners. I figure if this doesn't get me motivated to stay on track, I don't know what will. :-P 





Phew! That was a lot of miscellany for one day. If you stuck it out till the end, kudos to you! Happy Monday, friends.

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