Pining for the Fjords

Last week, I had the wonderful opportunity to visit with my best friend from college, Toni, who did me the solid of abandoning her family and flying across the country to hang out with me.*  We barely took any pictures because we’re kind of goobers like that, but we did grab a couple of snaps from Girls’ Night, held in Scottsdale with a group of other lovely ladies. Murph, Toni, and I enjoying a few adult beverages at Hula’s Modern Tiki Dinner at Tommy V’s Italian Bistro - From left, counterclockwise around the table: Christina, Murph, Trisha, Jenna, me, and Toni In addition to eating a lot, getting our shopping on, and touring the tiniest space museum in the country (if not the free world),** we also headed up to Flagstaff for an overnight stay.  While thinking of what to blog about this week, it struck me that I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Flagstaff quite a few times since we’ve lived in Arizona, but I’ve never really discussed it on the blog or ment

As seen from my previous posts, I had a great time while I was in Florida.  In addition to skulking around the Magic Kingdom and winning major awards at the March Mustache 5K , it was awesome just to visit with family I hadn’t seen in awhile, including Mom, Jim and Leigh, and lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins.  It was also nice to hang out with Mom’s cat Lily, since I don’t get cat time very often. So cute.  She’s fooled us all. Helping Mom stretch. On the Sunday I was in town, Mom and I headed to Hamburger Mary’s for brunch and the 1pm drag show, where we met Jim and Leigh and Uncle Doug.  Jim and Uncle Doug, ready for foods! Although a buffet was offered, I ordered one of their hamburgers, and I wasn’t disappointed; it was excellent.* We had a good time catching up and of course, the drag show was fantastic. I am so excited I could seriously spit. Work it, ladies! After the show, we all headed back to Jim and Leigh’s house; they mo

When I was planning my trip back to Florida to visit family and whatnot, I happened to run a quick interweb search to see if there were any short running races coming up while I would be in the area.  Imagine my delight to see that there were a few, including one on the Saturday evening of my visit, in downtown Clearwater, the town next to Dunedin, where I grew up.  This would be perfect, since it would give Mom and I plenty of time to recover from our Disney trekking , held the day before. The March Mustache 5K was put on by a local running group in the area and was HQ’d out of the Capitol Beer House, which had a lot of amazing looking offerings on tap.  We parked just across the street from the start line, at Coachman Park/the Harborview Center, and wandered up the hill to pick up our packets and scope out the race course.  Since this was the March Mustache 5K, mustaches were expected as part of our race ensembles, so we found some on Amazon.** See the family resemblance

Last week, I had the awesome opportunity to head to my old stomping grounds - back to Florida to spend some time with Mom, my brother Jim, and sister-in-law Leigh.*  Along the way, I also got to visit with other family and friends and even run a 5K! On Friday, Jim picked Mom and I up on the early side of the day,** and we headed further inward to Orlando to visit the Magic Kingdom, part of Walt Disney World.  We were happy to be joined by Uncle Jim, Aunt Kim, and our cousin Emma, enjoying her final day of spring break.***  Jim and Leigh are season pass holders, and they did an excellent job coordinating everyone, getting Fast Passes for the coolest rides, and serving as tour guide.  Our entire group that day. From left, yours truly, Mom, Jim, Emma, Uncle Jim, and Aunt Kim Getting ready to undergo highway robbery. Those tickets prices are no joke! We took a few pictures at the train station up front while we waited to find the rest of our group.  We