Pining for the Fjords

Want to see Day 1?  Click here . On Sunday, December 15 th , we woke up ready to head out and conquer the western side of Puerto Rico .  Actually, since most of us didn’t have a full night of sleep, we woke up ready to conquer some caffeine.  We made our way to a local sandwich shop called El Meson for coffee, chai, tea, and breakfast snacks.  Each of the rooms in our condo came with its own remote for a separate A/C unit and fan, although we found out this morning that they worked in interesting ways.  Each fan had a light, and after turning mine on only to have it go off a few moments later – three times – Mom confessed that my light going on made hers go on too, and she kept turning it off (in her words, mind you) “to f*ck with you.”  We had a fun round-robin with the fan lights and remotes at that point, trying to figure out the key to crack the algorithm.  Apparently, there is no one remote to rule them all. Eventually, we headed out to g...

Mom celebrated her 60 th birthday on December 17 th , and she’s been planning what to do for about a year and a half now.  Earlier options included going to Williamsburg , Virginia , San Francisco , and other locations.  However, she eventually came back around to one of her first ideas, Puerto Rico .  To celebrate, Chris and I joined her in PR, along with my brother Jim and my sister-in-law Leigh. We all started our travels on Saturday, December 14 th , Chris and I from Phoenix and Jim, Leigh, and Mom from Tampa .  Mom, Jim, and Leigh ate breakfast at Cigar City Brewery in the airport; Jim’s included beer, while Mom and Leigh’s included bloody mary’s and screwdrivers.  Mmm...beer Amy and Chris ate second breakfast in airport at Barrio Café (mmm…chorizo…) and picked up sandwiches to go at Le Grand Orange for lunch on the plane.  There may be a theme developing here... After an uneventful flight to east coast, Chris and I ki...

Last Sunday, on December 8 th , I ran the Holualoa Tucson Marathon.  Overall, I was really happy with my race.  I ended up setting a personal record (PR, in runner-speak) and taking about 30 minutes off my previous best time; my finishing time was 4:13:28.*  Below, the blow-by-blow account of the day… We drove down to Tucson on Saturday afternoon, taking the opportunity while in the southern hinterlands to eat lunch at Z Tejas, drive by the Casa Grande house (which was looking good, thankfully), stop for a milkshake, and wave as we flew by the Ostrich Farm at 80 mph.  We headed straight to packet pick-up at the Hilton El Conquistador, which was easy, if a bit crowded, since all the vendors were squished into a small-ish indoor space.  After grabbing my race number, we drove the 20 seconds to our lodging for the night, the Fairfield Inn and Suites, right off Oracle Road.  Truly, the Fairfield was awesome; our room was clean and spacious, the bed was...

As you know from my ooey-gooey post last week, Chris and I celebrated our 10 th wedding anniversary on 11/29.  While, technically, the trip we took to Scotland in August was to honor this milestone, we really felt it was appropriate to go to Las Vegas for the actual dates of our anniversary, you know, just because.*  We had a great Thanksgiving at home, and on the morning of the 29 th , headed northwest for the rest of the weekend. We stayed at the Aria this time, which is a newer property on the Strip (2-3 years old), closer to the southern end of the larger resorts.  It’s part of the City Center complex, which includes the Cosmopolitan and Vdara, an upscale mall called Crystals, some residential condos and whatnot as well.  Overall, we really liked Aria.  Our room was on the 14 th floor, ** so we had nice views of the traffic cul de sac below (ooh, fancy).  It also had curtains that you opened with buttons on the wall OR a remote control (I know, r...

I know I'm pretty irreverent around here sometimes, but maybe I'll lay off for a day, since I have something serious to discuss. Diabeetus. Crap, I really am bad at this.  Okay, starting again. In case you didn't know, today is the 10th anniversary of the day Chris was silly enough to marry me.  For the past 10 married years and the past 12 years total, he's filled my life with joy, and I just can't say enough about what a wonderful man he is.  I'm so proud of him for everything he's achieved - for moving across the country from his home and serving the USA in the Navy for six years in the bowels of an aircraft carrier (sailing twice into the Persian Gulf), for working through the first few years of his degree program to help support our family, for earning his engineering degree (half at UofA and half at ASU) and going on to land a fulfilling career at W.L.Gore and Associates, for all of the feats of endurance and athleticism he's achieve...