Pining for the Fjords

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we’re trying to live a bit healthier, and buying produce boxes through Chow Locally has been a great step in that direction.  A further step we’ve wanted to take for the past few years but only just got around to was building a garden in our backyard to help grow some of our own herbs and veggies. We had a garden in the Casa Grande house, and it was a lot of fun.  Although it wasn’t always the most successful adventure, I generally enjoyed planting different items, seeing how they worked (or didn’t, sometimes), and making recipes from the bounty found in the backyard.  When we moved out of the CG house and up north to Peoria, we set to landscaping the backyard; while we knew we wanted another garden and even designated a spot for it, the planets never aligned for us to put it together. UNTIL NOW! We finally found a weekend where the weather was good, we weren’t training for a race, we had enough expendable income to buy item...

Over the past few months, Chris and I have been making a concerted effort to integrate more produce into our diets.  While we generally eat pretty well, calorie-wise, and maintain our weight within a reasonable margin, we mostly do this through lean proteins and healthy grains.  While these are essential to health and we’re not giving them up (you can pry my bread from my cold, dead hands, thankyouverymuch), we know we need more actual vegetables in our diets as well.* To help with this, at the start of the new year, we made sure that each grocery trip ended with us buying at least two night’s worth of broccoli, asparagus, squash, or something that could be grilled, sautéed, or steamed, and perhaps one bag of salad.  Not perfect – I know – but it was a start.  Now, we’re kicking things up another notch by starting a subscription with a nearby Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) group known as Chow Locally. Look, a logo! When we lived in Casa Grande...

On Sunday, 3/9, I ran a half marathon put on by the City of Peoria (an entity to which we pay taxes AND trash/sewer bills…as well as race registrations, apparently).  This run was one in the city’s Runners’ Series; I’ve done a few of these runs in the past few months at differing lengths, and they generally are well organized.  The City has points associated with the runs in the series (participation points plus extra points for placing in your age group, etc), and if you end up in the top 100 point “owners” at the end of the series, you are entered to win a trip to a national half marathon race, as well as travel and lodging stipends.  Not too shabby! Getting ready to run! Added to these benefits was the fact that the race started and ended at Rio Vista Park, which is only 4.5 miles away from our house, and the course ran along our normal bike/run route, the New River Trail.  I have to admit that of all the reasons I love the area where we live, this tr...

Last Sunday, Chris and I drove out west to visit Blythe.  Ha!  Just kidding.  Blythe is terrifying.  Instead, we drove PAST Blythe on the way to Newport Beach where Chris attended a conference on injection molding to gain knowledge for one of his newer work commitments.  I tagged along for a few days of relaxation (mainly in the form of reading books and napping) and to accompany him on the voyage. Our lodging for the three days was the Hyatt Regency Newport Beach, which was in a great location; it was in a quiet area only ½ mile away from the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) and a mile away from the quaint downtown area of Balboa Island.  The folks at the Hyatt also really took care of us; when we weren’t able to check in when we arrived at 4:30pm, they called to let us know when the room was ready.  Upon our actual check in around 8ish (in the meantime, we were lucky enough to visit and enjoy excellent Thai food with Dad, Risa, and a friend of their...

After running some large events in the past few months,* I decided to take most of 2014 to run whatever races I wanted, with whomever I wanted, and at whatever pace I wanted.  While I always aim to do well when I’m really racing, the latter half of 2013 slowly slid away from “running and having fun” into “running another freaking interval so I can shave a few minutes off a personal record.”  I live for schedules and hard workouts and improvement, but I was getting a little burnt out, so it was high time for a break. So far, that’s been going well.  As frequent readers to the blog will note, I had an absolute blast in the Keys in February running Ragnar, and I’m also enjoying running (and sometimes placing) in the City of Peoria Runners’ Series races, most of which occur at the park around 4 miles from our house. Placing third in my Age Group in the Super Day 10K. I’m Number Three! One of the City of Peoria races coming up soon is a half marathon on Sund...