Pining for the Fjords

Did you read Part One ? Taking a selfie around mile 7-ish, from Eden Park in Cincinnati - that's Kentucky over there! When last we blogged, Chris and I were spending the night in Cincinnati; we'd ventured north so I could participate in the half marathon at the 28th annual Flying Pig  weekend of events. Although I had my alarm set for 4:30am, I was awake earlier; while staying in the Over the Rhine (OTR) area is convenient to tons of amazing things including restaurants and entertainment, it can also be noisy, and I have to admit to not sleeping super well that night.  I'd been obsessively watching the weather leading up to the race, and while it had been pleasantly warm earlier in the week, a cold front blew in a few days prior to Sunday, causing temps to plummet (this was happening at home, too - we have very similar weather to what's happening in Cincy).  Here's the hour by hour forecast the Weather Channel app showed me the night before the run: The race starte...

Howdy, intrepid blog readers! I know it's been a hot minute since I put up new content, and I hope everyone has been well in that time.  We've been up to all sorts of things - celebrating the winter holidays, taking a few great trips, both on our own and with our closest buddies, surviving another crazy Kentucky winter, visiting with family, and now that the weather has warmed up again, prepping the garden for what will hopefully be another incredible growing season. Amongst all of this, I trained for and completed my first distance running event in almost five years , the Flying Pig Half Marathon , held up in Cincinnati on the first weekend in May. At the start line with my erstwhile Race Sherpa That's Paycor Stadium, where the Cincinnati Bengals play football, behind us After we moved to Kentucky in April 2024, I gained a non-trivial amount of weight (rural living in bourbon country while entering perimenopause is no joke, y'all), and I'd been working to take off ...

Greetings, everyone!  We hope you're having the happiest, loveliest, most merry of holiday seasons!  The effort to save the trees by creating a holiday blog instead of sending out a holiday card seemed decently well received last year , so here we go again! From our household to yours - happy holidays, all! Like last year, we've rounded up a few notable photos and events from each month; many of these are described in more detail in other blog posts, and if so, I've linked to those in each section. January 2023 In what I would imagine is common for many folks, during January, we stayed close to home, recovering from the 2022 holiday season (we hosted Amy's Mom for her birthday, Amy's Dad and his wife Risa for Christmas, and had a wonderful time celebrating with friends and family).  We ate at some great spots , hung out on our back porch and enjoyed the amazing Phoenix weather, and visited some local attractions, including the Japanese Friendship Garden  for their ...