Reclamation...

For an "off" weekend, we sure have been busy! We took advantage of (a) actually being in town, (b) me not having to spend the entire weekend working on stuff for my class, and (c) not spending hours running or recovering from running which allowed us to focus on our house. Our mission was to "reclaim" our house from the chaos of the wedding that we never really had time to recover from since we've been going non-stop (in one way or another) since the honeymoon. I offered to host the Christmas party for my co-workers again this year, so that provided the pending deadline that I/we needed to make this a priority. We unwrapped 95% of the wedding gifts then had to discard all of the boxes/wrappings and find a home for everything (in our already packed house). Overall, I feel good about the progress that we made, although we still certainly have plenty more to do to get this house in the condition that I would like (and that is still very far from me being perfectionistic about it!).

In running news, K and I went for a short run together on the Greenbelt Thursday evening so that I could make sure everything still worked after Palo Duro. Thankfully, it did. Friday and Saturday we also ran, but mostly we ran for free food. On Friday evening, we went to RunTex to meet Chris Carmichael of Carmichael Training Systems and Adam Wilk, a Team Timex athlete. The event was sponsored by Runner's World and consisted of a brief Q&A with both guys followed by a run on the 4-mile loop then pizza. The run essentially turned into a short tempo workout for me because I was running much faster to keep up with the pack than I have in a loooong time. Likewise, we did the Taco Run at Rogue on Saturday morning to remember what road running feels like. We ran 7-miles and, again, I found myself running faster than I wanted to. And, I'm not sure I liked it so much. I missed running trail - where the trail dictates how fast you can go in most cases and where I don't get sucked into running other people's pace because of ego. I got a massage yesterday and, as expected after the race, everything was pretty tight. So, I'm going to get in sooner rather than later for another massage next weekend.

We also managed to fit in some time with friends who we don't see very much. I did my first duty as an AMD wife yesterday. One of Kurt's co-workers is having a baby in December, so I went to his wife's baby shower at Chez Zee for brunch. And, K went to the diaper party for the husband last night. Then, we met Matt and Jennifer for lunch/brunch today at Zax. Both were nice outings with good friends.