Uneventful Holiday

Thanksgiving was quite nice but unremarkable this year. 

We started off the morning with the annual 8 mile Turkey Trot.  For the first time in several years, I did not get a PR.  Probably close to one minute per mile too slow, but it didn't matter too much.  I ran with a couple friends through mile 3, then one peeled off for a restroom, and I stayed with my boot camp buddy until the rest stop friend had caught back up to us, and then around mile 6, I told them to go on without me.  I just wasn't feeling it. 

I need to get my butt in gear. 

Not sure if I mentioned it or not (probably not, since this was the source of much internal turmoil for me), but I finally got into the Berlin Marathon for next year.  Long story I will have to share later, but let's just say registration happened while we were in China and my registration plan fell through.  But it's all good now, and I have lofty goals for that race, so I need to get into PR shape in general now if I want to have the lifetime PR there that I dream of. 

I suppose it shall start this week.  Maybe on Tuesday I'll start trying to push harder on my run to work.  Adding in some more speed. 

But this is a tough time of year to work on cleaning up my diet, so that may largely wait until New Year's.  But at least I finished off the last of the Thanksgiving dessert today for breakfast.  Ugh!  But it was soooo good. 

The rest of Thanksgiving was nice but not terribly exciting.

After the race, we hung out with friends for a while.  Hubby drank mimosas and we cheered for friends running in. 

Then we went home, had a leisurely breakfast, and then got to work on cooking.  I made a butternut squash cheddar bread pudding (recipe from my mom from Bon Appetit), a cheese-onion-mushroom tart (can't remember where, but from a magazine I think), and the pumpkin crisp (from hubby's friend's Ukrainian wife, but not a Ukrainian recipe, something she got from people at church). 

Then we cleaned up and headed north for the big meal.  The traffic actually wasn't bad.  Hubby's best friend lives in a suburb called McKinney that is practically in Oklahoma.  Man, I hate the suburbs.  Their city completely typifies what I don't like -- chain stores and restaurants everywhere, everyone in cars driving two miles, cookie-cutter houses that are McMansion style. 

There were a total of 8 adults at dinner and about 6 kids?  Us, hubby's best friend and wife (both Italian-Canadian) and their two kids, another couple (wife was Italian) and their kid, and another couple and their three kids.  The kids seemed pretty out of control.  Lots of running, shouting, arguing, crying, etc.  Birth control! 

But the meal was wonderful when we finally all sat down.  I was starving.  I'd eaten a big bowl of Greek yogurt with fruit after the turkey trot, but since we were going to eat around 4, that was all I ate.  Instead, we ate closer to 6.  Hubby's best friend's wife in the past had forgotten or ignored that I didn't eat meat, but she went to great lengths to accommodate me and one person there who couldn't eat dairy (but she ate meat).  There were two kinds of stuffing, one vegetarian and nut-free, a broccoli-cheese casserole, mashed potatoes, roasted vegetables, green beans, cranberry sauce, rolls, turkey, and the two dishes I brought.  Then for dessert there were a lot of store-bought pies (pumpkin, fruit, and some kind of chocolate cake) and then my pumpkin crisp with ice cream.  And lots of wine, then scotch and limoncello.

I felt like I ate too much of course.  I ended up going for a little walk alone just to get out of the house.  The weather was awesome and mild.  After the walk, my food felt a bit more settled and I felt more awake, so we all sat around talking (and others drinking) for hours. 

A very fun night and a wonderful day of thinking about all the wonderful things in my life, much for which to be grateful. 

Friday was spent being very lazy.  We got the tree up, and we cleared a few things off the DVR, but not much else.  We didn't get the tree decorated or anything, which would have been nice.  I guess that's going to have to be a weeknight project, which isn't as much fun since we never seem to have much time at night, and now that I have to run home from work, will probably have even less...

Today I need to get motivated to put up non-tree decorations, get started on cars, get some laundry and house-cleaning done, and then make something special for dinner as we're having friends over tonight.  But thus far I'm just clicking around on Amazon and getting sucked into Law & Order!  Not bad, since there's always tomorrow!