Special Street

As I mentioned, this past weekend was my favorite 5k of the year.  Even the more uneventful years are so fun -- so many friends run this race and it has a great atmosphere.  This weekend, there was someone walking in front of me during the last half mile and she was struggling, I told her to come on, and she did and thanked me.  It's an encouraging and fun atmosphere.  Possibly because some people start drinking before the race?  Haha.

I have tons of awesome memories from this race:

One year, I had an amazing pacer, and I remember feeling like a dog because she kept turning around and saying "Come on girl" to me.  She also kept my watch during the race.

One year, I pushed my godson in a stroller.  I think I shared this story before, but I ran as hard as I could with him, and on the big hill of the race, halfway up, I realized that directly in front of me (and therefore directly in my godson's face) was the butt of a guy wearing nothing but green boxer briefs. 

One year, it was the day of my bridal shower and my mom did the race too, pre-festivities.  It was a PR at the time and one of the happiest days of my life! 

One year, one of my dearest friends was in town for the race and a day of fun following. 

One year, a friend wearing a beer mug costume paced me and I clearly remember some spectator, a middle-aged guy with a belly, standing on the lawn of one of the apartment complexes as we ran by.  As we passed, he said, "ah, now here come the fun runners."  For an entire half mile I thought about going back to choke the guy and asking him how fun he thought a 7:xx pace was.  Can't even remember what pace I was running, but I swear, it was not fun (though it was a cake walk for the guy pacing me). 

Last year, one of my favorite running buddies who moved to California was in town and we got to hang out afterward. 

One year my middle little brother and his wife came to visit that weekend and we all ran it, watched the parade and spent the day hanging out at house parties. 

This is the brother who has been on my mind constantly lately with his new baby. 

So it was extra cool to go to my secret easy-in-easy-out parking spot for this race and realize the street has the same name as my new nephew! 

Status check

Radio silence around here lately because there hasn't really been much to report. 

Life is just ticking along.  Working, running, all that stuff. 

Work is actually getting better.  The new attorney hired into our group in early January has taken about 3-4% of my caseload, but every little bit helps.  Especially since three of the ones she took are in active litigation, and two of them have upcoming mediation settings (in Indy) in the next 60 days.  That's a big relief for me.  The other thing that has helped is that the flow of incoming cases seems to have abated a little.  I feel like for the last month, each Friday morning, my email inbox is less of a disaster than it was the week before.  It always tends to blow up on Fridays and over the weekend, but if I can actually reduce the number that sit needing attention each week, I feel like I'm making progress.  Right now, the number is down into the mid-50s.  A lot, yes, but way better than the 80-110 that it seems like it's been since we came back from vacation several months ago and I was in the thick of overwork.  I've been doing better on the getting big reports drafted on schedule, though I still drag my feet a bit in getting going on the ones that require the most work.  I'm totally staying on top of voicemail (I have one message that's a few weeks old that I need to return, but I've been doing the behind-the-scenes stuff necessary to return it).  And the two unpleasant cases I've had in the last few months (also pretty much just these two ever), seem to be getting a bit better -- one settled, and one will hopefully settle. 

Running is also slowly getting better.  I'm not losing weight, and I'm kind of still in an eat-some-crap-every-day rut, but at least it's not getting worse.  I think giving up liquids (other than water, morning green smoothie, and nuun on long runs) is helping.  I've been surprised how much I alcohol and soda.  I almost never drink soda, but crave it when I can't have it.  And I don't drink much, but I seem to want that too.  I'm not at all surprised that I'm missing espresso and tea...  Anyway, back to running.  My times have been getting stronger, but I still have a lot of work to do.  I ran my favorite 5k of the year this weekend.  Two good miles, and then I slowed by about 40 seconds in the final mile.  I ended up only about 90 seconds off a course PR for me, and only about 2.5 minutes off a PR.  That's a lot for a 5k, but at the same time, it's not as bad as I would have guessed it would be.  I put it in a race predictor and it has me about 7 minutes off a re-Q, but maybe with a flatter course...  The downside to two pretty good miles -- I feel like I tweaked my calf.  Super tender to the touch.  Had it checked out on Sunday (ummm, after I ran 13 miles), got instructions to take a few days off, ice, light massage.  Anyway, aside from potentially a few days off now, I've at least been showing up for my runs and I feel like that's the biggest step.  If I keep doing that, the work will eventually pay off.  I never really committed to a spring half, so I may just not run one unless I come across something good.  I'm considering the Lakefront Marathon in Wisconsin for the fall.  I really wanted to run Steamtown, but I think given our schedules, we're going to be flying over to Europe on October 8, so once again, travel choices leave me with limited marathon options. 

Travel for fun has been non-existent since Mardi Gras, which was already exactly one month ago.  We were thinking about trying to combine a work trip that I have in early April to SoCal with a trip up to San Fran to see my new nephew, but thankfully, we hadn't banked on that because now it looks like the work trip will fall apart.  I have been travelling for work, but mostly just overnight trips every couple weeks.  Philly has been horrendously cold!  But April has a lot of work travel on the books -- a couple Philly, one SoIll (does that work like SoCal?  Southern Illinois?), and maybe the SoCal trip.  In all, looks like I'll be on the road most weeks, but hopefully mostly short trips.  So now we're trying to plan fun trips for May, which should be better work wise.  We're planning on DC and Charlottesville for my reunion and to see my bestie, and then maybe San Fran and wine country around Memorial Day. 

So I don't really know how to report I've been filling my time other than working and working out.  Last week I finally was better about doing some running commutes to and from work.  Of course, last week was the week I got back on the horse -- because it was spring break so it looked like traffic wasn't bad.  Oh well, it was good for me.  Now I just have to sustain it! 

We've been watching far too much TV in the last month or so.  What we've been watching lately:
Bosch (detective series on Amazon Prime, we both read and love the books), just finished
The Bachelor (guilty pleasure, husband watches it with me to be nice), just finished
Amazing Race (more me than my husband), in progress
The Americans (both love it), in progress
Better Call Saul (just me), in progress, 1 episode on the dvr
House of Cards (both love it), waiting to watch season 3, our netflix isn't showing up on the tv and I don't like the idea of watching it all on the computer (which we did with Bosch).

Anyway, that's the current status of things here! 

Zia VIII

I'm an aunt again!  This is Willard, my newest nephew, born either late last night or early this morning.  I got the text at 2:08 a.m., but they are on West Coast time, so that was 12:08, and I don't know how many minutes old he was at that point. 





I was hoping to get to meet him at the beginning of April if we were able to sneak out to San Fran and wine country for a week or so, but unfortunately, my April travel schedule for work is not being cooperative and now I have no idea when I'm going to get to meet him. 

I had some very bad dreams last night (went with my best friend from law school to see my law school boyfriend for some reason (maybe leasing his apartment?) and he was creepy and weird, and then my husband and I were walking down one of the big highways in Dallas and it was very crowded with groups of people, kind of apocolyptic, pigeons doing weird things, and we were trying to get home, we saw two running friends walking as well but we lost them in the crowd as I was kind of hanging on my husband's shoulders as he was steering us through the crowds trying to get us home, and then there were 3 planes really low and one was crashing -- no idea if that means I have some kind of inner turmoil?  I usually don't remember my dreams and when I do, they're just weird, very rarely disturbing).  I woke up and went to the bathroom.  When I came back, I saw the text from my brother and my husband got up to use the bathroom as well.  He seemed to have trouble falling back to sleep, so we talked for a while and I told him some things about my grandpa, Willard. 

The baby is named after my mom's dad.  My husband never got to meet him, he died in 2003, but I told him about how he made the Adirondack chairs on our back porch, how he's the one in a distinctive picture in our hallway, and some other things I remembered about him, the little he told us about when he was at Pearl Harbor and the war began, and the family confusion that surrounded his death (he had drafted a revised will but left it unsigned, causing issues between one of my uncles and his kids).  It was a fun conversation and I'm glad my brother and sister-in-law honored him with their first child.

Snow

Unbelievable!

We got about 3 inches of snow last night (unfortunately, at least some of it is on top of ice because we got a couple hours of freezing rain before the pretty stuff started).

I woke up at 2:30 to go to the bathroom and my husband went after I did.  I had gotten back in bed and he looked out the window and told me there was snow.

I couldn't get it out of my head, so I gave up and got up and looked out.  And then I felt like I had no other choice than to get dressed in sweats, coat, scarf, hat, and gloves and go for a walk around the block.

Yes, all this was between 2:45 and 3 a.m. 

There was one woman out walking her dog and she said she wasn't sure if she should say good morning or good night. 

I loved making my own little set of footprints in the snow before anyone else has done so. 

Needless to say, there was no running with my buddies this morning -- we are certified Texas wimps, and I'm okay with taking a rest day on the 0-4 days per year of weather like this.  Mad props to everyone who deals with it all winter long ...