Squid Salad

Yep, you heard me.

SQUID SALAD.

It’s what I had for lunch yesterday. Yep, I took pictures. Yep, I’m gonna share them. So sit back and relax, because this post is all about…

SQUID SALAD.

Hi Roller

Who likes carnival rides? More on my recent carnival experience after a quick update:

I’m back home in Los Angeles, and man, am I wiped! I got home yesterday afternoon, and my sleeping has been out-of-whack. I’m still feeling out of it. It didn’t help that my final 24 hours in Colorado were a little bonkers. They started with my successful completion of the BolderBOULDER 10K race. I didn’t sleep well that night, because I was anticipating my alarm, which was set at 5am, because Sarah and I decided to get in one final workout before my morning flight.

Advertisement

BolderBOULDER 10K Recap!

I haven’t had much experience when it comes to running races. Before yesterday, I’ve only raced in two of them – a 10K last November, and a 5K a few weeks after that (recaps of both can be found on my Races & Events page). But, despite my rather short race resume, I’m completely confident when I say that I will never have a day like yesterday.

The BolderBOULDER 10K Memorial Day Race is, simply put, unbelievable.

I had read the statistics long ago: 54,000 runners ran last year, from all over the world. It’s the largest all-timed race in the country, and the fifth largest in the world. Reading those statistics is one thing, though – being a part of them is completely different.

Let me take you through the race – I took pictures, and have memories that I won’t forget any time soon!

Colorado Biking

Today’s the day that I’m running the BolderBOULDER 10K (or, depending on when you read this, I may have already run it)! I’ll post a recap soon, but for now, I wanted to share a few other things I’ve been doing in Colorado.

On Saturday, I went biking for the first time since last September, and my second time in about a decade (read about my September experience, and my history with biking, here). I went with my sister Sarah and her friend Karen. Here’s Sarah and I before leaving:

Idiot Move of the Decade

This post is comin’ at you from the great state of Colorado, where I’m visiting my sister Sarah and her family, and, tomorrow, running the BolderBOULDER 10K race. I arrived the other day, and getting here was a hassle. And I have no one to blame but myself. Because I pulled the idiot move of the decade.

Lego

I had to buy a new iPod. I last wrote about my iPod in March, when I dropped it on cement and cracked the glass. My iPod rebounded from that trauma, and the cracked screen proved not to be a fatal wound, just an unsightly cosmetic one. What did my iPod in was some sort of faulty, damaged battery. I didn’t get the specifics, nor did I care – what was important was that I got a new iPod, and, once again, all is well in my mobile music world.

The iPod wasn’t the only thing that came home with me from the mall. That’s because the Apple store I frequent, at the Glendale Galleria, is right next door to one of my favorite stores in the entire world: a store that whisks me immediately back to my childhood and fires up every creative and design-related synapse in my brain…

…The Lego Store!

Chestnuts

I didn’t eat my first chestnut until I was in my thirties. Is that shocking? I really have no idea. Some people enjoy chestnuts every Christmas – roasted over an open fire, as the recipe/carol says – but we didn’t do that in my family. I grew up having no concept of what a chestnut was, and thought, for a long time, that it was an old-timey, out-dated, possibly fictional seasonal food item, much like ‘figgy pudding’ and ‘sugar plums’ (neither of which I’ve seen in real life).

For the past two Thanksgivings, when my family has congregated for turkey and football at my sister Sarah’s house in Colorado (where I’m going this weekend for the big race), we’ve gone to a local shopping center so Sarah’s kids can see Santa arrive. It’s a big to-do: they have actual real-life reindeer in a pen, carolers, and local restaurants passing out food. Either last year or two years ago, I saw a guy with a contraption that looked like a bingo ball tumbler set on fire. Turns out he was roasting chestnuts. I tried my first chestnut. I remember it being outrageously hot and burning my mouth – and not much else.

So I don’t know exactly what came over me, but about a month ago I came home from the store with this:

Wednesday Weigh-In

It’s been two weeks, folks.

Yesterday it was time to STEP ON THE SCALE!

Here’s what happened:

Six Days Until the BolderBOULDER!

My next fitness challenge is only six days away. Next Monday (Memorial Day!), I’ll be in Boulder, Colorado, running with my sister Sarah in the BolderBOULDER, a ginormous 10K race that attracts runners from all over the world.

Because of my back-to-back stair climb challenges, I wasn’t able to start focusing on 10K training until about two weeks ago, after finishing my 163-Story Burj Khalifa Challenge. When the time came to step away from the StairMaster (finally), and get into a running mood, I wasn’t very excited. I hadn’t run in a couple months, and, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to it.

Then I had a couple really wonderful runs in New York City last weekend (including one across the Queensboro Bridge and back), and since getting back from the Big Apple, I’ve had a couple more really wonderful runs.

In total, I’ve run four times in the eight days since getting back from New York:

What’s In The Crockpot? Part Five

Wow. Has been really been 7 months since we last played “What’s In The Crockpot?” It has!  I published Part Four last October 31st – Halloween – and the dish that I featured was what I contributed to a Halloween party potluck (click here to see the recipe – I won’t spoil the game if you haven’t played yet!)

Just because I haven’t published any “What’s In The Crockpot?” posts doesn’t mean that my crockpot has gone unused. I made a perfectly mediocre vegetable and bean stew in it just the other day. But because it was just mediocre (at best), and the internet is already flooded with mediocre recipes (just google Sandra Lee if you need proof), I refrained from blogging about it.

OK, Enough chit-chat. Pull up your socks and lace up your sneakers, because it’s time to play!

WHAT’S IN THE CROCKPOT?