holy poop its the end of april

mike called this a long month on his blog, but for me i think it went really fast. in fact, i fear that the next three months are going to whiz by and it will be august before know it.

in the meantime, i find myself working at two, count 'um, two retail stores. hopefully once i get the scheduling figured out it won't be more than 30 hours a week combined. it will be fun for the time being and i get good discounts at both places.

lots of stuff coming up in the next few months. classes are ending in a few weeks. mike's parents and sister will be coming to visit which should be fun. hopefully i won't have to work the whole time. :P dennis is coming to visit in early june and then i'm probably heading to iowa in mid-june for the house/apartment search. hopefully going to vegas in july and i REALLY want to go to texas one time before i move. so...should be a busy next couple of months.

oh, and i need to crank out more transcriptions for my dissertation (anyone want to help?) and probably start packing stuff. crazy! so i'm hoping the new jobs will still allow me to do everything i want to do before i leave. if not, then i guess i'll quit. :) that's the nice thing about having a job that you don't necessarily have to rely on.

okay...back to work.

something i didn't think i would say or do

an abq friend asked me on saturday if i'd like to participate in a 5K run in two weeks. i thought she was crazy when she asked me....the kid who has been riding the fitness struggle bus for a while. but after thinking about it, i think i might try to do it. and i might as well track my progress here. the even is called "run for the zoo" and i suppose if anyone wants to make some pledges you could. it will help animals and stuff. :) and if you donate money then i will feel obligated to actually follow through. :)

the race in on may 6th and i'll be working on getting ready for it for the next two weeks. regardless, it will feel good to have accomplished this and maybe it will help me stay motivated to keep on truckin'...i mean runnin'.

so as of today, i ran 3.1 miles (or 5k) in 42.5 minutes. hopefully i did the math right. the gym will only let me put in 30 minutes at a time and i knew i needed at least 45. :) maybe i should try to run outside?

anyways, if you want to pledge, send me an email or something. hope everyone had a great weekend.

taking in the view

i'm sitting here on my couch looking out the patio door at the beautiful sandia mountains. they were especially beautiful this weekend when they were covered with snow (which fortunately mostly stayed in the mountains!). the view makes me both happy and hopeful that when i leave here i won't feel like i took albuquerque for granted. that always seems to be the case though. once you live in a place, you do your normal day-to-day stuff, and you don't always take notice of the beauty around you. at least that's the situation for me. so i've been trying to make more of an effort to drink in this place while i'm here. the problem is that i'm not totally sure how to do that. my approach so far is to make a list of stuff i want i want to do before i move in august. here are some of the things i have so far:

-breakfast at gold st. cafe (must eat that red chili bacon again before i go)
-a trip up to the peak
-drinks and merriment at the restaurant at the base of the mountain at twilight time
-maybe a trip to the zoo
-isotopes game
-bowling at isleta casino (its way fun)
-a day trip to santa fe and/or taos
-winery trip (at least to st. clair for the wine flight)
-feast at tucanos
-lots of pie shack
-cocktail party at kate's
-grill outs
-lots of fun times with friends for sure in varied forms
-beer afternoon at kelly's
-lunch at juan's broken taco
-a trip to dagmar's german food sometime

and i'm sure there's lots and lots of other places i will end up adding (and unfortunately a lot of them are food related! better amp up the workouts). and i'm also pretty sure that i won't get everything on the list accomplished. i guess that means i'll have to come visit a bunch. :)

anyway, my hope is that i won't leave albuquerque regretting not appreciating it more. i think the best way to accomplish that is it spend time with my kick ass friends out here.

okay, enough rambling and staring at the mountain. back to work.

p.s.- the going to bed early plan is not going well for me.

early to bed

mike and i are trying a new experiment this week, which has to do with going to bed earlier. earlier means 10:30. i'm betting that's pretty close to mike's usual bed time, but for me, the night owl, that's really early!!! the idea is that more sleep helps you lose weight, so we'll see how it works. also, getting to bed earlier means getting up earlier, which means getting more accomplished towards the lofty goals i set in my last post. PLUS, i should get on a normal schedule since i'll be in a real job before i know it.

so wish me luck. i'm wondering if i'll need a nightcap to actually feel tired at 10:30 tonight. :D