The First Mile Is the Hardest

After running for 12 years now, I guess I can classify myself as a "runner".  But when I compare myself to "real" runners like my friend Anne, I feel like I'm not much of a runner after all.  She has stories of running in sub-freezing temperatures in Massachusetts, with her wet hair frozen to her face.  See, I don't love running THAT much.  In my mind, "real" runners really love running.  They love it for the sport itself.  They do it regardless of the weather and the sacrifices they have to make to get their run in.  I am a weenie runner.  I don't do cold/wet weather running.  In fact, right before most of my runs, I don't even want to go.

Today was such a day.  Todd and I had planned to go run five miles at Miramar Lake.  But I was not enthusiastic about it.  Even when we got to the parking lot, I sat in the car and didn't want to come out.  Even when Todd took off running, I just stood there and stared at his fading backside.  I was not in a running mood.  I took one small step forward, then another, then another.  Even as I'm a few hundred yards down the path, I was thinking to myself, "I can quit and head back now and sit in the car if I want."

I don't know if anyone ever told you this about running.  The first mile is the hardest.  You are fighting the fact that you're out there running when you could possibly be doing something else.  You are fighting the weather, whether it's too sunny, too cold, too windy, too hot, etc.  You're fighting your body, which doesn't feel quite in tune yet, because it hasn't warmed up yet.

But I'll tell you another secret.  After the first mile, you are glad you made the choice to be out there, running outside on a cold Saturday morning.  The wind that didn't suit you in the first mile suddenly becomes "fresh air" in the subsequent miles.  Your body has warmed up and it isn't fighting with you as much.  You hit your stride and you feel like nobody and nothing can stop you now.  Then you remember... this is why I make the choice to be out here, over and over again.  And nothing beats the feeling when you're done with your run.  You did it.  You did it despite fighting with yourself to get out there.  Today, the victory is just showing up.

Distance:  5.01 miles
Time:  56:30
Avg pace:  11:17/mile
Calories burned:  500

View during my second mile.


While I was at Michaels yesterday, I bought two bags of buttons and a styrofoam cone.  So I could make this.

I had seen it before somewhere. Then my friend Christina talked about doing it on her blog, so it spurred me to do it too. I got the pins at Wal-Mart a while ago. If you're thinking of doing this, just remember that it takes more buttons, more pins, and more time than you think it does! This guy is around 8 inches tall and it took me a couple of hours to make him.

Speaking of running, I finally got around to doing a layout about the Rock N Roll Seattle half marathon that I ran in June.

I used all new stuff from Lili @ The Lilypad: Fly Away Elements, Hand-Drawn Alphas, and Random Words 2. These items are on sale at The Lilypad for 20% off through Sunday! And the background paper is from the kit Believe.

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Car Expenses

Today Todd and I worked from home so that we can drop his car off at a couple of different places to get work done on it.  Our big car is a 2001 Ford Explorer with 127,000 miles on it.  It was paid off long ago, but now it's getting to be at an age where more money needs to be spent to fix things.  Argh!

We dropped the car off at Costco to get new tires first.  The tires were wearing thin and with "winter" coming and possibly some rain, we just wanted to be safe.  It's sad how much new tires cost for SUV's though.  Very sad.  Of course, we had to go inside Costco to buy some essentials, like our bulk soy milk.  But you know how dangerous it is to go into Costco.  You walk out with way more than you had on your shopping list.  I saw a big tub of Peppermint Bark for $9.99 and couldn't resist getting it.  I've always loved the Williams-Sonoma Peppermint Bark, but it is really expensive, so I've only gotten it once.  Last year I got peppermint bark in a tin box from Target.  But none of them were as much as this tub from Costco, for way cheaper!

I plan to make some peppermint bark holiday treat bags with the blank kraft bags that I got from Michaels. I'll show you when they're done!  And yes, I had planned to give most of it away.  As much as I love peppermint bark, I don't want to derail my healthful eating by eating the whole tub.  Even though I want to.  :-|

After we got the car back from Costco, we dropped it off at our local mechanics so they could take a look at why our anti-freeze is leaking. Turns out it's leaking from the intake manifold. Well, they just worked on that a couple of months ago, so thank goodness this is going to be warranty work and won't cost additional for us. However, they did not have enough time this weekend to work on it, so we'll have to take it back next week. :(

In the same plaza as the car shop is Tea Station. It's Todd's favorite source in San Diego for tapioca (boba) milk tea. So we had to stop by.


In the evening, Todd made Greek Lamb Pilaf for dinner, except we just used regular ground beef instead of lamb.

We like this dish a lot. It isn't as low in calories as our other Cooking Light meals though. This one is 446 calories per serving.

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Two Encounters

Today I ran into a man named Carl in the coffee room at work again.  I had originally met him in our work coffee room a couple of weeks ago.  I was chatting with my friend Susan and telling her that I was going to my dad's house for Thanksgiving.  After we finished chatting, Carl introduced himself and told me that he knows my dad.  I don't know why this kind of thing still surprises me.  Probably because it hasn't happened to me in a while.  People used to recognize me in public all the time and tell me that they know my dad.

The reason is, my dad is a fairly well-known Christian author in the Chinese Christian world.  He has written over 100 devotional, Bible study, and other topical books.  He's appeared in a series of lectures on TV in Taiwan.  On the back cover/flap of some of his books, there are photos of our family.  That's why people recognize me.  One time, I was in a Chinese restaurant, and I noticed that some people kept staring at me.  Finally they came over and asked if I was Pastor Lee's daughter, because they recognized me from my dad's books.  This kind of thing used to happen to me a lot.

Anyways, Carl goes to Chinese Bible Church in Rancho Bernardo.  He said that when my dad preached there, my dad had talked about me and that I worked here.  We chit-chatted for a couple of minutes that day.

Today I ran into Carl in the coffee room again.  He asked me if I can read Chinese.  I told him that I can only read food items on menus.  :-|   What, it's the truth!  I only went to school in Taiwan until 3rd grade, so my reading is really not good.  And that was 30 years ago.  Carl then excitedly asked me, "Do you know how many Chinese people are on our floor?"  I didn't know.  He said, "There are 23 Chinese people on our floor!"  Then he told me that they are starting a lunch time Chinese Bible study at work, because there are so many newcomers.  He said he wanted to know if I could read Chinese, so that if I could, I could help them with the Bible study.  Sadly, I had to tell him that my Chinese is definitely not good enough for Bible study.  (Sometimes my English is not good enough for Bible study, LOL.  And definitely not my Hebrew or Aramaic.)  Anyways, even though I can't help or really participate, I am so excited about Carl's enthusiasm for the Lord and that he wants to have this Bible study for the Chinese people who work on my floor.  Who knows how many souls will come to know the Lord because he took the initiative?

I had to leave work early today to get my haircut, because of the limited hours that Nickie works at Supercuts.  Todd had gone to Nickie twice to get his haircut now, and has liked her.  I haven't gotten my hair cut since July 1st, because the salon I went to closed, and Heather had moved to a different salon farther away.  Nickie and I chitchatted.  When she found out that I worked as a financial analyst and did corporate budgets, she started asking me all kinds of questions.  "How do you keep track of how much you spend?"  "How much should I spend on clothes?  How often should I buy clothes?"  "How much should I spend eating out?"  "How much should I spend at Starbucks?  I go there like four times a week, and each time I spend almost six dollars on a latte and a muffin."  And so on.  It was a little awkward.  If my best friend had asked me these questions, I would know how to answer.  When a stranger asked me these questions, I felt a little tongue-tied.  I didn't know her income, her finances, or anything about her.  So I told her that she could start keeping track of all the money she spends for two months.  Then she can get a good picture of what she spends her money on, and what to cut back on.  Everyone has different priorities and what they tend to splurge on.  She recommended cutting more layers into my hair, which I agreed.  Then she asked me if I wanted to get a blow-dry and styling.  I said sure.  When she was done, I really liked how my hair looked.

Then we went over to the cash register and she said that it was $43.95.  Seriously???  I didn't know there were $44 haircuts at Supercuts!  How could it cost that much???  I've never paid that much at Supercuts before.  There wasn't a breakdown of what the $43.95 consisted of on the receipt.  I like my haircut, but do I like it $43.95 much?  I was still in shock as I handed over my credit card.  I know I should have asked for a breakdown, but I was shocked.  So ironic that we were just chatting about finances and then she hit me with a $43.95 bill for my haircut.

So here I am.

Is it worth $43.95? Eh... on the other hand, don't answer that.
I'm NOT washing my hair for a long time. This blow-dry better be worth it!

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I Should Have Bought A Lottery Ticket

last week... because apparently I was very lucky!

On Wednesday last week, I was selected by the official Silhouette blog to win a $25 GC to their store, out of a little over 100 entries!  In case you don't know, the Silhouette is a digital cutter.  I did a project using the machine here.  I was excited to win because I had been wanting to download the various holiday shapes to make cards with.

On Friday, it was announced on the Paislee Press (Liz Tamanaha) blog that I won the Totally Rad Action 2:  The Revenge set of photo actions!  This was out of over 500 entries.  I could not believe it when I saw that I was the one randomly picked!  I actually left my desk and went over to Todd and jumped up and down!  It was a very generous giveaway from Paislee Press and Doug Boutwell of Totally Rad Actions.  I just got my actions today and let me show you what I've done with them.



I really love a bunch of the photo actions. They are really easy to run and adjust. I can't wait to play more with them when I have more time. :)

Speaking of Liz and Paislee Press, she was a guest blogger at Ella Publishing's blog today.  She has a tutorial for a Giving Thanks Mini album and a free download of the journaling templates.  The album looks easy and fun to do.  I want to do one when I have time!

And then... on Sunday I received a message on Facebook from the fabulous Randi Oh.  She is a designer (Studio Oh) at Scrapbook Graphics.  She picked me, out of everyone on her FB fan page, to receive a free kit!  How generous is Randi?!  And how lucky am I?? 

I picked Randi's gorgeous kit, Bella Joy Merry Christmas.

I can't wait to scrap with it! The kit is HUGE and full of yummy colors and rich elements!

So that's been my very lucky week.  I told Todd I should have bought a lottery ticket.  Or maybe Peppermint told me I should have bought a lottery ticket.  I can't remember now... all the excitement has clouded my brain,  ha ha.

Today's photo:


Todd enjoys giving me art supplies and hobby supplies as gifts. He really encourages me in my artsy fartsy endeavors! One Christmas, he gave me crayons, coloring pencils, and a bunch of super-cool grown-up coloring books. They had intricate geometric patterns, and even stain glass window designs on vellum paper that you can color. I appreciate Todd's thoughtfulness so much. So really, I already am the MOST LUCKY person in the world to be married to Todd. :)

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Ornamental Strategery

Back in October, Listgirl and I had already seen some stores bring out their Christmas decorations. Retailers are desperate and are looking for ways to make more money during the holiday gift season. But that desperation manifests in other ways. Yesterday I went to the UTC mall in La Jolla to pick up a gift. I noticed that there were barely any decorations up. Today I picked up lunch at the Highlands in the posh Del Mar neighborhood and noticed the same thing. Though some would argue that having palm trees, blue skies and 70-degree (21 C) weather makes every day a holiday. The extent of the decorations at Del Mar Highlands. Selling Christmas flowers does not count as decorating. Whether they went with ridiculously early decorations or none, good news may be on the horizon for retailers. The term Frugal Fatigue is starting to make the rounds in news outlets. Apparently some folks are just getting fed up with searching for deals all the time and starting to splurge again. Heh. I never believed that talk about America becoming less consumerist and more savings-oriented. It's going to take more than a bad recession to change such an ingrained way of life. As always, Listgirl and I recommend giving experiences rather than stuff whenever possible. Several of our gifts this year will be just that. Of course I can't reveal them now - check back in about a month. Finally... I think it's funny that the tree lot near my work is "Wayne's World."

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