Middle of the Pack

After some process improvement of the Friday night gathering of running supplies, our Saturday morning training runs with WCRR went well and without a hitch. We got up earlier and got to Mission Bay HS earlier than the scheduled time. Boy it was gray and slightly rainy this morning! But the temperature was perfect for running, somewhere in the 50's. Todd and I split up into our respective pace groups, and my group got to start before his group. I'm loving these staggered starts for the different pace groups! Basically, the slower you are, the earlier you start, so that everyone finishes around the same time. It worked out perfectly at the end, when Todd caught up with me and we ran the last 200 yards together and finished at exactly the same time! Me, running south in the middle of the pack on the boardwalk at Mission Beach. It was so gray that I thought the sepia tinted photo looked more artistic than the actual colors in the photo, LOL. Looking north towards Crystal Pier: About 2/3 of the way through the run, I saw the sun starting to peek through the clouds and shine over the water. I met a nice woman named Cathy who was about my pace. We chatted for a little bit. She ran the Rock N Roll Marathon last year without any training and finished in under 7 hours. This year she's training, LOL. I can't say that I've never known anyone to run/walk 26.2 miles without training. After the run, Coach Dan conducted a seminar about hydration. I guess I need to hydrate more because I found out that the dull headaches that I experience after long runs is due to dehydration. He also said something about if you're red in the face afterwards you're dehydrated. But I'm ALWAYS red in the face after running! Even when I only run like 2 miles. Then he said if you lose a lot of salt you may want to eat some pretzels and such the night before. That's me too! After my long runs my face is crusted with white salt. So now you can imagine how attractive I am after long runs. Sweaty, red-faced, and salt-crusted.

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I wasn't made this way

Many new readers to my blog have commented on my positive outlook on life. I really wasn't born this way, actually. My natural instinct is to be a worry-wort. And obviously my life isn't perfect, nobody's is. I went through a lot of personal crisis the past few years. In 2005 my husband Todd developed a rare disorder called Spontaneous Intracranial Hypotension (SIH). It's a condition where a patient gets postural headaches due to a leak of the Cerebrospinal Fluid (CSF) in the spinal membrane. The only way to relieve it was to lie down. So Todd basically laid down for two months and I tried my best to work from home and took care of him. We didn't know when/if he would get better. The treatments were trial and error, but finally one type of steroids helped him get better gradually. About a month after Todd got better and was working again, he was laid off from his job. Granted, they closed down an entire office and we had known it would happen, but it was still not pleasant when it happened right after the SIH. A short few months later, in June 2006, my beloved mom was diagnosed with uterine cancer. It was Stage IV already when they discovered it, but we were still hopeful. I took time off and went with her to every single chemo treatment. I spent a lot of good quality time with her just talking and sharing. We grew even closer and that made it THAT much harder when the Lord took her home on Valentine's Day 2007. Seeing someone you love suffer from and die of cancer is one of the most agonizing things you can experience in life. When my mom died I forgot how to breathe. I was subconsciously angry at God for allowing this to happen, even though intellectually I knew that heaven is unimaginably better than here. After my mom died, I tried very hard to put my life back together and tried to be "normal". Then one week in May 2007 I was very stressed out at work. One of my coworkers went on a 2-week vacation and I had to cover for him during a very busy time. One morning I was running on the treadmill and worrying about all that I had to do for work, when suddenly my heart was racing (more than the normal exercising heartrate), my chest felt tight, I felt dizzy and had difficulty breathing. I thought I had a heart attack. Turned out I had a panic attack triggered by all the physical and emotional stress I had experienced from my mom's illness and losing her. I went to the doctor right away and was put on the drug Paxil for anxiety. Paxil made me a lot less anxious, but I almost felt like I didn't CARE as much about things anymore. I was lethargic and my usual enthusiasm and passion for life was suppressed quite a bit. I knew in the long run it wasn't how I wanted to be. So after a year on Paxil, I worked with my doctor to get weaned off the drug. Even weaning off was hard when I experienced headaches, moody swings, and body zaps. Finally in July 2008 I felt NORMAL again. What a blessing it is to just feel normal! Why am I telling you this? Because I wasn't born a happy person. My life wasn't/isn't all sunshine and puppies. Being happy is a choice I have to make EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. Yes, some days it's easy to be happy. Some days not. But I choose to dwell on the good things in life and document those, because it makes me happy to go back and read my memories of the good things. It makes me thankful to be where I am now. Even the hard experiences in life are there so that we truly recognize it when LIFE IS GOOD. I love one of Todd's t-shirts that says, "Without rain, there aren't any rainbows." And always choose happiness, if you can. Life is a bit short to dwell on the unhappy things. Today's photo: Peppermint gave me this sock monkey calendar for Christmas. I had casually mentioned to her once how much I love sock monkeys. She filed it in her brain and surprised me with this gift. Peppermint is the first friend I've ever made on the internet. Good thing she's not a weirdo! She makes me laugh, she makes me cry (in a good way), and she charges me money for it. (Ha ha, just kidding. Even though she says she should.) Last but not least, Digi Dare #117 is up! Make sure you check it out at the Digi Dares site. All participants who make a layout and link us up will receive a 30% off coupon for Kristin Cronin-Barrow! Here's my layout for the Dare. Full credits here.

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Finally a cloudy day

After three straight weeks of sunshine and blue skies, we finally got a cloudy day and it even rained a little bit. Yea I know, you feel so sorry for me, right? ;P I have nothing to complain about. Even when we get cloudy or rainy days, it's a nice respite from the sun and something different, so I like it. Today's photo: I'm happy to report that this week, I got up early on Monday, Tuesday, AND today and ran on the treadmill before work! I can't tell you the last time I've done that! Imagine that, actually following the training schedule that I got from West Coast Road Runners... it's actually a relief to run in the morning and get it over with. Then when I come home from work I'm not starving and dreading having to exercise before dinner. I've been watching my DVR'ed episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice while running, it makes it go by faster. Running indoors can get boring sometimes... okay, most of the time. The Queen of Quirk herself (Jan Crowley) gave me the Fabulous Blog Award yesterday! I'm a HUGE fan of her blog and her sense of humor and writing style, so this is such an honor. Plus, she's a fabulous digi-designer and I love working with her stuff. I'll name five addictions that are different than last time (how many things can one be addicted to??):

• scrambled eggs for breakfast from my work cafeteria
• chocolate
• singing
• pizza
• hugs

Five people I'm passing the award to:

• Erika - love her dog Ebba and her photography.
• Jennifer W (Simple Scrapper) - informative digi-scrapping blog aimed at keepin' it simple.
• [i] love life - Kal Barteski's blog. She doesn't know me from jack, but I love reading about her life, her dog, her art, and her attitude about life.
• Life Is Art - the Pixel Gypsy Sherrie Piegdon's blog - I always enjoy reading whatever Sherrie has to say. She's logical and explains things well. And writes well.
• Kimberly Geswein's blog - they live in China now and I love her humorous take on life there.

On the deck tonight - crunching numbers to see how much kitchen & bath remodeling we can afford to do. FUN.

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Sunk Cost

There's a concept in economics and accounting called "sunk cost". Basically it means that it's money you've already spent and unrecoverable, but it should not affect your future decisions on the project. Here are some definitions I found on the interwebs: About.com - "Sunk costs are unrecoverable past expenditures. These should not normally be taken into account when determining whether to continue a project or abandon it, because they cannot be recovered either way. It is a common instinct to count them, however." Bridgefield Group "A cost already incurred that is not able to be affected by subsequent actions and thus has no relevance in evaluating future decisions." Here is an extensive article regarding the topic in wikipedia. I woke up today feeling bad because I have not been following through on my spiritual goals this year, which was to spend regular time reading the Bible and praying. I had signed up for a "read the Bible in a year" plan, and I'm SO far behind it would probably take 12 hours of reading the Bible to catch up to today's assignment. It paralyzed me. But today I kept hearing this "sunk cost" in my heart and I had to get on the computer and look up some definitions. Having studied accounting/finance in school and working in the field, I already was aware of the concept, but how did it apply in this situation? Then it dawned on me that it was God's gentle way of saying to me in a way that I can understand, "Child, the first 20 days of this year are over. You cannot go back and recover them. But it should not stop you from doing it TODAY." So yes! Regardless of the missed Bible reading and prayers this year so far, I can do it TODAY, and just read the passages assigned TODAY. The previous days are sunk cost. It should not affect my future decisions on whether to continue with my spiritual development. I need to write the past off. And I know there will be days like this again, when I need to start over and write off the missed days. And that's okay. I'm going to try and not let my past failures in this area affect my future. So if you're doing Project 365, or have any other NY resolutions that you feel you're failing on, don't give up. The past is sunk cost. You can start TODAY again, right where you're at. No need to catch up. No need to feel guilty. And no need to let the past failures paralyze your future actions. I feel really encouraged, I hope you do too. :) Photo for today: A couple of restored historical US Marine planes at the Flying Leatherneck Aviation Museum in Miramar. It was right across the street from San Diego Kitchen and Bath, where we went to visit at lunch to get some kitchen remodeling consultation.

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"With great power

comes great responsibility". - Ben Parker, Peter Parker (Spiderman)'s uncle. Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America today. No matter which way you lean politically, history was made today. Photo was taken at driveway to my work building. I'm hosting a LIST challenge at Pixel Gypsy Designs. (Imagine that... listgirl hosting a list challenge... ) The challenge is to list all the reasons why you're inspired to be alive. Here's my layout I made for the challenge: Stop by the PGD forums and say hi, and come do the challenge with us! Tonight Todd made Spicy Peanut Chicken Over Rice. Totally yummy as usual. The red dutch oven came from World Market. It was on sale and it was way cheaper than a Le Creuset.

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