The Weekend

Well, another weekend that was busy and it was so nice out that I never had a chance to get online. It Started with drinks at my hangout on Friday night. My roommate and a friend of hers came out and we were having fun and I happened to run into J4…now he hasn’t been mentioned in quite some time as I hadn’t heard from him after meeting him Super Bowl Sunday. Kind of a fluke on him being there, he saw me and we started talking, he couldn’t necessarily explain exactly why he didn’t call, but he did regret not calling, so said he would call me the next day before he left. We closed the bar and went home…

Saturday morning I had an early morning wake up call from C…that is always nice to get a call at 8:30 on a Saturday morning. Apparently he can’t sleep in anymore since he gets up early for work during the week so he opts to call people then. He might be working on my mortgage when I find a place which is why he was calling, to let me know that he had the option to do it. We talked a bit and then I got up since there wasn’t much point in trying to sleep longer. I had a scheduled showing for my house on Saturday from 1:45-3, so I did a bit of straitening up and decided to call my home and talked to my dad for an hour. Got off the phone with him and shortly after that (while my roommate and I were chatting), J (we’ll drop the 4 since the other Js are not a factor anymore) called and we talked for a bit. He invited me over for dinner and suggested a movie rental or something for later. I was game for it (particularly since he was offering to make a rotisserie, rosemary chicken, sounded yummy!) and after going for a walk with my roommate around Lake Calhoun (it was a gorgeous day on Saturday) and taking a little nap, then going for a run, I went over to J’s for dinner. We ended up drinking some wine, chatting, eating a most excellent meal, he showed me the work he’s doing on his house and then we watched Man of the Year which was quite funny. Both of us were tired from being out late the night before so around 1 (OK, it wasn’t real early) I headed home with thoughts of potentially having him come with me on Sunday to look at the house I was interested in buying. (They were having an open house).

Sunday I lost that darn hour but had an excellent run. Not real far, but I did 8 miles in 1:05:05 (8:08 pace) which felt easy. It must be the dropping 5 pounds of clothes, all I was wearing were light tights, light weight windbreakers, a long sleeved, light weight tech shirt and light weight windbreaker on top. The nice weather helped too I’m sure. Later that afternoon my roommate and I headed over to my friend’s that lives on the street I was hoping to move to. J met us and we started a look on the house to see what might be good and what might not (J is a contractor so part of why I wanted his help in looking). Unfortunately we found out there was an offer in on the house. My realtor called and asked about contingent, but they wouldn’t go contingent so it’s now gone…which means I’m going to stay with my asking price and work to get as much out of it as I can so I have more money to put down on the next one along with money to use toward remodels and such I might want to do (good thing I now know a contractor!!). After the look, my friend and I went for a walk with her dog and caught up, went back to her place for a while and then I headed home to meet up with MNFirefly and FullMetalLunchbox (who if you are keeping up, have been officially dating for a couple of months now and MNFirefly is moving to Chicago for a job and to be near her new sweetie). J came with me as he had nothing going on and was game for getting out of the house and the four of us met for a few beers and some food. Was a nice evening, FullMetalLunchbox seems quite nice and I think he would be a fun drinking partner, (particularly with reading his blog) too bad we didn’t have more time!! And he was working on my running Chicago in the fall…not sure I will, but I’ll have to make a trip down for a party weekend, and they have promised to come back for my housewarming, whenever and wherever that might be. Anyway, they were kind of cute all snuggly on the booth, kind of made you sick to watch (just kidding!!).

That’s it for my weekend, but another one without a real long run. I did some strength and 4 miles at lunch (it was too nice to not go outside) and tonight I’m planning 12-15…we’ll see what happens. I’ll rearrange

Home For Sale

Last Saturday I went and looked at two houses. They are on the same street that one of my best friends lives on. One is across the street and one is one house down and across the street. The first one was OK but needed A LOT of updates. It’s priced lower and if I could get it down even lower in price, I’d probably consider it a bit more…but the second one I just LOVED. I walked in and it felt like home. It does need updates. It’s been partly remodeled but still needs work, but it’s not things that would need to be done immediately. It has a lot of liveable space, and as I could afford it, adding and changing things would be great. It’s a twin home that is part of an association, so still no yard like I kind of want, but again, for the location (close to my friend and close to my favorite hangouts) I could live with the lack of yard and other things. After we looked, my realtor came to my place to get a feel for what I need to do to it to make it saleable. It’s not too terribly much, but then again it kind of is. I need to neutralize everything and declutter, which are the big things. Then I need to touch up some paint, do some staining and a few other odds and ends. I had needed to replace a doorknob on my patio door and my bathroom and those were taken care of by my dad yesterday. I’ve decluttered the kitchen and dining area as best I can and my realtor (he’s also a good friend as is his wife) is going to store some of the stuff for me so it’s more presentable for sale. I’m spending this evening spackling, sanding and painting where I need to touch things up. Packing up a few more boxes for storage at my friend’s place and painting the new bookshelf that my dad built for me and delivered this weekend (great timing on that huh? Oh well). With any luck, I’m going to have my place on the market yet this week. (everyone think good thoughts for me in selling, there are 4 other condos for sale in my association, one of them the same size and layout as mine but I think mine has a few better elements to it) Then it’s a matter of getting mine sold in a time frame that allows me to still buy the other place. I’m hoping to maybe make a contingent offer based on the sale of mine…but I don’t know if that will work or not. Thing is, I’ll be incredibly broke and have to stay at B&N and/or find a different part-time job and/or have a roommate for sure, but I don’t care…eventually I’ll have money come around a bit and in the meantime I’ll be in a place I think is perfect for me…

Snow, Snow and More Snow

This is what it looked like on my run last night. We haven't had snow like this (2 that blizzards within days of each other) in 25 years. I remember the last one in 1984...MN is known for it's cold, not so much the snow. What I remember as a kid was actually a fluke thing. What this means though...yesterday was March 1st...March came in like a Lion...early spring!! (not to mention the ground hog did not see his shadow this year!!)

I can’t believe I haven’t had a chance to update my blog now in a couple of days. And here I’ve even made some big decisions and I have yet to share them but with a few. I went for a run on Monday of 6 miles during my lunch, it was painful to a degree, but we had had snow, parts of the path weren’t plowed, was a bit slippery and a pain. Tuesday I was out, things weren’t feeling much better and I was supposed to do a 10 mile with 5 at LT pace of around 7:45…umm, knew that wasn’t going to happen. I’m just so not ready for that pace right now. I then and there decided that with everything going on (and just another recent disappointment in trying to find a place to stay) Grandma’s is out. I don’t have the motivation to push my training, things are still tight and hurting a bit and I just want to run just to run. I don’t want to train for it. If I wanted to, I could run and finish it, but if I’m going to run it again I’m going to PR and that just isn’t something I feel my training is going to attain this time through. So now I’m just running to run. That decided on that run, while I didn’t make the 7:45 paces for the 5 miles, I did hit some pretty intense hills and did 7 miles at an 8:30 pace. (yeah, I couldn’t get the 10/5 because I had work on Tuesday night) The last couple being sub 8 which is fastest I’ve fun in a long time. No Garmin today so I can’t post exact paces. Yesterday I ran 6.25 miles, over the same path and should’ve been a bit easier and it actually was just under 9 minute pace so again not bad. I think taking the stress off myself might be helping. I am bummed about losing registration fee and part of me still wants to do it and I might still train it, but without a place to stay and worse yet, no one guaranteed to come with me, I just don’t see it happening. Also today I’m supposed to be doing a 10 mile and we had snow last night and are expecting more this afternoon…I’m going to go out in it, but don’t know that I’ll get 10 miles in. And tomorrow is typically an off day, I’m going to run, but I have to work too, so no time for a longer run. We’ll see what happens over the weekend too. I’m running now more for fitness and weight loss than anything and I kind of like that. I don’t like pressuring myself to have to run this or that. I want to do intervals again, when weather permits, but I don’t want to HAVE to do this type or that…

In other news…I finally made a decision on my living situation. I had been on this whole, do I buy something else here, do I stay where I am or do I sell and move out of state…well, I’ve found areas and places that I kind of like and I decided yesterday I need to get my place on the market and move to one of the areas I really want to live in. In fact I think I have found the place I want. I haven’t seen it physically yet but it’s on the same street as one of my closest friends, is in an area reasonably close to everything I like to do and places I like to be, AND is at an affordable price after I ran some numbers…sooo…that means I need to get my place in saleable shape and on the market ASAP. My goal is Monday the 12th to list, and sooner if possible but I have so much I need to do to reduce clutter and make it viewable. Wish I had had it on the market sooner of course cause the place I want I know will be gone before I get mind sold…however, I did just order one of these that should arrive about the same time I’m going to list, so hopefully that will prompt something! Oh, and I talked to the mortgage people I'm planning to work with and as I suspected I'm approved...mortgage payment scares me a little as something was off on my calculations a little, but it's still doable and I'm still going ahead. Might mean having to stay at B&N for a while (or find a roommate which is the plan...I'll have a 2 stall garage on either of the two I'm looking for!!).

So back to the storms...We got hit on Saturday with one blizzard and Wednesday and yesterday gave us more. My boss told us to leave yesterday at about 1:30, and that was just shortly after we had gotten back from the thank you lunch they had taken us out for. It's just unreal though, how much snow we got. Enjoy the pics. These were taken from home and during the 6 miles I plodded through the snow (in 59:05...yes, it was a bit slow, and not the 10 on my schedule, but I think it probably should count for at least 8 plowing through what I was at times, and the slippery spots, and watching for the cars!).

This is what was happening about the time I decided to go run. Those would be my mailboxes and no, it hasn't been plowed yet!

My balcony around 2 pm yesterday. This included the snow from last weekend too, yes, I do know I need to get it cleared off!


You can't see it quite as well as I had hoped, but the prints on the left were from when I left the house, the ones on the right were right after I got back. It filled in that much in just under an hour. Some of them I couldn't even find. Oh, and I had taken my shoes off before running out to take the picture...I was in stocking feet in the snow!!

Balcony after all the snow was finally done, well, kind of. This was this morning and we are supposed to get maybe 3 more inches. I did make it into work though this morning. And I have running stuff with me, so am going to attempt a run at lunch.