sooooo cloooooose...

last week, I thought spring was ALMOST here. highs were in the 30's. it was nice. And then the weekend came, and Saturday brought the most awful run we've had here yet. 6 miles of running straight into a strong wind, when it's already frickin' freezing out, is totally not cool. At least the miles back were kind of nice, but it left me way more exhausted than I should have been for 12 miles.

yesterday was considerably better. We made a trip to the gym to lift legs and then ran a bunch of errands up there. mmmm... coffee from a french press... (thanks for the suggestion, Brent and Rae!)

last night I spent the evening making all sorts of food. Stuffed sweet pepper soup for my lunches this week, prepped the stuff for mexican pie tonight, and made pesto won tons for dinner last night. so that was fun.

Saturday we had dinner with KTG and her husband at their place. She made me a fantastic birthday cake that had lots of liquor (Bailey's) in the frosting. mmm...

other than that, just lots of catching up with people on the phone over the past few days. I finally caught up with Bullfrog (aka "airforcefriend") after about a month of phone tag (and not really talking to him fro 6+ months. sheesh!), and I've still got a few more people to "catch up" with. It's amazing how easy it is to get wrapped up in day to day life and get out of touch with people.

on a totally unrelated note... I do a lot of really weird "things." one of the weird things that I have been doing lately is that each time I go use the restroom I do 10-15 squats. just air squats. nothing fancy. I remember reading in a magazine or on a website one time that it's a great way to practice and reinforce good form on squats. and since I've just begun squatting with a bar instead of a smith machine again, I can use all the practice I can get. that shit's hard, yo. so I take a minute to really practice my balance and make sure i'm doing things right. it's a small thing, but it's kind of one of those day to day things that I think helps with overall fitness in the long run, like taking the stairs whenever you can.

Dice, predictably, laughs at me whenever he sees me doing them. he pretty much rolled his eyes when I told him I do it at work. BUT! Yesterday, I finally coerced him into doing barbell squats with me (simply because the smith machine was being used... he usually only does smith machine squats) and when he warmed up with the bar, I gently but firmly told him that he wasn't getting low enough. he told me it was hard to get lower BECAUSE IT'S DIFFICULT TO KEEP YOUR BALANCE. ha! and THAT'S when I got to break out with the, "SEE! THE BATHROOM SQUATS HAVE A PURPOSE!" thing. I think he was actually pretty impressed with my range of motion (as am I, quite frankly. I'm sorta inflexible).

so I guess the lesson of the day is that little things actually do matter!