Michelle’s House of Horror

You’ve seen the photo album on Facebook –so who do you think I most resemble?

I’ve posted a poll, which you will see in the sidebar on the left.

What do you think?

Out of the tragic Australian brush fires, one adorable image.
A (probably hunky) firefighter gives an injured koala a drink of water.
Just the cutest thing you could ever possibly see!

The koala will get treatment in a wildlife center and be released into the wild as soon as appropriate habitat can be located.

The death toll is expected to be over 200 people, with thousands left homeless. Arson is suspected in at least some of the fires.

Drool, slurp.
Oh, wait–was that a tacky thing to say? Not as tacky as blogging this photo just because, well, Matthew Mitcham is such an awesome specimen of young manitude. So athletic! So wholesome looking! So bendy!

Click on the links to check out even more hunky pix. A certain friend of mine would NOT be offended by any of them!

This is what you see looking out our back door–the snow on our patio tables is exactly how much snow is on the ground right now:

And this is what you see if you look out the front door:

And here I am standing in the driveway. Very exciting, no?

Here’s is Mark shoveling the snow in the driveway. Not fun.

Finally, here’s what our house looks like in the snow:

Look who I found on my front porch when I got back from the beach today:

Does this mean that he’s leaving that French woman and moving in with me? What will my husband think?

A few weeks ago, I got motivated to start doing some of my running outdoors. [Yes, I realize that it is now Fall, and that perhaps it would have made more sense to be doing that in the Summer when it was not pouring rain. Shut up.] My motivation came in the form of two half marathons I’m planning to run in April and May. It occurred to me that the half marathons would not be run on treadmills, and that it might behoove me to get used to the act of running with my feet on the ground before then.

My plan of attack is to continue to use the treadmills for most of my training, since I don’t like running in the dark, and to do my longer Saturday runs outside. Of course, this being Oregon in November, this involves rain. Which hasn’t actually been terrible. I was born here. I’m used to slogging through the rain. I did have to buy a few new wardrobe items to make it more palatable, but I like shopping.

Last weekend, I did get a little bit lost during my run, but ran about 6.3 miles and had a pretty good run in spite of the rain.

My second outside run was yesterday. I got up, had my coffee and cereal and headed out the door at 9:00-ish thinking I’d do a 7-8 mile run. I didn’t have a specific target for my run, but I did want to run through a nearby park, take pedestrian bridge across the river and see what the trails on the other side were like. So off I ran in the light but steady rain.

Running down one of the trails at the park, I noticed a group of teenage boys jumping up and down and blocking the trail ahead of me. They were looking down another trail, and kept yelling “woo hoo” and applauding something or someone I never did see. I figured it was just some silly boy behavior, and ran around them. A little way further on, probably 3.5 miles or so from my house, was the pedestrian bridge across the Tualatin River. As I ran across the bridge, I noticed yet another group of teens sitting at the end of the bridge. They appeared to be cheering for me in the same sort of way you’d cheer for someone who needed an unreasonable amount of encouragement for doing something other people can do with little effort. Like the sort of cheering you’d do if a person with only 1 finger who didn’t know the alphabet was typing a report. I sort of felt like I was in the Special Olympics at this point, but hey–any encouragement is fantastic during a run! The girls pointed to a trail that they seemed to think I wouldn’t find without their help. It was the only trail there. I jogged onto it.

After a few minutes, several people passed me going the opposite direction. One of them said to me “keep going, sunshine, you only have about a quarter of a mile left!” I looked a bit puzzled, said “no, I have about 3 or 4 miles left..what’s in a quarter of a mile?” and he laughed and kept walking.

After another 300 or 400 meters, I came to yet another group of cheering teenagers standing under a whole bunch of balloons attached to a big sign with the word “FINISH” on it. As I stayed on the trail that I was on, they yelled at me that I was missing the finished line. I laughed and confessed that my presence on their race course was accidental. Apparently, they all thought I was in the Run for Darfur 5K being put on by some students from Tualatin High. The race had started more than an hour prior to my nearly crossing the finish line, which explained the sort of “give the old lady who just ran a 1:20:00 5K some applause for trying” reaction I’d been getting. [I am admittedly very slow, but I can run at least a 10K in that time. I'm slow, but not a walker!]

I was oddly happy to get the unexpected encouragement after popping into a race accidentally during my run.

But.

I have to admit that I was very glad that there were not any people at the finish trying to give me a hug. It was a very “run, Forrest, run” moment.

Oh, and I ended up running 7.88 miles in all…with a brief walk break in the middle as I tried to work my way through the crowd at the finish line of the race.

No catfish though. Do you think they really jump? That doesn’t seem logical to me.

I’m wrapping up another delightful week on call. (boo, hiss)

Mark and I lit off our fireworks on Friday night. I’m always surprised how much spark-y stuff and loud noises come out of the legal fireworks! We walked to the end of the street afterwards and caught the end of the display the city puts on at Tigard High.

I’ve been reading a lot over the long weekend, since I’m a bit stuck at home (the on call thing) but it’s been good weather for lolling about on a chaise lounge on the patio. I got through “the Historian” which is a novel about some historians searching for Dracula. That was fun, if not particularly profound. Excellent reading for the chaise lounge, and I do love both vampires and travelogues, so I was very happy with the book. Also am just finishing up “the Glass Castle” by Jeannette Walls, which has also been a quick read…a little grim for the chaise lounge, but still interesting. It reminds me of “Bastard Out of Carolina” and “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”–young girl raised in a quirky to the point of abuse family makes good.

We went to the farmer’s market this morning and got more produce than we’ll be able to eat. A big pot of vegetable soup helped make a big dent in it though.

No knitting to speak of, really. My wrists have been bothering me again.

I did find an old friend from college on Facebook a few weeks ago. (Hi, Nabil!) I haven’t talked to him since about 1985! He’s been from Oregon to Dubai to Bangladesh to England since then. People do get around, don’t they?

It’s the usual work, gym, Mark bought another bass, I read more books kind of a month.

So, life is blissfully uneventful.

It was time to recertify for my CCNA (Cisco Networking certification, for the non-nerds who may be reading) and of course I’ve been studying a bit here and there for several months for the SND exam which will get me recertified. So, I took the exam several weeks ago..not really thinking I was super prepared but fairly prepared..and was not stunned when I failed by a bit.

However. I came home, and spent the next 2 weeks studying very hard indeed. Most unlike me.

I was very stunned when I took it again last week, and just barely missed passing. This is material I thought I knew very well! I wanted to stick a pin in someone’s eye. Probably my own, since it wasn’t anyone else’s fault I failed. I needed to complete this exam by 6/20 or lose my original cert. I was kicking myself hard in the posterior for waiting so long, and certainly didn’t want to take the whole CCNA exam again!

So I buckled down. Took some days off work.
And got 100% on the damn test this morning.

And there was much rejoicing.
Particularly at work, where my mood has been less than good of late.

Now what will I take next? Firewall specialist? IOS router security specialist?
Hmm…..

This whole fitness thing still seems to be working out (heh) very well. Mark and I are both down 40+ pounds, and still hitting the gym 5-6 nights a week…eating sensibly, blah blah blah. Yeah, it’s boring, but we both feel good and it’s a lot more sustainable to eat what we like in sensible quantities than to do a “diet” and get sick of it and fail. So “yay us” I guess.

So far this year I have run/walked/ellipticalled/biked over 718 miles. I actually rode my real bike in the street for almost 20 miles one day. There were hills.

I just got back from a work trip to the Seattle area for some training on one of our new firewalls. That was much needed, but I was mainly happy because it meant I got to hang out with some friends (hi, Kevin and Georgia!) and my folks.

Hanging out with my mother meant shopping. That was fun. Expensive.

Knitting-wise…hmmm…going to the gym has really hurt my knitting time. I’ve got a Pi Are Squared shawl on the needles right now. In Blue Moon’s Geisha yarn. Geisha is a mohair/silk blend that is really great to knit with. Definitely recommended!

More like 400. Take THAT you silly little goal, you!

I know, I know–I’m soooooo mature