This is my husband Blondie... We call him Double Down...

What a whirlwind. A complete and utter whirlwind. These last few weeks have been just insanely crazy. Here's a rundown on what's been going on. Take a deep breath, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride that is my life.

1) The job front.
As most everyone knows, Google has been the pinacle of employment in my head for like the last 4 years. I didn't even want to think about switching jobs out here unless it was to work for Google. So with the layoffs happening, I immediately put my resume into Google. And *gasp*, I got a phone screen with them. However, something weird happened. I couldn't even begin to relax about the phone screen. I was so wound up, so tense, I ended up not shining on the phone screen - it wasn't bad, it just wasn't great.

When the layoffs first happened, I also happened to update my resume on monster.

So, the week before my phone screen with Google, I got an email from company B, who happen to have corporate HQ in downtown, about 2 blocks from where I currently work. They had seen my resume on monster and contacted me. I ended up phone screening with company B about 3 days before my Google phone screen.

In the meantime, I got extremely excited about company B - the more and more I thought about it, the more and more I realized I wanted to stay downtown. I did an onsite interview with them on Friday (immediately before I left for Vegas again), and it went FANTASTICALLY WELL. Fantastically well enough that while on the train to the airport after the interview, they called and left me a voicemail that they wanted to bring me on, and would be getting in touch with me as soon as I got back from Vegas.

That's today. I am employed again! Feel free to shoot me an email if you'd like to know where I'm going to work. I just didn't want to post employer's names online. The salary is way fatter than what I make now, NO MORE OVERNIGHTS, the discounts are take your breath away good, NO MORE OVERNIGHTS, the work is something I'm interested in (it's what I do now but in a different kind of way), and have I mentioned NO MORE OVERNIGHTS???

Employment rocks the hizzou. Especially when I'm still employed and will be making the leap from one company to the next with no breaks.

2) Half-marathons...

I bit the bullet and signed me and Blondie up for the Nike Women's Half-Marathon in October. I start training today. And watching what I eat today. And losing weight today. And all that good stuff that goes into training. I'm no WC - I'm not triathalon ready (Go WC!!! I'll be rooting for you in May!), but I've got to get this body back under control again and what better way to do that then to run 13.1 miles???

3) Vegas... Baby... Vegas...

OMG. SO MUCH FUN!!! Blondie met me in the train station as soon as my interview as done on Friday. I was so ready for some gambling, some drinking, some relaxing, I couldn't tell you. And then I felt so good after the interview, and then I got that voicemail on the train about the job - we were on cloud 9.

We hit Vegas and immediately went to our hotel, the Flamingo on the strip (remember, this entire trip was comped out by my current employer). Nate Dawg and Mrs G met us at our hotel and we talked with them for a bit, but they were beat and had a big day ahead of them the next day, so Blondie and I went out by ourselves that night. We started with some craps, and both went up some $. Then we moved to blackjack where I went up even more $, but Blondie went down. Then we moved back to our craps table, where apparently I was so loud when we were there the first time, that the pit boss said "Hi Kerri! Hi Shaun! Welcome back" when we hit his table again - he remembered our names. We gambled until 5 am. I lost my $ but Blondie went up big time!!! It was so much fun. At one point I put my chips down on the Pass Line, but I covered up the P in Pass on accident and then had to point out to the dealers that I was on the Ass Line. Which cracked everyone up. A quick text message with a picture of a beer sent at 5:30 am to brother R completed our night.

We dragged our asses out of bed the next day at 2 pm, and headed straight for yards of margs and mexican food. Then we hit Luxor to get our tickets for our boob show on Saturday night, and headed back down the strip. We took it easy most of the day that day, ended up sitting outside our hotel on the patio on the strip drinking cheap beer. We met up with Nate Dawg and Mrs G and headed back down to Luxor that night to see Fantasy (the boob show). It was a great show - they had some beautiful dancers and the funniest guy in the world who could imitate any famous person you wanted.

Sunday - oh my goodness. It was a day of excess. We hit old school casino on the strip and proceeded to drink the afternoon away playing 25 cent poker. Then we went back down the strip to Casino Royale to get $1 Michelob's. From there it was cheap cheap Leinie's at our hotel, and then we watched the fountains blow at the Bellagio (my all time fav thing to do in Vegas). After the fountains went, we met up with Nate Dawg and Mrs G, and ate some chinese food. It was needed as yours truly was a little stumbly at this point. Then we got more drinks, and more drinks, and whoa. How did it get to be 5 am again? That just happened? Did someone reset our watches?

Pics will follow I promise.

4) Last overnight...

Tonight is my last overnight. This will be it for me. I'm actually looking forward to it, simply b/c it is my last one.

5) Ugh...

And I'm tired.

Cheers all!

--K

Important Questions...

1) How does one display 4" of ass crack and not feel it?

The Scene: VDay, 2007; a bar in the Mission
The culprit: Some guy sitting at said bar

Seriously. I mean seriously. 4" of ass crack. For anyone to stare at. It was god-awful. Party C first pointed it out. It then felt like a train wreck - I really didn't want to watch, but at the same time I couldn't tear my eyes away. Party C got her picture taken with the guy (he wasn't aware). You had to have felt some sort of breeze anytime someone walked by - pull your shirt down please! Or else, put a tip jar out - I would've given you $5 to be so ballsy as to show off that much crack in a public place. Yai yai yai!

2) Where exactly is the hippie toy-store located?

The Scene: GG Park, Feb 17th, 2007; Hippie Hill
The culprit: Everyone in the park except for me, Party C, Blondie, Carrie with a B, Porn King and GirlfriendJ.

It started out innocently enough. Blondie: "Look at the guy with the balls". Pretty soon, it seemed like everyone had toys out. Not just regular toys (frisbees, cards, beers!!!), but hippie toys (hula hoops, scarves attached to strings, cups on strings that you tossed in the air and caught on strings, balls you rolled up and down your arms, etc, etc, etc). Carrie with a B, in excruciatingly hysterical form on Saturday, made a comment that if he came through the area on stilts, he'd fit right in. Which led to a crack about juggling bowling pins while on stilts. Which led to someone (Party C? Blondie?) pointing out the guy juggling bowling pins (he wasn't on stilts though). The drum circle and about 30 beers rounded out the day nicely.

A shout out to Brother Lynn - "Francisco. That's fun to say!" "I'm in a store and I'm singing!"

3) If one has to get up at 3 am to work (on a day that a lot of people had off), how much should one drink the day before?

Who cares? Work sucks anyway.

4) If my burrito smells like ass, should I still eat it?

Hells yes! Because it didn't smell like ass! You were toasted Mr Kilowatt man!

And finally a shout out to Party C - you were a trooper this weekend. I'm still not sure how we do it. And I have to give you kudos - no way could I have eaten only 2 eggs on Sunday, gotten a new tat, and still partied it out Sunday night like you did. Sniff. Party C, you're my hero!!!!

Someone come visit me.

--K

It was a pretty good weekend. Last Thursday was the first of hopefully many poker games to be played with the guys. It looks like it will be a pretty good group. You can always tell that by the sheer volume of beers that we all put away! Friday was another beerfull night out. Brad, C and I whooped it up at Mad Dog in the Fog for the majority of the night while C modeled her stylish new button dress in the bar. Saturday was a day of hangoverness in the morning. The plan to go running in the morning was quickly scraped in favor of the more suitable "don't move from the bed" plan. We did manage to finally leave the city and head out to Berkeley. K, J, C and I all went on a road trip to take J to the dentist, tour the Berkeley campus, grab a bite of Jupiter food, and buy C some shinny new yellow galoshes and umbrella. I dropped them off at Toronodo in the Haight on the way back so they could get some afternoon drinking in while I dutifully headed home and spun my wheels on the project that I'm working on for work. That was a waste, but at least it's looking better now. And finally Sunday was a nice relaxing day sitting in front of the TV and catching up on a weeks worth of DVRs. It must have been the rain on Saturday, because K and I are both sick now with sore throats and stuffy noses. Hopefully that will clear up soon. In the meantime it's lots of chicken noodle soup, orange juice and Nyquil.

--S

Vegas Baby!

Yes, it was a good weekend. As you may or may not know, we have a yearly guys Super Bowl excursion to Vegas. This year was one that will be told to generations upon generations. I ended up a couple hundred up, which was pretty good considering I had a track record of losing my shirt every trip there. However, this story isn't about me and my measly two little bills. It's about a guy name Matt, or more commonly know by the name Lucky Bastard (LB or DLB).

We had a group of about 12 guys total this year, which divided up into half LB's friends and half his Dad's friends. We all get in on Friday at some point in the day. I got in pretty early and met up with Nate and Mike and hung around most of the morning and hit the daily noon poker tournament. Nate and I were knocked out, but Mike made it to the 10 spot, so he ended up getting a payout, which was cool. The rest of the afternoon was pretty nice for me. Craps was by far the most generous that day to me since I was up $400 after a couple hours of play. Generally I was always up during the course of the weekend with a couple times falling back down to even. I played mostly craps and blackjack, but a few spins of the roulette wheel and a couple poker tournaments rounded out the weekend nicely. It's about 9 when LB finally gets in from Dallas with Tracy and Klaus to follow. The rest of the night is spent at various table games. Some of us get to sleep early (around 2) and a couple (LB included) make up some lost time since their planes got in late and pretty much stay up all night. We're awaken at 7am by a DLB (Drunken Lucky Bastard) who stumbles in and declares "I hope you don't mind me putting my huge fricken pile o' money on the floor" as he pulls stacks and stacks out of his pockets and makes a big pile in the middle of the suite. All told the first night he was up around $8K. Not bad for someone so drunk he fell a few times in the hallway coming back to the room! Since we were all staying at the Rio, which is fairly isolated from the strip, they have you at their mercy as far as table limits. They definitely jacked them all up this weekend. There wasn't a $5 game in the house and I only saw 2 tables at $10. So most of the time we had to hit the $15/$25 tables. Normally this would tend to cause larger than normal losses, however, as you can see it was quite the opposite fate for DLB. He started out at the normal rate of $25 a hand and managed to get an early lead and just kept bumping the bets up accordingly... $50, $100, $200, $400, $600... After leaving his big pile o' money on the floor we felt it necessary to at least get one good incriminating pic of him...



The next day was a day of up and down and back to even for me. The one highlight was the full house I hit in Caribbean Stud which paid close to $400. That evening was a completely different story for DLB. I would say LB, but I think he woke up still drunk, so he kept going with the DLB moniker. The evening wore on and his stack kept growing at an amazing pace. Some of us went clubbing to give our up and down funds some stability, if only for a while. In the meantime DLB stuck to the tables to keep the bankroll going. At the end of the night (aka 8am) DLB stumbled in with 20 large. That's right, that DDLB (Damn Drunken Lucky Bastard) just more than doubled his stake in the casino's profits and couldn't even see straight. Toward the end of that night before heading up, he tried to make it over to the restrooms to give back a portion of the Dewar's that he had so generously taken off the Casino's hands, but didn't quite make it. Luckily a trashcan was on the way, so one quick blast from the gut in the trashcan and he was on his way back to the tables. What a trooper!

Superbowl Sunday. The day we came to Vegas for. And ironically we didn't have any Super Bowl party tickets. We had tried various times during the weekend to get reservations, but everything always seemed booked. That is until DLB sat down at a table an hour before Kickoff time. He pulled his stack of hondo's out and started the hands out with 3 bills. Yup, won the first hand. And the second. Split the third and won them both. Doubled down on the forth and got the 10 to double up. All told he won the first 12 hands and 19 out of the first 20. That brought his total up past the $25K that was the highpoint of the weekend. He was well known by the dealers and pit bosses by this point in the weekend and had done something that his Dad hasn't done yet in countless trips to Vegas. Earn Diamond status at the Casino. It is a shiny bright card, which stands out against the dim Gold Status cards that the rest of us had. So right before the Super Bowl he manages (with the help of the real big roller Jim) to get the remaining 4 of us that didn't have tickets yet to a party, some tickets to an open-bar, all-you-can-eat party, with huge wall sized projection screen TVs and a lot of rowdy fans. Not bad. Not bad at all.

And that takes us to a kick ass Super Bowl! It came complete with text wars with Slick (see K's blog below) over who would win the game. Of course the first one I received was simply "Bears". And the first one he got back was "Suck". Not much later he received "Colts" and I got back the "Suck" texts. The exchange was typically done after one side scored. Of course I had to send a couple "Send Griese In" and "Go Grossman" after a superbly timed interception ;-) And with the Colts win, the hated Bears were exposed as wannabes and their fans were united in hating Grossman. Ah, a season well done. Of course we can't leave out that the Packers must have shattered the Bears spirits just enough during the crushing last game of the season, that the Bears knew that they were pretenders all along.

I won 7 out of 8 bets on the game, so I was pretty happy. The Colts won, there was more than 3.5 field goals, more than 1.5 interceptions, the game ended with an even score, the first team that scored lost, there were no safeties, and there was no overtime. The only one I lost was that there were not over 4.5 sacks.

Sunday night was a drunken blur of gambling, clubbing, and only getting an hour of sleep before we had to take off for the airport. All told it was a damn good weekend. All 6 of us left ahead, which is unheard of. It's nice to see the Rio so accommodating in giving us their money when they gave the impression that they wanted to take it all with such high table minimums! The phrase "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" luckily didn't apply to DLB's big pile o' cash.

I got home at around 3pm on Monday and didn't get out of bed until 6am Tuesday Morning. That's definitely a sign that you've just been to Vegas!

Ah, Vegas Baby!

--S

Bear down! Or not...

Chicago was, in 1 giant word made by combining different words, fan-gor-bla-smic. I combined fantastic, gorgeous, blast and orgasmic. Although I honestly just stuck orgasmic on the end b/c I like how it sounds rolled together. Fangorblasmic. Ahh, I like my new word!

Chicago was also very very cold. I landed Saturday early afternoon and called Slick. He informed me that it was "cold" outside. Well, cold can mean anything from "if I had testicles they'd be curled up inside my body" cold to "a sweater will do" cold. It was the testicle cold. I seriously don't think the actual high got over 5 degrees, with temps regularly into the -10 degree area.

Saturday we ended up hitting the bar around 3 pm and shooting pool for several hours. The delightful Miss Funke and Fish joined us around 7 pm. We braved the testicle-cold (TC from now on out) to go to dinner and then we braved TC again to go back to the bar. Then it was back to Slick's to make fun of the new Superman movie. OMG - that movie is BAD. But the new Superman is quite the hottie (although nobody is as hot as my blondie!)

Then it was Sunday. Time to don our Chicago Bears gear and BEAR DOWN. It was still TC so we moved straight from Slick's to the bar. IT WAS INSANE. I can't stress that enough. And when the Bears lost (tee hee!), I honestly thought half the bar was going to line up to throw themselves in front of trucks or something. I was cheering, but I was doing it silently and with a sad look on my face, so I didn't get the shit kicked out of me. The lone Colts fan in the bar did get into a fight - some girl on girl 'fighting' (aka slapping) that had me laughing my ass off.

Monday involved me sleeping more than I thought was possible. I'd periodically wake up to laugh that Slick had to work, and then I'd go right back to napping. But Monday night was a drunken mess. From a huge pitcher of tequila (the restaurant called it margaritas, but they forgot everything that goes into making margaritas except for the tequila), to a bottle of wine back at Slick's, to me and Slick deciding we needed more beer... Top that with the chili I ate for lunch and the mexican I had for dinner...

And that leads us into the longest flight back ever on Tues. Seriously. On a cramped plane, stuck for 2 hours on the tarmac for deicing, landing way late in Oakland, having to take a bus and 2 trains to get home... I could've kissed my toilet and probably would've but I also know the last time we cleaned that thing and while I will let my ass touch it, no other part of my body is allowed near it.

In good news, The Co-Creators of the Cutest Kid in the World (aka my brother and his wife) are coming to visit!!!! Our first official family-visitors! We can't wait to see you guys. Let us know as soon as you buy tics!

Hey blondie - where is your post about the Vegas weekend?

--K

Taking the old liv-liv to drunk town...

In preparation for our various weekend trips (yours truly to Chi-town, blondie to Vegas), we've decided to get in a few good workouts. Specifically, we decided we needed our livers and kidneys in fighting form.

It started innocently enough on Wed. A call from a friend who managed to get herself dumped from jury duty... we needed to celebrate! Yay! No more jury duty! A whole group of us went to eat cheap sushi and drink expensive drinks. Party C left after a bit, she had a hot date to get home to, but the rest of us moved a few streets over to booze it up with the residents of the Financial District. (Blondie had killed himself running out to the Pacific Ocean on Wed, so he was home dying). Jury Duty's sister came out, and it was all bets off by then. Party C's date ended up bailing so she called Blondie and they went out in our 'hood. Yours truly kept pouring them down in the Fi-Di.

Then, it was time to go home. But not quite. Instead of just doing the smart thing which would've been realizing I was drunk, I decided Party C and Blondie needed some company so I joined them at the bar in the 'hood. Uh. Right. All of us were schnockered.

Thurs was not pleasant for anyone.

Thurs night Blondie went and got a nice shiny new haircut (he looks HOT), and then called yours truly to meet up at "the place between the pharmacy and Zazie's" (i.e. the bar in the 'hood). Then we went to grab some dinner where we ran into the Porn King and his friend Kari with a K. Porn King suggested giving Party C a call, so we did and she came and joined us. It was just a few drinks, but enough to give yours truly a spurt of drinking power. It was an early night b/c Blondie is on his way to Vegas EARLY today.

I don't know about Blondie and his friends, but Slick better watch out... I'm ready and raring to go after the last few days. Ready and raring...

Go Colts! Or rather, just Don't Go Bears.

--K

Bye Bye Barbaro...

As a KY native (not completely true but seeing as how I don't remember Ohio as a child, I consider it true), and as someone who loves her animals (no, I don't ride horses, but I still think they are beautiful), it broke my heart to see Barbaro was humanely euthanized today (yesterday now). What a trooper. Here's hoping horse heaven is full of good things to eat (carrots, oats, whatever else you want) and hot female horses (mares?) who only have eyes for you.

--K

A fresh start... Or, how I get my life back...

Ahhh, nights - I own you again! Early morning hours - I own you again! Life - you are my own again! Raging headache and cotton mouth - apparently I am owning you right now.

So, yesterday, my company announced the closure of the SF office for the technical teams that are out here. I'm one of those. They've given me a 2 month notice, and I will receive severance after the 2 months are up. In addition, (and this is *so* sweet of them - make sure you read that in a sarcastic manner), they've offered to pay to relocate me back to TX. Hmmm, let me think - okay, NO.

The point is, I've got my life back. I've been skating through this job for a long time, hating it and hating life while I worked it, and this is a really good thing for me. I'm going to start over out here. I'm going to find something I don't hate (if I find something I like, even better, but for now we'll go with something I don't hate). I'm going to get paid like I should be paid for what I do.

Big big thanks to A for getting me out of the house yesterday - you are a rock star!
Big big thanks to B for having the "medical thing" and joining us at Zeitgeist - you are a rock star!
Big big thanks to sweetie J and party C keeping the party going into the night - you guys are both rock stars!
BIG BIG thanks to blondie - yes, I know it was your turn, but sometimes sh*t happens. Thanks for dragging my drunk ass around town last night, and getting me to put some food in my stomach and getting me home and into bed. You are MY rock star.

--K

A sore foot...

I busted my foot last Wednesday on my Pacific Ocean run. Specifically, I pulled a muscle in the arch of my left foot. It hurt. I still was able to go to the gym on Thursday and Friday, but that's because I did non-impact aerobic activity. Saturday morning I woke up and was feeling better, and like the idiot I am, skipped Running 101 (because "it's not a workout right now") and instead did the Pacific Ocean run again. And reinjured it.

I stayed home today to stay off my foot. I decided to do laundry. Instead of waiting for our slow-ass elevator, I thought I could go down the steps with my piled high laundry basket and detergent (and my gimpy foot). Yep, I wiped out. It was glorious.

In better news, I will be off to the land of The Bears in about 1.5 weeks. Chicago baby, here I come. I bought tickets to visit Slick over Super Bowl Weekend, and of course, we now know that Chicago made it to the Super Bowl, so I'm SERIOUSLY looking forward to my weekend. Woo hoo! BEER.

--K

The. Pacific. Ocean.

It's 4.35 miles from our house. I ran out there today on my lunch break. All of a sudden, you come out of the trees in Golden Gate Park, and to your right is a huge windmill, to your left are more trees, and directly in front of you, with nothing to disturb your view, is the Pacific Ocean. That image alone gave me the energy to turn around and make it back to the apartment.

--K

Making myself cringe...

I did Yoga yesterday for the first time ever. It absolutely 100% hurt me. Every muscle in my body aches. From my neck muscles (traps according to blondie) to my stomach muscles (abs according to everyone), I feel it in every part of my body.

I'm cringing because I'm thinking back over the year and a half I've been thinking about trying Yoga and I'm remembering all the times I said (with a straight face): "But Yoga is just stretching. That's not really a workout".

See yesterday's post: I never said I was brilliant.

--K

Movies, beer, and Popeyes... Oh My!

As I found out on Friday, we have a "brew and view" in SF. That, to the non-drinkers reading this, is a movie theater that sells beer. This particular one is a live music venue with FREE movies on Monday nights. They do have a 2-drink minimum (that absolutely nobody enforces), but other than that - free (this includes popcorn). Also, if you don't like popcorn, you can bring outside food in. They don't care.

So, last night, Party C, Crazy Larry, Sweetie J, Blondie and myself headed over (15 min walk) for Super Troopers and BeerFest double feature. We got drunkity drunk. Sweetie J went across the street to the Popeyes and brought back fried chicken for everyone. It was a blast.

Until this morning when the alarm went off at 5:45 am because I had some work to do. Now I'm wondering why it was such a good idea. Beer from 7 pm to midnight? Popeyes at 9 pm? All the night before I have to actually work in the morning?

I never said I was brilliant...

--K

Interesting... Very interesting...

How was Kerri's weekend do you ask? Well, let me tell you.
1) I resisted a bagel on Friday. (YaY!)
2) I had a pedicure on Friday with my party friend C while chowing down on free gummy bears that the pedi-place so kindly left beside my chair (YaY!)
3) I had a glass of wine on Friday while watching a hysterically funny movie with C (YaY for movie - Boo for only one glass of wine)
4) Running 101 started Saturday. It was not as fun as I thought it would be. And apparently, the people that enrolled in Running 101 are targets of amusement for the 'real' runners. (YaY for the nice women that I met - Boo for the bitches (you know who you 2 are) that felt the need to make cracks about Running 101).
5) Farmer's Market + Nan + Chipolte Chutney + Pork tamale = yummy yummy goodness (YaY!)
6) Heard from an OLD friend that I haven't talked to in about 13 years. In addition, he told another OLD friend (15 years maybe) that he found me and that OLD friend asked for my email address so we could catch back up (I think this is a YaY! but it feels really really weird to be talking to people I knew when I was in 10th grade - Terri has been the only one to get that 'priviledge' thus far in my life).
7) Early night on Saturday and a bunch of beer (YaY!)
8) Dinner with my sweetie friend J on Sunday night followed by a bit of boozing in North Beach followed by Mario Kart while drunk in front of the TV (YaY!)
9) SD Chargers lost and Chicago Beers won (BOOOOOOOOOO!)

So that's 5 YaYs! - 1 big BOOO + 2 no changes (YaY-Boo) + 1 I'm not real sure. So I guess that evens out to 1 Yay!

--K

Working on my resolve...

Tomorrow is Bagel Friday. Unlike last week, I haven't managed to forget this. Crud.

--K

Random things...

1) I watched Clerks II the other week and now can NOT get "ABC" by Jackson 5 out of my head. Thank you Kevin Smith. "Reading and writing and arithmetic, are the branches of the learning tree". UGH! Make it stop!
2) The Cutest Kid In The World (TCKITW, aka my niece) makes a mean set of muscles.
3) If I had some cajun food in front of me right now, I would slowly smear it all over me. And I would eat it. Razzoos you silly fool. Why don't you exist in SF? (and a thank you to A for getting me on the cajun kick).
4) SF is on the water (REALLY?!?!? Who DIDN'T know that). But our apartment is still located ~475 ft above sea level. Talk about some hills!
5) I have 30 minutes left in my day and they are taking forever. Technically I know they take 60 seconds each, but today they feel like they are taking 5 hours each.
6) Hi blondie!

--K

It was a pretty good weekend. We started it all out with a chill night on Friday catching up on DVRs from the week. Saturday morning we went to the farmers market with A&B and spent $12 on fresh from the farm vegetables that would have cost us about $50 at the store. We reluctantly hit the gym Saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the day watching football (oh darn Dallas lost ;-) and lounging in front of the TV. J came over and we all just watched movies, played Mario Cart and hung out while trying not to think about food and beer. The conversation always came back to food and beer though ;-) Sunday was the day of running hell. J and her boss A took us on a new running route. We ran Golden Gate park from the JFK start near Stanyon all the way to the ocean and back (6.8 mi). The route took us past the Young Museum, a rose garden, countless picnic areas, the buffalo pen, and finished by the Dutch windmill/tulip garden near the ocean. Getting to the ocean was pretty cool. It was a nice reward to get there and see the waves crashing on the beach half way through the run. On the way back all the energy that I had was gone by mile 5 and I was on fumes till the end though. That was the farthest I've run in about 3 months. I thought I was going to pass out and die on the mile walk back home after the run. If it wasn't for that banana and cup of coffee on the way back up the hill to home, I think I'd still be trying to make it up that hill. Once back home, I don't think I moved more than 10 feet for the rest of the day. And that was the weekend...

-S

Blind-sided, and not in a good way...

My work (as I've mentioned before) has "Bagel Friday" which is exactly like what it sounds. They pay some bagel company to stock our kitchen with bagels, cream cheese, and muffins. As a result, my favorite day to come to work is Friday. And my favorite thing to eat is a plain bagel, with cream cheese on 1 side and peanut butter on the other. Oh god. Drool.

I actually managed to forget today that it is Bagel Friday. I ate my breakfast at home, and am feeling pretty full. I go strolling down to the kitchen this morning to get my usual liter of water and strong black coffee, and BAM. In my face. Bagels.

The hardest thing I've done in the past month or so, is walk out of the kitchen without a bagel. This was about 30 minutes ago. I've done nothing in the past 30 minutes but think about bagels. Now I'm writing about bagels. I hope lunch comes quick so I can go to the gym where there is NO CHANCE I will lose my willpower to eat a bagel (simply because there aren't bagels in the gym).

If there was lox in the kitchen, it would've been over.

--K

Happy 2007 to everyone! I haven't gotten many posts up in the past, but I'll try to change that this year. 2006 ended with a few beerful nights drinking, a good movie (despite what K said, The Good Shepherd was a good movie) , some excellent food (I miss Burgermiester already) , an entertaining concert (Gnarles Barkley / The Flaming Lips), and kick-ass football (Packers whooped up on the Bears / Badgers just eeked out the Capital One Bowl). So now it's back to work, back to the diet, back to the gym, back to running and back to getting in shape. Ouch, I hurt.

--S

Oh my god, what did I do...

I went running. I did it badly. Very badly. Today was my first day back to the gym, and now all of me aches. Because I'm an idiot and jumped right back in and pretended I haven't gained weight back and that, hey, I'm a runner.

Why am I telling you this? I'm joining the SF Road Runner's club. I'm enrolling in Running 101 - for beginners obviously. I'm going to have someone actually watch me run, get me to a comfortable pace, help me maintain that pace, help me hydrate properly, help me stretch properly... It starts next Saturday.

So what does that have to do with my run today? Even though it's a BEGINNER'S class, obviously I couldn't show up actually a beginner! Oh my goodness - NO. I mean, a beginner going to a beginner's class? Ha. That would be like going to the gym because you need to lose weight - everyone knows you lose weight first, and then show up at the gym all healthy.

My body hurts.

--K

And it all got wrecked...

Thank you food poisoning (or stomach flu or whatever the hell you were). I heart you for making the last 2 days of 2006 and the first 2 days of 2007 a living hell. Thank you for ruining my concert plans. Thank you for ruining my drinking skills. Thank you for wrecking my NYE. Sigh.

HAPPY 2007 EVERYONE!