What A Day.

Settle in, folks. This could be a long one. *Sorry* But I can promise you some cuteness, running stuff, and awesomeness!

For the cuteness ... Dan and Annie (Knitted Home ... Week 3 of her headband giveaway! Go check it out) were out of town this weekend so I agreed to kitten-sit their little ball of fluff, Neko. It was a win-win for me since I got a LOT of work done on my computer and made a serious dent on catching up on my Hulu. Oh, and I got to hang out with one of the silliest, most adorable kittens ever.

Check my youtube for the 2nd video if you're interested. No joke, this went on for over an hour. Oh and, yea, she's adorable (and mischievous). And I finally gave her a piece of paper to play with after having her steal several pages of my notes off the couch the night before. lol. I even got in a nice early morning jaunt with my friend Mike (his wife didn't want to get out of bed "that early") at our favorite metropark while he was in town. No info on that one since apparently my Garmin turned itself on in my bag again and the battery died. Grr. Oh well. It was about 4 miles and we were just wandering and chatting. It was great.

Neko: "You can't see me sneaking up to pounce on your feet."

I'm going to fess up and put it out there that I COMPLETELY flaked on my run Monday. I don't remember what my "deal" was that day (especially since it was MLK day and I wasn't on campus). To make it even worse, I flaked on making it up yesterday. Even though I worked late (if you aren't watching a clock, it's easy to lose track of time in a basement lab with no windows), I had planned on getting in my 3 miles on the treadmill when I got home. Then, I got home and crashed. Oh well. Time to move on.

I woke up this morning with a crazy sinus headache and ended up working from home because the meds were taking FOR-EV-ER to kick in. A headache is bad enough but when you have a headache and there's construction going on directly over your head for 8 hours straight? Hell to the no. Around lunch, WELL after the meds had kicked in and I was feeling better, I decided to head outside for my run. It was 26* and (sometimes) sunny. Perfect. I had to suck it up a little bit since almost all my workout clothes were either dirty or stinky. I can deal with stinky pants, but shirts HAVE to be clean. Thank goodness my race shirt from Midnight Special is polyester and was clean. I decided to try out the "new" route I ran last monday since it was a perfect distance for my 4 miles plus a decent warm up. My training plan called for a 4-mile "tempo run" with the first and last miles around 11:50/mile and the middle 2 miles around 10:50/mile. I'd say I did pretty well.

I was a little concerned at the beginning since I hadn't run in a couple days and my diet has REALLY been off the past 2 days, but I felt pretty good. My side started to hurt a bit towards the end of the 3rd mile, but I realized really quick that I just needed to focus on keeping my breathing deep and it was all good. My legs felt strong and the "cold" felt good on my face.

As soon as I got home, it was laundry time. To give you an idea of the rarity of this (and the ridiculousness of my friends), here's a small bit of a conversation that was happening online at the time:

Me: BRB. Need to go sort the wash and move stuff over to the dryer. Might take a second to pull out the non-dryer stuff and hang it up.
Friend #1: Oh, laundry day? Sounds like cold water. Which means you're either out of underwear or sports bras.
Friend #2: Probably sports bras. She can seriously go 2 months without washing underwear. Or tee shirts. It's ridiculous.
Friend #1: Seriously? So that's why her underwear has its own drawer.
Me: If you MUST know. It WAS cold water and I was out of both sports bras and long-sleeve tech shirts. And all my cold-weather running bottoms had a definite stank to them. Hey, it happens. As for the underwear thing, :p [Friend #2], I can easily bring up how many bras and/or polos.
Friend #2: No need for that, thanks.

Yea. I love my friends. I don't know if it's funny or creepy that they know me this well. Although, I did live with one of them for about a year but that was before I "started amassing ridiculous amounts of underwear" (according to Friend #2 later in the conversation).

Another awesome thing happened when I was doing laundry, but I need to set up that story. When my great-grandmother got married, she didn't get an engagement ring, just a wedding band. On an important anniversary (I don't know which), my grandmother (the youngest of a boatload of kids), took my great-grandmother to the jewelry store and let her pick out a pretty diamond ring ... her engagement ring. When my great-grandmother passed, the ring was given back to my grandmother since great-grandma only wanted to be buried with her wedding band. Not long before my grandmother went downhill, she started dividing up her jewelry between my cousin, Kayla, and I. This was the first time I had heard the story. Since grandma passed, I've worn this ring pretty much every day. It's only 1 of 2 rings I have that fit my right ring finger (broke the finger playing flag football in 2007 and now it's the same size as my thumbs). A couple weeks ago, it vanished. I remember sitting it down on top of my jewelry box on my dresser to go wash my hands and the next time I went to grab it, it was gone. I spent 2 weeks looking for it and about a week ago, I started REALLY freaking out. I felt INSANELY guilty for losing this ring when it meant so much. I was seriously avoiding looking at the pictures of my grandparents in my room I felt so bad. I've ripped apart my bedroom, car, every pocket in every pair of jeans, and every purse I own just looking for the darn thing. Tonight, as I was pulling clothes out of my hamper and putting them in the washer, something fell out of the clothes and landed at my feet. It was grandma's ring and my other rosette ring I was missing! I literally shrieked (scaring the crap out of my parents)! It must have slipped off the dresser top and landed in my hamper, which has been sitting in the laundry room waiting for a full load for the last 2 weeks. My hamper only sat next to my dresser for less than an hour one day when I was vacuuming. Agh! I'm just glad to have them back. My hands felt SO weird without my rings!