solar squirrel

This year with the new jobbie and all Todd and me decided to lay low and stay in Akron for Christmas.  It ended up being a great time well spent with family and a few friends.  I’m so happy that this year is almost over; 2009 was pretty crappy compared to 2008.  2009’s major lows were the loss of my job at Philips and my IT band injury.  Then there was the incredibly stressful few months at my ‘transition job’ which ended up making me realize what it’s like to have an awful boss (never had one till then!) but also allowing me to find a great new friendship.

2009 also had some really great things - like the fact that I finally landed an incredible job with incredible superiors doing work in renewable energy - what I’ve ALWAYS WANTED!  There is also the completion of my MBA in 2009 which is pretty exciting.  It’s neat to have a graduate degree, and with a concentration in sustainability I might add!

I really think that 2010 may be the best year yet.  I’m going to try to make it that way, at least.

Todd and I got a real tree this year.  We didn’t have a tree last year since we were in Oregon, so this year we made sure to get one early!

Harnessing Christmas tree to the Subaru

We got the tree Thanksgiving weekend.  It smelled SOOOOOOO good in the house!  We got out all of the Christmas decorations (mostly animal ornaments from World Market - we buy them once they go on sale for 75% off) and put up the lights.  I thought it looked pretty cozy.  Todd’s parents mailed us a ton of gifts and when we put them under the tree it looked like a present explosion!

Christmas tree with presents!

Christmas day we had a nice afternoon filled with TONS of delicious food at my mom’s house.  Todd bought me a gorgeous bracelet from Swarovski (SOOOOOO SOOOOOOO SPARKLY!!!) and my mom got me the gift of fitness - a PINK TRAINER!  Wooo hoooo!!!

Todd on the PINK trainer. :)

We’ve been building a lot of fires in the downstairs fireplace.  I love having the basement room finished.  It’s crazy that we never used that room before this summer when Todd re-did it.  It’s sooooo cozy with the aquarium lights.

View of fireplace from another angle

Our new freshwater aquarium

Another shot to show the wooden base and top

Todd made the top for the aquarium and he stained the entire thing.  I keep wondering if there is anything that he’s NOT good at doing…

I’ve been meaning to post pictures of the new room downstairs.  I took the fireplace photos, but still should get some good one’s of the entire room.  If you’ve been to the house at least you’ve seen it!  We’ve had a few get-together’s so at least people know it’s real.  (I’ve had some friends ask me if Todd is STILL working on the basement whenever he doesn’t show up to something with me…he literally worked EVERY weekend and evening for a few months this summer!)

Here’s to an awesome 2010 to EVERYONE!  HAPPY NEW YEAR KIDS - LET’S MAKE 2010 A YEAR TO REMEMBER!

Three Sisters: Me, Gretchen, Ashley (friend), and Katy

Friday was my sister Gretchen’s 20th birthday.  Thinking back I can’t even remember my 20th birthday…I must have been right in the middle of some crazy semester at school, trying to work and handle a full-time CS undergrad load.  I do remember my 21st birthday, though.  I had a huge test the next day - I think in either Calc II or DSAII (Data Structures and Algorithms — good lord, it could have been both I took them the same semester…)  Anyway - I remember being incredibly frustrated because I had to spend so much time studying and working on programming assignments when it seemed like a lot of the other majors were going out and having fun.  I remeber thinking - that’s ok - after I have my degree it will all be worth it.

Since then I have realized that sometimes it’s just best to live in the moment.  Who knows what would have happened if I would have partied through college (I would have probably failed a lot of classes and had to graduate later.)  Certain things require dedication and responsibility, but there isn’t this binary black and white border.  There are some greys that I really missed out on because I was so dedicated to school back in the day.  (I was valedictorian of my high school class, too).  Who knows what my life would be like now if I would have spent more time doing ‘fun’ stuff…  Things are different now - even though my GPA is pretty good at Case (3.7), I know I could have a solid 4.0 if I really tried.  I don’t care that much about it anymore, though.  What good is it to spend that extra time?  If it’s between hanging out with my family and friends or having a 3.7 vs. a 4.0 I’m taking the B every now and then!  Getting laid off has really taught me that success means more than job title, grade point average, and your salary.  It’s your overall LIFE that matters; your health; your happiness; your satisfaction with your accomplishments both career and personal.  It’s too bad that it took me a while to realize these things, but I feel like I know a secret now…one that’s so obvious but so hard to realize.

So - we went to the Melting Pot for dinner.  If you’ve never been there I recommend NOT going there for dinner, but instead dessert.  Dinner is overpriced and not very good (they give you raw meat/seafood and you cook it in this pot of broth on your table).  The dessert is also overpriced, but the experience is fun and it’s very tasty.  We decided to do this thing where you get an appetizer, salad, entree, and dessert.  It was $88 per couple.  (I told Gret she could get whatever she wanted).  Here are some pictures:

Spinach and artichoke cheese appetizer

Entree plates (each couple gets one) with seafood and meats

Dessert! 2 pots of different flavored chocolate and plates with strawberries, marshmallows, rice crispy treats, brownies, bananas, and cheesecake!

And yes, we did eat ALL of it!  I may have eaten more of the dessert plate than Gretchen did!  It was nice, though, because going here is more of an event than most dining.  We were there for close to 3 hours.  It was fun to have tons of time to talk and have fun in-between the courses.  We took lots of pictures of each other and at one point were being really silly and taking fake myspace pictures.  (If you have a myspace acct you know what I’m talking about — the over the head self-portrait where you’re trying to look good - yet another reason to make fun of myspace.)  Oh - and no, I won’t be posting those. 

I was out pretty late, but decided I really HAD to get in a long run and there was no way I was doing it by myself so I decided to run w/ SERC .  Daisy and Espeed are too fast for me and Barb was only doing 10, so I joined Dawn and Rich at the 6 mile mark.  They were planning on doing 20 and they weren’t going too fast for me so I ran with them.  They are great to run with because they talk most of the time and made the miles go by pretty fast.  Towards the end I was pretty tired though and barely made it up the big hill in the park.  Luckily Rich gave me one of his gu’s or I would have likely died because I was expending so many calories trying to stay warm!  Man it was frigid!  The wind was crazy and it was snowing pretty steadily so my fleece was soaked from the melting snow.  My eyelashes were covered with snow and ice and I could barely see!  Rich said my ponytail was like a barometer or something because it had so much snow on it that it was an indication of how long we had been running.  I know neither one of them read my blog - but they are such great runners and I’m really appreciative that they ran with me.  (They’ve both done many ultras including hundred milers).  I’m so happy to get that 20-miler over with.  Now I feel like I’m really training.  Let’s see where the rest of the weeks take me!

Well, our vacation in Oregon is almost over :(  We leave tomorrow to go back to Ohio.  It seems like we just got here!  Tuesday was a gorgeous day and we decided to go fishing since we didn’t know if we would get another break in the weather.  Todd’s dad is an experienced fisherman so he took us out on the Rogue River.  It was so beautiful!

Rogue River

We caught 3 fish, but none that we could keep.  You’re not allowed to keep native fish and that’s what I caught.  Todd caught a sucker fish and a steelhead but we had to throw them back.  It was still really fun and that was the first time I had ever caught a fish by myself!  We used fish eggs from the fish we caught last year as bait:

steelhead eggs used as bait

Notice the tweezers - Todd’s dad said that you shouldn’t touch the bait because the fish can smell if you have touched it.  He also treated the eggs with Borax (?) I think to keep them from going bad.  They looked REEEEEELY gross because after you had them in the water they got this whitish membrane on them that was sort-of hanging off.  Todd thought that was the ticket to catching a good fish though and tried to make that happen every time he put the bait on.

Todd the happy fisherman

We both were fishing and Todd’s dad was doing the rowing and instructing.  It was like we had our own private fishing guide!  He would steer the boat and tell us where to put our lines in and what bait to use.  Then when we got to the spot on the river where we would fish, he would row the boat against the current so the boat would stay in the spot as long as possible.  He must be buff constantly rowing against the current like that!

Our fishing guide and instructor (a.k.a. Todd's dad)

It’s been really snowy here ever since Tuesday.  Our drive from Grants Pass to Portland on Friday was super snowy!  There were highway patrol on the road blocking anyone who didn’t have 4 wheel drive and making them put chains on their tires!

Snowy drive north

This was driving in the middle of the day.  It was so beautiful!  The tree branches were all individually covered with white fluff.  I sure love snow!

In other news I have not really worked out at all.  I think I have gained about 40 lbs.  Yesterday Todd and I tried to go running but it was super windy and my face felt like it was freezing off so we only ended up doing about 7 miles.  Here is a current picture of me that emphasizes the weight gain in my stomach and lower half:

Me posing to show off my new winter weight gain!

So, needless to say; I will be going full force with my workout schedule when I get home (Monday late night).  And as ‘luck’ would have it, I still don’t have a job, so I’ll have PLENTY of time to workout!  Woo hoo!  (Though I still have 2 courses that I have to do work on, but at least things will be slow for the next 2 weeks because of the holidays - hopefully those 2 weeks can be used to jump back into being in shape!)

Buckeye 50k is seriously up in the air for me at the moment. I don’t know if I’m going to be in good enough shape to run it, especially having missed 2 weekends worth of running - one of which was a milestone long run (22 miles).  What do you guys think?  Should I just shoot for doing the half marathon?  Will I be able to get back 2 weeks worth of running in time to do the 50k in the middle of Jan?

Today is going on our third full day in Oregon visiting with Todd’s family.

Todd looking out at the winter snow

Yesterday we woke up to a winter wonderland!  It was so beautiful and white.

Looking out over the back yard

Todd’s sister and nephew were going to drive back north and before they left I decided that we should have a snowball fight - 2 against one - Todd’s 11-year old nephew and I against him.  Hee hee.  I didn’t get any pictures of the fight but it was pretty fun.

My running has been non-existent but here is a rundown on my ‘exercise’ so far during the trip:

Saturday 12/13:  Sat on a plane all day, then drove 4.5 hours from Portland to Grants Pass
Sunday  12/14:  Played in swimming pool.  Tried to drown Todd by standing on him while he was under water (sorry Brian, it didn’t work)
Monday 12/15: Snowball fight with perfect snowball snow.  Built a snowman with rock eyes, pine cone nose, and branch mouth and arms.  The 2nd snowman that was built was smashed when Todd threw his nephew on top of it.

We’ll be here till the 22nd.  I’ll probably be taking more pictures and posting fun updates.  Stay tuned.

Oh E-Speed - if Wii Fit counts as exercise, so does snowball fighting!!!

Me, Gretchen, Mom, and Katy

Katy, Gretchen and I took my mom shopping and to lunch for Mother’s day. At lunch I witnessed the most disgusting guy I’ve ever seen in my entire life. This guy was NASTY and he was sitting right behind us. He was going on and on about politics, computers, software, and mostly - himself. He was cussing and being SO incredibly loud and rude - even though there we were - a few feet away! It was SO HILARIOUS because when he got up to leave (which by the way he was so gross looking I couldn’t even look at him - he was fat on top and had super skinny legs and he was wearing shorts and he had these sores on his legs - SICK!!!) my mom was like “I just want to let you know you’re disgusting”. OMG!! LOL!!! We were all CRACKING up!!! He seriously was so gross though - he was talking about having an affair and how he wouldn’t have an affair with a 20-something because of this and that and blah blah blah…anyway - it was funny and we kept laughing about it the rest of the day. My mom is so freakin funny!!!

More pictures from Mother’s day shopping and a recap of the Mom’s day 5k coming soon!

First:  quick update on my car.  The wannabe pimp guy actually fixed it!  And for free!

Second:  Sat. am. Todd, Dub (my grandma) and I went to W. Va. to visit my uncle and his gf. in their newly built log cabin that they completely built themselves.  When I say they built it themselves - I mean - REALLY built it themselves.  To the point of actually chopping down the trees themselves that were used to build it.  Amazing.  They also cut down the trees that needed to be removed to build their driveway; built the cabin with the help of 2 other people after stripping the logs themselves; did the electricity, foundation, roof, windows, EVERYTHING.  The coolest part to me was the fact that they don’t have water piped into the house.  They have this huge cistern that collects RAIN WATER!  I was completely amazed and made uncle Mark show me the water inside of it as well as trace the piping from it all the way to the reverse osmosis filter for the drinking water.  I was so impressed with everything.  My uncle Mark and ‘aunt’ Dorothy are 2 of the most incredible people you will ever meet. 

Uncle Marc’s Cabin