Happy Birthday Jane Austen!

It's amazing that an author who was born in 1775 (on this very date - December 16th) shaped our literary culture so intensely. 

Thank you Jane Austen for Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Mansfield Park, and so many more!

Holiday Spirit

We had a rather mellow weekend ... Saturday we spent most of the day in Wallingford but zipped out to Madrona to "hang" at the playground when the boys were getting squirrly.  The playground happens to be right next to my favorite secondhand store, Driftwood, and I scored a Mulberry purse, Marc Jacobs dress, and Marc Jacobs sweater all for under $100 (woot - Merry Holidays to me!)  Today I ran the Jingle Bell 5K (and decided I am not a fan of 5Ks) with the Amazon run club - the race was a fundraiser for arthritis and the turnout of Santa's and people running for the cure was pretty awesome.  This evening we made our way to Nicole and Salil's for an amazing leftovers dinner (they had a big holiday party that only Matt could make it to last night due to the drought of babysitters in Seattle).

And now, I feel like the holidays are really beginning ... Matt just popped in White Christmas and it's true bliss.

Tis the season to ...

It's that time of year!  When the cold seems to get under the skin, not just bite it.  When the days are about 4 hours long.  When eating poorly is OK because all clothes are pretty puffy anyhow.  And when cheer equates to sitting on Santa's lap (for the kids, not the grown ups!) and shopping frenzy.  This past weekend Matt's parents were in town and we soaked the holidays in.  We (aka, Don and Matt) covered our house with lights, we cooked, cleaned, and were merry, and we paid a visit to Santa. 

There were no tears at this year's Santa sitting, but the merryment didn't really come until the boys got to check out the train.

Race report: Seattle half marathon

The week has been so busy I never posted my Seattle half race report.  The run was awesome.  It was raining just the perfect amount, but the crowds and the beautiful city scenery made up for it.  Also, it was rather warm which made it fun to run in the rain.

As usual, I started out much too fast running my first three miles in 6:30s.  Part of it was because at the starting line I landed next to a shirtless guy with tons of BO.  The other part is there were a lot of people at the starting line who were more like 10min milers than 7:30s and I just wanted to get out of the crowds.  At about mile three I hit a mini wall and I saw the 1:30 pace flag sweep by me.  At mile 8 I hit another mini wall (but this time it was after a giant hill at Lesche) and I saw the 1:35 pace flag go by.

I wound up running 1:39:57 and I came in 66th overall and 9th in my age group (although there's one woman in there with the weirdest "uneven" split - she ran a 1:15 first 6mi and then an 00:35 second 6mil ... another London incident? ...)

I was a little bummed with my time, so instead of waiting for Matt to pick me up I ran home.  Maybe nuts, but it felt good - plus it only added 3.5 miles.