Ticks, Tacos and Talking Shop

Good morning!!

Or should I say Congratulations! We have officially survived the weekend!

Haha, I always felt that way in college when Monday morning came around. Not that I was really all that crazy of a college kid, but just in the fact that weekends in college usually revolved around way too many activities and way too little sleep.

Anyway, I’m sad/happy to say that I don’t actually have a TON of stuff to recap for you. This weekend was actually fairly chill, for the most part. Which was desperately needed around here, let me tell you.

But let’s look anyway, just for S & Gs, ok?

Friday

After battling traffic on my way home on Friday afternoon, I quickly threw some snacks together for our Friday night bible study meeting. No pictures because people started arriving while I was finishing up, and I don’t know everyone QUITE well enough to tell them about my little corner of blogland quite yet.

We ended up getting out a little early though and decided to go catch a movie! There are so many good ones out right now! We decided on The Internship because we were looking for something funny. And let me tell you, it definitely lived up to the previews. It was SO funny and dorky and I loved every second of it!

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Saturday

We were up SUPER early on Saturday morning (which is just wrong in my opinion) to hit up the farmers market because I had a work function that I needed to be at by 10am.

We picked up some green beans, 2 squash, zucchini, mini Sonoma bread & red, white and blue scones (from Great Harvest), whole wheat pita bread, goat milk ricotta, and eggs. Most of these are new to us products (we’re trying out this whole farm fresh egg thing to see if it’s REALLY that much different), so we’re excited to try them out!

After my work event, which went from 10-11, I sat in traffic for 2.5 hours to get home. Yes, 2.5 hours to go the < 30 miles to my house. Insane. I even had to stop by Wawa for some sustenance because it was nearly 2pm and I hadn’t eaten anything since 7:30!

Finally I made it closer to home and decided that since my workout plans were out the window because of time, I might as well swing by a get a quick haircut. Just a trim though, nothing exciting!

I made it home just in time to change and head out on our next adventure: Hiking at Caledon State Park with Chris and his sister (and all our dogs)!

I intended on taking more pictures, but ended up getting totally distracted by the hike itself and didn’t even think of it until we got into the car! Boo!

Laney sure enjoyed herself though! She was one pooped puppy dog by the time we got home!

Chris, his sister and I headed home and made some simple turkey tacos for dinner. The weather was so gorgeous that we were even able to eat out on the deck and spend some time relaxing.

Which was good, because then we started to find some ticks on us. And spent the next 2 HOURS pulling ticks off of us and the dogs. Probably more than 75 in total. It was RIDICULOUS. And let me tell you, trying to get a dog to sit still while you pull 25+ ticks off of them is not an easy feat.

Needless-to-say, that basically took up the entire rest of our evening. Stupid bugs.

Sunday

Luckily we got to sleep in a little on Sunday morning to recover before heading to church.

After a quick grocery stop, I headed home to change because Chris and I had big afternoon plans: The start of half marathon training!

I’m probably going to talk about this more later, because I think it deserves a post of it’s own, but we are signed up for the Hokie Half Marathon in September and we have some lofty goals for this one! Last time we were running for experience. This time we’re running to improve our time. Which means a very different kind of training plan than last time around. 

So we headed out on a 5 mile run, and tried to pick up the pace. Guys, this was seriously one of my worst runs EVER. EVERRRRRRRRR. There were tears. and curse words. and lots of stopping to keep from totally melting down. I hit a total mental block. Bad, just BAD.

We ended up cutting it to about 4.5 miles, and made it back in a very pathetic (and MUCH slower) time than planned. Just not my day.

Thankfully I didn’t have time to stew about it, because I had to hop in the shower and head down to Richmond for a VA Bloggers meet up!

(Please pardon the fact that I look like a half-face giant in the picture. I should clearly not try and pretend that I’m tall in group pictures and stand on my tippy toes in the back. Not a good look for me.)

We met up at Chuy’s Mexican Restaurant in Richmond, and spent a few hours chatting about Blogging, life outside of blogging, significant others, and various other random things.

I love these kinds of meet ups, because it’s so nice to not only meet other bloggers, but get the chance to “talk shop” (HA!) with others who understand the weird quirks that come with a hobby like this. Like everyone pulling out their smart phone to instagram pictures of their dinner. The norm.

 

Anyway, there you have it – my not-so-exciting-yet-still-very-fun weekend. Complete with ticks. Gross.

So tell me: What did you do this weekend? Have you ever had to deal with ticks before??

Run Amuck 2013

As I mentioned in yesterday’s recap post – the exciting part of my weekend definitely revolved around running the Run Amuck race, sponsored by the Marine Corps Marathon.

Essentially, the Run Amuck is a mix of your “typical” mud races like the Warrior Dash or the Spartan Race where there are a mix of physical-based obstacles (walls to climb over, etc) and mud-based obstacles (giant pile of mud to crawl through), paired with common military obstacles or PT skills.

For example, there were obstacles such as climbing over walls, crawling through a mud pit, climbing backwards down a large hill with the help of a rope, and a “spiders web”.

However there were also some military obstacles, like flutter kicks, jumping jacks, pushups, carrying ammo cans, army crawling through the mud, and running up the stairs of the Marine Corps Quantico stadium.

To be honest though, the hardest part of the whole thing was the HILLS! The course was approximately 3.5 miles, but a good chunk of it was over rolling hills. Now, these hills would have been difficult on their own. But add in the fact that it had been raining the whole previous day, and these hills basically turned into giant mud slides.

We’re talking sometimes you’d take 3 steps forward just to slide 2 steps back!

Sometimes it could seriously take you like 5 minutes just to get up a hill! Assuming you didn’t slip and slide halfway down and have to start over.

In fact, there was one hill that was so steep and muddy going downhill, that most people ended up sliding on their butts! Which was fine and dandy for me, until a big Marine came sliding down after me and slammed right into me, pushing us both rapidly down the hill.

The Marines running the race actually ended up detouring people a little around this hill by the end (we heard) because people were getting hurt as they slid down the hill because it was still full of rocks! We saw people with ripped shorts, and even I got a nice scrape on my tush from a big rock that I slid over.

Overall, I had a ton of fun at this race. Chris and I completed it with his family, which made it even more fun.

Although I will admit, I actually thought that this one was WAY muddier than the Warrior Dash we did in April. While the Warrior Dash had more difficult obstacles, their obstacles were more geared towards strength, balance and agility. The Run Amuck race was all about getting dirty and doing some marine drills while doing it. 

This is definitely a race that I would do again! Sadly, I think it is something that is only done at Quantico, since that is where the Marine Corps Marathon Headquarters is based. However, if you live in this area of Virginia, I would definitely recommend it! It is very well run (it’s the Marines, come on!), and it is definitely an experience!

So tell me: Have you ever done a mud run? If so, did you feel it was more mud based or more obstacles based? If you haven’t, would you ever consider doing one?

* All credit for photos goes to MarathonFoto.com.

Nerd Alert!

I’m BAAAACK!!

My super amazing, spectacular, totally awesome husband completely took apart my computer this weekend (like down to the green motherboard) and replaced the broken part that was causing my computer to not only refuse to charge, but was making it kill chargers. And now I’m up and running again!!

I have to admit, it was a little strange to go several days without a computer! We get so used to technology that it’s easy to get completely reliant on it for everything. So it was nice to step away for a few days and regroup.

Now that’s not to say that I unplugged entirely, because I do still have a kindle and a smartphone, but still… baby steps people!

ANYWAY, for the most part this weekend was actually very chill and I don’t really have too much to share with you all in terms of a recap. But let’s review anyway, shall we?

Friday

Chris came up to meet me after work on Friday to pick up our race packets for the Run Amuck that is run by the Marine Corps Marathon crew. Essentially it’s similar to the Warrior Dash or the Spartan Race – 3 miles of obstacles and mud. And awesomeness.

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While waiting, I did some window shopping at some nearby stores and ran into this beauty.

Seriously almost barfed when I smelled it. Trying a little too hard, Yankee Candle??

After picking up our packets, we took Roscoe to meet some potential new parents! They wanted to see how he would do with their dog and cats, so we spent some time letting them meet him and sniff around. Maybe he’ll have a new home soon!

By the time we go home, it was after 8pm and we were feeling pizza and a movie. Sometimes you just have to go old school. So we ordered pizza from a new-to-us pizzeria (note: not very good pizza… bummer), and watched Thor. Because Chris wants me to watch all of the Superhero movies before I can watch the Avengers. Yes, we are nerds.

Saturday

We were up SUPER bright and early for our 8am start time at the Run Amuck. Sadly I did not bring my camera with me (I wasn’t about to risk getting it muddy!) and the official pictures aren’t out yet, but I promise to share them with you as soon as I get them!

In the meantime…

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I think you get the idea…

Upon returning home and spending a good 45 minutes in the shower trying to get mud out of my ear drum, Chris and I both proceeded to take a “15 minute nap”.

…1.5 hours later…

Whoops! We puttered around a little bit and watched some TV before heading over to his mom’s boyfriend’s house for a good old fashioned shrimp BBQ and Kan Jam extravaganza.

 

Sunday

Thankfully we were able to sleep in on Sunday, and when I finally got up around 10:15, enjoyed my frosted mini wheats (seriously,

obsessed… it’s a problem) and coffee while catching up on some blog reading.

After spending the morning cleaning, Chris and I headed to the movie theaters to see the new Star Trek movie. Yes, we really are nerds – I warned you!! The movie was AWESOME and now I really want to go back and watch some of the old school Star Trek stuff. Nerd.

We then headed out for some epic grocery shopping, which was very much needed around our house. I even tried my hand and some Sunday food prepping once we got back, and packed up 3 salads, some tuna salad, and some veggie snack packs for this week. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself!

The rest of the evening was spent doing the usual –  heading to church at 6pm and then dinner with Chris’ fam. Our usual Sunday evening routine.

Then we came home and Chris fixed my computer!! Yay for computer nerds!!

Well there you have it – my super non-exciting, nerdy weekend!

 

So tell me: What did you do this weekend?