People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.

I have Blogger's Block again...

First, the quote today is Monet. I love Monet. I don't know that I've ever really told any of my friends that, just... because it's never come up. Imagine my surprise when I woke up to this on my back porch (ignore the recycling project happening in the background)...

Um....

Who DOES that?!

Second, as I said last week, Gabby's doctor gave me permission to take her to Disneyland once, this weekend. The chemo she's on this month lowers her blood counts, so this weekend was our one window of opportunity to head out with her.

And it was rad.

She went nuts when she saw the Castle, loooooves King Arthur's Carousel, was totally amused by Dumbo ("Mommy, that elephant is FLYING! That's so crazy!"), screamed through all of Matterhorn, and wanted nothing to do with Pirates. We have annual passes to Disneyland, so we go a LOT, but she was acting like it was her first time there ever. It was a great morning, and she had tons of fun.



1 & 2 even managed to participate without melting down.

She also drew a pretty fantastic dinosaur on her magna-doodle.

Third, my sister is coming to visit this week. So far, our winter has been fantastic. Sunny, warm, clear - beautiful. While the rest of the country was melting down over some chilly weather, we've been basking in the SoCal sunshine.

So of course, this is what our forecast looks like for her visit:
Goodbye, hiking. Goodbye, dinners overlooking the ocean at sunset. Goodbye, morning runs. Goodbye, sitting on the beach eating cheese. Stupid winter.

Finally, last but not least, I have an iFitness belt giveaway here, that's ending tonight, and so far, looks like Little Fruit Fly has a lock on it!

Blogger's Block

I'm totally stealing this phrase from Little Fruit Fly. I've got a lot to say, and no creative way to say it.

First, people have not only liked the shirt idea from my last post, but some have requested a shirt of their own.

And I love that.

I have to do some more research on what exactly I want it to look like, where to buy from (any suggestions??), etc., but need to order this week to have for the Princess Half - if anyone is interested, shoot me an email at hmgiraffy at gmail dot com so I can have a quick count of how many to order.

Second, I was super psyched out about the 10 miles I was scheduled to run this weekend. I'm really glad I live somewhere with great bike paths. Literally across my street, there's a bike path that goes for... miles. It's called Mountain to the Sea, or something, and its true.

The plan was to just go, 5 miles, and turn around. Somehow even when I'm running the 405 manages to wreck my life, because my GPS failed somewhere around there, and I didn't realize for about 10 minutes that I remained at 3.5 miles regardless of how far I'd gone. Doh!

I definitely didn't want to fall short of my 10 miles, so I kept going, even after I saw this in a church parking lot....

Fearless, right?

It was kind of a pretty trail, in parts.. if you're into that "homeless den, petri-dish water" look.

At each intersection, there's a choice to take the flat path across the road, or a path under the road. I purposely ran the hills most of the time... I know about that hill at the Ticket and Transportation Center!

Every time I ran under one, I was reallllly hoping The Big One wouldn't hit right now... especially at the end, there was no way I'd be sprinting fast enough through there.

TNT obviously does some training out here as well, 'cause at the end of my run, I saw this and kicked up my pace... Soooo close to the end!

...but apparently they run the opposite loop

No thanks.

Finished in 2:04, which is pretty exciting, 'cause after I got home and mapped my run, I'd churned out 10.9 miles. Sweet!

And, it was awesome. It was hard, but never overwhelmingly so. I ran sans music, I ran wthout knowing my pace, and it was GREAT. I seriously felt like I could have kept going. I'm a little achy today - ice on the hips, and compression socks - I feel like a 70 year old woman.

But I am SO READY for the half.