More Like "Leftover Friday"

Happy day-after-(American)-Thanksgiving! I love American Thanksgiving. Although the Black Friday deals and Christmas hoopla is in full swing, this holiday nevertheless manages to escape colonization by commercialism. It really is a time of family and friends and togetherness and giving rather than receiving.

We had such a great day yesterday. Sunny and warm, so the kids and I went for a beautiful morning walk down to the lake, mugs of coffee and peppermint hot chocolate in hand. They spent most of the hour discussing the farm that they are going to have one day ("Mom - you won't need to buy your vegetables anymore. We will grow them for you!").

The Husband, meanwhile, was peeling potatoes. Our contributions to the Thanksgiving feast were mashed potatoes, jello salad (Epp Salad 2.0, a much kinder and less crunchy version of the one my grandma used to make complete with cranberries, apples, celery, marshmallows and - gag- an entire grated orange, peel and all), and pumpkin pie.

(I'm ridiculously proud of my pumpkin pie, seeing as I made it from scratch, pumpkins steamed in the oven and whole wheat/butter crust and all. Although I will admit to having a backup can of pumpkin in the pantry just in case.)

We spent the day with friends from church and it was just so, so good. The kids played Wii and hide-and-seek while the grownups went for a walk and then sat around the fire outside with coffee and my aforementioned amazing pie. It was a delicious day.

And more deliciousness today, with nothing on the calendar! The Husband is sleeping in, the kids are watching a made-in-Canada-teen-spy-show, the coffeepot is full, and so is my heart.

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Set OOO

Quick on the uptake, I am not. For a couple of years, I would periodically notice an appointment on my boss's calendar that said "set OOO." Couldn't figure it out for the life of me. Was she scheduling a specific time in which to gush over her kids? Or something else so awesome it required a full caps "OOOOOO"?

Until I got an email from her (no joke, two years after I started) with "OOO" in the subject line and then the dates for her upcoming vacation.

OOO = Out of Office.

(Am I the only one who didn't know this?)

I present to you this explanation as public service so that you aren't trying to figure out what is up with all the OOOing around here. Or why I'm updating my blog in the middle of the day.

Because it's VACATION TIME!

Hooo boy! I am off for the entire week. It's Thanksgiving week down here in Americaland and my kids' school rolls conferences/admin days together so that they actually get the whole week off (genius!). I hoarded some holidays so we didn't have to send them to all-day care for Monday to Wednesday, and now instead of blearily trying to make it through my Monday morning catching up on release notes, I'm drinking coffee and catching up on computer time while the kids are zoned out in front of the TV.

As usual, I have a bazillion things planned for my week off, and I'm sure I'll accomplish maybe half of them. We've got teacher conferences, doctor's, orthodontist, piano, hair, playdate already on the list, and a ton of errands to run. Plus I want to set up a little craft studio for The Girl downstairs. And finish another book. And do some long runs. You know - all those things that you somehow never get to on the weekend.

Checking item #1 off my list: swap out my free-wheeling-bicycling Blog PM for coffee-drinking-toque-wearing-sticking-out-her-belly-like-you-do-when-you're 10-weeks-pregnant-and-you're-sure-you're-already-showing Blog PM. She looks so contemplative, doesn't she?

This is what she is contemplating - our first snow:

Bah! These long autumns are fantastic, but they lull me into thinking maybe we might just escape the white stuff this year. We got three inches on Saturday and we went from grass to this in only a few hours. We've already got a snow fort on the front lawn, but I expect it will be short-lived as the forecast high for Turkey Day is 12 degrees. I'm not quite ready for full-on winter yet, so I'm glad that we're easing into it.

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In Which PM Makes Excuses

Oy! Over a month since I last posted? Already? Time flies when you're having fun doing the working girl/(often single) mom thing.

Busy times at the PM household. As usual, I guess. Weeknights are a blur of piano/cello/homework/supper. Weekends are either full of projects or else full of nothing (if we are tired of projects). The Husband has been doing a lot of travelling lately, too, so I get first, second, and third shift a good deal of the time.

Beyond that, work has been on the crrrr-azy side lately. And while software manuals might not win me a Giller or a GG, they *do* use up a lot of the ol' creative juices (hey, those sentences don't parallel structure themselves), so far too often my personal computing time ends up being on the passive I-just-want-to-read-someone-else's-blog side.

So now that you know that the dog ate my homework, am I forgiven?

Almost?

How about some pictures:

More fun with leaves!

We figure we've got most of them bagged now. Just in time for the snow!

The Girl sewing a blanket. Super craft girl lately.

The Boy just finished up soccer. Hooray for getting our weekends back!

The highlight of football this year was that their league got to play at the Metrodome. My favourite part about this picture is that everyone else is totally blurry and he's almost totally in focus. That's pretty much his football MO. I'm trying to hint gently to The Husband that the NFL may not be the most solid of retirement plans anymore.

Proud papa and son at the Metrodome (look at that fancy new roof!).

Hallowe'en loot. How she got all that in one hour is beyond me. She was a "Cat Princess" this year. No pic of The Boy. He reprised his princely role from the Renaissance Festival, but his costume came off as soon as he got in the door. He got similar amounts of candy though. Oy!

To top it all off, I had my birfday on Saturday. If I get the biblical threescore-and-ten, I'm halfway there. Watch this space for a mid-life crisis! And hopefully if I do have one, I'll actually blog about it before my next birthday!

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Headed to the Poorhouse

I told him we'd pay him a dollar a bag.

I think I may need more bags:

(And dollars)

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Dear God, Please Let There Be Somebody Behind Me to Read This...

Funniest shirt I saw in today's race.

(I laughed as I passed her. Heh heh.)

Yup, I'm the proud owner of a "Finisher" tee:

It was a fab day for a race - sunny and not too hot. Fairly cold at 4:45 this morning when we got up, though.

If you've never been in one, races are really quite fun. Nice people shout encouragement at you the whole way, and there's free drinks every couple of miles. Also, the people-watching is mah-ve-lous - it's an entire subset of humanity that you don't ever really see. There's the hardcore runners - they're wearing singlets and those shorts with vents up the side. There's the think-they're-hardcore runners - lots of fancy gear (water belts? for a supported 10 mile?) and cool gazes sizing you up.

My favourites are the old runners - white hair, shuffling gait. They wear whatever they want and they just don't care what they look like or how fast they're going.

I definitely don't think I'm an awesome runner, but I did do a personal best today, so yay me! Last year I did 10 miles in 1:49, which was already vast improvement on the first time I raced.

This year I did it in 1:39 - I took ten whole minutes off! Plus, my training over summer has been lackadaisical at best, so I'm really happy.

Also really sore.The Husband was right; there ARE lots of hills on the course.

But my favourite reason for running races? These babies:

After you cross the finish line and the nice people give you a medal, there's all this free stuff to pick up to replenish your body. I like the bananas and the powerade and the chips okay, but it's these salted nut rolls that totally make it all worth it. I never buy them (that whole peanut allergy thing), so they're my post-race treat.

So, all in all, an awesome race. And now that I'm back up to 10 miles, I can work towards the next level in my training program. I'm running a half marathon in December! It's a destination race - hint: it involves slot machines and Journey tribute bands. And they shut down the Strip. And it's at night.

Wonder if they have salted nut rolls, too?

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Ready...Set...

It's race day tomorrow!

I signed up for the TC10 waaaay back in June, back when I had only recently stopped running longer distances and back when I figured it would be easy to get back up there.

Urgh.

But, I bought my new shoes so some style and some fear have kicked my butt back into gear a bit. Of course, school starting plus the stomach flu has kept my training miles since then down to a not very respectable 40ish. (Clinging to that "ish"!)

I'm not nervous; more ambivalent. I definitely don't feel ready, but at the same time don't care a whole lot about how well I do, since the entire point of races for me is to set up some kind of a tangible goal. I am a tad concerned about the course; the other day The Husband (who has run this course two years in a row) said, "you know there's hills, right?"

No. I did not.

Wish me luck!

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