Reflective Weekend

It was a great weekend to be home, after being away the two previous weekends. I ate too much good food, had a good run, went to church, and hung out with good friends. Mixed in there was some reflection. I'll touch briefly on some of these, but there will be more in-depth future blog posts about them. Even though the readership of this blog has grown over the past year, it is still ultimately for me and for Todd. If no one else reads it but us, I would still write it. Over the last year it has helped me remember a ton of great memories made, and document some of my struggles as well. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I worked at the office everyday last week. Usually I work Fridays from home, but I did not feel like it last week. I don't like working alone from home anymore. I like being at the office and interacting with people. I think it's important for me to not feel isolated, and to have an opportunity to practice social skills. Practice makes better, and I want to be better at socializing and making new friends. Making and keeping friends is tough! I talked to my sister on the phone yesterday and she told me it's hard for them to make and keep friends too. Everyone seems to be so busy with their own lives. She said sometimes she feels like if she doesn't initiate a get-together, then it would never happen. She lamented that it would be so nice if any of her friends actually initiated from time to time. Todd and I feel exactly the same way sometimes. It makes us appreciate even more the friends who DO invite us to do things with them.

On the workout front, I exercised last Tuesday, Wednesday, AND Thursday! Three days in a row! I can't even tell you how long it's been since I exercised three days in a row, all in the morning before going to work. I did a weight work out on Wednesday for the first time in maybe three months. I don't know why I've neglected doing weights, but it was a BAD idea! I had a hard time lifting weights that were easy for me before. My muscles were so WEAK! I realized all that time in front of the computer in January and February (for both a lot of work work, and for scrapping and designing) was really not good for my arms and shoulders (and butt, for that matter). Time to get back into a regular weight routine and some cross-training, besides running.

On Friday night, Todd and I had a calorie-fest at Red Robin. I got an email from them advertising a new burger for $5.99 and I totally fell for it. So we shared the burger, fries, and a salad. Upon entering the restaurant, we saw flyers for the missing running girl, Chelsea King. More about her later in this post.

We missed our run with the running club on Saturday morning, on purpose. We had heard for days, that a storm was coming on Friday night/ Sat morning. I'm game to run in very mild rain or slightly wet ground. But I'm NOT game to run in a storm with gusting winds, LOL. So we decided on Friday night that we weren't running on Saturday morning with the group. I woke up around 5am Sat morning to howls of gusting wind and heavy rains, and smiled satisfactorily to myself at my decision as I fell back asleep, ha ha.

On Saturday, I decided to embark on a project to purge my closet and drawers of clothing and shoes that I haven't worn in 3-4 years. The stuff I have that was just taking up drawer/closet space was really bothering me. What a waste. A lot of the clothes don't even fit me anymore, since I've gained weight. I'm not fat at 128 lbs, but the clothes that I wore at 115 lbs don't fit. I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to fit back into those clothes, and if I do, I'm sure I'd want to purchase some new clothing instead of wearing those same ones. So I did a lot of purging. And thanks to this article about sentimental clutter, I took photos of old sweatshirts from high school and college that I never wear but had kept around for sentimental reasons, and finally put them into a giveaway bag. It was more freeing than I ever thought it would be! I'll have a post with before and after photos of closet, when I'm done.

For breakfast on Sunday morning, we had fresh homemade bread by Todd! He made it Saturday night and we ate some then already. On Sunday morning the bread looked like this and it was yum.  The crust was especially delicious!

The next time he makes it, we'll take process photos and share the recipe.

We went for our longer run outside at Miramar Lake on Sunday.  It was a gorgeous day after the storm. Here's Todd taking off for his run.

I wasn't too far behind. I was apprehensive about running five miles, since I had somehow tweaked my left knee earlier last week. I ran for a mile, expecting that I might have to turn around and go back. But I felt no pain whatsoever, so I kept running and made it the five miles around the lake. Along the way, I saw some really cute dogs. And big sky with puffy clouds.






Place: Miramar Lake
Distance: 5.02M
Time: 55:31
Avg time/mile: 11:04
Calories: 503 cal

After that I promptly made the calories back by eating some chicken taquitos at Chile Peppers for lunch. :-|

Todd made the BEST chocolate chip cookies ever, from scratch, in the afternoon. He documented the process with photos, so look for that in a future blog post soon. But for now, here's a photo. :p


We met up with our good friends AJ and Meera, and our new friend Monika, for church on Sunday night. We visited The Rock church in Point Loma. Monika goes there, but we had never been there before. The church was celebrating its 10 year anniversary, so we got to see a video showing the tremendous growth and blessing it experienced in the last 10 years. Pastor Miles McPherson delivered an inspirational sermon about how we cannot imagine what God can do in our lives and the lives of others in 10 years time.  He challenged each of us to think about our lives for the next 10 years and write down what we envision it to be, and the church is going to gather everyone's vision and put it into a time capsule to be opened in 2020.  It was such an inspirational idea and something that I plan to think about and write down for myself.

Besides church, the purpose for the gathering was also to finally meet our friend Monika.  She's AJ and Meera's friend from college.  We had been reading her blog for months but have never met her yet.  She's an avid runner and way faster long-distance runner than me.  She is also a huge sock monkey fan.  It was so great to finally meet her in person!  Todd likes her because she's a fellow cheese-hater.  So after church, we all had dinner together at a Vietnamese Pho restaurant.  Todd brought the best chocolate chip cookies ever to share with everyone, and it was a huge hit.  But then again, we were amongst cookie fans.  :p


Notice how Meera's the only one who missed the memo about wearing a red top and blue jeans?  LOL.

Also, a couple of weeks back was Meera's birthday. So I finally got to give her her gift that I made for her:  a framed scrapbook page about our friendship.

I had given her a preview of it on her birthday, via an email. She had seen it and cried. I would cry too, if one of my close friends made a page for me like this. I really like it and I'm so glad she loves it. I love her.

That's about it for my weekend. I did also design some new templates which will be released tomorrow into my stores. Now I want to talk about something that led me to shed a tear as I drove to work this morning.

Poway high school long distance runner, 17 year old Chelsea King, disappeared while running on the trails from Rancho Bernardo Community Park Thursday evening. Her parents reported her missing when she didn't go home Thursday night. They found her car in the parking lot, and her cell phone was in there. I've seen flyers everywhere this weekend with her name and face on it. Alas, she has not turned up yet. And this morning I read that they have arrested someone on suspicion of rape and first-degree murder of Chelsea, and he may be connected to another attack in December on those same trails by Lake Hodges, and also the disappearance of Amber Dubois a year ago from Escondido. I'm so sad for her family. But I've also been self-reflective about where I run, and that I haven't been carrying my cell phone with me when I run alone outside.  The park where she was running at is literally a few blocks from my office building.  This happened amongst an idyllic suburban community sprinkled with some office buildings occupied by high-tech companies.  This hit close to home.  Our coach Dan with West Coast Road Runners is a high school cross-country and track coach here in the community and knows the family.  He helped with the search on Saturday.  How could something like this happen in my community?  I don't run alone on trails, but I do run alone sometimes on the roads by my house.  And I haven't been carrying my cell phone with me.  My friend Anne wrote a blog post urging all runners to carry their cell phones with them while running, which I will heed and do from now on.  Even if it's something as harmless as me stepping on a rock wrong and twisting my ankle, I would need to call Todd or someone to help me back to the house.  For everyone out there who runs outside, I urge you to run with your cell phones.  And pray for Chelsea and her family.  It's been a very sad few days in our community.