Seven Miles + Reunion with Old Friends

I was going to title this blog post, "Seven Miles, Old Friends, Pillow Fight, 7.2 Earthquake, and Taxes", but it seemed too long. :-| I could have just titled it "Weekend Wrap-up" or something like that.

On Friday night, we were going to eat leftovers for dinner, but I had another last minute idea. I hardly ever have cravings for this, but on Friday night, I suggested to my husband that I take him to Wings-N-Things. Todd was super-excited because he loves Wings-N-Things and I hardly ever want to go there. So we get there, and they're even showing his Cleveland Cavaliers on their big screen TV. So we parked ourselves in front of the big TV, ate some buffalo chicken strips and salads, and enjoyed the fountain Coke Zero. Todd could not be happier!

We installed the Netflix CD on our Sony PS3, finally. So now we can stream movies from Netflix right to our PS3 and watch it. We used it Friday night to watch "Fletch". What a classic! I had forgotten the whole plotline so it was like watching a brand-new movie. Chevy Chase was so classic in that movie! "Dr. Rosen Rosen", LOL!

On Saturday we didn't run with our running club again, because it was a very hilly trail on the agenda. So we went to our favorite place to run nowadays, Miramar Lake, and started running around 9:45am. It was sunny but not too warm. I took it easy because I knew I was going to try to go for 7 miles. One 10 oz. bottle of Ultima, one 10 oz. bottle of regular water. Ate a packet of vanilla GU about 4 miles in (45 min). Last three miles were fairly easy. In fact last two miles were both under 11 min. I have a knack for running faster when it gets to the end, LOL. Maybe I just wanna finish it and go eat something good. :p

Location: Miramar Lake
Distance: 7.01 miles
Time: 1:17:46
Avg pace/mile: 11:05
Calories: 698

Needless to say, I was pretty hungry when I got done. We went home to shower, and then we were supposed to meet up at 1pm for lunch with our friends Dan and April and their kids, who are visiting from Dayton, Ohio. They used to be our neighbors two houses down! But they called around 11:15 and said they just got into San Diego and the kids were too tired, so they were going to rest first and meet us for dinner. We were fine with that. We ended up eating leftovers for lunch.

We left our house around 4:15pm because we wanted to pick up some cupcakes to bring along for everyone to enjoy. So we stopped by Haute Pink Cupcakes and picked these babies up.

There was oreo, chocolate, carrot, lemon, chocolate chip, and coconut cupcakes. Yum! We were so hungry we wanted to steal a bite, but we didn't want to arrive with less cupcakes than people. :p

We met up with Dan and April and the kids at their hotel downtown. Then we walked a few blocks to Fred's Mexican Cafe. We had gone there before at Taste of Downtown and had good samplings there. We ordered some margaritas, an appetizer, and all kinds of good Mexican food.










It was really fun to catch up with them. We haven't seen them since 2000! (Well, I saw April briefly in 2005 while traveling for work.) Lots of things have changed, but they're still their fun selves and we remembered why we were friends and neighbors. (We were coworkers and friends first, then they bought the house two houses down from us!) At one time in the mid-1990's, all four of us worked for the same company! After dinner we walked them back to their hotel and parted company, because they were still on East Coast time and they were tired, especially the kids.

On the way back to get our car, we walked by this scene...





A big public pillow fight at Horton Plaza! I risked life and limb to walk closer to take these photos. I got bonked on the head with a pillow even. Came home and googled it. Turned out that yesterday was International Pillow Fight Day. Who knew?

We were going to go to church today but decided last minute to stay home and watch our church on the internet hooked up to our TV. Todd's plan for today was to install our new whole house water softener. However, he needed some parts, so he went to Home Depot. Unfortunately Home Depot didn't have the right parts, and we need to get them from a plumbing store, which was not open today. I did taxes almost the whole day, which was super-fun, especially since we owe a bunch of money. Boo! While I was in the middle of doing taxes, I heard a rumbling, which is always a clue that an earthquake was going to happen in a few seconds.  It started mildly, but kept getting stronger and the shaking intensified.  Finally I decided to get under my desk because I had a feeling that this one was big, and long.  It stopped after about a minute.  I immediately looked it up at USGS and it was centered near Mexicali in Baja Mexico, about 120 miles from here.  They initially said it was 6.9 on the Richter scale, but later upgraded it to 7.2!  Nothing was broken or damaged at our house, thankfully.  And most importantly, we're all safe.  But I did make myself some nachos to cheer myself up.

At least the taxes are done. I'm not paying until April 15th though!