Full day ahead of us

Yesterday we attacked our Saturday with gusto, with me up on the roof cleaning out the gutters and bryan piecing together our guest bathroom. everything here in indiana (maybe the entire midwest) grows so quickly! Our yard must be mowed at least once a week, though it would probably benefit from two times, and the gutters! Wow - i had no idea vegitation could grow like that - we had been a little lax during the winter, and then when a big storm came, a big gust put tons of leaves and debris in them and all of a sudden we had more growth in the gutters than in the garden.

Speaking of our garden, i think we're going to forgo planting our main one this summer, which is kind of sad - we both look forward to the fresh veggies so much, but this year Bryan tried to start ours early from seed and they were doing great until they had two run ins with puppy Delilah and then got rain soaked when we moved them outside. I guess we'll redouble our efforts for next year.

Yesterday we had planned on having some friends over for a bbq, and we scurried around, cleaning, dusting, arranging this and that - only to decide to go to their house at the last second :) Okay by us really, the clean house was a treat to come home to.

Now I'm up and going to work for a little bit on class preparation and Bryan is in the next room, enjoying the sunny morning by sleeping. .

Sunday Morning

Got on up and on the road early this morning for a run - did about 3 miles, which isn't a ton, but it felt good and i dont think either i or the doggies wanted to run much more in the heat. Summer running is tricky here - Bryan doesn't mind running in the warm weather, but it kills me so i have to try and get up early to beat the sunshine. Doggies did good - only 2 barks along the way - one at a man on a bicycle (delilah) and one at a man running towards us (delilah). Now they chewing on ice cubes and trying to cool down.

My agenda today looks like errands, and some work, and then i must watch federer and nadal in the french open final - those two are great. seriously - what a rivalry.

Slow Saturday

Saturday here and somehow its already become the evening. I had such big plans for today - clean the house, do laundry, and mainly to work on my classes that i will be teaching in the fall. sadly, nothing but laundry got done today - i was so lazy! We've been having extremely strange weather out here lately, so i will partially blame that - when i woke up this morning and until about 2.30 this afternoon, it was pouring so hard our road in front of the house was covered. But now its beautiful outside, and the sunshine and the dogs seem to be begging me to stop being a couch potato. Maybe its because June is our slow month - we've got visitors all through July and then a trip home in August planned, then the day we get back its back to work and classes right away.. maybe im just cherishing this down time while i have it??

Bryan's in new york for the weekend - actually new york and boston. he's got such a good adventure planned - New York for the Belmont Stakes race, then catching the chinatown bus to Boston to see the Mariners play the Red Sox, and then to a sports bar to participate in the home town buzz while the celtics play the lakers. He's with the same buddies that he went to an AirSupply concert with this last February, so he'll probably have some good stories to tell when he gets back.

i made a list the other day of all the things that are "on my plate" - sometimes when i do this it makes me feel less stressed: after writing them down, i dont need to keep them in my head anymore. I really want to learn to manage stress better, and how to keep my expectations and what i think others think better under control. Anyway, it seems like I've got several things sort of looming in front of me, that i really want to be good, manageable experiences, and I'm trying to come up with ways of going about them that ensure that. Does that make any sense at all?

Here's a quick catch up about what we've been up to since the middle of winter:
*Visited bryans family in san jose and loved every minute of it - it felt so good to have california sunshine on me!
*Ran in the Saint Pattys Day Dash in seattle with my family!
* Bryan and I our first 1/2 marathon in May, with both of us finishing in better times than we had thought - we're now signed up for another one in October and in the process of trying to find bicycles to do some biking events.
*most exciting of all, bryan and i got engaged in april! he proposed on my birthday and we're thinking aug 09 for the day. farther away then we both wanted, but think its the most do-able short of just going to city hall. right now we're busy trying to find a place where we'll be pronounced mr. and mrs. it seems hard to believe that i even just wrote that - that we'll be man and wife!such excitement.. and all the years in front of us. ..

A Month

Almost a month since my last post - wow. In that time we've had visits from both our parents, stocked up the freezer with moms cooking, finished the bathroom (!), as well as some other exciting things around the house.

We leave on Saturday for a quick trip to San Jose to visit Bryan's family down there and the sun will feel so good! i know it will only be two days for me, but i plan on soaking it up as much as i can.

We also just got a new camera - today! So i'll be sure and post some new pics and get back into the swing of things here on the homefront.

I love living in a place where its okay to drive down the middle of the street, or that when you turn onto a road, you may encounter people out for an evening walk with their dogs, .........in the middle of the street. There's something really appealing to me about being in a place that isn't so involved with daily life that it requires sidewalks and yellow lines. If you drive from out of our neighborhood and turn right and head down the road, pretty soon you leave behind the busy intersections and get to places where corn and soybeans are grown and cars just yield to one another.

On a side note, our camera has been acting a little special lately, so i guess i'll be offering up mainly prose while we look into to fixing that little guy.

We brought in the new year with Oatmeal Raisin cookies Minus the Raisins, Plus Chocolate Chips. This is what we decided to have for dinner :)

Resolutions

I wonder, if i post them, will they work better? Maybe, I guess I'll go ahead and throw them out there, in the spirit of the New Year:

*Successfully complete (running) Indy Half Marathon in May. This involves not just crossing the finish line, but training properly and with a regimen. I do not want this to feel like some last minute school project or volleyball preseason camp that i can squirm my way through - i really want to be ready. (and do Carmen Electra's workout tape so i can become as sexy as her - I'm sort of joking on that one, but I would be happier with some shedding of my winter layers. this isn't anything that I'm obsessed with, and i figure the above resolution will help take care of this latter detail, but sometimes i do wish i was a girl that was really really good at motivating myself. I mean, when i was playing volleyball, i was really enjoying the activity, working out almost everyday, and being told what to do by coaches - and i think that was a huge part of my success, as lame as it sounds. I just don't think i could have gotten the same results in the weight room or on the court without a coach telling or yelling, or without a list of weights to do, with this much resistance etc. Hopefully this doesn't mean I'm a lazy good-for-nothing, but instead simply recognizes that i need a schedule, or some kind of structure to really kick start my workouts. That's what I've really struggled with since I've stopped playing is hating the activities *see below resolution - and just not getting out there enough. its also a little challenging here in Indiana, without the help of the incredible outdoors that Seattle has to offer, or with the really active population that live there. But that's not really a good excuse, and hopefully this year we'll finally put Bryan's "best hikes of Indiana" book to good use.)

*Stop hating running. I really do hate it, but its not that conducive to my task.

*Make my doggies well behaved ones. Mainly the areas i want to work on are greeting strangers, THE DOORBELL issue that Milo has, and being around small kids. I don't really care about the smaller things like being on the furniture - if my dogs are good around wee ones and Milo doesn't sound like he's going to eat the person on the other side of the door, call me happy.

*Financial responsibility. This is a little broad i know, but mainly it involves paying off some debt i have and really getting things going with saving and just being more aware of where my money goes, how i spend, and what i want to spend it on. Somehow, even though i have more than i enough, i always end up feeling like i don't, and i think this is essentially poor management skills on my part.

That's all of them, really just four, but I've really been kicking these around in my head the past few days and feel good about them. These are areas of my life that i spend a lot of time fretting about, and not enough time actively working to change, so i think this is a really honest, thought out list for me and i look forward to trying to tackle these challenges in my life. I tried to keep the really really subjective things off the list, since those are sooo hard to measure, and they can be a little silly, so its best to keep those in my head. However, here's my one real fantastical one, just because it really wouldn't be Jesse without something not based in reality, now would it?

*Just this morning i read this story about a lady (actually an ex-model, which is why i think they ran the story) who was oh so tired of the modeling world and needed a new adventure. So what did she decide to do? She moved to Alaska and opened a kennel for homeless and abused Musher dogs!! I mean, how neat does that sound? She now runs her kennel AND trains the some of the younger dogs and is competing in the dog race this year. So that's my fantastical new years resolution - move to Alaska (or montana), build a cabin (with either heat under the floor or a really cozy main room with loft where all the heat rises to), and rescue all the dogs in the world.

I did think about resolving to water the plant in our room, or to squirm less when we're going to bed, but really i think there's more of chance of me moving to alaska and saving all the dogs in the world than doing either of those!