A Case of the Runs

Besides tragedies like breaking my $12 sunglasses... ...this summer has thus far consisted of: Above: Sizzling plates from Denny's! Above: Yummy foot court food from Fashion Island in Newport Beach, CA. Wow, if only all food courts were this pretty! Above: Longboarder's in Oceanside, CA. The top is a BBQ burger, obviously not mine. Much more boring is my soy sausage and salad.

I am probably going to talk about my dissertation for a while still, so please bear with me as I make what I can feel is an important transition in my current life.  I'm scrambling this week to make the final edits, but I'm feeling somewhat refreshed because I took off this past weekend for a little trip in order to clear my mind. Destination: Vegas (where else?!) On Friday morning, "The Ukrainian" picked me up at my house, and he drove for two hours before we started getting dizzy from hunger and stopped at a Denny's for breakfast.  That's kind of our go-to place... I usually have egg whites, oatmeal, biscuit, and hash browns. I had been wanting to get my first full-body massage, and under my irresponsible watch, I did not look into it until that morning.  Here's "The Ukrainian" looking up the directions to the place I found, which was quite off the Las Vegas strip.  As we neared, I started fearing that it was shady, but it was actuall...

A few months ago, I had my first meal at the all-too-popular restaurant, Sizzler. I didn't grow up eating out, so it took me a while to hit up the all-American favorites such as Denny's or even Olive Garden . I generally go to the more "up" Souplantation . So yes, Sizzler excited me, in spite of generally hearing it as the butt of a lot of jokes. Not sure why, though: Above: We both got an "endless salad bar" for $9.99. My plate is on the left/bottom. A waiter served this not-so-good garlic/cheese bread. Above: Dessert... Nilla wafers from the chocolate pudding (I think I like chocolate pudding), and fruit. Above: Sizzler's telling us that this stuff is good for us. Yippee! Above: "The Ukrainian"'s clam chowder.

For my birthday , my sisters took me to brunch at a cute little place in Pasadena, CA called Central Park Cafe.  This was brilliant, since breakfast/brunch is my favorite meal, and I'm a morning person!! My sister has already reviewed the place  on her blog, but here was my take. This is a picture of the salmon benedict that my sister got.  We all asked for our creams and sauces "on the side," because we're just a sad lactose-intolerant family.  By the time the waiter got to the "normal" guys at the table who wanted their sauce as normal, he gave us the cocked eyebrow. The little sister's waffle... the whipped cream was, you guessed it, on the side... My older sister's French toast looked HUGE and delicious, but when I tried a corner, I found it to be bland and dry.  Unfortunately, this French toast actually made me crave it for WEEKS until I finally had some ones from Denny's and in Vegas a few weeks later.... My brother-in-law'...

"The Ukrainian" and I went snowboarding a couple of weeks ago at a relatively un-snowy Mammoth Mountain .  He is an experienced boarder, but it had been a while since I actually went along to the slopes.  I usually just stay in whatever hotel or lodge we happen to be near and "work on my dissertation." But now that the dissertation is out of the picture, I had no excuses.  Four hours of lessons later, I kind of got the hang of it, but I spent the majority of the stay in bed from post-boarding soreness and the cold in general. When we headed back, we made a little pit stop at a place called Convict Lake .  "The Ukrainian" must have weakened his knee or something, because he got down on one of them at the spot below... ...and all of a sudden, he became something that rhymes with Beyoncé.  Me too.  (He doesn't like her at all, but I do... and this is my post.) It was perfect, and while my spidey senses knew it was coming, nothing can ever prepar...

EVENT: Run for the Memorial 5K/10K DATE: Saturday, September 11, 2010 LOCATION: Rosemead, CA RACE BEGAN: 08:00 am FINISH TIME: 00:51:46 ( Garmin ; tag time: +2 seconds) Without giving super-specific information about where I live (you can see the About page for the vicinity), I was very excited to be doing a local race! I had not done a 10K since 2008 , at least one not involving mud , so I was looking forward to gauging my fitness level. I wanted to do the 5K, but since "The Ukrainian," The Councilman, the BFF, and her friend Mak all decided to take the long route, I'm glad I decided to be more ambitious! Course Map -- Definitely weird to be running a race on routes that I've trained on numerous times... City of Rosemead Run for the Memorial Find more Runs in Rosemead, California So here is a parade of pictures that surrounded this event! Above: Packet pick-up. T-shirts (with the logo at the top of this post) were given, along with a few other small goodies like a c...