Warm Weather
My town has a fairly mild climate. It's on the Pacific Ocean, it's in the Northern part of the country... it's mild. Very. In fact, even though it's sunny most days, I wear my school jacket most of the day.
Not this week. The past few days have been really warm (around 80), and while it sounds nice in theory, doing every day things in this weather isn't so great. Trying to teach dense Social Studies to 30 fifth graders in a crowded, hot room at 12:30pm is not ideal. They get super sleepy. Going to the gym is sweatier than normal because there's no air conditioning - just windows. Luckily we DO get ocean breezes.
Looking forward to those highs of 60s coming up!
Firulais
A stray dog wandered into school the other day. Most stray dogs here are gross, matted, infected, etc, and I've been taught to stay away from them. I tell others to stay away from them. Amazingly enough, the staff at our school took him to get taken care of, gave him a collar, and he now calls our school home. We are usually the first teachers to get to school in the morning, and this morning he greeted me by running around my feet happily as I entered my fifth grade classroom. It's been a long time without a cute dog around, happy to greet me. I'll admit it. I liked it.
He's been named Firulais, which apparently is the Spanish equivalent of "Fido". Although some people didn't want to name him that, our older custodian (Don Jose) took him to the vet and when the administration went to pick him up, that was the name on his tag. And the cutest thing is that when Don Jose whistles, Firelais runs after him like any good dog would. Aw. It's cute.
I wonder where he sleeps at night. Under the modular? In the children's bathroom? Under the jungle gym? In a corner somewhere?
WE'LL NEVER KNOW!
Cañon
Is it crazy that the one thing I'm looking forward to today is a 5 mile run in a canyon? No? I didn't think so. Thanks for your input.
10k
After our race in March, Stephanie and I were inspired to sign up for a big race in San Diego. We chose a race from the "Iron Girl" series for women. I chose to run the 10k, and she chose to run the 5k. A 10k is 6.2 miles, which is a distance I have been running at least once a week, so I knew it was feasible, but I wanted a good time. I found a training plan to follow, and was dedicated to it for the last 6 weeks. While I run 3-5 times a week on my own, the training plans gives different types of runs to do so that you can improve time.
We left school a little early on Friday, and Mom picked us up at our house. We had a super quick crossing at the border, and drove straight up to Del Mar, California (North side of San Diego) to where the race was happening at the racetrack and fairgrounds. We picked up our bibs (numbers), and a bunch of free goodies, checked into our hotel, and got dinner.
Unfortunately, I forgot my camera at home, so we had to pick up a one-use camera to use. This means there were no re-takes on photos, no deleting of photos, and we had to wait until Sunday to see what they looked like. Keep that in mind while you look at the photos.
We arrived at the race Saturday, at 7am:
We stood around for a while, and then did some stretching:
I headed to the starting line, where the 10k race began at 7:30:
Mass of humanity:
58:50 minutes later I finished the 10k:
I get all red when I run:
We headed back to the hotel and posed in front of a statue:
Posing with our team mom, outside our hotel:
I was very, very happy about the race. I was able to control my speed well, and my legs sprang into action when I knew I needed to go faster. I achieved my goal time that I set for myself (a 9:30) mile, and out of the 779 women who raced I was better than average both in time and finishing place. And most of all - I had a really great time. I also got to eat some delicious pancakes on Sunday.
3 Thoughts For the Day
Because good things come in threes. Well, and celebrity deaths come in threes as well, but let's not think about that.
#1 - I've been craving pancakes lately. Last week the cravings got so bad that I had to make some pancakes. This is strange, because I'm not usually a pancake person. I've never wanted pancakes before like I wanted pancakes last week. I made the pancakes and while they satisfied me, they weren't as fluffy, delicious, airy, and melt-in-your-mouth as I had longed for. Tonight I realized why I'm craving pancakes. Wheel of Fortune is sponsored by IHOP. Those commercials!!! They flop those pancakes down on the stack of pancakes like nobody's business! And yes, I watch that much Wheel of Fortune. In fact, I just put two and two together with the craving of pancakes because I was just watching Wheel of Fortune.
#2 - We have a bike horn on our front gate. You know, the bike horn with the actual horn on the end and the black bulb on the other end, and it really does say "honk!" when you squeeze it. Our gate is far from our front door, and we got it for when visitors stop by. We tend to have more "drive bys" than actual visitors: passersby who choose to honk the horn as they go on their way. Well, the black rubber bulb was coming away from the metal part, and you can't get a good honk out of it unless you hold the two pieces together. We came home from school today to find someone had taped the bulb back together to the horn. My roommate poses a good question: Was this so that they could continue annoying us with their drive by honks, or was it done simply out of the kindness of their heart? It's weird to think that someone passes by our house enough and takes the time to notice that our horn was broken. Now if they'd just stop and fix our jungle of a yard...
#3 - Why are tortillas SO good?
