Happy Friday! I continued my new-found habit of getting up early to run and was rewarded with a great run in perfect weather. Today I started week 9 of the C25K and I'm feeling like a real runner again. That's a good feeling. I'll never be speedy, but I'm enjoying watching my average pace per run decline steadily. You can always check out my progress with my little Nike+ Mini just to the right of this post. If I don't run for several days in a row, she'll start dissin' me.
I was surprised and delighted this morning to see that Karen, at Waisting Time gave me a blog award! My first blog award ever. I was so excited that I ran up stairs to show my husband. Thank you Karen!
The award requires me to list seven things about myself that you probably don't know. I'm fairly new at blogging here, so my job is a little easier.
Here goes: Seven Things you Probably Don't Know about Me.
2. I have a long middle toe on my left foot that, combined with my running, caused me to have a purple toenail most of the time. I did buy a size larger (and longer) running shoe on the advice of my running store friend, so the toenail now only turns purple when I run longish runs with hills. I usually paint my toenails in summer for this reason.
3. My mom was my #1 cheerleader. She died 17 years ago, but I always wear her ring (a West Point miniature that was her engagement ring) if I want to feel her there when I'm doing something important. Like my first day of teaching, or my 10 mile race last year, or when our children got married.
4. I'm a bit of a statistics nerd. When I saw the Site Meter gadget on blogs I read I signed right up. Of course I love comments (thank you, thank you), but I also love checking out who's checking my blog out. I set it so it didn't count my own visits to my site. When we were on our vacation, I got rather worried because I noticed one person kept checking out my blog all day long, with lots of page views and hour long visits. Was someone stalking my blog?? Only after I read the description carefully did I realize that it was me-- using the hotel's wifi IP address!
5. My third grade teacher, Miss Shelly, told my parents that I was "not college material." Fortunately, I was the fourth child and they didn't take her opinion as Gospel. I was a National Merit Scholar, did well at Stanford, was top of my class in Law School, and have two Master's degrees (Library Science and Education). I'd like to meet her some day.
6. When I get a greeting card, I tend to read it and take everything it says literally. You know, 'you are a beautiful, thoughtful, intelligent, fun . . . . person.' 'Yes,' I think,' they chose this card so carefully and it describes me perfectly.' This 'Beautiful Blogger' award had me looking in the mirror!
7. Probably one of the reasons that teacher said that to my parents is that I got D's in Penmanship and Reading until I reached 4th grade. Well, I still got pretty miserable grades in penmanship (love, love typing). I became a reader practically overnight when my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Heckman, read to us for an hour every day. I discovered the public library and checked out the book (Misty of Chincoteague) so I could read ahead. And so began my lifelong love of reading. I read voraciously. I re-read favorites once a year. I love a well written book. And I love being a children's librarian and seeing children discover a love a books and reading. Thank you, Mrs. Heckman.
The second requirement of the award is to pass it along, and so I'd like to pass this along to a lovely list of Beautiful Bloggers. Please check out their blogs and enjoy!
1. kimert @ Just Another Mom on the Run
2. Mary @ A Simple Twist of Faith
3. Sarah @ Round
4. Barefoot Jax @ Fattie 2 Fittie
6. Tonyne @ The Unlikely Success Story
7. Lori Lynn @ Sunflowers and Daisies
If I don't wrap this up soon my computer's gonna turn into a pumpkin and it'll be tomorrow. But I wanted to mention the wonderful Spinach Strawberry Salad I made to go with dinner tonight. I bought a Costco container of strawberries and wanted to made an start on using them while they were at their peak. I made over an old, non-WW friendly recipe to fit my plan and it was de-lish. The salad disappeared before I thought about taking a picture, but the recipe may get an encore appearance in the next couple of days.
Lots of thank you's in this post. I want to thank all of my readers for coming by. You have to know I still get excited when I get comments and even when I just see you've been browsing without commenting.
