Lazy Bloggers Use Lists

1) I went for a 4-mile run yesterday with Stefano.  We went ridiculously slow, but hey, I'm still working on it.
2) My thumb is healing nicely.  I cut a nice chunk off the side of it while chopping an onion for dinner a week ago.
3) Most of our plants from last year are coming back!
4) Most of our weeds (and then some) are also coming back...
5) I ran 2.5 miles today, and felt awful.  But I tried going quite a bit faster than I usually do, and I'm worn out from yesterday's run.
6) Stefano raked up all the dead grass out of the backyard, then vacuumed the house.  He's my hero!
7) I think that's all.
8) Oh yeah.  Molly really likes it when we do yardwork, because she gets to be outside with us.  I like it too, since she's really worn out and looks like she's about to fall asleep right now.
9) I haven't posted a picture of her in while, so here you go, here's a picture of my dog sitting like a weirdo.  No, she doesn't still have to wear the cone of shame; the picture is from over a week ago.

Funny Puppy Story

Molly is afraid of the vacuum cleaner.  This is a new development; she didn't use to mind it at all.

But anyway, it would make sense for her to run and hide, right?  Except that as soon as I started vacuuming the bedroom, she came in from the living room.  She was still keeping her distance from the vacuum cleaning, tail down, and shaking a bit, but she seemed to think that she needed to be there.  I'm pretty sure she thought she needed to "save" me from the evil loud vacuum, but was too scared to get close or try to attack it.  I eventually calmed her down and got her to leave the bedroom (she was kinda in the way...), but she just went across the hall to the office, and sat on the futon where she could keep an eye on me.

After I was done, I joined her on the futon, and she was very excited to see me.  And licked me all over.  And I could have sworn she was saying "oh, I was sooooo scared.  I wanted to save you but I was scared.  I'm sooooo glad you're ok!!!!"

She is seriously such a sweet dog.  And according to the vet this morning, she's all healed, and no more "cone of shame" or bandages!

Advice

Ok, so what would you do if you were in my shoes?

My neighbors, on the far side of the our duplex (so they're not immediate adjacent to us), insist on having their large poodle/lab mix, Jack, in their front yard, unleashed and out of control, at least once a day.  They have a backyard, so it's not Jack's only place to be outside, but they let him out in the front yard whenever they're outside doing yard work, playing catch with him, etc.

We have a backyard, but no door to it.  We have to go out the front door and up the driveway to get to the backyard.  It's not fenced, but we have a dog run so we can tie up Molly when we're in the backyard.

However, since it's a pain to go to the backyard, I usually let Molly out in the front yard, on a leash, whenever she has to "go".   But whenever Jack is out, I can't take Molly out in the front yard, because he will come over, jump all over us, and distract her from her "business".  The neighbors don't usually notice, and when they do, he doesn't come when he's called, so they have to come over and drag him back by the collar.  If they even bother to.  Usually I scoop Molly up and go back inside until they have the decency to control their dog.  He's about three times her size, and she gets pretty freaked out by him.

But regardless of if we're outside, Jack doesn't stay in their yard.  He wanders over into our front yard, up to our door, all over our porch, and they don't call him back until he comes back on his own or they have to go inside.  Needless to say, Molly gets very upset because like all dogs, she's territorial, and our yard is "hers".  Today she was growling, barking, and had her hackles raised.  And today, Jack decided to walk up our driveway to our backyard and poop!!  Of course, our neighbor had no idea, because she was on the phone and taking in the garbage cans.

So am I justified in being angry?  If you were me, would you say something to the neighbor?  What would you say?  Help!

Doing too many things

Did you ever have one of those days?  Those days when you're trying to do a million little things.  "Oh, wait, I have to do X before I do Y," etc.  Oh, I need to hang up clothes.  I should hang up my towel first.  But I'm not done drying my hair.  Ok, dried my hair.  I should comb my hair.  Where's my comb?  It's under the clean clothes on the bed.  I should hang those up.  But my towel!

And then it's almost 4 in the afternoon and you haven't had lunch or showered.

But I totally rocked at getting stuff done this weekend.  I ran both days, hung out tons with Christine, made whole wheat pasta, and cleaned the heck out of the house.  I even washed some windows!  But just some.

Oh, and I tried to chop my thumb off.  My hand slipped into the knife while I was chopping onions, and I sliced a nice chunk off the side.  Then my body rebelled and tried to make me pass out.

Driving

I was just driving back from Christine's apartment, around 10:30pm, and it's just below 50° outside.  I cranked up the heat and the heated seat, opened the sunroof, found some good blues music, and took the long way home.

It was over way too fast.

And it made me wish it were camping season already.  I miss sleeping outside in the cool, fresh air!

Release

I am SO glad today was a running day (I schedule my runs Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday).  I had an incredibly frustrating morning of work, and knowing that I had a two-hour lunch and a 2.5 mile run coming up helped me get through it.

Now if only I hadn't forgotten to bring my Kindle to the gym.  I missed out on reading time!  At least I found a treadmill with sports on the tv, which I can mostly ignore, rather than morning "news" shows e.g. the today show talking about OMG ST PATRICKS DAY.

Speaking of which, I think I have the holiday to thank for the gym only being half-full.  Yeah not having to wait for equipment!

Making Everything Fit

Cynicism is easy.  Seeing the beauty and reason in everything is infinitely harder.  And incredibly worth it.

My hand is cramped up now...

I just sat down and wrote some stuff that I've been meaning to put up here for days, but kept struggling over. Turns out I just needed to pick up a pen and paper.

I'll type it up later when I'm not trying to work. But its intense, emotional, introspective, and I'm scared to put it online. I know I need to though. Because I think I'm finally figuring out who I want to be, and I want to share her with all of you.

You've been screwing the milkman! (name that musical)

So I got a sales visit yesterday from my neighborhood milkman.  Yes, Denver still has a milk delivery service, and quite a few people in my neighborhood have pretty blue and white Royal Crest Dairy boxes on their front porches for their deliveries.  In fact, some of the houses we looked at have separate doors for milk delivery, basically compartments in your wall (usually the kitchen) with a door on both the inside and the outside.  Something about them really appealed to me, but unfortunately our house doesn't have one.  At least I have my mail slot, and I can feel happy and quaint about that.

As tempting as it is (and the milk is fresh and REALLY good -- they gave us a free half gallon as a sample), it's expensive, and with as much as I cook, I'm at the grocery store twice a week because I hate planning ahead.  So pretty silly to get a delivery of milk and other dairy products when I still need veggies and stuff.  It was fun to think about for an afternoon though.

Run!

So you can stalk my running progress now...

Just go to http://runkeeper.com/user/ctruschke (or click on the handy dandy link on the right side of my blog) and you can see all my latest running activity.  So if it's been a while, feel free to yell at me for being lazy or something.

Also, Blogger made some cool updates, so I updated the blog's look a bit, and added the option to view it as a nice mobile page.  So if you happen to have a smartphone, you can go see a pretty page of my blog.

That's all.

Grssk Cooking

To people who know greek letters, people who write "greek" with upper case sigmas to be "cute", it's really annoying. Because, as the title implies, you're actually saying grssk, since sigma is, of course, an "s".

Sorry.

Nerd rant over.

Anyway, Stefano and I took a greek cooking class last week!  My lovely sister had gotten us a gift certificate to a cooking studio near our house as a bridal shower gift, and I set it aside until things calmed down after the wedding.  Then until things calmed down after a summer of hiking and camping.  Then promptly forgot about it until around January.  Then procrastinated because I have a wee bit of social anxiety (ok, the "wee" part is a massive understatement; I refuse to call to order pizza because I hate talking on the phone; I put off making doctor's appointments for MONTHS because I can't make myself pick up the phone or commit to going to see a new doctor).  Anyway, I was worried I'd be too nervous around a group of people and an instructor and not have any fun.

Which was a ridiculous worry, since I had a blast.  It was completely informal, the teacher wasn't a professionally trained cook, and didn't even do the classes as her full-time job.  She was just someone like me who loves to cook and wanted to show other people how.  I definitely knew more than the other people in the class, but that didn't bother me.  It was really fun to cook in a professional kitchen, see other people cook, and make things I've never made (or even had) before, like eggplant!!

My mom has a thing against eggplant, so I've never really had it.  But mixed with lamb, onions, and tomatoes, drowned in bechamel, and baked, it was pretty darn tasty!

Anyway, we learned how to make spanikopita, whipped red pepper feta spread, pita chips, greek salad, moussaka, and baklava.  I'd already made baklava as a kid, and honestly I liked that one better.  The one we made in class was with pistachios and rosewater syrup, rather than the traditional honey and walnut version.

Tasty tasty food.  I put the recipes into an online cookbook on SparkRecipes, and I'm planning on making modified, healthier versions.  But for now, those are the versions we did in class.

Segueing into a related topic, I've been using SparkPeople for tracking my food and workouts.  It's really pretty cool, and for someone like me who needs to obsessively track things and feel accountable, it's really helpful.  SparkRecipes is a complementary site where you can find healthy recipes and calculate nutrition information for your own recipes.  I'm going to start a new project (in my spare time, ha!) where I go through our family recipes (and some others that I make a lot) and figure out nutrition information.  I'll share that here once I get some progress made...

Look, I made a whole blog post without talking about my dog!  Except for this sentence, obviously.

Molly, Before and After, In Videos

Before:

After:

Cone of Shame

Molly is not very happy with her cone. Ok, she's not unhappy, she's mostly confused. And her back feet are bandaged because we got her rear dewclaws removed. And the bandage on the front leg is from the catheter. Basically, she's a mess right now. Poor girl!

That Dam 5k

I ran a 5k on Sunday!  It took me 43 minutes but I ran the whole thing I was just planning on walking, so that's still a plus in my book.

Pics are online here.  Christine and I look awesome because we decided to sprint to the finish line.  I beat her by one second.

Bananananana

Dear everyone who has told me "OMG you're eating your banana wrong!"*,

Apparently you're supposed to eat the banana from the not-stem end, not the stem end.  I've attached a handy picture since I don't think my explanation makes any sense.

"That's the way that primates eat them!" people excitedly tell me.  "You won't get any of those strings that come off the peel and stick to the banana!  They're easier to open!  This way you have a handle to hold the banana with!"

[Interjection: Molly just tried to curl up on my yoga mat, and looked very confused when I made her get up and told her it was not for dogs.  She's really confused today because we took her to the vet yesterday to get fixed, they kept her all day, including giving her pre-op drugs for about three hours, and then a few other surgeries got complicated and they ended up not getting to her.  So we got to pick up and extremely confused, abandoned-feeling dog at 6:00 last night, and she cried for about two hours straight because she was woozy from the drugs, she has a shaved patch on her arm where they had put a tube in, and SHE HAS TO GO BACK TOMORROW TO DO IT ALL AGAIN.  She is going to be PISSED.  She's already spent most of today in her crate because it's her safe place and she thinks nothing will hurt her if she's in her crate.  Plus she gets food in her crate so she goes in there when she's hungry.  Which is 20 times a day.]

What was I talking about?  Oh yeah, people telling me I'm eating food wrong.  For anyone who knows me in real life, I'm kinda thin-skinned.  (cue everyone I know saying "biggest understatement ever!".  Whatever, "everyone I know.")

The thing is, I've tried the "open and eat the banana from the non-stem end" trick.  Several times.  I kept trying because people have made me insecure about how I eat my food.  IT DOESN'T WORK.  It's harder to open (you don't have leverage from the stem, duh), I always bruise the banana in the process, I usually don't eat that end of the banana anyway because it's usually icky and bruised, strings still get on my banana, and my banana doesn't need a handle!  It's wrapped in nice non-slimy peel until I am ready to eat it.

Anyway I just remembered this rant because I just ate a banana and decided to try opening it the "new" way and it made me angry.  I'm done now.

*This is actually only two or three people.  And I think they just told me in a way like "hey there's a news story out that says you're supposed to do it this way!".  But I'm overly sensitive, and this particular thing really stuck with me for some reason.

EDIT: I just realized I meant this to be one of my open letters to people who won't respond, like "dear neighbor down the street with two mean dogs, why did you pick up your dog's poop and put it in someone's RECYCLE bin?", but then I didn't word the rest of it that way.  So sue me.

March ≠ summer

The ice cream man is driving around my neighborhood.  Not like the Schwans man, which would be slightly normal for March but slightly weird for the fact that I don't live in suburbia, but kind where it's a super-shady ancient truck being driven by someone that looks like a kitten-murdered, playing creepy music.

And now his music is stuck in my head.

Just wow...

So... Don't you think you would register a website domain name before announcing you're going to be using said site?  A new candidate for Denver mayor announced her site, then someone else bought the domain name and started redirecting traffic from that URL to another mayor candidate's site.  Seriously???

Oh, and when you visit the URL, it redirects to a Google search of "denver mayor's race".  So you announced the URL and not only didn't own the domain name, but you didn't have a site developed and ready to upload.  Why are you qualified to run a city?

Denver Post Article

Three quick thoughts

Denver weather prediction snorts.  It was forecast to rain/snow most of the day today, so CDOT cancelled field work that we really need to get done.  Of course, it's beautiful, warm, and sunny.

There are half a dozen school zones within about 10 blocks of our house.  All have different speeds and different hours (really different hours... like 7am-4pm, 6am-9am AND 2pm-4pm, 7am-9pm [not a typo], etc).  None have the nifty flashy lights that actually quickly tell you that the school zone speed limit is in effect.  I feel like it's just a matter of time before I get a ticket.  Or run over a kid because I'm too busy figuring out if I can go 20 or 30.

Molly doesn't know the difference between "sit" and "lay down".  And if you try to get her to sit when she's already laying down, she decides that you hate her and she skulks around and cowers for the next ten minutes.

Also, it's Friday!!!!!  Sorry, that was four.

Run Carrie Run

So I just signed up to do a 5k this weekend.  Probably walking rather than running, since I'm going mostly to support Christine.

Ok, I lied.  I signed up yesterday.   But I wrote that first sentence yesterday, then got sidetracked by work and an hour-long migraine which may or may not have been caused by me suddenly dieting and jogging for 3.5 miles.

She signed up to do the 5k back before she had her surgery, so now she, Stefano, and I are going to walk it together.  Woo!!  And I went to the gym yesterday so I'm finally feeling like this whole half-marathon thing might happen.

Pardon the fact that this entry probably doesn't make sense.  It's early and I'm not awake yet.  If I hadn't been going back to fix all the typos I made, it would probably be complete gibberish.

Off to Greeley, CO to inspect the airport.