I've been chronicling my workouts over here for the past couple months (although, admittedly not doing a very good job of writing much about them in detail lately). I've been working on increasing my speed and today I ran an 8:26 mile! That is huge for me! For a long time (years!), the fastest I usually run is a 10 minute mile, so I am really happy that I was able to increase my speed so much in such a short time. I needed to take a walk break after that before finishing the rest of my workout, and I walked a lot of my fourth (and final) mile because my legs were tired, so my overall time for my run today wasn't all that great. Now I need to work on being able to run faster, for longer.

I've made it past the halfway point of NaBloPoMo, so for my third weekly update for NoImYoSeMo (November Improve Yourself Month), I'm also going to update on my November 101 in 1001 goals.

101 in 1001:
Stay within Spark calories for the entire week, 4X. (One week) Check!
Post every day for a month. Still going strong!
Link a Flickr account to my website. Working on it. Have to upgrade my MT, so first I need to back up all my files just in case, which is turning out to be kind of a pain in the butt. I really need to take a weekend and thoroughly go through all the files on my website, because there are a lot useless things on there.
Post 10-photo based entries. I've only done two this month so far, which brings my total to 6 (I think). I have a photo for the cheesecake entry I need to add, which means I have three left. I'm sure you'll get at least one photo of Jonah from this coming weekend.
Update my address book. Still need to buy a new one.
Donate food to a food bank. We're planning on doing this this week.

NoImYoSeMo:
Do the dishes and wipe down the counters in the kitchen every night before bed. Did mostly okay. Thursday through Saturday they didn't look great, but they didn't look that bad.
Wipe down the bathroom counters everyday. I skipped a day or two this week when the counters looked fine.
Take vitamins every day. Check!
Floss every day. Ugh, this is just an impossible habit for me to adopt. I missed two days this week.
Be better about keeping in touch with out-of-town friends. Chatted and sent an email to out of town friends.
Go to the gym/workout 5X a week. Nope, only three. I was still too run down to work out on Sunday, was good Monday through Wednesday, skipped it Thursday because of poor laundry planning (gym clothes were left in the washer instead of hung to dry, so nothing to wear). Friday and Saturday I have no good excuse except that I've still been tired all week.
Actually bring my bags full of clothes to donate to Goodwill. Done.
Donate my old suits. This will have to get done the weekend after Thanksgiving, if at all. I hate that charities make it so difficult to donate things they actually need!
Come up with my holiday shopping list and budget. Still haven't done this. I have to make a budget for gifts, a budget/plan for decorating the apartment, and a budget/plan for my holiday cookie exchange party. I can't make an actual gift purchasing list until the wishlists start circulating. I'd like to try to be a little more inventive with my gift-giving, but it's such an ordeal in my family I don't know if that'll be able to happen.

Here's my second weekly update to the NoImYoSeMo (November Improve Yourself Month).

Do the dishes and wipe down the counters in the kitchen every night before bed. Um, not so much. I blame it on the swine flu.
Wipe down the bathroom counters every night. Ditto.
Take vitamins every day. Check! (Although the first year I'm actually taking vitamins regularly, I get the flu? Really?)
Floss every day. Missed it twice. Again blame the flu.
Be better about keeping in touch with out-of-town friends. I really suck at this. Carla and I were trying to figure out possibly meeting up the day before Thanksgiving, but I'm not sure it's going to happen.
Go to the gym/workout 5X a week. Um, not at all. (Yup, flu.)
Donate my old suits. Still haven't found a place to bring them yet.
Come up with my holiday shopping list and budget. Still workin' on it.

As you can see, the flu pretty much got in the way of my doing anything productive this week. As far as my 101 in 1001 goals I'm trying to tackle in November, I'm just starting a Spark week today, I've managed to keep up with NaBloPoMo all month so far (halfway through!), and I've added two more photo-based entries. (I have a photo of the cheesecake to go back and add in at some point too.)

Hopefully, next week will be better. I'm already starting off with a clean kitchen tonight!

I got up way too early this Saturday morning to head to the gym before going off to the Punkin Chunkin! Adam and I went last year with a bunch of our friends, which I mentioned here. You can see photos from last years Chunk taken by my friend Nick here. This year promises to be even better, seeing as we won't be freezing our butts off in ridiculously chilly, grey, windy weather. It's going to be in the mid 50s and gloriously sunny. I can't wait to get some pumpkin funnel cake and fried pizza. YUM!

Oh, and there's even a special on the Chunk on the Discovery Channel... I actually watched last year's special with my parents and it was randomly showing again last Friday (probably in anticipation of this week). Honestly, the show doesn't even do justice to the awesomeness of the Chunk. They only featured the cannons and none of the centrifugal, catapult or trebuchet machines, which are WAY more fun and interesting to see, in my opinion.

(Hee... it just asked if I wanted to correct "NaBloPoMo" to "Abominable.")

I can't remember if I've actually done NaBloPoMo before. I'm pretty sure I haven't, because I usually go to visit my parents for Thanksgiving and wouldn't have taken my old laptop with me because it would have fallen to pieces on the trip. (By year 6 of its life, that laptop wasn't rating so high in the key category for a laptop -- portability. ) Anyway, I don't blog from their home computer because I'm too lazy to cover my trails, so now I'm positive I never decided to do NaBloPoMo before.

That's going to change this year, because I'm going to use NaBloPoMo as motivation to check off some of the items from my 101 in 1001 list:

14. Stay within Spark calories for the entire week, 4X. (I've done this once already.)
24. Post every day for a month. (The entire point of NaBloPoMo.)
25. Link a Flickr account to my website. (This is turning out to be more of a pain in the butt than I had expected. My version of MT is so outdated, I can't link it to Flickr, so I need to back up my whole site, upgrade to a more recent version of MT, and then hopefully link it up from there. For now, I am using the inferior Google Photos, which is fine for sharing albums, but not as nice and neat as posting photos to my blog. Until I get it linked up, you can see my Flickr photos here.)
26. Post 10-photo based entries. (I'm halfway there already.)
35. Update my address book. (Need to do this before it's holiday card season.)
70. Donate food to a food bank.

I also love Slynnro's NoImYoSeMo, which stands for November Improve Yourself Month. I'm going to add a few self-improvement goals for November that are not on my 101 in 1001 list:

Last night was the Fourth Annual Halloween Party, although the party has changed locations now that Adam and his roommates have moved out of their old house. I changed my costume idea twice in the past two weeks, from Robin Sparkles, to one of the girls from Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" video, to...

the 2009 New York Mets. All of them. Well, all the injured players, which is pretty much the entire team.

And no, I'm not flashing some gang signs there... one player broke his pinky, while another (Alex Cora) broke both of his thumbs. I'm also missing a knee brace for my right knee (Carlos Beltran), which I borrowed later in the evening. That right there shows you how miserable this season was; at least I was able to get some entertainment value out of it.

(And for those of you who may be curious, in the World Series match up from hell, I am rooting against the Phillies, which does not mean I'm rooting for the Yankees.)

Here's a close-up:

In this photo, you can see that I've labeled the various player's injuries. The baseball fans at the party really appreciated the costume (as well as some stranger on the street, who said it was pretty funny).

Also making an appearance, Dr. Horrible and Captain Hammer.

My cake pops from last year were requested, but I didn't feel like taking the time to painstakingly make those again. Instead, I made the cake balls (with the help of Carolyn, while Adam fled the apartment for the evening), which I think turned out pretty well.

Hope you all had a fun Halloween! Did you dress up? What was your costume?

So, back at the end of September, I set a series of goals for myself to complete in October towards my 101 in 1001 challenge. Here's an update on how I did...

1. Run a 10-miler. -- Check!
14. Stay within Spark calories for an entire week. -- Did it, the week of the ten miler, no less. Which meant I was pretty hungry by the end of the night of my race. But it just goes to show that if I can do it under those circumstances, I should be able to do it more often.
29. Create a "cast of characters" page. -- Check!
35. Update my address book. -- Nope. I went to B&N the other day to look for one I liked, but had no luck finding one.
60. Get an hourly bonus. -- Sorta. I've seen the paperwork, so I know I qualified for one, I'm just waiting for the check to be deposited.
61. Read a non-fiction book. -- Nope. No excuses, I just didn't do it. Unless magazines now count as a book.
79. Go to a winery. -- Check! (Two, in fact.)
99. Bring lunch to work every day for a month. -- Check! There were a few days I brought frozen meals, but as long as I purchased them with my major grocery shopping for the week (as opposed to dashing to the corner store outside my office building at lunchtime), it counted as bringing lunch from home.

Not too shabby. Now I need to come up with a plan of attack for November!

You guys, I did it. I ran ten miles. TEN FREAKING MILES! And not only that, but I beat my original time goal that I had set before I started my training of two hours (12 min/mile pace). My 7, 8 and 9 mile long runs had all been between 12:20 and 13 minute pace, so I figured there was no way I was actually going to finish all ten miles in under two hours. So after those couple of runs, I had revised my goal to finish in 2:10, which would be 13 min/mile pace.

And then today, I ran the first five miles at 11:15 pace. I could not believe I kept up that pace for so long, and I realized two hours might be within my reach. For the second half of the race, I allowed myself to walk at the start of each mile for 1-2 minutes. During my training runs, I'd really hit a wall once I got to 7 miles, probably because the farthest I'd ever run before this training was 6. Today, I didn't hit my wall until I started the last mile. I ended up walking a decent amount of mile 10, and I was sure that there was no way I was going to be able to run enough of it to get in under two hours.

Then, I passed some of the race workers who said there was only 500 yards to go. I looked at my watch... 1:56:30. 500 yards is just over a quarter mile... I could do that in 3:30 minutes if I kicked it in. I worried they weren't really telling us the truth. (I mean, there were some people saying "You're almost done!" at mile 6. Yeah, right.) But, I started jogging again and when I turned the corner, I could see the finish line in my sights. I always somehow manage to have a burst of energy at the end and I ran it all the way in.

1:59:29

Under two hours.

My feet now feel like they are about to fall off. I have ridiculous chafing on my thighs because my legs stopped sweating at mile 8. I'm dead tired.

But I did it. I set my mind to it, trained hard for a few months, and ran TEN FREAKING MILES.

And now, I'm taking next week off from running.

Distance: 10 miles
Time: 1:59:29
Pace: 11:56/mile

I've decided to use the upcoming month, October, to tackle a few of my 101 Things in 1001 Days. I want to write them down here so I remember to try to complete them this month. It's great to have a list and all saying that I plan to accomplish these things by such and such date, but I need to actually put a plan in place if it's going to happen. If this works well, I might try to make a plan of attack for meeting some of these goals at the beginning of each month.

For October, I plan to complete:

1. Run a 10-miler. (Barring injury or illness, this should occur next Sunday.)
14. Stay within Spark calories for an entire week.
29. Create a "cast of characters" page.
35. Update my address book.
60. Get an hourly bonus. (Technically, I should be receiving a bonus for July-September, but I don't receive it until October.)
61. Read a non-fiction book
79. Go to a winery.
99. Bring lunch to work every day for a month.

Stay tuned to see how I do!

"They" say that it takes 21 days to create a new habit. Apparently this is not true for boring tasks that you hate doing.

As part of my 101Things in 1001 Days challenge, I said that I would floss every day for a month. I already was an okay flosser... maybe twice a week or so. (Certainly better than TS, who rarely flosses, yet has PERFECT TEETH.) Considering all the troubles with my teeth earlier this year and the fact that I handed over approximately 1/7th of my annual salary to the dentist, flossing would be a very good habit for me to develop. I figured for my teeth's sake, I should probably tackle this goal as soon as possible, so on July 14 (just after getting back from vacation), I started flossing every day for 30 days straight. And I did it. Which meant that my final day of the 30 day goal was last Friday. Check that one off the list!

And then I haven't flossed since last Friday.

Now, I'm sure you don't care at all about my dental habits and the last time that I flossed (perhaps TMI), but I am just saying this to say that there are some habits that just don't stick naturally, not matter how much you want them too. I just see flossing as one more annoying thing to do as part of my bedtime routine that is keeping me from hopping under the covers. Forget the fact that flossing takes about 60 seconds, those are 60 seconds that I could be in bed.

I'm obviously going to need to work on this.

I've mentioned before the fact that I am apparently still 9 years old and easily motivated by collecting stickers. In fact, for my 30 day flossing challenge, I did exactly that... each day I flossed, I got a smiley faced sticker in my planner. And it worked! I collected 30 smiley faces. I got a little thrill opening my planner each day and seeing those colored, foiled circles grinning up at me. So starting today, I'm going to go back to giving myself a sticker for each time I floss and hope that the habit eventually... sticks.

I suppose I should also mention here that some habits are easier to develop... like taking vitamins every day. I checked off my goal of taking vitamins every day for 30 days straight from the 101 Things in 1001 Days challenge today. I think it helps that my multivitamin is a gummy vitamin that tastes just like gummy bears. I won't let myself take them until I've also taken my B vitamin and flaxseed oil vitamins first, but oh, do I ever want that yummy gummy vitamin! (And then, of course, I also would give myself a silver foil star sticker in my planner.) Apparently I can easily bribe myself with both stickers and candy. Gee, who woulda guesses?

Look! That's us in the Pacific Ocean!

Despite getting up at 4:30 a.m. Eastern, we stayed up until 1:30 a.m. Pacific -- if you do the math, that means we were up for TWENTY-FOUR hours straight. Total rock stars.

Things I love so far about San Diego:
1. Perfect weather.
2. Potato rolled tacos.
3. Everything else.

Off to a Padres game and then other 4th of July festivities. Hope you're all having a fantastic weekend!

After seeing Zoot's and Ashley's lists, I knew I wanted to do the "101 Things in 1001 Days" project myself. This past week was the SIXTH anniversary of my first post on this website... my sixth "blogiversary." I wanted to do something to mark the occasion so I figured it was the perfect time to do my 101 in 1001 list. Unfortunately, creating the list took much longer than I expected... even though I blatantly stole many ideas from other 101 in 1001 lists I've found.

Here are the project guidelines:

The Mission: Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.
The Criteria: Tasks must be specific (i.e. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable, or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (i.e. represent some amount of effort on your part.)

Start date: June 27, 2009
End date: March 24, 2012 (shortly after my 32nd birthday... wow!)

I've posted my list below and will keep coming back to update...