GrumpysMonkey

Yesterday morning, John and I ran 13.1 miles. Yep, a half-marathon. It wasn’t official or anything – we just ran around the lake, and around, and around, and around. It got a little boring.

So now that we’ve done it, will we do it again?

Well, yes. At least once. We signed up for the Seattle Half Marathon on November 30th, and then two days later we’re headed to Cancun for a nice little vacation. But will we ever run a marathon?

Actually, I’m not sure. I enjoyed the run, mostly. I had some issues with my lungs. I’m not really sure why. Some runs I feel like I’m barely exerting myself and others I feel like I can barely keep going. It seems to be random, but it could be due to allergies or air quality, or possibly fighting a bug or something. There doesn’t seem to be a pattern and I’m not overly concerned with it.

But overall, I enjoyed the run. My knees were mostly good, my hips were mostly good. My feet were not happy though. About 2 miles from the end, they were really hurting. I don’t really know that I want to double the distance that we did. I could see dropping down to doing 2-3 runs a week, maybe topping out around 16 miles a week. But I think I’d rather add some other activities into the mix, like biking, rollerblading, weights, even swimming. I can definitely see myself doing a little mini-triathalon next summer.

But a marathon? As much as my friend Ben is going to be disappointed, I don’t think I want to run a marathon. I could change my mind, but at this point, I think I will enjoy the fact that I’m a runner, but enjoy the fact that I’m not a marathon runner.

Today I feel decent. I’m tired, definitely. My legs are mildly sore, my knees are a little "tender" (not sore, but they just feel like they are a bit swollen or torqued). My hips, however, are GREAT! I love my physical therapist who fixed my hips.

I had a 90 minute massage yesterday afternoon after the run and that was a great idea. I love my massage therapist.

This is really a Cook Local post more than anything, but since I haven’t had time to get the polling software working on that blog, I figured I’d just open it up for comments here first.

I’ve made the decision that when it comes to food writing, Cook Local comes first. Not that I’m not still working hard on the Examiner column. I still post there 4-5 days a week and I will continue to do so. But when I’m planning recipes and coming up with new recipes, they are going on Cook Local first. That’s the site we own, that’s the site with Google Ads, that’s the site that I know exactly how many page views I’m getting and from where.

But what else should I do? I’ve had a few suggestions.

1. Branch out. I own www.cooklocal.com. But I could easily set up sites like www.miami.cooklocal.com or www.bayarea.cooklocal.com. I’d need to find writers from those areas, of course, and then I’d need to manage them (a little). I’m not sure I have time to do that yet, but then again, I’m not sure how much management it would really be. Plus, there’s a chance that would dilute the main page readership. Though as long as it was still resulting in page views and ad clicks, would I really care?
2. Add How-To’s: I’ve already done this a little bit. I’m wondering what interest there would be in cooking techniques? How to make a braise? How to mince garlic with a chef’s knife? How to make butter? (that one I’ve already done). I did a post on setting up your kitchen the other day. Does the site need to be just about local cooking? Or can it be about cooking techniques as well?
3. Farm reviews: I’ve done some of this for MetBlogs with my Meet Your Local Farmers Market Vendor series. Would people be interested in that? I know I have readers from all over the world (there’s at least one in Australia anyway). So if I did that, I might lose readers? Or would they just skim over the Seattle-centric posts and wait for the recipes?

I’m not going to make any big changes right now. I don’t have the physical or mental energy for it. However I do want to start making plans, so if any of my five readers have input, please let me know. Do any of these ideas appeal to you? Do you have other ideas? Maybe this weekend I can actually get polling software installed and see what Cook Local readers think.

We need a vacation. And lookie! We have 2 free tickets. Aruba, Nassau, or Puerto Rico.

So, given the following criteria, where would you go?

• Food is important. Local cuisine is a big draw for us and we love exploring to find new things.
• A beach would be nice. Some snorkeling maybe? A catamaran trip or something?
• Things to do or places to go. I don’t want to stay someplace where the entire goal is to lay on the beach all day. Sure, I want to lay on the beach. But after a couple of hours, that gets really old.
• Decent hotel. Clean, comfortable. Doesn’t need to be luxury.
• Moderately priced for food and hotel.

A month or so ago, one of the local takeout joints closed down. We’d never actually eaten there, mostly because we just never thought about it. They had burgers, and something called a pizza burger which I wish I’d gotten a chance to try.

However, in their place comes Paseo. Paseo is a little Cuban joint down in Fremont. It’s incredibly tasty, with these amazing sandwiches that have tender pork, jalapenos, onions, lettuce, and some sort of sauce on a great baguette. It’s a truly amazing sandwich. It is, however, a lot of food. And it’s in Fremont, so we don’t get there very often.

Well, now we have Paseo literally a 5-7 minute walk from our house. Not only that, but we can SMELL them from our living room! I was sitting on the couch this morning with the window open and I could smell their delicious pork. When we run any time after about 8am, they are already cooking and the running path is between them and us.

I am not sure how we are not going to have Paseo once a week.

You’ve probably noticed that our IMs, Twitters, Facebook status updates, and replies to any but the simplest emails have been rather… negative. Well, it’s been a rough few weeks. John’s job has pretty much taken over our lives and made both of us miserable.

It really hit home for me when I realized that one of my few "rules" of life was broken by his job. You see, when I was married before, we had a TV in the bedroom. Over the years, the TV in the bedroom was on whenever we were in the bedroom. As you might expect, this sort of ruined any chance for intimacy or even conversation in the bedroom. So when I moved out on my own, I decided that never again would I have a TV in the bedroom.

There are more reasons for it than just intimacy though. I have sleep issues and one of the first things a sleep doctor tells you is to remove all distractions from the bedroom. No computers, no reading, no writing, no work, no TV, no video games. The bed is for sleep and sex and that’s it.

We’ve done very well with this up until this new job. Sure, I read in bed once in a while, but that’s definitely the exception rather than the rule. The treadmill is in the bedroom, and I bring the computer in there sometimes when I’m on the treadmill, but the way the bedroom is arranged, that half of the room is really separate from where the bed is. So overall, until recently, the bedroom was exclusively for the two uses I referenced above.

But this new job requires John to answer the phone 24 hours a day. If he misses a call, he needs to call back within 5 minutes. So his work phone (and email) migrated into the bedroom. Even if I was OK with him working most Saturdays, I was (and am) most definitely not OK with work in the bedroom.

So that’s a little of what’s been going on. We’re working on it, and if anyone was worried at our twitters and status updates, we are ok. We love each other, and no matter what crap life throws at us (there was also major boat sale disappointment this week), we will figure it out.

But if anyone has a line on a community related position in Seattle or Bellevue or Redmond that has an opening and little to no on-call work, John could really use a new job.

I am in a major funk. Haven’t had much quality time with my husband in weeks, been working a lot, blogging a lot, and working out a lot. I’m exhausted. I need a vacation.

These are the days I really need a cat. If there was ever a day to curl up with a purring cat on my lap, it would be today.

I need a vacation. A real, no-work, vacation. I would love to get ahead enough to leave the laptop at home and  go away for a night. Just one. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that we’ll get one for quite a while.

I don’t have a lot of energy for blogging these days. Between Cook Local, the Cook Local Examiner, training for a half marathon, and other crap that takes over our weekends, I’m exhausted.

So blogging here is likely to come in spurts. I’ve got things to say, just not the energy to say them.