Exercise or the lack thereof

Shana and I made a goal at the beginning of the year to play tennis every week. Well that didn't really work out for several reasons. But this Monday she and I were supposed to play after FHE. It has been extra warm here lately and summer evenings seem to be finally here. The downside of this is that all the tennis courts were full when we got there. 9:00 on a Monday night and they were all full. It's a first for us. So we made a rather rash decision to go running. It's been months to years since either of us have seriously gone running, so I'm not sure where this idea came from. But we decided to run to our friend's house which was a little over a mile away with the thought that they could take us back to our car when we got there (we're not that into running). So we ran there and rang the buzzer...no one answered. Rang again, still no answer. Good thing Shana had brought her phone, for this very reason. We called them and they were grabbing some food at a place about a mile away. So we told them to wait there and we'd be right over. So a mile later after many positive affirmations we arrived at the restaurant looking rather hot and sweaty. Somehow our short mile run turned into 2.4 miles. But I'm proud of us because I honestly didn't think I could run that far. I guess our aspirations of doing a mini-triathlon aren't totally out of the question.
Tuesday morning I woke up feeling pretty good. Somehow I forgot that the second day after is always worse. So when I got home Heather convinced me to do P90X with her. We had planned on starting together but I used the excuse of going out of town to not start when she did. Cardio P90X at 4:00 in the afternoon on a hot day is not a good mix. We were both ridiculously hot by the end. But it was a strange satisfaction that we made it through. Now if I can only keep up the motivation to go on to day 2.
Today when I woke up I wasn't feeling quite so good. My muscles were yelling about the torture they had been put through the past couple of days. But I'm determined to torture them yet again today as we have football practice. I haven't quite decided if I'll run to practice yet though or do P90X when Heather gets home???

Family

After not taking any pictures while I was home we decided to take one right before we left. So here's some of the family (minus Thomas-on a mission, Carolyn and Nathan-out of state, and me-taking the picture).



Kinda hard to get everyone smiling at the same time!

Oregon

Between summer school and when school starts again in the fall I got a week off. Partly because no one else has this time off and I didn't want to go somewhere cool by myself I decided to come home to Oregon. Oregon in the summer is amazing. It's actually been hotter here the first couple of days than it's been in LA all summer. But it was a nice dry heat when I got off the plane and really it felt wonderful.
I've taken advantage of the heat and relaxed by the pool each day, kayaked the Santiam River (class I rapids!), gone sales tax-free shopping, eaten food picked straight from the garden (blackberries, blueberries, peas, beans, zucchini, tomatoes, etc.), made blackberry and banana chocolate chip ice cream, caught up with a few old friends and hung out with the family. John decided to come home this week too so it's been fun to see him as well.
It's been nice and relaxing to not think about work or anything else. Steven was kind enough to shut my arm in the truck door Monday so that's been a pain, literally. But other than that it's been a great vacation.

Hello Goodbye

Red Velvet recently hit 80,000 miles and with that came a not completely unexpected set of problems. One night after tap class I went out to my car and it wouldn't start. After several phone conversations, some starter fluid, AAA guy banging on the gas tank it finally started. All was good until Friday night about midnight when it wouldn't start again. By that point I basically knew it was the fuel pump and wasn't all too happy. But since I was stressed enough with work and life at the moment I just couldn't add buying a new car into the mix. So I got the fuel pump replaced and had basically decided that I would just keep driving her until something else major went wrong. Well that next week when I was at the Keane concert I opened the trunk to get some blankets out and it wouldn't shut. This had happened before about a year ago and I had to get the trunk welded back together. So that was the last straw, Red Velvet had to go.

So the past few weeks I have been crazy busy at work, coming home and researching cars, test driving cars on the weekend. Finally it all paid off and I found my newest big ticket item, Martini, the 2009 Corolla. I don't usually name cars this quickly but while Jessica and I were sitting at the dealership the name just came. Some how we went from Red Velvet to Grey Goose Martini and the name just stuck. And since my Dad was running a crazy relay race the weekend I got my car I ended up doing the whole thing on my own (with Jessica's help).



So now I don't have to worry about if he's going to start, if the trunk is going to close, if there are any weird noises, or if the Velcro on the glove compartment is going to hold. It was a bittersweet goodbye to Red Velvet when I left her at the dealership, but I must say that I definitely moved up in the car world.

Concerts

The past couple of weeks I've gone to a couple of concerts here. Keane and Ingrid Michaelson came to the Greek Theater a couple of weeks ago and a group of us went for a great summer concert. I think I liked Ingrid even more than Keane. She was such a good performer.



Then yesterday was the US Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach and I went down to spend the day in the sun. John, Shana and I drove down and parked many many blocks from the beach since it was so crowded. But we caught up with Heidi and Nate, watched some surfing right from the beach, caught some of the skateboarding competition, and then were mauled by mobs of people as we fought for what turned out to be great seats in the sand for the Weezer concert after it was all over. Surfing, swimsuits, concerts on the beach, can't get much better than that for a summer Saturday in California.