This Sunday, I was out the door when the sky still looked like this:

Yeah, that’s early.  (It was about 6:00 am.)

Why on earth did I do this to myself?  I did it so that I, along with my friend Barrie, could walk 13 miles in the Mercer Island Half Marathon.   And we did it.  I didn’t even fall this time!

When Barrie first convinced me to do this with her, I was feeling kind of cocky.  I mean, it’s walking, right?  I can walk.  Sure, 13 miles is a long walk, but it’s not like I was going to run it.  THAT would be hard.  As it got closer, I started to panic a little.  13 miles started to seem farther and farther in my head, especially when I set out on long walks by myself on the weekend to “train.”  By the day before, I was starting to freak out and wonder why I ever agreed to do this thing.

Then we went to register the day before, and I came back loaded up with free sports drinks, chocolate milk, Clif bars, chapstick and water bottles that said “Got Polyps?” on it.  I was also pretty excited that the jersey they gave us was way nicer than the normal Men’s XL cotton T-Shirt- it was actual jersey material.  Swag always makes me feel better.  And then we started to walk.

Well, 13 miles is indeed a long walk.  Thankfully, Mercer Island is really pretty and has some pretty gorgeous houses to stare at.  The first few miles went by uneventfully.  We chatted so much that I barely listened to the audiobook I had downloaded just for the walk (The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman was my literature of choice that day).

Then it started to drag a bit.  We were still chatting, though I started to get engrossed in my book, but I was starting to feel like it was going to go on forever.  Whenever I do any kind of excercise, I am constantly doing backwards math (basically comparing how far I’ve gone to how far I have still to go), and I was kind of overwhelmed when after mile 5 I realized that we still had 8 stinking miles to go.  Ugh.

Thank god I had Barrie to keep me distracted.  At mile 7 I was stoked that we were more than halfway done, but my left hip was starting to bother me.  I figured it would go away.  I would come to regret this later.

At mile 8 the elite runners, who started 30 minutes after us, started to pass us.  My heart literally leapt with joy at the mile 11 marker.  2 more miles!  Anybody can walk 2 miles!  We kept going.  My hip was starting to KILL at this point, so we even started running a little because it hurt less than walking (who could have ever predicted that?).  Mile 12 seemed like it went on forever, but then somehow we were suddenly in sight of the finish line.  It was kind of weirdly anticlimactic to walk across a finish line, but we did it.  And Mike was there to awkwardly videotape it:

Awkward, but we still did it.  Even if it was “just walking.”  And then we got fruit:

Total time: 3:15:08.  Next up: Beat the Bridge.

Today was one of those days, where everything just seemed to line up and life gives you a break. After raining cats and dogs for over a week with record flooding throughout the area; the clouds decided to take break, let the sun come out and dry up some tarmac.

It just so happens Ducati Seattle was having an open house event at 1:00PM to unveil the new 2009 Ducati Monster 1100S.  Free food, free test rides, and the opportunity to get out of the house and meet some new like-minded people? Count me in.

So I rushed down to the garage and start digging out all my old riding gear. Helmet? Check. Gloves? Check. Jacket? Check. Valid M1 license? Check. Aubrey out shopping? Check. I chucked everything into the Mini and off I went.

Today, I have to say was one of the most exciting days I’ve had in Seattle in a long time. Enough that I’m actually writing a blog post. I got to ride both the Ducati Hypermotard and the new Monster 1100S. It was like a life recharging event. My mind was trapped in the day to day mundane routines and was finally, for a short 30 minutes, I was set free. I know, I know it sounds cheesy, but it something I really can’t describe with words.

Here are some pictures from the Open House and with the demo bikes in front of our house.

To those in the know. Live. Love. Ride.

Last night, we were sitting in front of the fire, watching Weird Science courtesy of our Roku (which Mike had never seen before, weirdly) and thinking we were pretty much good for the night, when our friend Max called me telling us that we had to get down to the Queen Anne hill stat.  It was hard to make out what he was talking about, but I did hear something about sleds.

We bundled up again and walked down to the Queen Anne and Highland, where almost a hundred people had gathered and decided that since the city doesn’t plow, we might as well all take advantage of it:

This chick had some serious speed going:

A group effort:

Most creative vessel of the night:

I guess that’s what you get when you combine freak snowstorms, a poor infrastructure and lots of super fun hills.  It is definitely a bright spot in our virtual house arrest of late.

So Blizzardwatch 2008 is officially on.  Since we live at the top of a really steep hill in a city that has never bothered to get their act together re: snow, we are kind of stuck up here.  As a result, I’m going a little stir crazy and you get another awesome snow post.

We look so cute bundled up.  Meanwhile, my toes were completely numb.

Mike won’t go wine-tasting with me, but he will do some snow tasting.  Disgusting.

On Thursday I tried to sled.  This plan didn’t work so well, considering my sledding materials of choice were the following:

Yeah, that’s me, rocking Marc Jacobs galoshes but still to cheap to buy a real sled and opting for the lid of my CSA bin and the top of our trash can instead.  I have awesome priorities.

And finally, for Mike’s friend Justin and my fabulous parents who will be visiting us soon:

Bring a jacket.

These are things that I’ve heard over and over again during the past couple of months:

• “It doesn’t snow in Seattle.”
• “Eh, it may snow for like, 3 minutes, but by morning everything will melt.”
• “It NEVER snows here in [insert current month here].”

Obviously, people are in denial.  Or they are just liars.    Just look outside our office window:

I was awoken at 5:00 am by thunder and lightning.  Huh?  Is that even possible in conjunction with snow?  My boss emailed everybody on my team telling them to work from home today due to this outbreak of “thundersnow.”

This weather phenomenon is just confirming my belief that Mike and I do, indeed, have some sort of magnetic attraction for all things strange and random.  Seattle, I apologize for the deep freeze, but I think we brought it.

Confession: I didn’t do a lot of research on Seattle before we decided to move here.  I knew it rained a lot.  I knew there was a lot of coffee.  I was aware that I would probably have an excuse to buy more jackets than I did in SoCal.

But snow?  I had no idea it snowed.  We had been here a week before somebody made an offhand comment about how little it snows here, to which I responded, eyes agog, “Wait a minute- it snows in Seattle?”  This person probably thought I was an idiot.

So once I started making friends and I mentioned my snow-phobia, everybody assured me that snow in Seattle is a total anomoly, practically a myth.  They said there were about two weeks a year that the roads would ice up a bit, people would get in a ton of car accidents, and then it would be over.  Seeing acutal white stuff on the ground, they told me, NEVER happens.

Then I looked out the window last night:

I was wary.  Especially considering that I had signed up for the Jingle Bell Run on Sunday.  Running in the SNOW?  People don’t do that.  I got nervous.  But then I remembered how everybody says that snow always melts during the night, so I’d be fine.

Then I looked out the window this morning:

Hmmm…  not exactly melted.  I didn’t want to be a total flake though, so I bundled up in as many layers as I could manage (including 2 of mike’s mismatched knee-high snowboarding socks.  I couldn’t find a matching pair for the life of me) and headed over to my friend Barrie’s house, where her very awesome and very brave boyfriend was there to drive us downtown.

I always hear people complain about Seattlites not knowing how to deal with snow.  Well, Barrie and Dominic are evidently the McGyvers of snow- here they are scraping Dominic’s car windows.  We didn’t have an ice scraper, so they used sticks:

We made it to the madhouse that was the race.  As should be expected, there was a bizarre error on my number identifying me as “Angie Bach,” a 22 year old who lives in Federal Way.  I was too overwhelmed by the sheer number of people to try and argue.

How many people were there?  Well, here is a picture I snapped as our heat started:

So yeah, there were a lot of people.

The race was good.  Considering that I’d been having visions of falling into a snow drift and having my corpse shoveled out days later, I was pretty happy that I ran it in 32 minutes (the thing was definitely too crowded to do much passing.)  Theoretically, I would like to subtract some time for when I slipped in an ice patch, scraped my knee and tore open my running pants right at the knee- now they have a cute “grunge” look to them.  Very Seattle.

I still finished the race, where I met Barrie, who had already finished and managed to ravage any freebies within a 3-mile radius.  I think she ended up walking away with 2 lbs of bananas:

We look cute, huh?

After the race we grabbed breakfast, where I saw the reason why print journalism is failing- this headline:

It’s going to be a fun winter.

Remember WAY back in July when we came for a househunting trip and I kept marvelling at how it was still light at 9:00 pm?  Let’s review.

I took this picture at 9:00 pm on July 12:

Last week I took this picture at 4:30 pm:

And it’s only getting worse.  This morning, when I went for a morning run before work, I was SHOCKED by how dark it was.

Thankfully, Winter Equinox is coming up soon and we’ll slowly be making our way back to later sunsets and longer days.  Slowly.  But surely.  Thank God.  I need me some sun- not necessarily to lay out in, but at least to look out at on whatever sunny days we get.

Today was my first day of work!  Of course, as with most first days, it involved a ton of paperwork and getting things set up.  Not super exciting, and I’m not completely clear as to what my everyday routine is going to be, but the people are really nice and everybody seems to know what they are doing.  So yay! for things looking good.

I normally would post pictures of my new work environment, but I could not find my camera anywhere in the house or car (more on that later).  iPhone camera + cubicle lighting = no bueno, so I’ll do that another day.  Let’s just say it’s very grey and boring at the moment- I definitely need some flair in there soon.

The REAL highlight of my day was the trip home- I met my friend Barrie when we both got off work, and we WALKED home.  Yeah, that’s right, we walked.  This is a major feat for this girl from Orange County who thought that her old 12 mile commute was the shortest she would ever see.  It took us 45 minutes to walk 2.4 miles (it would have been much quicker if we didn’t live on top of the Queen Anne Hill of Death, but it’s a good workout nonetheless).

Walking home from work is a total treat.  You get to see parts of the city that you never noticed before- like CounterBalance Park at night:

By day, CounterBalance Park is the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen- wood flooring, a few park benches, and not a piece of playground equipment or a hint of grass as far as the eye can see.  But at night these colored lights come on and it becomes something that is absolutely gorgeous.  I doubt I ever would have even known about it if I never got off my butt and walked.

To make the night even better, we had dinner at Barrie’s house.  Her boyfriend Dominic made us a fabulous dinner, and then we sat around and talked nerd.

Good times.  Gotta love the 1:1 person to MacBook ratio.  Makes me and my Sony Vaio feel like the uncool kids.

YAY: Saturday I successfully slept in almost as late as Mike.  This is a major accomplishment for my unable to sit still self.

BOO: We didn’t get out of the house until 1:00 pm, which means we wasted half of what is probably one of the last really nice weekends of summer here.  We suck.

YAY: We made it to the grand opening of the Colonnade Mountain Bike Skills Park.  (I think they should have called it a “Skillz” park.  ::groan::).  It was really cool- well built, much bigger than I would have ever imagined, and only 2 miles from our house.

BOO: Mike’s bike is still broken from his last trip to Mammoth.  Something tells me that will get fixed soon.

YAY: The mountain bike park has an off-leash dog park!!

BOO: I still don’t have a dog because my husband doesn’t really love me.

YAY: We found a really awesome Thai restaurant down the hill from our house.  Yum.

BOO: We have to walk back up the hill after we eat there.

YAY: Mike actually went to the farmer’s Market with me in Ballard Sunday morning.  Total food Pr0n + somebody to help me carry stuff.

YAY: I made a ton of progress on a lace scarf I am knitting.  I just started this on Tuesday:

BOO: My stupid wrist is still hurting when I knit or bike or lift things.  I think I’m going to end up having to do physical therapy.

YAY: We saw Burn After Reading on Sunday night.  It was pointless and self-mocking and it entertained me so much that I actually stayed awake through the whole thing- yeah, that’s right Ben, I stayed awake during an entire MOVIE!

BOO: Mike got so frustrated trying to park downtown before the movie that he ended up driving to a mall outside the city to see it.  We both agreed that it’s time to conquer our deep-rooted Orange County-born-and-raised fear of public transportation and start using the bus system.

YAY: All the new TV shows are **this close** to actually starting full-force.  Gossip Girl and Bones have already come back to us (squeeee) along with a handful of new shows: 90210 2.0 (eh), Fringe (has some definately nerdy X-Files-ish potential) and Privileged (I don’t think Mike has seen this yet, but it might end up being cute).  I know it’s lame and low-brow, but I love TV.  Mike and I are the best at lying around and watching TV.  We would totally medal if watching television while knitting (me) and looking at car forums (Mike) was an Olympic team sport.

BOO: TV definately limits productivity.  But I love it anyways.

BOO THE SEQUEL: Speaking of Gossip Girl, Blair is putting out an album:

This weekend was the grand opening of the I-5 Colonnade Mountain Bike Skill Park built below the 5 freeway near our house. We are seriously a hop, skip and jump away from this new amazing man made creation. Both Aubrey and I were pleasantly surprise at how vast and well built it was. I mean we were thinking “what can a bunch of guys really build underneath the 5 freeway?” Aubrey’s reaction? “Holy Crap.”

The park has a bit of everything for anyone who rides a mountain bike. From 60 year old guys on cross country bikes riding the beginner section to the young kid hitting the 7 foot wooden ladder drop, it’s for everyone looking for a good time. Best of all? Everything is free! Okay enough with the time wasting. I’m off to the bike shop to get my bike ready. Click on the photos to visit my Flickr gallery. I tried to document  the place as much as possible for my riding friends back at home. You know who you are. Enjoy!