If you were my slippers, where would you be?

I had big plans tonight... okay, that is a lie. I hadn't actually made plans, but I had sort of vague thoughts about doing something, it being Saturday and all.

AND THEN IT SNOWED.

I don't know how it is elsewhere, but in Minnesota, you do not want to be out driving during or immediately after the first snowstorm. Over the course of the spring, summer, and fall, we, as a state, seem to forget how to drive on/in snow*, so when the first snow falls it is a nightmare of epic proportions. And so, having no pressing reason to leave the house, I stayed in.

I've been watching Arrested Development, because I accidentally watched almost to the end of Battlestar Galactica and I am not emotionally ready to be done with it just yet. I got halfway through the end of the final episode of season four, and I paused it because I thought "Wow, they're tying up a lot of loose ends! What's going to be left for season five? There IS a season five, right?"

Yeah. I don't know how I failed to realize that there are only four seasons, but now that I know I can't bring myself to finish it just yet. I need more time!

The nice thing about Arrested Development is that it's not nearly as detrimental to my knitting as BSG. Thanks to this unexpected night in, the baby sleep sack I'm knitting for my cousin is nearing completion. I'll be glad to get it done so that I can return to the sock I started. I've managed to misplace my favorite slippers, so I could really use a nice thick pair of socks right about now.

...that sounded unexpectedly dirty. I assure you that was not my intention.

In between episodes, mostly because I was hungry but also to give myself a reason to get off the couch, I made some amazing soup, using a recipe my friend Catherine shared with me a few years ago.

( Real Tomato Soup )

It was delicious. And then I may or may not have eaten a sizable amount of Ben & Jerry's and had a New Belgium Trippel.

I hope you're all enjoying your weekends. Fellow Minnesotans, I hope you're safe and indoors, enjoying the view. Because the first snowfall is, I have to admit, beautiful.

*I think this is part of the collective amnesia that enables us to remain here, year in and year out, despite the winters. I would estimate that at least 75 percent of Minnesota dwellers vow in late January that, come spring, they will leave this hellish place forever. (Come spring, naturally, because have you ever tried to move in January? Or February? DON'T.) Then spring comes waltzing in and OH MY GOD IT'S SO WARM OUT! I CAN GO WITHOUT GLOVES AND NOT GET FROSTBITE! THE SNOW IS GONE! And then it's summer and snow literally does not seem possible. The delicious heat lulls us into a false sense of security, and then before we know it, autumn is halfway over and we realize, too late, that we've been tricked yet again.

Illinois was fun! I went to visit my friend Catherine and her husband Jeff. They live in a really pretty little town; even if they didn't it would be a pleasure to visit them because of their exceeding awesomeness. Catherine and I did some walking and knitting and baking and lots and lots of talking.

I got home today and was feeling a little out of sorts. One of the lymph nodes on the right side of my throat is visibly swollen, and it kind of hurts. And I had to go to the DMV to renew my tabs.

But all the same, it was a pleasant day. I'd taken it off work so that I wouldn't have to go dashing back in to the lab immediately post-vacation, and I'm so glad I did, in large part because my license plate tabs expire today -- hence the trip to the DMV.

And the DMV actually wasn't that bad. The one I usually go to is in the same building as a county library, so on my way to get in line I stopped and got coffee and three library-sale book (fifty cents each!) to beguile my wait.

Then I went yarn-shopping (which was fairly naughty of me, since I bought plenty of yarn in Illinois) and grocery-shopping (which was totally necessary, since I had no food). I came home and made spaghetti squash with herbed butter, butternut squash-potato soup, and banana bread. It smells delicious in my apartment right now.

...you make a slight adjustment to it while running and one breast escapes entirely.

I think I need to go down a size or so.

Fortunately the jailbreak took place inside my shirt, so I didn't actually flash anyone. Some of the people working at the construction site I was jogging past at the time may have witnessed my frantic (and ultimately successful) attempt to re-contain the escapee -- if they did, I very much wonder what they made of it.

Earlier today I went for a very, very short run in my shiny new Vibrams. I bought them while up in Duluth with my friend Amy and I am super-excited about them. They look like this. The store I bought them at (Duluth Running Company) had them in all four colors but I thought the red ones looked the nicest. I like red.

Short run: Awesome. My calves are a little twinge-y now but not in a bad way.

I was in Duluth Friday night through yesterday afternoon to do the Harvest Run with my friend Amy. We stayed with her fiance's aunt, who is an incredibly nice person with the most comfortable spare bedroom I've ever slept in. Sleeping there was like sleeping on a soft, appropriately supportive cloud. Even if I did dream mostly about zombies.

The race was great! Only they didn't have a mat at the starting line, which is a first in my (admittedly limited) experience -- the chip-timed races I've done so far have all had mats at both the start and finish. So I don't think my time was quite right. There were 400 runners on a very narrow bike/running trail, so the start was pretty staggered and I know I started a little while after the gun. I wouldn't care except that I really gave it my all in this race and I was sure my time would be better than last weekend's time, and it wasn't. My official time wasn't, anyway. In my heart I am pretty sure I did better and that's encouraging.

Now I am making soup, using a recipe I more or less made up myself. I'm going to share it here and I'll tell you later if it was good or if it sucked!

( Experimental Soup )

The soup turned out not to suck, but it was a little on the bland side. Not bad, though.

So I managed not to fall asleep and drool on my bare mattress the other night.  I did, however, end up sleeping on just the mattress pad, because it took what seemed like an eternity (and was probably actually about five minutes) to get it on and the thought of repeating the process with the fitted sheet made me want to cry.

Pretty sure I was mildly delirious at that point.  I kept losing things -- my Nook, my phone, the bottle of aspirin -- and finding them, and losing them again and it was very tiresome.  Most of the time I hadn't so much "lost" them as either left them on the counter in the bathroom or kitchen or knocked them off the bed and onto the floor.  It was like a reversion to early childhood, when out of sight meant NO LONGER IN EXISTENCE.

I spent most of the evening in a hoodie and sweatpants, but just before I went to sleep I decided it would be very clever to wear my robe to bed instead, because (I reasoned) I would be too hot in my hoodie, and my robe, being a summer-weight garment, would be cooler, especially if I left it unfastened..  And while it's true that my hoodie would have been a little overly warm as sleepwear, it's also true that the loose belt of my robe nearly strangled me in my sleep.

I have a cold.

On one hand, this sucks.  No one likes to be sick (well, maybe some people do -- to each their own).

On the other hand, I am a little bit relieved because I initially thought that the horrible sore throat I had last night was the result of allergies, and I was worried that they would continue to plague me before and during the ten-mile race I'm doing on Sunday.  Because that would suck too.

Thinking it was just allergies, I went to the Twins game last night.  I apologize to all the fans I may have infected, especially since the Twins lost so they don't even have fond memories of an awesome game to console them during the feverish sniffling.

I should really be in bed but I decided it would be an awesome idea to launder my sheets before bed.  One of my favorite cold remedies is a scalding-hot shower, and I felt that the nice cozy feeling of being squeaky clean and crawling in between equally clean sheets would make me feel a bit better.

And it probably will, but right now the task of remaking my bed seems Herculean.  Wrestling with the mattress cover and fitted sheet is more than I can handle right now, so I'm going to sit here and take a little break from moving.  I'm afraid to lie down on the couch because a) I am probably super-contagious, and my roommate does not need any of that and b) I will probably fall asleep there, and while it IS a comfortable couch it's not an appropriate sleeping place for a person who has a perfectly good bed in the next room.

SO.

I made you a poll.


I usually try to let the fever run its course, unless it gets high enough that I'm really uncomfortable and can't sleep.

Over the years I've gotten to be more of a morning person, in that I get up before nine a.m. on the weekends even when I don't have to. I'm not sure why, exactly, because I am still not what anyone would call an actual morning person.

Case in point: Yesterday morning I got up, stumbled into the shower (where I got soap in my eye and swore about it), then dashed back to the bedroom (dripping water all over the place and stubbing my toe) to get the towel I'd forgotten, dressed myself (successfully and without injury) and then made coffee (the iced, instant Starbucks kind, so no points for not burning or setting myself on fire). Fortified with a few sips of caffeine, I prepared to leave the apartment.

It was cold out yesterday (and is today) so I decided I needed my favorite black hoodie. I retrieved it from the bedroom and tried to put it on.

But there was a problem. I stood in the front hall holding it, and for a good ten or fifteen seconds I was SO FUCKING PUZZLED. My hoodie wasn't working! There was something wrong with it! The zipper wasn't there. And it didn't have sleeves, or a hood.

Because it was a pair of pants.

I had picked up a pair of black sweats that were on the floor near my hoodie. (They should have been in the hamper, and the hoodie should have been hanging up, but the story of How and Why I Am Not Neat is an entirely different and longer tale). And I had tried, or at least thought about trying, to put those sweats on like a jacket.

I had some yarn left over from the baby sack (which I foolishly did not take pictures of before gifting, but oh well!) so I made a matching hat using this excellent pattern.



Other things I made this weekend: scones and quiche. I am especially pleased with the quiche, because I made it totally on a whim this morning, entirely from scratch, and it turned out deliciously. Plus it was a great way to use up the leftover green onions and chives and eggs I had hanging out in my fridge just waiting to go bad.

I felt like total crap this morning, and I could not figure out why. I worried that maybe it was anxiety creeping up on me again, or that I was getting sick.

Then I went for a bike ride with Rachel and went out to my parents' house for dinner and gardened a bit with my mom and lo, all was well. And I realized that I'd been feeling like crap because I have been lazy as hell for the last week. To be fair, I have been semi-busy with shower-planning stuff, but that was not so all-consuming that I couldn't have fit in some exercise.

I've known for several years now that if I fail to get enough exercise, it makes me feel like crap. You would think that would motivate me to make a point of getting enough exercise, but you would be wrong.

Speaking of that, I am going to need to start getting a little extra exercise, because I just signed up to run the TC 10 Mile. I won* one of the guaranteed spots after doing the TC 1 Mile last month and I'd been hemming and hawing about signing up but in my post-bike-ride haze I was just like, "Fuck yeah, running! HERE IS MY CREDIT CARD INFORMATION." I'm glad I did, though. I think having that as a goal will keep me motivated this summer.


* Via a random drawing, by pure chance, and not as a result of my performance in that one-mile race (which was pretty abysmal).