Lights!

We finally got our tree and finished our holiday decorating this past weekend. The tree had a few issues with its bungee cords and the smooth top of the car, but we managed to make it home without seeing it fly off through the back window, so all was well in the end.

Chez nous, E has definitely earned the title of Master of the Light Brigade. Here's a list of the mini-lights we currently have strung about the condo (my numbers may be slightly off, but they're close!):

• 3 strands of blue + 2 strands of white on the patio
  
• 2 strands of blue + 1 strand of white on the balcony
  
• 1 strand of red around the beaded curtain opening to our closet
  
• 1 strand of red + 1 strand of red chili-peppers novelty lights (currently not working - not sure what happened there, though it may be my fault for attempting to replace some burned-out bulbs with incorrectly sized extra bulbs from the new strands) around the bridge railing
  
• 2 strands of white around the inner tree trunk
  
• 2 strands of red + 2 strands of green + 2 strands of white above & below the kitchen cabinets
  
• 2 strands of green around the guest-room window
  
• And we can't forget the cow novelty lights around the lower stair railing!
  

In addition, we have 2 single clear window candles in the guest-room and of course several multi-colored strands of larger lights on the tree itself. Phew! I think we've definitely got our holiday groove on now...

Cheers and joy to all!!!

(oh yeah: don't forget to click on the Sacramento Top 25 link for my site)

Sacto Blogging

The News & Review had a cover story last week on local Sacto bloggers. Now personally, I don't think this "news" was really worthy of major coverage, considering how long blogs have been around and considering the amazingly small sample size of Sacto bloggers who were interviewed as part of the article. But I did find one piece of interesting information about a site called the Sacramento Top 25, where lots of local blogs are listed and which is a good source for making your blog known to a wider audience. So I decided to sign up. However, one requirement is to put a link on your blog to the site, which I'd gladly do if my Blogger template had a built-in spot for links, but it doesn't. And until I hear back from the Blogger Help folks about how to resolve this issue, I've decided I'll just have to put the Sac Top 25 site link at the end of every post from now on.

So here it is: Sac Top 25

Feel free to click often to help my site rise in the rankings!!!

Shakespeare in the Park(ing Lot)

The protestors were back for the first time in several weeks this morning. We were all starting to hope that they'd decided to take a break for the month of December, but no such luck. I, however, was quite prepared and had brought a collection of four Shakespearean tragedies to read to them if they started to preach or get too annoying (hmm... as if that ever happens...)

Today I finished all of Act One and a few scenes from Act Two of Othello. Kind of fun to read about lust and pagans and jealousy and "making the beast with two backs" to the oh-so-Christian protestors!!! My throat is a bit sore since I'm not accustomed to projecting my voice quite so much on a daily basis, but I'm sure I'll improve with regular practice. And it'll be a great way for me to reread some classic works of theatre. I can't remember when I last read Othello or King Lear, for example.

And what could be better on a Tuesday or Friday morning than a little Shakespeare in the Park(ing Lot)?

Bush Attack on Choice - What a Surprise

Yep, the good ol' boy is at it again, signing a spending bill that just so happens to have a measure in it that restricts access to information about choice and abortion. Luckily, at least here in California, our Attorney General is planning to file suit against the federal government for overstepping its boundaries.

So my response to all of those folks who claimed that choice is safe even under the current administration is a resounding, "Oh really???" In my opinion, the deviousness is only beginning and we're going to see many more subtle machinations of Bush & his ilk during the next four looooong years.

This just makes me even more committed to supporting any pro-choice organization or politician. And for those of you who disagree, let me just remind you that pro-choice does not mean anti-life, and it's possible to be both pro-choice and anti-abortion at the same time, assuming you have enough intelligence and critical thinking to understand what each term means.

Pro-choice = pro-women & pro-families & pro-child & pro-education & and pro-life in the very best sense of the term, meaning pro-everyone's-life (including women as people not just as carriers or vessels!!!)

Running Goals

After doing the Mad City Marathon at the end of May, I had thought about training for another marathon this year, possibly the Chicago marathon in October. But then I decided that I didn't want to devote the necessary time to training, primarily because relocating to Sacto and getting settled here was taking lots of time and energy. And I also enjoyed taking advantage of some other offerings (Pilates, volleyball, swimming, water aerobics) at our gym. So instead I did the Sac 1/2 marathon in September, as I wrote about on this blog a couple of months ago.

After that event, I felt like I needed to set myself a new running goal. For a long time, I haven't really focused on speed, since I don't really see myself as a fast runner but rather as a consistent and middle-of-the-pack runner. But as I thought about my 5K times, I realized I'd be really happy to improve my pace to achieve a sub-25:00 time on a 5K (3.1 miles). So I've been pursuring that goal on the treadmill over the past couple of months, and last night I did my fastest time yet - 23:16 (this means sub-8:00 miles all the way!). I felt really good about hitting this mark, and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to replicate the experiment, at least to a certain extent, in an actual timed event sometime soon.

Kind of cool to reach these fitness goals, especially since I only discovered running and how great it can be during the past decade...

And next year for sure I'll train to do the California International Marathon at the beginning of December. After all, the finish line is literally 5 blocks from home in front of the State Capital, so how can I resist that?!