Not sleeping, so blogging

I seem to be having a hard time getting to sleep tonight, so thought I'd update my blog for this week. It's been fairly uneventful thus far, just the usual work/training/whatever. Work is good, if a tad slow. I'm very happy at the spa and actually enjoy going to work. (Well, most days.) Mostly because of my co-workers. We all get along very well, there's lots of joking around and having a good time between appointments. We even hang out on our off-times. From what I've heard from those that came from other spas or resorts, the lack of conflict and general snarkiness is pretty rare, considering it's mostly women working in very, very close quarters. We do have one token male, Todd, who puts up with us very well.

I've been at Breathe 2 1/2 years now. Since I have senority over most of the other Massage Therapists, I get first crack at any new appointments. This has really helped during this slow time, which hasn't affected me too much as yet. But some of the newer hires are really struggling. Business always drops off in the summer, but not usually until the end of June. But with the economy in the state of flux that it is, it started getting slow around April. There was one very scary week in May when there was hardly any work to go around, but luckily things have picked up. Not quite to where we'd like, but one upside to that is people are more willing to pick up shifts. Like for when I go to Vegas for the Boston/Styx concert the weekend of the 28th :-)

Hmm, what else can I bore you with? Let's see . . . how about my running? With the training schedule I'm following, I run 3 times a week. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Mondays are generally easy, 2 or 3 miles at my own pace. Wednesdays are for building speed and pace work, and are generally 5 or 6 miles. Saturdays are the long days, up to 8 or 9 miles now, 10 in another couple of weeks. Scary thought!! Today I was doing speedwork, in which after warming up I alternate running fast for a half mile, then recovery jogging for a half mile, repeated for 6 miles. Which is 4 laps around Liberty Park, FYI. I think I got a little over-excited my first few sprints tonight. By the 4th mile if I tried anything more than a slow trot I'd get a bad stitch in my side. What causes those things, anyway? Me no likey. So I took it easy and just jogged pretty slowly the last couple of miles. I'll have to pace myself better next time. I prefer running at night as that's when I tend to have more energy. Plus it's cooler outside and much less crowded at the park once the sun sets. The cold grass feels good to stretch on after, and seeing the stars through the trees is a nice perk, too.

I think that's a good enough overview of my life at this time. Hopefully I'll have something more entertaining for next week. Peace out, y'all.

My Birthday Camp-out

So here I am, 4 months later, finally posting a new blog. I was going to blog all about my cruise and everything, but I'm afraid too much time has gone by. So I'll just start where I am. Soon I shall have a camera (thanks Mom and Dad!) and will be able to post pictures when applicable.

For my birthday this year (I'm 27) I got to go camping! I hadn't been for years and was totally stoked when the opportunity came up. We didn't go far, just up Big Cottonwood Canyon about 10 miles to a campground called The Spruces. The plan had been to meet the rest of the group about 5 p.m. to drive up there. My friend Kristi got stuck at work so I waited for her and the two of us rolled up there about 8. At least that meant we didn't have to wait on dinner, it was waiting for us when we got there. We had dutch oven Enchillada Casserole, very yummy! Plus my friend Brady (the organizer of the trip) had gotten me a birthday cake with my name on it and everything. Chocolate, of course. We realized too late that we should have put the tent up before getting distracted by the food. Oops. We had to put the thing up in the dark. Luckily, its a very easy tent to put up, just took a little longer than normal. Kristi and I had a 6-man tent to ourselves, and as she had just had a long day to finish off a stressful week at work, she hit the sack rather early.

It was just an overnighter, so not much happened besides sitting by the fire and shooting the breeze til the early morning hours. But I loved it. Living in an apartment can feel rather confining. I was happy to be able to spend some serious outside time, even though it got pretty cold. Just as we were heading to bed, it started to rain. Just a very fine mist at first, then the drops were sounding larger as I went to sleep. I woke up when it got light around 6, and could still hear what sounded like rain hitting the tent. The birds were singing so I figured it couldn't be too bad. I sat up to look out the window, and had to laugh. It was snowing! I took a pic with my phone and sent it to a bunch of friends and fam, just because. The whole group (6 of us stayed the night, everyone else drove back. Wussies.) seemed to wake up at the same time, and I heard some colorful language from the other tents when they saw the snow. One couple packed up and left right then. I certainly wasn't going to drive down the canyon in the snow, so I snuggled back in to my warm, cozy sleeping bag and dozed off again. The next time I woke up the snow had all melted and the sun was out. The remaining 4 of us hung out for a couple hours and let the tents dry, and after a brief scare where I thought I'd lost my keys (they'd fallen out of my purse and were hiding under the foam I slept on. The Princess and the Pea I ain't.), we packed up and headed for home.

It was a good trip. Here's hoping I get to go again before the summers over. Without the snow next time . . .

P.S. My half-marathon is just a couple months away, Labor Day weekend. Training is going well, I'm up to running 8 or 9 miles on my long run days. I'm pretty much ready stamina-wise, just gotta work on getting a bit faster!