Healthy Yoga and Unhealthy Ice Cream

A few weeks ago, my yoga class decided to have an ice cream social following yoga. We went to Cold Stone Creamery. I'd never been there, so it was quite the experience. Just trying to figure out what we wanted took a little time. In the end, I opted for the Love it size French vanilla ice cream with apple pie filling and graham cracker pie crust. I went to Dottie's Weight Loss Zone http://www.dwlz.com/restaurants.htmlto try to calculate the number of Weight Watchers Points I'd just inhaled with delightful abandon. Gulp. 27 Points! Yikes!

Some Days

Yup. Some days are just so crappy you need a happy hour. While we Commonwealth employees weren't being paid and were facing this first round of layoffs, and it just seemed like the thing to do. My friend, Renee, thought my idea for a quick beer after work was good for whatever ailed us. Good friend + cold beer = better day.

Julie and Julia

If you love to cook and you love Julia Child, take the time to see this movie. Meryl Streep will make you forget you're watching a movie...she is that good. You will think you're really watching Julia. Going in, I didn't realize that this was a true story, that Julie really did blog for 365 days as she cooked her way through Julia's book. Although I am familiar with Julia Child's book, I never knew much about her life. For anyone who loved watching Julia's show, laughed through it while learning all sorts of stuff about French cuisine, you will love this movie. We did.

Does It Ever End?

Where does it all come from? Does it somehow multiply? How many shirts can one man wear in one week? He wore how many pairs of Joe Boxer Briefs in 7 days? Geez oh man.

Learning All the Time

As you can see, I had a big post weekend. Little did I know that I could actually have scheduled those posts so that they posted whenever I designated. That way, only one would post at a time and it would actually look like I was continually updating. My friend, Renee, told me that I could stagger the posts. So, this is my test to see if I can make this happen. I'm writing this on Monday, July 27. I want it to post on Tuesday, July 28. I'm not always successful with this computer crapola, so let's see how it goes!

Lesson 10 Compilation

This lesson was pretty cool. We created a rounded edge clipping mask, added 2 textures, added and overlay for type, and then used the burn edge technique from Lesson 9 (the one I was less than impressed with). I really liked the overlay for type because with busy backgrounds I can see where the type wouldn't show up very well. Here are my before and after pics.

Musselman Tri

Oops! Brent - I can't believe I posted about the wine tasting and completely forgot about your race. Sorry.

Kera is Brent's support crew at this race. She gets up early (4:45 a.m.) to drive to the race, helps him get into his wet suit, and waits to be sure he comes out of the water alive. Then she drives back to the hotel and helps me pack up the van so we can hustle back to the race to catch Brent coming in from the bike. Then, the long wait for him to come back on the run. Really, the only one having fun here is Brent I think! LOL!


This race is a half-iron triathlon which means there's a 1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run (a half marathon).

The assigned bike rack slots in the transition area had personal, inspirational messages in addition to the competitor number. This was a really unique touch.

Kera may have some pictures from the swim. Brent had a great swim, coming out of the water in 8th place (of 50) in his age group. He had a good bike too, finishing 15th in his age group. These pictures show him coming out of the transition area from his bike to start the run.

The run, however, was not so good due to hydration and fueling issues, which are always a struggle for Brent in long races. Time wise, he ended up 39th in his age group for the run.

The good news is that he finished overall in 26th place in his age group with a time of 5:53:45. He was 366th out of 875 competitors over all. Even with a bad run, he took 15 minutes off his previous time at this race. Not bad for an old guy!