A race at Gasworks Park and Mike’s birthday

Work is getting more manageable these days, and both Mike and I got some key things done last week that frees us up a little.  Mike is in a Kaizen this week at work, though, which will make for a pretty busy week.

Last Thursday night, interestingly, both Mike and I had work events going on in the evening.  Mike was attending the “going-away” party of one of his co-workers, and I was attending the graduation ceremony for the Girls Who Code program for which I’ve been a mentor this summer.

Girls Who Code has been a very rewarding program to be a part of.  Seeing the girls grow in confidence and knowledge is really cool.  I really enjoyed working with the program and hope they continue their Seattle programs.  (This was its first year in Seattle… I believe it’s been going on in the Bay area for a couple of years.)

Friday night Mike worked late, so I went to the grocery store and ran some other errands.  I had a 10k race on Saturday morning which went ok.  It wasn’t terrible or wonderful.  It was a pretty strictly run-of-the-mill race with a run-of-the-mill finishing time.  There were a couple of things I really liked about the race though.  It started and finished at Gasworks Park, which is half a mile from our apartment, so getting there in the morning was really easy.

Gasworks Park (the day before the race… it was much busier the day of the race)

 

Also, the course was beautiful… right along Lake Union and the Ballard locks.  I was surprised at how many people there were!  I hadn’t realized it was such a large race!

Getting ready for the race!

 

For the first mile and a half (which is a quarter of the entire race), all of us runners were pretty much running shoulder to shoulder and there weren’t many opportunities to pass people.  (That probably didn’t help my overall time, actually, now that I think about it.)  After that, though, things thinned out and we had a lot more room to run.  It was still one of the more crowded 10k’s I’ve run though, so it was a fun, new experience.  A couple of other things I liked about the race.

1) They attached the race timing chip to your race bib, so you didn’t need to put on a bib and a timing chip on your shoe separately.  In the past I think the technology was such that you had to have the timing chips really close to the ground (where the sensors are) in order to detect your time.  Now apparently, as in all areas, technology has marched on and you can now put a timing chip all the way up on your chest and the timing sensors can still pick it up.

2) Rather than picking up your race T-shirt ahead of time, you picked it up when you crossed the finish line.  This is very convenient as it meant I didn’t have to pick up my T-shirt before the race and then figure out where to stash it until the race was over so I could take it home.

3) They offered two different color T-shirts at the finish line, and you got to pick which one you wanted.  What a fun idea!  I got to choose between blue and yellow, and I picked blue.  Mostly because I just got a bright yellow-ish green race T-shirt for the Seafair 5k Mike and I did a month ago.

4) Gasworks Park is just cool in general.  I don’t know the history of it or why it’s called Gasworks Park, but it’s got some pretty crazy equipment there.

Umm… not sure what this is

 

Saturday was also Mike’s birthday!  He started the day with dropping the car off to get routine maintenance while I ran my race.  Then we had a present opening session where he opened his birthday presents.  In the evening we went out for dinner to Cicchetti, a favorite spot of ours.  It specializes in middle-eastern food and specialty cocktails.  The ambience there is incredibly relaxing… we actually ended up lingering there for about two hours just talking.

On Sunday I got a lot of CSA produce made up into food.  I made up a lemon chicken slow cooker meal for Mike, and I made up a pan of baked ratatouille.  It’s so good!  🙂  I got all of the CSA produce used up from last week, so I’m all ready to pick up new produce tomorrow.  I’m already halfway through the CSA season, and I’ve been doing really well as far as food waste.  Basically the only food that’s gone to waste has been three bulbs of fennel (I seriously don’t know WHAT to do with that licorice-tasting vegetable!) and some cilantro and summer savory.  (I just don’t use that many fresh herbs, I guess.)  But I’ve been keeping up with the peas and green beans and zucchini (things that went bad last year), so I feel like I’m doing pretty well.  It’s helping a lot that I’ve been sending some lunches to work with Mike, and I always include some vegetables in there since he’s been eating healthier.  He isn’t a huge vegetable fan, but does like peas and green beans!  🙂

The weather here has been warm and sunny… almost too sunny.  Seattle’s getting pretty dry and could use some rain!

Piper enjoyed having us home over the weekend.  She’s had a lot of energy lately and doesn’t seem to be sleeping as much.  Typically by Sunday she’s pretty exhausted having us home all weekend, but this Sunday she still was very awake and alert.  Mike and I really need to brush her more, because she seems to be shedding a lot this summer.

In honor of Mike’s birthday I told him I’d watch any movie he wanted to see.  He chose Mad Max.  It was seriously one of the weirder movies I’ve ever seen.  I didn’t quite get the location/scene set up, didn’t quite get the main characters’ motivations, and in general just really didn’t get the movie.  I wish I could analyze it a little more, but I can’t.  I can say that it reminded me of Quentin Tarantino’s very early works (think, Reservoir Dogs), so that probably tells you something about the almost comically extreme violence.  Quite frankly, I wouldn’t watch it again.  Mike liked it, but there were half hour long car chases with giant old muscle cars sporting super chargers so large I’m surprised that the drivers could even see past them down the hood of the car.  I think it was basically Reservoir Dogs meets The Fast and the Furious.  Actually, the more I think about it, the more accurate that seems to me.  So you can take that for whatever it’s worth.  🙂

We also ran a couple of errands, and Mike fixed our vacuum cleaner.  There was something in it that wasn’t sealing correctly, so Mike ordered parts for it a week and a half ago.  They took forever to arrive, but when they finally did Mike dove in to fixing it.  We haven’t tried it out yet because there was a little foam strip Mike had to glue and that apparently needs 24 hours to set.  But soon we’ll be back to full vacuuming strength!  🙂

I hope everyone had a good weekend!