September Highlights

I’m so glad it’s October. The weather is getting cooler.. the leaves are changing.. we have a trip planned to the mountains for our 1st anniversary.. it’s a great time of year.

September was a pretty busy month. Here’s some things that went down:

Training

Training ramped up a bit and my husband started training for his 10K at Disney Marathon Weekend. I was really worried about it for a while, because my husband has never been very consistent in running. He has a love sort-of-like/hate relationship with it and refuses to label himself as a runner. He enjoys finishing 5K’s, but hates running in general.. and has a severe lack of confidence in his ability to go much further. That being said.. he has never really trained consistently, and every time I presented him with a training schedule he scoffed and said he would do his own thing. This year, Disney has a Galloway training plan for the 10K at Disney Marathon Weekend. I printed it for him and have pushed encouraged him to follow it. So far, he has done really well and has even agreed to stick with intervals. (In the past we would start with intervals and end with him deciding he would just run as he felt like it.) It’s been a while since he has trained for anything.. and definitely feels the effects of running 30 mins/2ish miles 3 days a week. BUT, in the few weeks he’s been at it, he has noticed his speed increasing a bit and is pretty proud of himself (as I am of him!) He still struggles with the idea of running 6.2 miles, but I remind him that as long as he does the work, he will do just fine. He maintains that he will quit running when this is over… as he has said before every race he runs.. so we’ll see 😉

Running the 2014 Shamrock 5K together in Baltimore

Zeus

I took Zeus to the vet in the beginning of the month for his annual check up. The vet recommended a teeth cleaning (which I did not have done last year due to expense.. our wedding took a big chunk out of our bank accounts last year, so I put the procedure off.) and I wanted to have a cyst under his paw, as well as a skin tag he’s had for a while on his back leg that kept getting bigger removed. So I scheduled him for surgery and took him in mid September. He came out a groggy but happy pup.. and was back to himself the next day. One thing I noticed was his breath was no longer stinky.. they pulled 6 rotting teeth (all tiny ones) and cleaned/polished the remaining. He smells so good now! He had to go on a soft diet and take pain and antibiotic pills (coated in peanut butter, of course) of which he thoroughly enjoyed. He’s back to eating his normal food.. despite giving me an “I’ve been cheated” look the first day off the wet diet. This past weekend I noticed his front paw swelling and he was limping on it a bit. We took him for a walk and his toe started bleeding too. I took him back to the vet on Monday and they thought his bandage was too tight, so they gave him a new one and want me to come back on thursday to look at it. I believe they may also want to take his stitches out too. It got much better after they changed the bandage, so that’s good. Course, he doesn’t seem to notice any of it as he tears through the house like a bat out of hell. Love that pug.

Getting dropped off at the vet for surgery… terrified

Home after surgery.. don’t know why he wanted to sit there lol

Fitness Test

In August I had my metabolism test, and this month, I had a body composition follow up and a fitness test done. I won’t go into too much detail here, because I do want to write a full post about it.. but I will say that I’m in great shape and doing well on my progress. Quite encouraged by the results. More on that later.

Birthday/Dating Anniversary

My husband’s birthday was on the 21st. We celebrated with a nice dinner at an Italian restaurant we’ve never been to and some cake on Saturday (the 20th).  The restaurant was called Enotria. My husband had heard of it in passing from a few different people and decided he wanted to try it out for his birthday. The decor was very nice, and the food was great. He had lasagna and I had a Mediterranean salad topped with lump crab meat. we also tried the stuffed mushroom appetizer.. and it too was pretty awesome. Later we went home and watched a move he had wanted to see from the library, and had some cake for dessert. In the past, my husband had requested mint chocolate chip ice cream cake. This year however, he insisted on cannoli cake. I drove down to a local bakery, which was a little out of the way, but they have a great reputation, and our wedding cake came from there. They had two different kinds of cannoli cake, and I naturally chose on the fancier one. He loved it. It was huge though, so we had cake all week long. Every time he dug into a piece, he exclaimed “I love this cake!” So I think it was a winner! For his gift, he had mentioned that he wanted golf lessons. My husband’s a pretty good golfer (though he thinks he’s just ok.) He has been golfing since high school, and has recently getting back into it more this year. So I agreed to get him lessons, he just needs to go set it up. Sunday (his actual birthday,) we made a home cooked meal of meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and my mom and her boyfriend came over for some more cake later that evening. My husband’s birthday is also the anniversary of our first date. Now that we’re married, we’ll really only celebrate the wedding anniversary, but we do recognize that we’ve been together for 6 years now.. which is pretty cool!

lasagna

my fab salad

stuffed mushrooms.. that’s crab imperial on top

GONE!

dining room

CANNOLI CAKE

Work

Work has been kinda crazy.. not so much the whole month, but pretty much the past few weeks. I’ve been working on a project since April that I’m getting towards the end of. We were notified two weeks ago that the Garrison is closing a building that my supervisor has custody of. He has 7 labs in that building full of OLD, dusty, dirty, lab junk. Old instruments, glassware, tools, parts, random lab equipment, computers, manuals, books, chemicals, compounds, supplies, gas cylinders, apparatus, glove boxes etc. They gave him two weeks to clear out. It was a massive undertaking. Everyone on my Branch who had spare time needed to be over there working. There was so much trash to throw out.. and 30+ years of junk to sort through. Then we had to move it all over here to my building. I participated where I could, but I also have our student that I’m mentoring twice a week, and I was trying to finish up my project because THIS week a new high profile project was starting that would basically take up all my time for the next couple of months. The new project involves vendors from outside companies bringing their technologies in for testing, and coordinates several different organizations on post. It’s pretty big and important, and involves being in a lab pretty much all day. It would be impossible to run my current project concurrently. So to say I was stressed is putting it lightly. BUT we managed to work out a schedule such that I can work on that project in the mornings and come back to work on my project in the afternoons. My student comes in the afternoon when she’s scheduled, so it won’t interfere with her either. SO, that’s a relief. Vacation can’t come soon enough!

October

October too presents itself with being a busy exciting month.. here’s some things I’m looking forward to!

• Our anniversary trip to the Pocono Mountains this weekend!
• Running the 5K (with my husband!) and the half at the Baltimore Running Festival
• Running the 10K at the Marie Corp Marathon, and cheering on Dawn, Randi and Aaron in the marathon!
• My next metabolism screening (follow up)
• Possible Pug meet up with Halloween costume contest
• Halloween (Cause who doesn’t love candy and a good costume!?)