Below are the most recent 6 friends' journal entries.

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
shubbe	11:46a	Recipe me. So now it's after the holidays, and time to stop eating everything in sight again. Try to lose those pounds I put on. As a bonus, Matt is doing some hardcore food logging and watching right now, which always makes it much easier for me to watch what I eat. Unfortunately I find that I tend to make the same few things over and over, because they fit both "healthy" and "quick and easy". I need more things that fit those bills in my arsenal. My old stand-by is simply taking boneless skinless chicken breasts and sprinkling some Tony Chachere on both sides, coating both sides in a light layer of whole wheat bread crumbs and tossing them on a baking sheet in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes. Super easy, very tasty (I think, anyway) and not too bad for you. Okay, I shared my favorite quick and easy, healthy recipe. What's yours? I need ideas. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
shubbe	12:02p	Snigwhats? Speaking of things from my childhood that few people seem to know about (er.. not that I've spoken about that recently, but let's pretend I have).. It came to my attention this last weekend that, based on anecdotal evidence gathered over three days, 90% of my friends don't know what sniglets are. If you're now asking yourself, "What the hell are sniglets?!" I DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT IT. I'm in denial. I grew up knowing what sniglets were, and it never occurred to me that that wasn't the case for everyone else, too. At dinner, only Dave had any recollection at all of the concept, and just barely. But that was only a sample size of 5. During our run, only Lori showed a glimmer of recognition at the word, and was at least more familiar than Dave. This was a sample size of about 8 or 9 people, several younger, several older. Then, at Galaxy Cafe, where they USE SNIGLETS AS THEIR ORDER NUMBERS, the two (very young) order-takers didn't know what the concept was called. Though one did make a valiant attempt, saying they had a weird name like "snug-something". I will admit that, while I remembered Rich Hall's name, I couldn't remember what show they were from, and had to google to remember it was Not Necessarily the News. We also had a book of sniglets. 'Cheedle' and 'aquadextrous' have always stuck with me in particular. Anyway. It just struck me as odd that I grew up assuming that sniglets were a thing people knew about, and now it turns out that's not true. Did you know about sniglets? (Here's a good list, if you STILL have no idea what they are.) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, January 1st, 2010
shubbe	10:08a	2009 Training Totals. 2009 totals Bike: 47h 52m 23s - 307.36 Mi Run: 218h 06m 10s - 1349.18 Mi Swim: 13h 26m 22s - 39967 Yd Total: ~280 hours Significantly less hours than 2008's 443, but significantly less Ironman training, as well. The reduction was all in biking and swimming, which I barely did at all this year. My big thing this year was running, obviously, where I had slightly higher mileage than last year, despite only training for one thing instead of two. Last year I said: What I'm most pleased about is my increase in pace in all sports, especially running and swimming. In 2007, my average pace for my 923 miles run was 10:46. In 2008, my average pace for my 1328 miles was 9:59. At the beginning of the year, I was averaging in the low 10s, and for the past few months, I've been averaging in the mid 9s. So 2008 was 1328 miles in 222 hours. 2009 was 1349 miles in 218 hours. Yay for getting ever faster! I'm especially pleased because so many of those miles were base miles, run at an easy speed, and many of them run in the middle of Texas summer. My total average pace was 9:40/mile. Project for 2010: Ride faster, while at the very least not getting appreciably slower at swimming and running. (Comment on this)
Thursday, December 31st, 2009
shubbe	3:04p	2009 in review. Hrm. As I sit down to review my 2009, I find .. I don't really have anything interesting to say. That will hardly stop me from saying things, though. I accomplished my goal of taking the first half of the year as just a "for fun" time, where I wasn't training seriously for anything in particular, and that was fun, but for me, a little unguided. Even though I know I need downtime sometimes, I enjoy having a schedule and a goal. My sister's wedding and the Hawaii 70.3 was a nice palate cleanser between "just for fun" training and settling back into marathon training. The wedding was beautiful, Hawaii was beautiful, and I love to see my sister happy. And the triathlon.. was certainly a triathlon. Running in lava fields SOUNDS fun, but it lost its charm quickly in that heat. (Still very glad I did it.) In June I started training with Team Rogue North, aka the Rogue Roadrunners. We did our base phase, running lots and lots of long, slow miles, culminating in the New Mexico Marathon, my fifth (standalone) marathon, and the first where I've not had a firm time goal. It was nice to have no time goal, and still just eke out a sub-4, a time I never thought I'd be able to accomplish at all. Then we entered our speed phase, which was tough but significantly less mileage, culminating in the San Antonio half marathon, which.. well.. at least that's over. And finally we're now on the home stretch coming into our goal race, the Houston Marathon in mid-January. I feel like this program has been good for me. It's been a LOT of running and a lot of speed work and it's been hard and tiring, but I feel like I'm a stronger runner than I've ever been. I'm aiming for a 3:40 again, and maybe second time will be a charm. I would love it if everything came together on the day.. healthy, great weather, feeling strong, but I'm prepared to hold it together even if everything falls apart, as often it does. On the job front, things have been good this year. On the Matt front, things have been great. His year has had more trials and tribulations than mine, but I've tried to be there for him when he needs me. So, 2009 was good to me, even though it sounds like most people are happy to see it go. I'm hoping 2010 will be even better. I kinda stopped doing resolutions a few years ago. I have a few goals, obviously.. the New Orleans 70.3, Ironman Coeur d'Alene in June, supporting Matt in Canada for his second-in-two-months Ironman, the San Diego Comic-Con.. but also some more nebulous goals like getting faster and stronger on the bike. And getting stronger in general.. I'd like to work on building some muscle and core strength, since core and weights are usually the first thing to go for me when I get overwhelmed. Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2010. Welcome to the future. Please send flying cars. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 28th, 2009
shubbe	2:48p	Need help being a girl. So, anyone who knows me knows I'm rather.. low-maintenance. I couldn't even keep my hair short because it involved too much product and too much styling. I'm more of a "wash, brush once, forget" sort of person. As such, I don't really wear makeup. I own makeup. I own a medium-size bag of a fair amount of makeup. Roughly 90% of it was purchased for some past Halloween costume. The remaining 10% I wear when I wear makeup, which is roughly once a month, sometimes more (like during the holidays), sometimes much less. I purchased this makeup some time between 8 and 15 years ago, and most of it doesn't even look dented. One of the things I'm trying to do lately is care more about what I look like. I don't intend to become high maintenance. I actually enjoy being low maintenance. But I find that I have more confidence in my appearance when I'm wearing makeup (due largely to having never gotten over having bad skin), and I may branch out to feeling more confident at times OTHER than holidays. Plus, when I'm wearing makeup, thusly feeling okay about myself, I'm willing to pose for pictures when people have cameras. When I'm not, I hide from cameras. As part of this initiative, I figure I'll buy makeup produced this decade. But I have no idea where to start. I don't know what kind I need, what colors, how to put it on properly, etc. I'm willing to pay a knowledgeable person to tell me these things. Where do I go? What do I do? Help a prospective girl out here. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, December 25th, 2009
shubbe	7:51p	Merry Christmas 2009 From me and mine to you and yours. (1 Comment |Comment on this)