Another Weekend Update

Exercise
Ok, so I intended to run early, but Tucker suggested family breakfast before church, so the run didn't happen till 11:00 and it was 84 degrees at that time. But I managed to do either 8-1/2 or 9 miles (with a significant amount of walking, but that's fine, cuz my goal right now is to build stamina). The hardest part of my run was my sore butt. I did lunges yesterday in a new way that's shockingly effective, if soreness is your goal. Here's what you do:

Grab 2 12-pound weights.
You'll be doing a four count lunge.
Count 1: step forward with your right leg.
Count 2: nearly straighten right leg as you lift and squeeze left leg and bun.
Count 3: return to lunge position, even deeper than the lunge in count 1.
Count 4: bring left leg forward to meet right leg.
Repeat about 50 or so times.

So anyway, the run was hard cuz your (well, my) butt jiggles when you run and if your (my) butt muscle is sore, IT HURTS!

Open House
Storybook Cottage was less impressive on the inside than on the outside, but one thing was really cool. The countertops were cast concrete (that's what the real estate lady said) and on a small serving countertop, the owner had inlaid pieces of her grandmother's silver flatware. It was a great idea, and a neat way to keep memories of someone you love alive.

Healthy Eating?
I think my insatiable appetite may be gone, which is very good news indeed. We leave for vacation on Saturday and it's way easier to wear a bathing suit when you haven't been eating your entire city out of house and home. :)

Something that gives me hope
I'm reading a book called Co-Active Coaching, by the people who run the Coaches Institute in San Rafael -- the place I'm thinking of taking the coaching training. The reading is fascinating to me. And because of how I read books -- I read the dedication and the forward and every other page that many people skip over -- I read something that encouraged me on the very first page of the book:

"Early one morning a man was walking along the beach, watching the ocean waves breaking on the shore, and he saw a most unusual thing. He saw that the beach was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed up on shore and were dying in the sun. Far down the beach in the distance, he could see a young woman picking up starfish and throwing them back in the ocean, one at a time. When he was close enough to her to be heard above the waves the man said, "You're wasting your time. There are thousands of starfish here. You can't possibly make any difference." The young woman reached down, picked up a starfish, and threw it as far as she could, back into the sea. "I made a difference to that one," she said, and she reached down to pick up another.

Isn't that cool?