WOW MOM

The wind & rain storm blew a big branch right off the tree across the street from my building!  It's hard to tell by the picture, but the branch is definitely bigger than a SmartCar.

Talk about a lawsuit waiting to happen...

Bear Down Scarves

I knit these two red & blue striped scarves for the Holiday Bowl last week because none of my UA gear is cold-weather friendly.  I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to knit stripes using two colors! D'oh I should have tried it much sooner! I used this youtube tutorial on knitting stripes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyE4zBSyGng

The scarves are 2x2 ribbing and were fairly quick to make because I used oversized (in relation to the yarn) size 10.5 needles.  For stiff, 100% acrylic yarn, the scarves actually turned out very comfortable against the skin.[1]

Here we are, bundled up with our new scarves!  Even though our seats were high up, we were right on the 50-year line which was pretty cool.  Not-so-cool though was UA's terrible performance in the Holiday Bowl.  We got totally shut out and there were way too many Huskers fans sitting on the Arizona side, boo!  I was all ready to sing "Bear Down, Arizona" but the opportunity only arose after the marching band played it once in between quarters due to the aforementioned shut-out.  Even though UA was not that great at football when I was there as a student, the games were always still a ton of fun ...probably because of the rowdyness of being in the student section.  Alas, I suppose the grass was greener then :)

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[1] I would have liked to use nicer yarn but it was the only type that came in both red and blue at Michaels and there are not many other places to get yarn here in SD...the knitting stores I do know of are only open until maybe 5 or 5:30 pm.  ***Note to SD knitting store peeps -- people with full time 9-to-5 jobs knit, too!***

Weeks 8 & 9

So I've totally fallen off the training wagon after dealing with a month-long cold and the return of my shin splints. K and I did work out 5 out of 7 days we were on vacation (with K actually running 10 miles on a treadmill...that might have more to do with our boredom with all-inclusive, but I'll save that for another post.) The last couple of weeks I did 8 miles at MSP and then 10 miles this weekend at DAC. Twenty more days until the Carlsbad 1/2! I'm thinking I'll do 12 miles this weekend, then a nice easy 8.5 mile taper down the week before the race.