Miss Rachel

The race I did on Sunday was OK: I finished, and I didn’t come in last. I came in 457th out of 480. I walked the first two miles and ran the last (the miles were marked along the course). It was a flat course, and the scenery was beautiful, featuring one of my favorite things: old houses because it was in Old Wethersfield, a historic district in Wethersfield, Connecticut.

It was kind of a solitary race for me. I ran by myself, but I did manage to exchange hellos with a few spectators and a cop near the end who told me I was almost there. At the finish line, they announced my name – wow, way to make me feel special – so I put my arms up in the air. Then I collected a bottle of water, found some shade and managed to lower myself onto the grass and wait for Sweetie to finish the 10K. Even walking as much as I did I was pretty beat: I acted kind of like my dog Blue when I was trying to sit down on the grass afterward. He has 3 “regular” legs and 1 deformed leg so he always kind of flops when he lies down: thunk. I kind of “thunked” down too, and I don’t have a deformed leg. I was pretty hurtin’ there for a while, but I walked today, and I’m feeling much better.

I did manage to make dinner for us Sunday night: curried cauliflower and peas served over “jubilee blend” brown rice. Remember rice? I love quinoa and pasta so much I sometimes forget about rice, but it’s nice now and then.

We had a nice dose of cooler weather last week, but the summer heat has returned full force this week with potentially record-breaking high 90s. Fortunately, I don’t start school until the weekend after Labor Day weekend. Much as I look forward to returning to the beautiful campus, the current weather is not putting me in very back-to-school frame of mind.

In other news, I re-reading The Secret Garden, a book from my childhood and it’s even better than I remembered.

And I’ve bought a “season pass” on iTunes to Mad Men (now in it’s fourth season), and I’m loving it as much as ever.

I remember last year we had some of the worst weather for summer. I remember lying on the couch under a blanket in July – !!! I’m not super crazy about hot humid weather, but I do like for the weather to be seasonal. Like when it gets warm in the winter, I find it disturbing because it’s not supposed to be warm, even if the warm weather is “nice.” Warm weather is nice in spring and fall, not winter. This is New England and we’re supposed to have four seasons. So anyway, now it’s summer and the weather is acting like summer. The cicadas start singing early in the morning, and you just know you’re in for another hot summer day.

On Friday, I had a real scare when I looked at my bank account online. I was just checking to see if a payment I’d made had gone through, and I saw an overdraft charge and a couple days previous a charge for $499.99 that I had not made. What???!!! I googled the name of the company and found a website with very little info. No “about” page, no “contact us” link. There was also an “888″ number (on my bank statement, not the website) that I called once I got to work and the number just rang and rang so I hung up. I tried it again a few minutes later and finally after about a gazilion rings I got someone’s voice mail. I gave my name and told them that there was an unauthorized charge and corresponding overdraft fee on my bank account and that it was “unacceptable” and that they needed to call me back. They never did.

At first, I was afraid that I had made a mistake and inadvertently signed up for something without reading the fine print, but I’m pretty convinced that this was not my mistake. I just googled the company again, and nothing comes up. Fortunately, I called my bank and they refunded the charge and the overdraft fee and are starting a fraud investigation. The charge was made at 6 PM on July 7th and I happen to remember that at that time I was getting a pedicure. I sincerely hope it wasn’t anyone at the spa who fraudulently used my card, but it does make me wonder. At least my toes look nice.

And now it’s time for our random meal of the day picture. I had some sliced mushrooms, shredded carrots and an onion hanging around, and I decided they would work well stir-fried with greens and served over soba noodles. I just needed something green. There is a lot of local produce becoming available right now, and I found some nice small cabbages that fit the bill. Unfortunately, once they’re cooked, they don’t really look that green, but the meal still tasted good. Sweetie and I seasoned our plates with nutritional yeast, sesame oil, sesame seeds and tamari.

The Summer Solstice is tomorrow, and boy it certainly feels like it. The temperatures have only been up into the 80s, but the humidity is really high so we’re sweltering. Thank god Sweetie bought that air conditioner for our bedroom a couple weeks ago when we had the first little heat wave of the season. I’ve been really busy this weekend, doing all kinds of chores and errands, and I’m trying to mellow out now, but I’ve got the Sunday Night Anxiety Blues so I’m not really feeling so great.

ANYWAY, the good news is that I got a new MacBook Pro – the 15-inch one. I still have some file transferring to do from my other two computers (an eMac and a MacBook), but I’ve got some of it done and I’m just really happy with my new machine. It’s fast; it’s efficient; it’s light. It’s just great all around. It cost a pretty penny, more than the tax refund money I set aside for the purchase, but it was a good investment. I don’t feel any buyer’s remorse about it.

The weather has not put me in the mood for cooking at all so we ate out every night this weekend, instead of just the usual Friday. I had never been to Chipotle, but I heard great things about it, and one came to our town recently so on Saturday Sweetie and I checked it out. Can I just say yum!!! Wow, I see why people seem so excited about this place. The menu is small, but the vegan options are delicious. Sweetie had the Vegetarian Burrito and I had the Vegetarian tacos. I ate all three of them even though I probably should have stopped at two. But they were just so darn tasty. We’ll definitely be ordering from there again.

I do most of the cooking for dinner in our house, but Sweetie is big on breakfast. Every weekend he makes pancakes or scrambled tofu. and then he continues eating the leftovers on the weekdays, reheating the tofu or frying up up pancakes before going to work (!) – how ambitious, cooking on work day mornings – ! I’m not much for big breakfasts, but today I joined him for some scrambled tofu and vegan sausage patties, and they made for a delicious breakfast.

It’s still pretty hot and humid, but I’m going to take a nice cool shower and hope the Sunday Night Anxiety Blues wash down the drain.

Last weekend was uncharacteristically busy for me with TWO events to attend – a cookout at Sweetie’s cousin’s house on Saturday (for which I made the aparagus salad) AND a cookout at my friend GG’s house on Sunday (for which I made peanut butter chocolate chip cookies).

It’s only Thursday (or already Thursday – ? Short week!), but I’m looking forward to this weekend that has nothing scheduled .  Yea for “me time.” Also, it’s June which is one of my favorite months.  I think next to October and the whole holiday season, June is my favorite time of year.  It’s warm, but the heat hasn’t gotten old yet, and everything is still fresh and blooming and we get peonies and roses.  Sounds good to me.

I have plans of all sorts of chores to do this weekend, one of which will be figuring out what to do with my computers.  I think the time has finally come to give up my eMac because it’s so slow and switch over to using my MacBook as my only computer.  Or maybe give up that up too and upgrade to a MacBook Pro. A trip to the Apple Store will definitely be in order either way because if I decide to just keep the MacBook, the track pad will need to be repaired.  It’s double clicking when I’m just trying to click – very frustrating.

I’m wondering how I’ll like sitting at my desk with just a laptop.  It certainly will look different without a desktop computer.