Success!!

1) First success for the day ... finding on-street, free parking one block from St. Mary's/Courtyard by Marriott. 2) Making a new friend. : ) I was able to track down the gal from Canada I'd spoken to by phone yesterday who is having the same surgery as I had in 2003. We had lunch together and certainly had lots to talk about. I wish her the best tomorrow, and certainly relief from her pain and discomfort. Life isn't easy when sitting is literally a pain. We'll connect again sometime post-surgery before she leaves Rochester. I hope to bring her and her husband some cookies. :-)

This is an incredible woman. She completed 2 Ironman triathlons last year (one in 14 hours and change) with a herniated disk in her back. She also coaches junior (age 10 to 16) triathletes.

3) At Byron Team R.E.D. this evening, I won a  Bear's Den Gift Card. Woo hoo!! So did Wendy O'Leary.

We tied playing 6-5-4. (Tom O'Leary, aka Tom-Pat O'Woo, just happened to have some dice and shaker in his car.) I'd never played before. You have 5 dice and get 3 rolls. You try to get one 6, one 5, one 4 and the highest total on the 2 remaining dice. It's a little Yahtzee-ish. I rolled 6-5-4 on my first shake, and a 4-2 but had to beat 9 so I rolled them both again and got 11 (6-5). Whoo hoo! Wendy got the same thing. So ... my fixins' were free (a diet Pepsi with lime and a cup of chicken tortilla soup, which was quite good ... a little spicy, just right).

Karl-Peter scored a free taco salad.

How, you may ask? Tom O' ordered Wendy O' a chicken taco salad. However, a beef taco salad was delivered. The waitress asked if anyone wanted it as it would just get tossed. I brought some oatmeal/white chocolate chip/pecan/Craisin cookies. Too many "extras" and not enough dough. They were a tad crumbly. But the flavor was very good.

I used the last of my nice brown eggs from the indoor farmers' market. You can tell the difference between farm fresh and store-bought just by looking at them. This picture doesn't do it justice, but the one on the right is the farm-fresh variety.

Workouts: 5.5 mile run and lifted this morning (followed by a delicious HUGE walnut pancake at Brothers). Evening: 6.00 hilly, slippery miles through Byron. Felt great.

Tomorrow, I need to make several batches of cut-out cookie dough for baking on Saturday afternoon. They'll be pink ribbons and pink hearts for LUABC. And Randy is crying : ) about not having blueberries in my baked goods so perhaps I'll come up with something blueberryish for Saturday's OSS run at Dunn Bros. on Elton Hills.

Out of news for today. Drive carefully. The roads were terrible coming in from Byron. Slippery, slippery. We all followed the snowplow that was sanding/salting, going 30 mph.

Toodles.