Nice ...

You just never know when some unexpected "niceness" is going to come along. Today, it came along at noon in the parking lot of the Tulare County Courthouse. I'd finished filing the document for work and was returning to my car when a woman sitting in her car on her phone said, "Excuse me." I thought she'd need direction or instruction or something re: the court house but it was quite the opposite. She wanted to compliment me on what I was wearing. She said she'd majored in fashion design. And she ended a call with her dad just to share her kind words with me. Totally made my day. So I'm going to challenge myself to pay it forward and bestow a compliment on someone when they're least expecting it. I think the giver gets as much as the receiver out of the interchange.

Another nice thing ... free shoes. No strings attached. HA!! Well, sort of. All I have to do is run in them and share my thoughts about them so they can be rolled into everyone elses for publication in running magazines. SWEET. And I LOVE the colors!! Finally something other than boring white shoes. Thank you Cregg!!

Let's see ... what else is new. Life has certainly been full ... Tuesday night a "milestone" birthday celebration at Bravo Farms in Tulare where I made a new friend. :-) She's from MN but works much of the time in CA. She's going to be back next week and will be here for her birthday, so we're going to have a "girls night out" next Wednesday. Can't wait!!

I've been running LOTS and feeling better about my running. 78 miles for last week, down from 92 the week before. I feel like I'm regaining some speed. I don't know if my hamstring will ever be 100%, but I'm hoping I can maintain at about 75% without further injury of some sort. I'm hoping to improve on recent marathon times at Two Cities in Fresno/Clovis on 11/4. Marathons this year have been quite disappointing.

In the kitchen ... some really good Cooking Light recipes. Pasta with Brussels Sprouts ...

pork tenderoin with pears (not CL, but oso delish!) ...

and another CL recipe ... pumpkin cheesecake.

Sunday afternoon brought some fun with Yvonne and Ragan at the Calico Art Festival in Hanford. Yvonne was (wo)manning the PlInKo! booth, which I played,

Fun afternoon. Saturday brought a double loop of Rocky Hill (never get tired of it, even in the dark) followed by a delicious breakfast at Valhalla, a Swedish restaurant downtown Visalia.

Then a trip up to Three Rivers (not much happening up there).

Though the temps are cool this week, the weather is still beautiful here. And the flowers are still in bloom. Even my impatiens. (I think this one is an azalea, outside the office.)

Last week, my Cooking Light group met at Rosie's. We had a delightful evening. Not sure all are OK being on my blog, so I'll just post this one. Or two.

Our meal was sooooo tasty.

The weekend before, I'd organized a little 50th Bday party for Michele and Sheri. 18 people showed up at a Mexican restaurant downtown. Another fun evening.

As I got less than 5 hours of sleep last night (rolled in from Bakersfield at 11 PM and was running a tempo run at 4:30 AM), I'm going to finish watchin the Vikings implode vs. TB and then call it a night.

Toodles .....