Busy, busy weekend

Wow, this was a super busy weekend, which means lots to blog about :D

Friday seems so long ago I can hardly remember what I did. I think I ran a couple of errands after work and then went home to plop myself on the couch and catch up on shows I've Tivoed and hadn't had time to watch yet.

Saturday I got up early and headed out to Oakland for the Bay Side Coached Run (NOT the Diablo Valley side run as I stated in my blog on Friday-- I'm still having issues keeping the two teams straight). We met at a new location near the Oakland airport. It was a pretty nice trail but NO SHADE! I had deja vu from a training run we did last summer in Antioch!

Side note: For those of you who don't live here, the Bay Area can be a funny place in terms of weather (well, it's a funny place in other ways too but let's just stick with the weather :D) The east East Bay where I live (east side of the Caldecott Tunnel) is always warmer during the summer than the west side of the East Bay (which is usually warmer than SF and the peninsula). Rule of thumb: the further east you go, the warmer it is. Many times when I've driven west on 24 Walnut Creek/Lafayette/Orinda is sunny and hot, but the minute you come out of the tunnel in Berkeley and Oakland it is chilly, overcast and windy! Because of this local weather phenomenon, I was glad that our run was in Oakland on Saturday-- I was hoping for that overcast, chilly weather. Of course this weekend, the weather on the other side of the tunnel was gorgeous but too warm for comfortable running... GRRRR.

I had initially wanted to do 6 miles, 2 before the team started and then 4 with the team. But because of a little mix up with the location, I get there right on time and decided to just do 4 with everyone else. I started out with Phil, Claudia and Jeanette... after a little chit chatting Jeanette and Claudia forged ahead and Phil and I stuck together. After the infamous Ditching Incident at Nike, Phil vowed never to ditch me again. True to his word, he stuck with me the whole time, even when I pooped out and had to walk for a minute a couple of times! Our final time for 4.06 miles was about 47 minutes (I already uploaded my info from my watch onto the computer so I don't remember the exact time-- I'll update the real time from home).

After the run I went home to relax for a little bit before Claudia and I went out to do a little shopping. We had a very productive shopping trip but we were good girls... we only bought the items we went shopping for! We also treated ourselves to some yummy gelato afterwards :D

Later that night a group of us met up at Pizzaiolo in Oakland for our friend Petra's birthday. The food there was SO yummy but my hungry tummy did not like the long waits between courses! I ate my fill of salad, bread, meatballs, prosciutto and fig, polenta, pizza and a couple yummy desserts! Okay, that sounds like a TON of food but I had very small portions of each since 10 of us were sharing! By the time we left it was very late but my belly was happily full of all the yummy food. It was a wonderful night hanging out with some old friends and meeting a few new ones!

Sunday I relaxed all morning... Claudia hosted at Stitch 'n Bitch at her new place later in the afternoon so I had plenty of time to sleep in, watch some TV and read. :D Lindsay and I carpooled over to Claudia and Rocky's and soon after we walked in the door we were served a VERY yummy pomegranate martini! Since I don't do well with Vodka, Claudia had made these martinis with white tequila.... YUMMM! Rocky BBQ'd us up some Maui style short ribs, chicken and corn, and Claudia made rice and a really good macaroni salad. The Mac salad was a Weight Watchers recipe so it was even good for us, or at least not BAD for us! Usually I'm iffy about diet recipes but it was so good I never would have guessed if she didn't tell us! Jeanette also made us some macerated berries (we had a lot of fun with that word) which were poured over angel food cake... okay, now I've made myself hungry!

We spent a wonderful evening eating, chatting, knitting and drinking! We got to break in (but no literally breaking occured, thank god) some of the beautiful dishware and stemware they've gotten recently as wedding gifts! Poor Rocky and Patch were the only males there... hopefully we didn't scare Rocky with all of our girly chit chat! THANK YOU Claudia and Rocky for being wonderful hosts!