recent-ish goings on

I figured before it was time to blog about Christmas I should squeeze in one more post, so here is a hodge-podge of what's been going on in my world, but not necessarily in order.

I'm on school break! I spent the semester working on my minor in the American Revolution and Early Republic, which meant I read a bunch of books and met with my professor every other week or so to talk about them. Then during finals week I wrote two ten-page papers, and I handed those in on Monday the 17th. I enjoyed the readings and learning and all that, but it's always nice to have a break.

I ran a 5k at Monticello with some friends on December 1. I haven't run very many regular flat 5ks, so I was able to set a personal record of 24:24. The run started right in front of Monticello, went around to the lawn in back, wound down by the gardens, and ended up on the parkway trail before coming back up to the Visitor Center. I run on the trail that heads up to Monticello all the time and of course I've done the Montalto Challenge, but it was fun to actually run right next to the house and gardens. Before the race started a friend got some man to take a photo of us in front of the house on her iPhone, but unfortunately the man was not so savvy with the photo-taking. So here's a finger, a glimpse of Monticello, and us runners!

I'm also training for a marathon again, in hopes that I can run the race in April I couldn't run last year when I injured myself. So hopefully this time will go better. 

My brother didn't get married in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago. He thought it would be funny to change his FB status to married while he and his girlfriend spent the weekend there, and my family fell for it (for the most part). I let him know it wasn't funny though. It was just dumb. Boys, ugh.

For a potluck Christmas dinner party with my girls' small group I made a beet, pecan, and goat cheese salad. I'm pretty sure that was the first time I actually cooked stuff and did intricate preparation for a salad (like toasting the pecans on the stove and adding maple syrup, plus cooking the beets and making the dressing from scratch). I thought it was pretty good, but the problem is that not everyone likes beets, so unfortunately there was a lot of salad left over. (Which turned out to be fortunate for Josh, who ate all the leftovers.) Some people just don't know what's good.

I had a pistachio sighting again! Actually, I had two, but for the first one there were several shells lying around, and Josh (rightly) pointed out that it doesn't count when there are lots of shells, so he didn't even let me take a picture. Luckily just a few days later I found another one in the parking lot of the UVA Law School. It was right next to my car near a mysterious bone thing, which was kind of creepy. 

I'm in Santa Fe! I came here Thursday. It's nice to be here, hanging out with my parents and Ryan. I'm also running here (marathon training!), and am surprised how decent the runs have been so far considering the temperature has only been in the 20s. The first day I overdressed and pretty quickly had to shed a couple layers, but the next day was better. The sun here seems so much bigger and closer than it does in Charlottesville, so I think that has a lot to do with it.