November 29, 2009
· Filed under Pictures, Pregnancy, Running
I’ve been pretty determined ever since I got pregnant that I was going to keep running. Of course, this was pretty difficult at the beginning because of my horrible nausea but I did manage to keep it up a bit. I remain surprised by how difficult running is even now that my nausea is mostly gone. I find it much more tiring despite the fact that I’m running at a slower pace. I didn’t think this would happen until I got much bigger.
I was initially only going to keep running until Thanksgiving and then switch to walking but I enjoyed the two Turkey Trots I ran this past week so much that I think I’ll keep on going. Here I am finishing the Breakheart 5K the Sunday before Thanksgiving:
And here I am with Eddie after the run:
Thanksgiving morning we got up early to pick up our packets for the Gobble Gobble Gobble 4 miler. We run this pretty much every year since the start is about half a mile from our house. The course is pretty hilly, and it’s generally a good mix of fast people and slower people dressed as turkeys. It’s pretty well organized with nice T shirts and accurate mile markers. And this year they even had chip timing (although no mat at the start so it was gun time). My previous races have all been run around a 9:30 pace but this year I was just hoping for an 11-12 minute pace. I’d been doing some of my training run/walking and initially planned to do that for this race but then felt so great that I ran pretty much all of it. I ended up finishing in 42:44 which was well below my goal time of under 45. Excellent!
Here I am mid-race:
And here I am with Eddie after finishing:
After having such a good time at these two races with no obvious ill effects, I figure I’ll just try to keep running for as long as I feel comfortable. I’m still a little miffed as to why it’s so much more tiring now that I’m pregnant. I lost a good bit of weight with my morning sickness so I’m still not even about my normal weight so it’s definitely not that. I know I’m supposed to have a larger blood volume now, and I guess that must be the cause. I just find it a little frustrating to be so much slower when I’m barely even showing yet. Oh well. In general, I’m happy that I’m still able to run and have a great time at races. Now if only my daily runs were a little less painful.
November 2, 2009
· Filed under Pictures, Pregnancy
We had our appointment for the early risk ultrasound today. I had been looking forward to it for weeks but found myself getting kind of nervous as the day approached. We checked in at 8:45 am and waited a bit to be called. I was a little surprised when they took us right into the ultrasound room. I figured we’d talk with a doctor first or something. The set up in the room was pretty cool because they had a screen facing me and Eddie so we could see exactly what the ultrasonographer was doing. I couldn’t believe it when they put the probe on my stomach and there was the baby! Despite all the nausea I’ve been having and despite hearing the heartbeat a few weeks ago, I still didn’t quite believe there was a baby inside me. In fact, even with these pictures, I’m not sure I’ll really believe it until I actually feel the baby kick.
The pictures were amazing. The baby is only 3 inches long but we could see everything: brain, beating heart, stomach, arms and legs, and even fingers and toes. The baby kept moving its arms and legs around. And we could even see it opening its mouth and swallowing. Unreal. I kept looking at the screen and then looking at my stomach and trying to reconcile the two images. I can’t even describe how cool it was to see the pictures. And how cute our baby is! Even the 3D images didn’t look too alien. I really liked our ultrasonographer. She explained what we were seeing and seemed to share some of our excitement. Unfortunately, the ob who came after her was very off putting. I can’t even quite figure out what she did, but she seemed very unwilling to share any information with us and kept giving off the impression that something was wrong. Very annoying. I was pretty upset after that even though we knew the nasal bone was fine and the nuchal translucency was less than 2. Silly doctor. Hope I don’t do that to any of my patients!
I started to feel better after I got home and talked to Elena. She reassured me that she had been examined by both an ultrasonographer and an MD. And she said her doctor said any measurement less than 2 was great. Plus, it was fun uploading all the pictures and talking with Eddie about how cute our baby is.
I think I’ll wait until I have the results of the bloodwork before I tell everyone in the residency, but we told our parents they could start telling people. I get a little smile on my face every time I think about the pictures and how active our baby was.
Here’s a picture of our baby in profile. I swear it looked even cuter on the ultrasound screen.
And here’s the cool 3D picture.
And here is its foot!
June 23, 2009
· Filed under Animals!, Life, Pictures, Running
Monday, Eddie got to experience the thrill of driving on the left side of the road for the first time. We stopped off at Hertz to pick up our car. Amazingly, Ireland is one of the most dangerous countries in which to drive in the world. As a result, our credit card, which normally provides insurance when renting a car, does not have this coverage for a select few countries, Ireland among them. So, we paid 15 euros/day for the car and ~26 euros/day for the insurance. Phew. Obviously we only elected to have one driver and given my total inability to judge distance, Eddie was the obvious choice. He did an amazing job, and we started out on our trip across Ireland. Our first stop was the Rock of Cashel which is actually a very cool combo of a fort and cathedral:
Gorgeous views of the Irish countryside. Notice the cows in the distance.
From there, we went on to the Castle of Cahir which was awesome because you got to explore almost all the rooms. If only our condo had a “murder hole” so that we could drop rocks on unsuspecting salesman as they tried to approach.
We finally arrived at our bed and breakfast around 8 pm and headed out for a quick dinner at the nearby Sailor’s Bar. This is the view for our dinner. Note that at this point it’s probably close to 9 pm and still full daylight.
Tuesday morning, we debated a good bit whether to check out the Ring of Kerry (a popular tourist destination) or the Dingle Peninsula (awesome name, but farther away). We ultimately ended up going with our host’s recommendation and driving around the Beara Peninsula which was absolutely gorgeous with amazing views of both the ocean and mountains. This beauty was interspersed by moments of pure terror because apparently someone decided it would be fun to make very windy and narrow roads, just wide enough for 1 car, and then set the speed limit at 80 kmh. Luckily, Eddie was driving, and I just let out frequent squeals of terror.
Anyone who knows me knows that I have love animals, so we frequently stopped to try to entice the cows and sheep to come closer. Apparently the cows loved me:
But the sheep were quite fearful. Here is one running away from us:
Here’s one example of some of the amazing views.
Notice the crazy winding road:
Unfortunately, I’ve been rather sick for this entire vacation so I haven’t been able to get much running in. I’m actually starting to feel better, but I’m left with this horrible hacking cough. Lovely.
February 6, 2009
· Filed under Life, Pictures
It may seem that all we did in San Diego was stare at cute animals, but that is not entirely true. We also slept, ran, ate and drank. Ah, the perfect combination.
Running was actually one of my favorite parts of vacation. We usually got up every day around 8 or 9 am and picked a beautiful place to both sightsee and run before lunch. We ran at Mission Bay Park, the Embarcadero, and La Jolla Cove. Unfortunately, we failed to bring the camera with us on these runs which is really a pitty because they were gorgeous places to run. All of them were on the water with great scenery. It was very fun to explore various parts of the city on our feet. To give you a brief idea, here are some pictures of La Jolla Cove. We decided it was so beautiful on our run that we had to go back later to look some more.
A view of the cliffs:
Me, enjoying the late afternoon sun:
Sunset. For once, I took a relatively decent picture.
We also had a great time checking out the awesome breweries in San Diego. As most of you know, Eddie and I are rather crazy about craft beer so San Diego was a lot of fun to explore from that perspective.
Here’s Eddie staring in disbelief at the awesome beer supply at Stone:
And here he is doing a little dance of joy:
And here I am proudly displaying our collection of glassware at Pizza Port:
Had an interesting time checking out the food in San Diego. Eddie insisted on trying numerous taquerias. Apparently San Diegans enjoy combining french fries with Mexican food. I had a California burrito which included steak, shrimp, and french fries, in addition to other normal burrito food. And Eddie had carne asada fries which seemed to basically be nachos but with fries instead of chips. Here’s Eddie enjoying this tasty dish:
February 5, 2009
· Filed under Animals!, Pictures
February 2, 2009
· Filed under Animals!, Pictures
After a visit to the San Diego zoo, here are my top picks for my next pet (not listed in any particular order). Sadly, there are no big cats pictured because they are not very photogenic. Silly animals. And have no fear, Spenser would obviously stay and simply rule over whatever animal we got.
1. Sloth bear
2. Serval
3. Wolf
4. Cheetah AND Golden Retriever
5. Polar bear
6. Koala
January 21, 2008
· Filed under Life, Pictures, Running
Sometimes running is very perplexing. Yesterday, on a whim, I decided to run long and managed 8 miles very comfortably despite the bitter cold and the biting wind along the river. Today, I went out for an easy 3 miler and thought I would never make it to the end. Hmmm.
On a positive note, I had a fabulous weekend. Had a great call on Friday night thanks to the awesomeness of my senior resident. We spent about half the night laughing hysterically about nothing (in between taking care of kids!) and still managed to get a decent amount of sleep. Saturday morning, I got home from work around 10 am and had a nice 2 hour nap before heading over to Costco for an eye exam and to pick up some groceries. Took another brief nap before cleaning up the condo and baking cookies in preparation for Eddie’s (almost) surprise party. Sadly, Eddie figured it out, as he always does, but we still had a fabulous time. Met some friends at Christopher’s for dinner and then came back to our place for dessert and drinks. As a wonderful surprise, some of Eddie’s friends bought him Rock Band for his birthday. This, of course, resulted in some hilarious karaoke along with some interesting renditions of various songs.
Spent much of yesterday sleeping, then had a great long run, followed by a good dinner and an evening of watching Karate Kid. And thanks to my wonderful fellow residents, I even had today off. It doesn’t get much better than that.
November 1, 2007
· Filed under Pictures
A brief run down of our recent trip to Philadelphia …
Here is the fabulous place we had breakfast in the Reading Terminal Market:
And here is where we discovered the infamous bacon, egg and cheese bread:
And here is Eddie after several slices of the bread:
In addition to all our eating, we did manage to take in some history. This is the Liberty Bell, which was much smaller than I anticipated:
And here’s where the Constitutional Convention took place:
And here I am sitting on 300 year old benches in a Quaker Meeting House:
And back to eating and drinking…
October 24, 2007
· Filed under Pictures
Ha, I finally figured it out. So here is a brief photo tour of our recent adventures.
Eddie and I enjoying tasty butter-dipped corn at Topsfield Fair in front of the world’s largest pumpkin:
Here are some very cute goats at Topsfield Fair:
And here is a sign over the goats:
Can you tell what kind of animal this is?
Here I am the next day getting ready to run the Tufts 10K:
And here are all the fast people getting ready to run the Tufts 10K!
I think that’s enough pictures for now. I promise a photo tour of our trip to Philly soon.
July 27, 2007
· Filed under Animals!, Pictures
Anyone who knows or reads this blog knows that I am a little bit crazy about animals. So, you can imagine my great glee when my parents got two Cavalier King Charles puppies. They are ridiculously cute!
This is Molly:
And this is Juliet:
Don’t let the sleeping pictures fool you, they are maniacs!
