Inaugural Portland Rock 'n' Roll 1/2 Marathon

On Sunday, May 20, 2012, I completed the Inaugural Portland Rock 'n' Roll 1/2 Marathon in Portland, Oregon, with my parents.  We decided to head down to Portland on Saturday morning in order to attend the expo and pick-up our race packets.  After the expo, we headed down to find the Big Ass Sandwich truck for lunch.  The sandwiches online looked amazing, and we were a little disappointed at them in person as there wasn't quite enough meat.

After checking into our hotel, we walked down to the Portland Saturday Market that was a short walk away and close to the start line of the race.  We got lucky with having a sunny day on Saturday and enjoyed the sun as much as we could.  For dinner, we got to see Rick and Sandy Bowen.  It was fun catching up with long-time family friends and we enjoyed a great meal at the Old Spaghetti Factory.  After dinner, my mom and I decided to take a short walk and ended up at VooDoo Donuts.

We were lucky with a late race start on Sunday and our hotel was only a couple blocks from the start line.  We were unlucky in the fact that it started raining around mile 3 and rained the rest of the race.  I am always amazed by how diverse the courses are.  We went through some not so nice industrial areas, some cute retail/commercial districts, and some expensive residential neighborhoods.  The other downfall of Portland was that it felt like it was uphill THE WHOLE TIME.  I know it wasn't, but there was a lot of gradual uphills and just a couple, fairly steep downhill sections.  My time wasn't great, but it wasn't my worse either.  However, in all the pictures, I look totally pissed off, so I need to make sure to smile more during the next run so I don't look so miserable.

After the race, we ended up back at the outdoor market for lunch.  My mom and I shared African food while my dad had a pulled pork sandwich.  Overall, we had a great trip.  I really enjoyed Portland and can understand why people would want to move there.  I would really like to go back there for a weekend in which we didn't have a race and could just enjoy the city a little more without having to go to bed early and being very careful about our nutrition prior to the run.

Tattoo Time

One way I can relax and blow of some steam is by getting tattooed. Right now, Mike at Black Tortoise Tattoo in Lacey, WA, is working on my arm.  Here are  a couple of in process pictures and I will post more soon.

Mason Jar Salad

Today I decided to make Mason Jar Salads.  The idea is simple put all the ingredients of salad in a jar for easy and quick meals.  First, the dressing went on the bottom, then vegetables and finally lettuce.  I used two types of dressing and picked my favorite healthy salad toppings.  I also used a lot of spinach versus lettuce.  Overall, I made eight jars and figure I spent about ten dollars on ingredients.  It will be interesting to see how long these will last.  I hope it works out for me and am already excited thinking about how the ingredients can change as the season progresses and I can include fresh ingredients from the garden.

Quick Update

I know it's been awhile. I have the best intentions to update my blog often, but that never seems to happen. Midterms are over and were a success. For the two weeks where I had eight papers due, I basically became a hermit. Now since that is over, I am back to the routine of things. I have about another month before this semester is over. I can't believe I am almost done with my first semester of my master's program. Only three more and I graduate. I don't think April 2013 can come soon enough.

My internship is going GREAT. It is so much better than I would have ever anticipated. I love the people I work with. both the clients and the staff. Last night, the agency celebrated it's 5 year anniversary. In the 5 years, they have served about 625 people, and that doesn't include the 56 people that are currently residents. Of those people, 74% successful move from our agency to a home of their own. The mayor was there last night and said:
“In order to serve the chronically homeless in our region, we need three Drexel Houses"
“This facility is the best example of federal, state and local collaboration that we have in the entire region"
You can read the entire story that was published in the Olympian here.

Besides that, things are about the same I guess.  Oh, I am still tutoring at Sylvan Learning Center and just picked up more hours which is exiting.  It's so fun to work with the kids.  Plus, my friend hired me to work at Portrait People at South Center Mall.  It's nice because she is working around my schedule but kind of sucks because it is a heck of a comute.  But, it is nice to get a little extra money here and there.  So, as you probably guess, right now, my life is consumed by school, my internship and work.

I will try really hard to post more and hopefully I really will this time!

Internship

I was just notified this morning of my foundation year field placement.  I am going to be doing my internship hours at the Drexel House which was created by Catholic Community Services to aid in providing emergency, transitional and permanent housing to the chronically homeless in Thurston County. I called this morning and set up my pre-placement visit for tomorrow afternoon.  I am definitely excited, but also a little nervous about starting.  I will be doing about 20 hours a week there over the next two semesters and know that working with the homeless population will definitely open my eyes to their needs.  It will be interesting working with this group as I don't have a lot of experience with that yet.

Tacoma Hot Yoga

Yesterday, I went to my first hot yoga session.  So, how was it you may ask??? Well, first off, it was HOT.  The room is heated to over 100 degrees and by the end, I, like everybody else, was sweating like a pig.  Here is a short list of what I disliked and what I liked about the class:
Dislikes:
- It was hot!
- The instructor didn't participate in the poses, so I felt a little lost most of the time
- It was Hot!
- Even though not everyone was uber skinny, I felt like I needed to lose some fat to do the poses right
- It was HOT!
- We were suppose to do all the poses with our eyes open which was hard since during some of the relaxation poses I wanted to close my eyes.
- IT WAS HOT!

Likes:
- The instructor made it known that everyBODY is different so each pose is going to be different on each person.
- The instructor was helpful in giving alternative pose ideas.
- They were aware that it was my first time, so my mat was close to the door (it's a little cooler there apparently).
- I lost a couple pounds (though I'm sure it's all water weight)
- The practice of yoga focuses on becoming internally healthy and accepting oneself which I LOVE!

To be honest, if I didn't buy ten sessions, I probably wouldn't be going back.  But, I'm going to give it another couple shots and hope that I do enjoy it more.  I did like how I felt afterwards (once I had time to take a cold shower) and I'm a little sore today, so I know it was good for my muscles.  I just hope with more practice, the poses will get easier and I will feel more confident in my body.

Snow Shoeing

For my dad's birthday, we planned a trip to go snow shoeing on Mt Baker.  It would have been a lovely trail with amazing views had the weather been more agreeable.  Unfortunately, it was cold and rainy, so we turned around after about a half hour.  The best part of the trip was stopping at Graham's on the way home for some burgers.

The Swing of Things

I am in the full swing of things with school.  It has been pretty crazy adjusting to everything.  Besides the hours of class time every week, there is a lot of work to do outside of class for each course as well as "other" classes (workshops) that we are required to take.  The last few weeks have been a little hectic, but I think things may actually start calming down as I get used to what is required every week and focus on my time management.  I turned in my first paper to be graded last week and am anxious to see how I did.  I am a little nervous as the teacher did say that she grades the first paper really hard.

Overall, it has been a really good experience so far.  I have taken classes online before, but never like this.  That platform that USC uses is really nice as there is a lot of face to face interaction with the professors and other students.  I feel a lot closer to my classmates here than I did in any other program that I have done online.  Also, the amount of support that USC offers is great.  So far, I am really glad I made the choice to do my MSW@VAC.

Snowmageddon

We are having our first snow of the year, and it is turning out to be quite a storm.  As of this afternoon, we are officially in a state of emergency as an ice storm is hitting the area the day after we received about six inches of snow. So far, I have been okay, but cold.  Yesterday my battery was dead in my car, but I was able to get a jump start and replacement battery in the afternoon.  In the meantime, I did have to walk to work (which is luckily only took about 20 minutes) in the snow.  Then after work, my coworker gave me a ride back to my apartment where we had to push my car out of its parking space before jumping it so I could get to the store for a new battery.
 

Today is just plain cold and icy.  It's right around thirty degrees and we have had a variety of frozen perciptation all day.  A little snow, some freezing rain, snow pellets, sleet...you name it, we have seen it.  At least it is suppose to start warming up soon so hopefully things will be back to "normal" soon!

First snow in 2012

Yesterday, I woke up to our first snow of the year.  We had a few flurries throughout the day, but not much accumulation and the roads have been fine.  The are however predicting we will hey six to ten inches of show tomorrow during the late morning or early afternoon.  Many schools have already been cancelled and my only hope is maybe my work will let us leave early if business is dead. I guess we will find out tomorrow.