An evening feast in photos

My tango partner, PB, is as wonderful a cook as he is dancer. And for both of those, I am grateful to him :-)

Menu

1) Anti-pasta - black & green olives, marinated spicy eggplant
2) Can't remember the name of this dish (name will come later) but it was delicious!
3) Salmon with PB's special mayonnaise
4) Green salad
5) Grilled vegetable terrine
6) Osso bucco and endives in lavender, Greek potatoes
7) Mango sherbert, Black Russian tea

French bread, Portuguese red wine - Chaminé

I was spoiled rotten! No time to train if I'm too busy spending 4 hours eating ... hmmm ... no, more like MMMMM!!

Post-race mayhem and exhaustion ... but oh the food!

Sunday evening with PB

The delectable celebratory menu:
- Warm goat cheese croutons on green salad
- Curry ratatouille
- Cashew and vegetable rice
- Heavenly Hash ice cream

- PB and I stayed up way too late talking and philosophying ... ugh ... so much for getting a good night's sleep.

Monday

- had to get up and get to work by 7:30, a new contract at a new company ...

- legs felt pretty wrecked in the morning. I walked very slowly all day. The woman training me at work likes to take the stairs. I had to confess to her that I had just run a marathon. I spun around and went down backwards ... she laughed.

- getting out of the chair after sitting for a while was a little difficult, but not as difficult as going to the ladies' room. OOF!

- stayed up late and wrote my race report, so STILL didn't get enough sleep

Tuesday

- legs felt better, still sore, but I was able to go down stairs frontways

- after work and before supper I had an awards ceremony to go to ... I was sooo proud!

- post-race Chinese food celebration with my Coolrunning Montreal gang. We all ate like pigs ... (clockwise, starting at 2:00) ... tofu stuffed with crab and shrimp, salt and pepper pork chops, sesame beef, General Tao's chicken, white rice, and snow pea leaf with garlic. YUM YUM!!Another chicken dish loaded up with all sorts of vegetables arrived a few minutes later, but we couldn't wait ... we were too hungry and had to dig in and eat!

- (left to right) Don, GB (who ran the half), TB, me, Mercury (who ran the half), LifeAny, and Runningag (who ran the full)

- RG walked painfully down the stairs out of the restaurant. I ran down them past him like a mischievious urchin. TB was jealous of my "hardy constitution and incredible ablility to recuperate". Another late night ... OOF!!

Wednesday
- Headache
- Legs feel even better and I can walk at fast speeds, even want to run ... so I did so, down the stairs at work

Thursday
- I cancelled supper with a friend and ate a sandwich. I had not even taken off my make-up nor brushed my teeth when I fall asleep at 8pm. I was exhausted, what with not having had enough sleep and starting a new job (the stress of a sharp learning curve and new environment!)

Friday
- Got up without the alarm this morning. If I had set it, I would have had the time to go run. Instead, I slept in and got 11 hours sleep. Let's say, I felt super-energetic having now gotten enough sleep. I'm going to have to find a way to expend some of this energy this weekend ... I feel fully recuperated! The real test will be running again ...

Reset ... reset ...

My hours have been too wickedly all over the place. That's what I get for being an artist and hanging out with people who also have do not have "regular" schedules. So tonight, I am going to try to go to sleep "early". These late nights have been killing me, throwing my balance off, and making my training not just irregular, but more like haphazard.

Got back from some fun snowboarding last Saturday with the kids (they are almost as good as I am now!) Thought I had my cell phone on me but didn't. And it wasn't in my coat pocket either, as I had checked when we arrived at the ski hill. Where could it be? After calling my cell phone several times with my cordless home phone and searching everywhere with a flashlight, I finally found it. Not IN my car, but UNDER my car, half buried in the snow. I guess it must have fallen out of my jacket pocket as I loaded up the car.

Still works, but the LCD screen is kaput. Can't see who's calling or whom I'm calling. Can't access my phone book either. Drat. But it still works!

Sunday was a recreational day. We visited the pool and went tobogganing on the hillside. My oldest son congratulated me for swimming faster than than I did last year :-) I still can't beat him in a short race though ... And why do kids always choose the part of the hill with the biggest bumps ... OUCH!

Weather is finally warming up. I've been *thinking* a lot about running, but I suppose thinking about it isn't going to make me sweat.

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Oh yes, here's the 5-star meal that my friend PB made for me and two other friends last night. Absolutely delicious! My tummy was spoiled rotten. Sorry no pics ... my appetite was stronger than my artsy photographer side.

Drinks:
Red wine, not sure what kind as I did not drink any, but undoubtedly a good one as PB is a wine connoisseur
Blackberry liquor (a bit like sherry and very yummy)

Appetizers:
Green and black olives
Marinated eggplant
Gherkin pickles
Vine leaves stuffed with rice
Cheese crackers with spicy red pepper jelly

Entrees:
Grilled vegetable terrine
Garden salad with warm goat cheese croutons

Main dish:
Veal shanks with endives and lavender

Dessert:
Mango sherbet with champagne syrup

Death is very finite

The man on the hill passed away Saturday.

My "lil' brother's" father passed away last Thursday.

At the visitation, I saw one of my runner friends, Mercury. His wife who was also mother to one of my best friends passed away last summer unexpectedly.

My swing dance friend CM passed away last summer from cancer. Very sad - she was only 35.

My mother's future is still in question because of her liver and cancer. Another friend, just a few year's older than I, has cancer and is dealing with it courageously, no complaints at all from him, just appreciation that he has one more day. Another friend's mother just got operated on for cancer ... I will cross my fingers for her. I share my friend's sadness because I was there in the same place a year ago, so sad and worried about my own mother.

And then of course, there is my near-death experience with my car crash.

DEATH. It's not quite the same when we hear about it. It's not the same either when we see it on television or in a film. Seeing the man on the hill die rocked me right to the core.

Made me do a lot of thinking. I don't want to have any regrets when I die, things I wanted to do and say ... I don't ever want to look back on my life and wonder what if? All we know for sure is that we have RIGHT NOW.

It was a morbid weekend and having not had the time to deal with it, Monday came and I was EXHAUSTED. On top of it all, my headache refused to leave.

A friend PB cheered me up Sunday night with a fantastic supper, osso bucco, aren't I the lucky one? We followed it up with some tango dancing ...

Today, I felt less affected by the morbidity of the weekend and met up with JC for a quick half hour swim. I guess the eleven hours of sleep I got did me some good. "What a hardcore weekend you had," JC said and gave me a hug in the pool.

I am so fortunate to be alive and to have good friends.