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I don’t like grocery shopping.  Despite the abundance of awesome food available, and the fact that I’m enjoying cooking a lot more these days, grocery shopping remains a chore that I just don’t enjoy.  I think it’s the unpacking actually — if the food could magically move from my cart into my refrigerator and pantry, I might enjoy it more.  (And if my clothes magically folded themselves and appeared in my dresser, I’d enjoy laundry more too.)

In any case, I don’t like grocery shopping.  I make it slightly less painful by planning out five or six dinners before we go so that I know exactly what I need to buy.  Last week while perusing our collection of recipes, I came across a recipe I got from my mom years and years ago for chicken-rice casserole.

If you are interested, here’s the recipe.  There are a lot of variations on this theme, but this is the one my mom made when I was a kid.  It was really easy and tasted EXACTLY like I remembered.  Warm, creamy, gooey, and probably not healthy — in other words, a total comfort food.  This version doesn’t have any vegetables in it, so I made asparagus to go along with it since I figured we needed something green!

Chicken Rice Casserole

2 cups cooked chicken
2 cups cooked rice
1 can cream of celery soup
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 small onion, chopped
1 can water chestnuts, drained
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 cup bread crumbs or dry stuffing
4 tsp butter

Mix everything except the bread crumbs and butter together in a large bowl.  Pour the mixture into a greased casserole dish or baking pan.  Melt the butter and mix with the bread crumbs/stuffing.  Cover the chicken-rice mixture with the buttered bread crumbs.  Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until bubbly.  Makes 6-8 servings.

We spent the weekend in Miami where we did a few touristy things, spent plenty of quality time with my family, and — oh yeah — went to a little shindig known as MY BROTHER’S WEDDING!  Brian and Cindy are wed!  Hooray!

(Side note: I am retarded and had my camera on the wrong settings for the first half of the wedding, so I did what I could to salvage them for blog purposes.  This is why you hire a professional photographer instead of relying on a friend — because they might be retarded like me.  Anyway, I can’t wait to see the professional photos.)

The ceremony was held on the balcony outside the ballroom at the hotel and it was, um, HOT. But it was a short ceremony so we all survived.

Brian smiled pretty much non-stop the entire day. Apparently he told my mom at one point that he was getting a headache from smiling so much. I almost cried when Cindy came in, because she and Brian both looked so happy.

Brian looked very handsome, of course, and Cindy looked absolutely beautiful. I loved her dress. So pretty!

Here are the newlyweds with both sets of parents. Cindy’s parents hardly spoke any English (and we hardly spoke any Spanish) so we didn’t get a chance to really talk to them, but they were so cute and looked very happy.  Cindy grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador and her parents still live there, although she and her two siblings have all lived in Miami for years. The kids started spending their summers in Miami when Cindy was 15 so that they could learn English.

Cindy has a 7-year-old son named Daniel who just started 2nd grade. He was the ring bearer. He’s a cute kid with LOTS of energy.  I have a nephew now!

Our family is now connected to not one but TWO giant Hispanic families. It was so funny to see the similarities between Cindy’s extended family and Jose’s extended family — including the way they took pictures of every possible combination of relatives.  It made me smile.

When Katie got married, I hadn’t met Jose.  Though we’ve been to a few weddings together now, it was fun to have him at a FAMILY wedding.  The “immediate family” pictures get bigger each time — there are now 9 of us!  Two parents, four kids, three spouses!

Here’s the full slideshow of pictures from the wedding!

I’m three days into my “Become a Morning Runner” experiment and it’s actually been a big success so far!  It remains to be seen how I’ll adjust as the days turn into weeks and the novelty wears off — but for now it’s working great.  I’ve hit the road each morning between 6:30 and 7:15.  I ran 3.5 miles on Monday, a short 2.5 miles (aka 30 minutes at the “summer” version of my easy pace), and another 3.5 miles today.  Some observations:

Positive:  It is indeed cooler.  Gloriously cooler.  As in 80 degrees instead of 95+.  This makes a HUGE, and I mean HUGE, difference.  (According to SciGuy, we haven’t had a day with a high below 95 degrees since July 29.  We’ve had many days where the LOW hasn’t even dropped below 80 degrees.  Supposedly a slight break is coming soon, in the form of drier air.  I can’t freaking wait!)

Negative:  It is more humid.  Way, WAY more humid.  As in 80-85% instead of 50%.  So while the cool temperatures feel so much nicer and I don’t get as overheated, the humidity is brutal.  The first half mile is ok, but then I’m struggling to keep sweat out of my eyes for the rest of the run.  I didn’t know it was possible to sweat more than I did on my afternoon/evening runs.  But WOW.  It is possible.  The sweat doesn’t evaporate because the air is already so moist, and I just sweat even more.

Positive:  It’s so awesome to come home after work and not have to worry about getting out the door for a run…because I already did it!

Negative:  As I suspected, getting to bed earlier has been a challenge.  I closed my eyes at 11:30 on Sunday night, 11:00 on Monday night, and 11:30 last night — which is pretty good compared to the usual 12:00-12:30 — but it was HARD.  Around 8:00, I start telling myself both in my head and out loud that “I am going to bed at 10:30.”  Obviously even that isn’t 100% effective.

Positive:  So far, I’ve found that I have more energy when I get to work, which helps me get going with the day.

And finally, something that isn’t positive or negative, but just a question.  This week I decided to run three days in a row — primarily because we’ll be in Miami from tomorrow through Sunday for my brother’s wedding and I don’t know whether I’ll have much time to squeeze in a run.  But for next week, I need to figure out how many days to run.  Three?  Four?  Every weekday?  Hmm…

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Today I got some interoffice mail.  This is rare — who sends actual mail anymore? — but not that weird.  These days, it’s usually something about JSC’s health and fitness program sessions.  I took one of them 8 years ago and have gotten mail about it ever since encouraging me to sign up for another session.

Instead, it was the coolest thing I’ve ever gotten in the mail — and quite possibly the coolest thing I will EVER get in the mail.

Remember this?  That’s the neat thank you I got from the STS-129 crew last fall.  Butch held up his Rendezvous checklist in front of the camera and we saw that he’d written “Thanks Steve!” and “Thanks Sarah!” on the cover.  Steve was their rendezvous instructor and I was their rendezvous flight controller.  It was a really nice surprise from a really nice guy.

This is what was inside the interoffice mail envelope:  the covers from both of Butch’s rendezvous books (prime and backup), both with thanks written on them.  One for me and one for Steve!  The flight procedures coordinator, Renee, was archiving the flight books and thought Steve and I would like to have the covers, so she sent them over.

Thanks Butch for being an awesome space shuttle pilot.  And thanks Renee for being an awesome FDF coordinator.  I’m super excited to have this memento!

I don’t know what got into us, but Jose and I were EXTREMELY productive this weekend.  One of the projects we took on was sprucing up the front of our house with some low-voltage outdoor lighting!  I’ve got to give Jose all the credit for this one — it was his idea, and the perfect use for our last remaining Home Depot wedding gift card.  The process was really easy, once we figured out where to install the transformer.  We have 4 power outlets on the outside of the house:  one by the front door, one by the back door, and one on each front corner soffit.  We weren’t in love with the idea of the big bulky transformer sitting right next to, and kind of in the way of, our front door, so we went with the soffit outlet.  It’s controlled by a lightswitch right inside the front door.

(Side note:  we debated low voltage versus solar lighting for quite a while, standing there in the aisle of the strangely poorly air-conditioned Home Depot.  You can’t beat the ease of the solar powered lighting — just stick the light in the ground and voila, you’re done.  But the problem is that they’re really, really low power and thus very dim.  Some of our neighbors have them, and they barely cast any light, which makes me question the point.  So low voltage it was, even though they are more work to install.)

We headed out on Saturday evening to get things started.  Installing the transformer was actually the hardest part for one reason:  we had to figure out how to drill into masonry.  I was not about to mess up the outside of our awesome house without knowing what I was doing, so I spent a while googling for information.  Turns out the drill we already had was sufficient, we just needed a special masonry bit.  And you have to drill SLOOOW to lessen the risk of the masonry crumbling.  We actually chose to drill into the mortar instead of directly into the brick.  So the hardest part?  Not even that hard.

With the transformer installed, we carefully laid out the cable and placed the light where we wanted them to go.   The lights connect to the cable with a double-sided plastic clip with two sharp metal prongs on each side.  When you squeeze the two halves together, the metal prongs pierce the plastic sheathing on the cable and make contact with the copper wiring inside.  So we clipped on the first light, eager to see it illuminate, and….NOTHING.  What a letdown!

We spent the next hour troubleshooting everything.  We pressed harder on the clip.  We cut away at the plastic sheathing to ensure that the metal was indeed touching the copper wire inside.  We tested the electrical outlet.  And no luck.  Nothing lit up.  What was supposed to be an easy project was just not working!  Frustrated, I dumped everything back into the box and we marched back to Home Depot yesterday.  One of the guys from the electrical department looked at everything and quickly declared that the transformer was bad.  We were willing to give it another shot, so we exchanged the first set for another and headed back home.  Last night we once again went out into the yard, but I was skeptical.

But it worked!  I guess the transformer really was bad, because this time the lights popped on without complaint — no cable stripping necessary, since it turns out the plastic clips do function just as promised when there’s actually power running through the cord.  It only took about 10 minutes to snake the cable around the edge of our flowerbed, hiding it underneath the rocks along the edge.

Don’t they look nice?  I like them even more than I thought I would!  Now if only we could get our plants looking healthier to match the lovely outdoor lights.

We also have two spotlights for our trees, but those will involve a bit more work to install since we’ll need to dig a small trench across the yard to bury the cable.  It was getting dark when we finished the lighting, so we’ll do the spotlights sometime soon.

There was a giant ominous cloud in the sky this morning.  Normally this would signal something about storms later in the day, or something, but I’m not getting my hopes up.  Instead, I’m sure it’s going to be ridiculously hot.  AGAIN.  Sigh…

So you may remember this quote from my post yesterday:  “Frankly, it’s easier to be a lazy bum than it is to train.”  I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently as I start to lay out my training plans for this fall with the goal of PRing at the half marathon at the end of January.  What has made me give in to being a lazy bum in the past?  And what can I do to prevent it this time around?

On Monday morning, I had to be at work really early and left the neighborhood around 6:45.  On the short 2-mile drive from the house to the highway, I must have passed at least a dozen runners, and suddenly I thought: “I should run in the mornings!”

Where did THAT come from??  I have NEVER been a morning runner (well, except for races, since they’re always in the morning) — even on the weekends.  I tend to stay up late, and therefore like to sleep in.  But as I thought about it, I realized that I could actually do morning runs without a huge impact to my schedule.   My work hours are flexible, and over the years I’ve fallen into the habit of generally working 9-5, which means I usually don’t even get out of bed until 7:30 or 8:00.  I run after work, and rarely go to bed before 11:30-midnight.

Running in the evening has worked for me for years, but there’s one BIG disadvantage:  it’s too easy to blow off a run.  Why?  Because I had to work late.  Or someone invited me out to dinner.  Or I have errands to run.  Or I’m tired, or hungry, or thirsty and I just don’t “feel” like it.

Running in the morning eliminates all of that.  It forces me to get my run in before the day begins, and leaves little room for excuses.  As a bonus, it’s cooler outside.  (Last night I just about gave myself a heart attack trying to do some informal speedwork in the 100 degree heat.)  In theory, I could make the switch to morning runs pretty easily.  All I’d have to do is get up an hour earlier — which would be 6:00-6:30.  To most people, that’s not actually early at all — it’s normal!  The days I have to be at work early are minimal and always known in advance, so it would be easy to plan around them.

The more difficult part is that I would also have to go to bed an hour earlier.  Even when I intend to go to bed before 10:30-11:00, I rarely do.  Getting into that habit will take commitment.  I’ll have to stop letting myself get sidetracked by whatever side project I’m working on.  (Or worse, getting distracted by whatever dumb show is on TV.)  And I’ll have to accept going to bed while Jose is still up.  (We both go to bed at the same time these days.  If I start getting in bed earlier, maybe he will too, but he might not.)

Anyway, after all those ramblings went through my head, I’ve decided to give morning runs a try.  The daily schedule needs to look something like:  in bed by 10:30, up at 6:30, run for up to an hour, and at work by 9:00.  They say it takes 3-4 weeks for a habit to stick, so my goal is to run in the morning for at least 3 weeks — from Monday August 23 until at least Friday September 10.

Never fear, I’ll keep you all posted.