wedding follow up: vendors & venues-- part 5

continuing from part 4...
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the invitations: Mercurio Brothers printing. 


They do letterpress invitations at relatively low prices, certainly lower they anything else I found, and with great quality. You have to order several weeks in advance. At the time of my wedding, they had a 5 week backlog. Call ahead to see how many weeks advance they need to have your order ready on-time. You can give them a pdf of a pre-designed invitation and they will work with you on colors and get it looking perfect. They are located in Berkeley, CA, so if you live near there you can pick up your order but otherwise they will ship anywhere.

the honeymoon: the Providence Inn B&B (in Providence, Utah)

After our wedding we drove up to Providence (just south of Logan) and stayed for a few days. It was a nice quite place to stay. They bring breakfast to your room too, and I remember it being very good. Their rooms are nice too. We stayed in their English Cottage room.

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The end.

personal best

I did 3 loads of dishes in one day. And I also mopped the floor. With a mop. (A mop that I bought 10 months ago but was still in the plastic until this weekend. The mopping is a first for me. I have never owned or used a mop before, in any abode. Except when I was a kid, since I can't remember if my parents owned a mop.)

- journal of the slovenly housewife

4.0

DH and I have been married 4 years now. He is so cute.

And here is one more...

blog stats you may or may not find interesting

So. Google keeps statistics on pageviews of my blog, at least since May 2008 (but this blog has been going since 2005). Sometimes I amuse myself by looking at these statistics. There are two posts that have consistently been the top two in number of views (at least according to data collected since 2008, mind you. No doubt there are other posts written before 2008 that are unsung.)

The # 1 hitter is a post known as tags shmags, which has 986 pageviews, an exponentially higher tally than most blog pages of mine. (and when I say exponential, I mean exponential. Not just lots. Nope. Hope you enjoyed this aside DH.) Now why is this page so highly read when most other pages have less than 50 hits? Are people searching for "tags shmags" all the time? Shmags was a word I made up on the spot. But it could just as easily be spelled schmags. So you see the popularity of this page is an unexplained phenomenon. Though I must say it is one of my finer posts. Maybe. Perhaps I should ponder that a bit longer. Maybe I should do a post about my favorite posts. Hmm.

And the # 2 hitter (with 311 pageviews) is my Event Horizon post about the Hadron Collider news report. This post is not even very interesting. You might even say it is completely uninteresting, especially considering it is four years old. But the picture is nice. Maybe that's the draw.

1-ply

Who invented 1-ply? Does anybody actually like it?

David has unfortunately come home from the store with TWELVE rolls of 1-ply toilet paper. I'm thinking of leaving some surreptitiously at friends houses.

race recap

So last Saturday I ran the Utah Valley half marathon. It starts in Provo canyon and ends in downtown Provo. It was downhill for several miles, so I'm sure that had some effect on my time. I did run the whole way, and finished in under 3 hours, which was my goal. In the half marathon I did last year I had some sickness/pain issues and had to walk a few miles, but this time luckily nothing like that happened. I was not in as good of shape this year. My time was 2:57, compared to 3:15 last year. For those of you who don't run, 3 hours to run 13 miles is beyond slow. Out of 2500 people that finished, I think I came in at around 2250. I think I could finish in 2.5 hours if I spent more time training. I only ran 3x a week this time (should be 4x) and my short runs were too short. I trained for 3 months, but before that I had not run at all for 4 months. I also weigh 20 lbs more than I did last year. But similar to last year, I got sick for a few weeks in the month before the race and did not run during that time.

Someday I might do a marathon if I had a plenty of time to train (like when all my kids are in school someday and I spend 4-6 months training). I know this time I could not have run even another yard beyond 13.1 miles, so running double that would take a lot more preparation.  I know now that pushing your body physically is as much mental as it is physical. The last 2 miles were especially hard on me, and even though my body didn't realize when I had crossed the finish line, my mind did know I could feel my body shutting down even as I crossed the line. The longest I'd ever run before the race was 10 miles, and I was running a lot slower than I did in the race.

Activity/food journal: The night before the race I was exhausted but could not sleep. I eventually took some sleep meds in desperation and got maybe 2 hours of sleep max. Then I was up at 3 am to catch a bus up the canyon. I ate some cheerios before leaving and didn't have any digestive problems. During the race, I ate some orange wedges at several aid stations and 1/2 banana toward the end. I also had GU around mile 6. That stuff is so weird. I also had a lot of water and a little powerade, especially in the second half. I don't think I drank any less this race than last. I had one bathroom stop halfway through the race. After the race I ate/drank whatever was at the finish line, walked around and stretched/cooled down, and then walked home (about 1.5 miles) where I took a cold shower and later put ice on my knees in the afternoon.

For next time: don't cheat on the short runs in training. Make sure to eat something during the race, it helps. Sleep more before the race- go to bed a couple hours early.

the daily question

Where is your sock?

Happy Birthday David!

David is 31 today. There are many reasons why I love him. Here is one of them.