recovering from wedding

so, i must be finally starting to recover from the post wedding exhaustion .... i woke up this morning and thought hey, i should start going through wedding pictures and thinking about what we might want to order for an official album. but this is one of my favorites, and it's not even from our photographer. thanks colleen, i have a feeling you were behind this one! :)
andy is off with his buddy, rob, to a junk yard to get new axles for the jeep. and the sun is thinking about showing it's face. think i'm going to run to the native plant nursery in gig harbor then enjoy some 2 wheeled freedom. the pictures will still be here later.

rough life

the kitties spent much of this afternoon here. a couple times, one would get up to stretch and they would switch seats, but that was about it.

reclaiming MY space!

I have a space that is mine .... all mine .... it's called the bead room. I have a huge counter where i can create and leave a path of destruction in my wake, and then i can close the door and ignore it. The past 6 months this room has also served as a guest room, and the "wedding crap" room so i've had to share my space. I've spent many hours in the evenings this weekend clearing a path and finally unearthed the counter top! hooray! now i'm free to create again!


Where did all that crap go?! well, some of it got put away, some of it got thrown away, some of it has already been given away, some of it got stuffed in the garage (don't tell andy) and a good lot of it got sorted into piles, inventoried and prepped for listing on ebay. hopefully some of the "wedding crap" will find new life in someone else's house. (cat not included, he stays.)


and i managed to acquire enough paper crafting supplies to warrant buying one of these - so i could put everything away!

RATUSALOT ??

"Ride Around the US a Lot of Times"

This absolutely cracked me up today.

Hug Point

Hugging at Hug Point State Park, OR on our mini-moon trip down the oregon coast.


Playing a hopscotch of sorts with myself making foot prints playing in the sand.

It's been a really intense, brain draining week at work. i've certainly learned tons, most of it feeling like research and not directly applying to solving the problem at hand at the time ... until 2 days later and i'm like "oh, i know how that works, i can do that!" but it's left me kind of worn out.

fall also happened practically over night in the last week. i feel like i missed too much of summer to wedding planning this year. and it's already fall!! i secretly love this time of year though. it's time to start lifting some weights and heading to the gym. i love lifting, it makes me feel strong and buff. it's also shorts and fleece weather now. yay! at least the sun is still shining. as the days get shorter my commute seems to feel longer. it it possible the SR-16 stretches in the winter months??

Fluffy Tia

Jen snapped this just before the ceremony.
It totally cracks me up.
Tia in a big sea of princess-like-fluffy-white-girly-ness displaying a nice collection of scars and scrapes down her arm earned from a variety of different bicycle related crashes over the years.
yup, you can put the tomboy in a dress with face paint, but you can't take the tomboy out of the tomboy. :)

what you don't exactly see in this picture is me completely slumped in a wooden kitchen chair in the bathroom w/ my feet propped up at head level on the sink. It was just after this when i said something like "I think i have to pee again, do you think it's just pre-race jitters? or do i really need to go again?!" b/c trying to go pee while wearing a sea of princess-like-fluffy-white-girly-ness is truly a team effort. (Thanks Team Bridetribe!)

Operation: Team Lean

Team Tia and Andy have set out to become Team Lean.

Our goal: lose 100 pounds by next summer. That breaks down to about 70 pounds for Andy and 30 for Tia.

Why? Because we are too fat to race in our current state. We feel pudgy and unhealthy. We are tired of whining about our clothes feeling tight, and Tia refuses to buy new "fat clothes". We both like to go fast on our bikes, and we feel like slugs on them right now.
Doesn't that sound like a lot? Yes, but we've both done it before, no reason we can't do it again (and make it stick this time). Andy topped out after college at 425 pounds. Tia at 215. (Can you believe that?!) Being fat sucks, and we're not going there again!
How did this happen? Wedding planning is stressful. We both try to eat (and drink) our stress away. and we've been too busy to ride our bikes much the last couple of months. That all compounds to FAT!

How will we accomplish our goal? lots of hard work and determination is the short answer.

Next 2 Weeks Goals:
1. Institute bedtime.
1a. The alarm clock in the living room will go off at 10pm indicating that it's time to get showered and start unwinding. We really need to get in regular, good sleep every night.
2. Start eating at consistent times each day.
3. Get in the habit of going to the gym twice a week. Start weight exercises w/out any real weight
3a. Andy is working on getting his gym membership switched to they Y so we can workout together.
4. Dust off the bike, pump up the tires, and starting getting some regular exercise.
4a. Just regular human being exercise at this point will be an improvement. Don't need to have a mindset of "training" or even "working out", just some good exercise is an improvement at this point.
5. Increase veggie consumption.
5a. The more veggies we eat, the less junk we tend to eat.

Fred and George

 

I snagged these guys out of a huge pirate chest full of kiddie toys at a restaurant in Newport. After sticking them to the windows of the car and making them dance around on my fingers while I made up songs about octopus-y-pies and jelly-fishy-doos, they finally came to rest on the dash for the remainder of the trip. I declared they needed names, and Andy creatively came up with Fred and George (left to right).

It really is too bad that I'm so difficult to entertain.

We're back!

yay!
wedding weekend was awesome (and exhausting!).
the oregon coast was gorgeous!
and we were so happy to get back to our home last night - our own space - our kitties - our dirty laundry - our jobs ... oh wait.

we found a little tia-tribute on my friend becky's blog last night. i laughed till i cried (multiple times) as andy read it to me. it's 98% fact. except i think the business card said "The man you've been looking for". but i seem to have lost it in the last decade, so we'll have to rely on our memories. :)

will try to post some pictures later this week! but no promises .... i'm ready to spend some more time on my bike and start hitting the gym. and the vortex of tia-time often keeps me from getting everything done. :) hehe.

T-minus hours

ready for weddin'!

it's been a busy busy busy and exhausting few weeks! and wedding is finally almost here! due to flight delays, i picked up my mom at seatac at 2am this morning. and a few family and friends of family have trickled in over the last few days. tomorrow the bulk of our out-of-town guests will descend upon us. :)

how am i feeling? how am i doing? how am i holding up? (i've been getting lots of these questions! thanks for caring!)
short answer:
exhausted, excited, overwhelmed, ready, irritable, tired, jazzed.

longer answer:
- wow, i can't believe this many people love us enough to come so far to be here.
- i'm jealous that our guests are more rested than we are (at least some of them are).
- i flapped my arms at the sky to hold the rain clouds off until monday. (andy and i have been in 2 weddings in the last 6 weeks, and a 30% chance of rain turned into soggy weather and beautiful indoor weddings. we have a solid rain plan, but i really want to be outside).
- ready for a vacation.
- ready to resume my regularly scheduled life.
- ready to ride my bike more.
- ready to be andy's "wife-y".
- tired of visiting craft stores.
- wow, there's so much room in the living room with 2 bikes and computrainers and stands moved out. (it looks sort of naked to us, but both of our mothers were impressed.)

what else have we done besides finish planning a wedding since vacation 3 weeks ago?
- the patio is finished (15' x 30') it's so amazingly cool! we just need some sweet patio furniture now.
- we have a new roof (and shiny new gutters and downspouts).
- i finished painting the house (mostly, there's still a little under-eaves work to do.)
- the remaining poplar trees (that didn't come down in last winter's wind storm) in our backyard have been removed and replaced with a "mountain" of wood chips.
- our house is clean - the cleanest i've ever seen all parts clean at the same time.
- 85% of the flower beds have been deadheaded over the last 2 weeks and it is in gorgeous full summer bloom!
- there is actually a desk and a kitchen table under those piles of paper and junk mail and notes and to-do lists.

yay! we are gunna make it!!

Legendary!

Yesterday's ride surpassed the standards of epic and received the rating of legendary.



5 hours 10 minutes out on the bikes. Dennis rode out to Brandywine falls with Andy and I. Some fire roads, doubletrack and singletrack, awesome views, and some killer climbs. Barbara picked up Dennis and his bike at Brandywine and Andy and i reversed our tracks back to the village. The cloudy skys and the sprinkles off and on through out the day held off .... until our last 10-15 minutes back across the village to the condo ... when the sky just unleashed and it rained cats and dogs ... i just had to throw my head back and laugh at our luck. i'm still not sure if i should call this good luck or bad luck. :)

Mountains hiding in the clouds:

Andy, Dennis and Tia's abandonded bike in route to Brandywine:

Hoo-ray! we made it to the suspension bridge:

Brandywine Falls -- nevermind that we spent nearly 3 hours riding here and we could have parked the car and spent 10 minutes walking from the parking lot .... but where would the fun be in that!?!?

Recovery day

so all that swelling in my lip yesterday had to go someplace .... and that someplace ended up being the whole right side of my face overnight. i was actually surprised that this didn't happen late yesterday afternoon or evening .... and i was hoping that i had somehow miraculously cleared this hurdle in the healing process.

lucky for me, the weather supported my body's vote to take it easy today ... which helped my brain justify sitting on my butt. it was scattered rains (not showers) until early afternoon .... which allowed for plenty of ice on the face time and jewlery time. check out my sweet little workshop!

since i wasn't riding early in the day, i even had some "big breakfast" - including eggs, hashbrowns, bacon and english muffins. mmmm ... my body rejects such thing before a bike ride ... but today ... why not!?!?

it finally stopped raining sometime around lunch time (~ 2pm) and a breeze picked up and dried the trails out pretty good. we all finally emerged from the condo after 4. andy, dennis and i left on our bikes. barbara left in the "extration-mobile" to ride her trike (on her favorite paved flat trails), and danny and tracy left with tennis racquets. we got out for a couple hour easy spin - andy took me on a couple of (pre-ridden) singletrack trails to practice some skills. my body said that was enough for today - to work the kinks out from yesterday - tomorrow will be better. andy went out to ride some more, without his ball and chain slowing him down.

Operation: New Patio. Phase IV

We are finally done with this boring, labor intensive phase of the patio. Our goal was to have all the gravel brought in before we left for vacation ... and we made it! yup - that big hole we dug and the big frame we built actually held 7 yards of gravel. Bringing them in one yard at a time in the trailer after work in the evenings, made for 7 nights of gravel shoveling and raking in those last 2 weeks leading up to vacation time. next goal - patio completed by wedding weekend - labor day weekend. we've got 3 weeks, but only 1 free weekend. wish us luck!

(for the super observant, you might have noticed that the house is now green too. more on that later!)

Ted says welcome!

Andy has always wanted a little chainsaw bear ..... i came home with this one day as a surprise. Andy named him Ted.

Ouch!

i'm sorry mr. stingy bug to interrupt your afternoon .... but was this really necessary?!?

and of course we couldn't be just cruising along on a nice flat section of trail or be stopped for a snack ... oh no ... it's a tia and andy story .... it's always much better.

coming down a little decent - nothing too tricky - i'm being smart - keeping my head up - picking a good line down the trail - using both breaks to control my speed - butt up and off the back of the saddle. ouch - oh crap - something is stinging my lip!

i take one swipe with my right hand towards the right side of my face .... i feel it's little legs grab onto the inside and outside of my lip - as it is still stinging me ... oh crap ... this hurts ... i can't believe it's still stuck on my face! i take a second swipe becoming more nervous at the predicament i'm in. and then break the number one commandment of mountain biking ... DON'T GRAB THE FRONT BREAK! yup - insert ENDO here. andy looked over his shoulder back up the trail to watch me tumble over the handlebars and land in the brush. after landing, i was still grabbing at my face to pull mr. stingy bug off my face.

andy ran back up to find me crying on the side of the trail - he thought i was really broken. but i was crying - first because my lip and face were throbbing, second, b/c i had just scared the piss out of myself as i flew through the air, and third b/c i felt like a total dork for not having a better plan to remove a stinging insect from my lip other than to throw myself over the handlebars of my bike and down the trail.

considering i took a little trip over the handlebars, i came out pretty unscathed. couple bumps and bruises and a little missing skin, but all in all ... just a big fat lip. which an hour later as the swelling was starting to come down and i was laughing again, andy was teasing me about having fish lips.

so much for the story about the bar fight i was cooking up.

Mountain Biking 201

got in an even more epic ride today. 3 hours 45 minutes of epic-ness. we moved a lot faster, covered more miles. my body seems to have gotten the hang out of extracting oxygen from mountain air, and my heart rate wasn't nearly so spikey today.



i've had several of those "ah ha! i get it!" moments on the bike the last 2 days. finally figuring out what all those wise words of advice and encouragement folks have tried to give me in the last couple years actually mean and feel like.



#1. i have an accordion middle. climbing up short steep losing my balance hills yesterday - i was flopping all over like a fish, and for some reason i thought "activate your core". and hey, ya know what - it works better when your upper and lower body actually work together. note to self - actually do core exercises and listen to the PTs who say your core is weak.



#2. look where you want to go. i'm a total dork about getting down twisty turns - like switchbacks where i would normally be looking at my front wheel or down the cliff where i'm sure i'm going to plummet to my death. for some reason today i said "get yer head up and look where you want to go!" ... and guess what - my bike went where i wanted it to go!



#3. you don't need to moving fast to be balanced. yup, i've always had a fear of - if your feet stop moving, you're screwed, better try to unclip before you crash - and i would normally crash trying to execute this maneuver anyway. today i swear i came to a stand still in a steep little up section, my feet quit moving. it was like everything went in slow motion. i felt my front wheel start to lift. my brain stayed calm (?!?!?!), i shifted my weight forward, my feet started to move, and i peddled to the top. COOL! lesson learned!



#4. just like in the weight room, grunting helps.



#5. i still hate bridges, especially bridges that aren't running in exactly the same direction as the trail. i'm trying to get over this fear. today, on a particularly scary bridge entrance, i said, "be strong, go for it!" i got down the big root step, maneuvered through the tire width of a crack between the two big rocks, got my front wheel up on the bridge ... and ... panicked. judging by where my bike and i ended up, i think i just let go of the handlebars and attempted to bear hug the log handle rail. i earned a few scrapes and some dirt in my shoe from this - but i've lived to tell about it. maybe i'll conquer a few more less scary bridges and build some bridge confidence before trying that bridge again.

I'm in Timeout!

yay! We made it to vacation! I'm in whistler - life is grande. Andy and I got in a 3.5+ hour long mountain bike ride today. (which is probably more than my whole ride total of the last week.) I slept great last night for the first time in several days.

We had a discussion last night about they types of vacation. There is the traveling vacation where you travel new places, see and experience new things, and quite possibly return back home more tired than when you left.

Then there's the timeout vacation. Where you just take a time out from life and relax.

Another thing to use vacation time for that is not vacation at all - would include traveling to a far-away big bike race, and though lots of fun, and a very worthy use of vacation time, it's not vacation and it's certainly not a timeout.

So I'm in time out.

Barbara (Andy's mom) asked me about my goals for the week. She reminded me that last summer, one of my vacation goals was to not get in a car after we unloaded it and parked at the condo. I was still adjusting to my new commute from Tacoma to Silverdale, and pretty much was sick of being in the car. I had completely forgotten. I think I could handle driving to the store for more wine this year (sober of course). :)

This is were being a highly driven (over motivated) person becomes a curse. I think I have a todo list (of fun relaxing stuff) longer than can be accomplished this week! But my number one goal of the week is to avoid wedding details. The only wedding details allowed this week is working on ideas for the ceremony and writing our vows, which isn't really a wedding detail but us figuring how to express to our community of friends and family how much we love each other, and that should be a fun yet challenging task.

Other things to do this week:
I packed up the bead room and towed it to whistler - and plan to be a little jewelry factory. Need to build up some inventory for some fall/winter sales. I also want to start thinking up some ideas for setting up an online shop this fall and figuring out how to make a few bucks from my other hobby. (And I guess there's still a few wedding related jewelry items I need to finish.)

Need to update this here blog - so you folks don't think I've been sitting around on my butt eating ding dongs and watching movies the last two weeks. :) (ps netflix has made a killing on us this summer!)

I might actually read a book. I try to cram a million and one things into everyday, it's hard to sit still long enough to read. And it doesn't help that by the time I sit down long enough to read that I'm exhausted ... can't hold eyes... open ... dropping book on chest ... after about 5 pages. It takes a long time to finish a book 5 pages at a time.

I plan to ride my mountain bike every day this week. I had started trying to run/walk just do to something different, keep myself moving, and prep for cyclocross .... but I haven't made time to get out for a run for 2 weeks now. After our "epic" ride today, I was going to digest some lunch then go for a run/walk. I played w/ my beads for a few minutes - then wandered to the couch and passed out - a drooling nap .... when was the last time you took a nap so hard you drooled?!?

vacation is great!

Operation: New Patio. Phase III

Saturday ....
after a 'lazy morning' around the house: catching up on laundry, dishes, cleaning the floors, and paying bills. we went for a quick ride down at Pt Defiance park - it was idiot central.... too many people out driving their cars, unaware of cyclists in the bike lane. it was so warm and muggy in the couple mile ride down to the park, but we were welcomed w/ an incredibly sweet cool breeze off the narrows. i joked about hauling my trainer down to set up in the shade in the breeze. :)

after all that - we got the framework for the new patio built! and we still had enough energy to sit on the couch and watch a movie!

One of the joys of summer ...

fresh local produce ....
and fresh from the garden catnip!


momma must love the kitties a lot to pick out this extra special plant from the farmer's market months ago ..... and then anxiously await the first harvest.

ain't life grand?! i think it was a hit!

link, putting those extra digits to good use.

Operation: New Patio. Phase II

[ok, photos back, for now anyway. leave it up to the software engineer to break the software. this is apparently a reported bug in blogger - the disappearing pictures. seriously, if QA reported a bug w/ steps to reproduce it like this - i would slap their hands and say "well, don't do that! add pictures the way you are supposed to!"]

Saturday's activities included: Tia and Barbara loading the trailer and hauling off the first load of concrete. Here's the second (and bigger) load:

It weighed in around 3000 pounds.

We rented a cool little tractor for andy to play with. It was lots more fun than digging, but left andy feeling like he'd been run over by a truck on sunday. dennis did a great job supervising, (and as always working too hard).

The new patio is gunna be awesome! can't wait to have people over for BBQs after riding bikes all day! yay!

Operation: New Patio. Phase I

What a fun friday night activity.

Left with too much time on my hands, i come up with activities such as these.

though destroying concrete was rather satisfying. this thing didn't bust apart nearly as easily as we had hoped. we had to be creative in our application of chisels, slegehammers, pry bars, and the general principles of physics.

we were successful! and the kitties were throughly entertained.

little Linker not so little anymore

Link, pound kitty number 4. In october, when he came home:

Link today:

i still call him "little linker", though andy laughs that he's not so "little" anymore. he's still the big baby of the family. he still has fluffy soft kitten fur. i hope he keeps it. :)

my sweet new wheels!

check out my sweet new wheels! andy got me a new mountain bike for my birthday, and it rocks!


i didn't have any good suggestions for anyone for what i wanted for my birthday this year. my mom after rattling off a bunch of suggestions the week before my b-day, struggling to come up with something, threw in a "how about something for the wedding? do you need anything ... ". i think i cut her off: "NO! something for wedding?! that's not a present!". then we both laughed, since it was the only suggestion that i had any sort of an opinion on .... and it was a pretty strong opinion.

so around birthday time (may 1), andy decided that i needed a new mountain bike frame. which i did. my old bike was a frame we picked up on ebay for much less than $100. andy or his folks had an old (ancient) fork, and there were plenty of components laying about to build me up a bike. it was enough to help me learn some basic dirt riding skills, and gain some positive mountain biking experiences. i even won my first mountain bike race this spring! i was the only beginner woman to show up. :)

so, a couple of weeks of andy scoping ebay and craigs list, to see what people were selling, and how much things were selling for. talking to a couple shops to see what a complete new bike might cost us. a couple weeks of figuring out what size frame i needed. (we concluded that i needed a "medium and a half". i was almost too big for a M, but much too small for a L). and i rode a couple bikes in parking lots and over speed bumps to get ideas of what kind of suspension i would be happiest with.
finally we were ready to buy! so more watching ebay and craigs list.

the bike arrived at about 4pm, on the thursday we were driving to elkhorn. ignoring that fact that we should already be on the road, and we had a 6+hr drive ahead of us, we opened the box slapped the bike together and i got to ride it up and down the street a couple times.

the bike was in desperate need of some andy TLC. and this weekend she was ready to go! yay!



on saturday, we went out to banner forest, between port orchard and gig harbor. this is a place i love to ride! there's some fun single track, a little up and down, and no serious climbing. there's nice wooded trails, and some crazy sandy big rocks trails. in general good "tia-friendly" trails to challenge me, but yet not enough to freak me out.

we rode a few familiar trails. and then took a left where we've always turned right (or was it a right where we normally go left?), and discovered some sweet new single track! lots of tight twisty turns (which in general i suck at, and need lots of practice). i love my new bike!! i already feel more comfortable and confident. and my skill set has improved in amazing ways since i last rode these trails this time last year. several sections i remember having to stop and practice until i got flustered with last year, i rode through on the first time this weekend!

when i'm riding my mountain bike, i think about how it's good to stuff you're not good at .... and especially with people who are better than you. andy's incredible patience is going to pay off soon; i'm going to be challenging him to ride faster! :)
next goal: keeping up with andy's dad, dennis, in the pool! HAHAHA! (the man has a 7ft wingspan, and is quite possibly part fish).

BBT gets a face lift!

the Blue Berry Toaster got a face lift yesterday!
Last year the new Element-mobile suffered a serious blow while still sporting her temporary tags! This rock instantly caused a crack 1/3 way across the windshield. Two weeks later, another serious blow. This "rock chip" or hole, if you will, didn't crack the windshield until one of our major cold-freeze weeks this winter. A month later, a third chip. This one would have been repairable, had it been the only issue this poor windshield was having. I waited patiently all winter and into the spring before getting a forth rock chip.

I finally got the thing replace yesterday, didn't cost me a dime. Thanks State Farm! But I do have to wonder, how many new windshields can I get in a year before a pencil pusher takes notice?

Now I can install my new Good To Go! transponder. Are you Good To Go!? (quite possibly the stupidest name for a toll system ever, but I'll save that rant for another day).

A few of my favorite things

Bicycles. Handcrafted one of a kind art. Coffee. What is there not to love?!?!

We were in Baker City, OR for the Elkhorn Classic Stage Race this weekend. Baker City is a cute little bicycle loving town in the eastern part of the state. I bought this awesome coffee mug from a local artist and triathlete outside of Belle's downtown on Saturday after the crit. The owner of Belle's Main Street Market matched the Pro men's race payout for the women's race! unheard of!! I'll be back next year, more fit, and ready to win one of those $100 gift certificates ... I think a case of that Huckleberry Riesling needs to go home with me!

Speaking of wine ... I think I just thought of another use for my new mug!