The Aftermath...

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes and commentary about how old I am (or how old I am not, depending on your POV).

When I was younger, in my wild-party-girl days, I came up with the idea to celebrate my birthday for the entire month of August...and dubbed August "Birthday Month." I rationalized that since August has no other recognized holiday (trust me on this), it must exist in honor of MEEEEEE!!!!

So during "Birthday Month" whenever I would go out with my girlfriends, our goal was to find someone who was willing to "sponsor" us because, IT WAS MY BIRTHDAY!!!! and we'd do this all month long...You'd be surprised at how well it worked! There was always someone who was willing to buy a birthday girl a drink during Birthday Month...

Yes, one can be this self involved when single and can recover from it with age and wisdom. At least that's what I keep telling DramaGirl.

Of course, once I became a mama, birthday month sorta fell to the wayside and it's really better that way. This year, since my BD fell on a weekday, I celebrated with my family, and tonight Walter and I are going out to a nice dinner, so I get two days this year (well...I'll get three, but I'll write more about that later).

For the family celebration Walter and DramaGirl cooked a fabulous dinner and then afterwards we went to Extraordinary Desserts.

DramaGirl's roasted red potatoes

Me and my top chefs!

The desserts at Extraordinary Desserts are truly amazing. I posted a few pix on FB of some of the extraordinary-ness that was displayed in the front cases.

Some frosted scone-thing

A meringue filled with fresh fruit and a peach custard (I've had this before...it IS as yummy as it looks)

DramaGirl says there's no such thing as too much chocolate

We ended up ordering...

A hot fudge sundae (with white chocolate bark). There's a brownie mixed in with the hot fudge...decadent!

A chocolate cake/chocolate mousse/chocolate frosted piece of goodness and some hot chocolate (again...DG says, "there's no such thing as too much chocolate)

A multi-tiered napoleon with lemon curd and raspberry sauces

And the aftermath...

Stuffed...the four of us (Walter was there too) couldn't finish it all, but seriously...YUM!

Dealing with the aftermath meant that I needed to get some running in to somewhat counterbalance the number of calories I consumed. I ran a little bit on the 'mill yesterday, but I got bored and overwhelmed by OMG...I HAVE TO GO BACK TO WORK ON MONDAY AND I HAVE SO MANY THINGS TO DO... so I stopped at two miles and went to run errands instead.

Then last night Betty and her husband and my BIL and his GF came over to watch the Padres beat the Giants (sorry NoCal folks) and to eat some of the five pounds of steam mussels I'd prepared (I was at Costco...and you can only buy the ENTIRE BIG EFFING BAG and I wanted them, so the obvious answer was to buy the WHOLE SHEBANG and invite a few friends over...right?)

BTW...I can steam up some pretty serious mussels in a white wine broth. We almost finished the whole bag.

Anyway, somewhere during the second bottle of wine, Betty and I decided that we should run in the morning!

Hmmmm maybe opening that third bottle wasn't such a good idea?

So, we have the Aftermath Part II

This morning Walter, Betty and I met up with Kat at 7am at La Jolla Shores and ran part of a route that we do during the SDTC Rockin' and Runnin' program...from La Jolla Shores, to Torrey Pines. The SDTC loop includes a run up Torrey Pines, through the park and down into La Jolla from the east and  is about 12 miles. We were nowhere near that ambitious, we ran three miles up the beach, and three miles back.

There are several of the cool features of this route, including getting to run on a part of the coast that few people get to because it is inaccessible from a road or parking lot. You have to walk (or run) to get there and part of the rock/run includes climbing up and over some boulders and rocks. You also have to be mindful of the tides. During high tide, it would probably also require getting wet to get to the best part of the beach, but the tide was low this morning at about 6:30 (we checked), and it is so worth the effort to get there.

For example, this morning we got to see...

Plenty of jellyfish (I know it looks like a turd and a messy one at that)

Someone's beach house that has a funicular, which is something that you just don't get to see every day.

Underneath the Scripps Pier

The boulders and rocks we got to climb over and we could almost see La Jolla (through some pretty serious morning mist) although the misty-ness of this photo may be because I was "misting" on the camera lens...

Walter...who looks THRILLED to be up and running, doesn't he?

What we didn't see was any smelly whales (that's for you Marcy...if you're still reading :-))

Speaking of that mist, we all commented on how LUCKY tomorrow's AFC 1/2 runners will be if the morning marine layer hangs on as long as it did this morning. By the time we finished our run and stopped to have some coffee, it was close to 9:30 and the marine layer was still pretty thick. People setting up for their day at the beach had sweatshirts on and were lighting huge bonfires... Maybe not great beach weather, but it will be PERFECT RUNNING WEATHER. Betty and I whined and lamented that it FIGURES that this is the year we DON'T RUN and the weather will be PERFECT! GAH!!!

So...shout-outs to all you AFC 1/2 Runners out there tomorrow morning (especially Alberta...I'll be thinking of you!) Have a great race!

I'll be dealing with third aftermath this week.