All caught up

After the 4th of July race, I had 5 whole days off work to recuperate.  It was nice to have such a nice, long weekend, but I didn't veg out the whole time like I usually do... not this time!  I walked the dog every day, got in two more runs - about 3 miles each (which felt like marathons in the heat), and got some household projects taken care of.

Free image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Often when I have a big chunk of time off work, I go completely off the rails with my diet and exercise.  I don't normally use this blog as a food log and discuss much of the "diet" portion of my diet & exercise regimen, but I will say I managed to indulge during the week without going crazy.  It helped that we didn't have any big plans with friends or family during the week.  Jason had to work part of the time, so I had a couple of days all to myself, and a few days to hang out with my hubby.  We went to our favorite watering-hole a few times (confused bartenders wondering what we were doing there in the middle of the week) and had a few beers and a few burgers, but managed to stay within reasonable limits.  My weekly weigh-in showed me at +/- zero pounds for the week, and I called it a win.

What fun could we have during five days off???  Well... we were watching a lot of television, specifically a lot of Holmes on Homes and Kitchen Crashers, which prompted a lot of speculation about what we might be able to do to spruce up our own kitchen.  This speculation grew to a conviction that, yes, we could tile our back-splash; nay, we should; even we WILL!

By Sunday (the day before I had to go back to work, yes, we procrastinated even with all that conviction behind us) we had been to Lowe's, Home Depot, and Menards several times each, for ideas and options, and finally settled on a plan of action.  But until Sunday morning, we hadn't bought a thing.  First order of business:  buy stuff!  Lowe's supplied the tiles themselves, and we got everything else we needed at Menards.  (We had a couple of rebate credits from Menards so most of the supplies were covered by the rebates, thus the extra trip.)

By the end of the day Sunday, we'd laid all the tile. ("Laid"?  Is that what you say when you put it on a wall?  Whatever... it was up, anyway.)  All that remained was to grout, caulk, and seal it.  It didn't sound like much work left to be done, but grouting certainly turned out to be a bigger chore than we expected.  I really thought that was going to be the easy part!  We got the grout and caulk done on Tuesday and left it to cure for a few more days, and finally I got it sealed on Saturday, so the deal is pretty much done!

Leave it to us to stretch a weekend project out for 6 days.

Before

After

Close-up

The down side of all this crafty home improvement project activity is that basically, as soon as I went back to work, all formal exercise came to a halt.  A sudden and complete halt.  Finally last Saturday it was time to get back in gear.  I declared "BREAK'S OVER!"  I got up just after Jason left for work and took off for a nice long run with the dog.  We got a five-mile jog in, and felt just great!

Perhaps my body was really looking for a break from the routine... my weigh-in on Sunday:  down 2 pounds for the week!  Go figure...

This past week, just doing my regular routine, work, workout, run, hit the gym, help make dinner... blog!

Whew!  Now, finally I've caught up after my little hiatus.  Now I've got to get ready for my next race:  only a couple of days away!!