Kathleen's Adventures

I totally cracked myself up this morning when I was getting ready for work and " Haven't Met You Yet " came on the radio.  I thought to myself while laughing "ahh, I guess this is my daily dose of affirmation." I hadn't put a whole lot of thought into that song until recently, and the words of my best friend have definitely made the song stand out now when I hear it. Also, another random thought I've been meaning to mention and keep forgetting. You know the song "I Just Haven't Met You Yet" by Michale Buble? For some reason I think of you every time I hear it. Like there's this really great, amazing guy out there that will be really giving and fight to work things out with you, but he just hasn't met you yet. When he finally does meet you though it's going to be wonderful! Just in case you don't know the lyrics... I'm Not Surprised Not Everything Lasts I've Broken My Heart So Many Times, I Stop Keeping Track. ...

The day started off very cold and very windy.  It ended kind of cold and very windy.  Fun. We did still have a good time on our little 68 mile jaunt through the country. It was cooooooooold at the start.  We are tired of freeeeeeeeeezing at the start! It takes 4 women to tell Wilmer how to read a map Hanging out in Bellville, TX Jazz Hands! Sitting behind my car to try to avoid some of the wind...my hair shows you we weren't able to exactly escape all the wind.  The BBQ and cheesecake brownies made it okay though.

They are in!!!  I love them!  I'm so glad they turned out well - I was very nervous because I was the one mostly in charge of the design.  I hope everyone else likes them as much as I do. Cyndy and I got to sport them on our ride Sunday.

Pictures from the Brenham ride:

Enough of the Debbie Downer posts - time for some pictures. I haven't posted any in forever (mostly because I don't have them), but I did take a few on my phone during my "Spring Break" a few weeks ago to share. Saturday I went to a crawfish boil at Denisse's house.  We've been friends for 22 years.  That's pretty cool.  No pictures from the crawfish boil - I need to get better about that! Saturday night was full of baking for Sunday's No Boys Allowed (except a few special boys) ride in Brenham: Our bike ride was beautiful - we rode 50 miles total, with a stop at the Southern Flyer Diner at the Brenham Airport at mile 45.  These pictures were taken from the porch of the diner. Monday I headed to Beaumont for my 1.5 day Spring Break with my family.  We visited Mrs. Clark across the street while she fed the animals. I had no idea Kate and Molly were such horse lovers!  They were in heaven. Bennett...not so much... They have a small owl that...

Jordan Rapp , an up-and-coming professional triathlete was hit by a car on Tuesday - the driver fled the scene and left him there bleeding profusely. The story is here .

I have a little food for thought from one of Greg Matte's sermons on "The Need for Companionship" from his Genesis series. We live in a very competitive culture and I think that we end up seeing people as competition to be beat instead of companions to be met...and to be loved and to be cared for. "Well, if you're pretty, well I'm going to be a little bit prettier. If you dress good, then I'm going to dress a little better. If you're smart, I'm a little bit smarter. If you're successful, I'm a little bit more successful. If you're spiritual, I'm a little bit more spiritual. If I'm just a little bit ahead of you and I can compete and win, then we can be friends, but I have to establish I win first because of the competitive culture we live in." People are not competition, they're people and so we can interact with them and come around them and allow them to relate as we're transparent in our lives. Sound fami...

I may be taking my blog private in the next week or so. I'm not 100% sure yet, and if I do, it may not be for long, but I'm considering it. Email me if you want to be able to continue to have access if and when I do make it private.

Yesterday was quite the adventure, from beginning to end. I guess you could say my Sunday Funday technically started Saturday night. I went to dinner with a few college friends and it was great to catch up - one just got back from Afghanistan, so it was pretty neat to hear about his experiences as a pilot for the Marine Corps over there. While we were out, my phone was blowing up with people dropping left and right from riding Sunday morning (38 degrees with 25-35mph winds sounds just awesome for riding). I bailed on the Galveston ride, but was still planning to do Tour de Houston - with people who are way way too fast for me. What was I thinking? No idea. I finally sent a reply that said I might be out as well, as I was ordering a drink from the bar at Armadillo Palace, and had a little peer pressure to "live a little" from my friends. I convinced myself to at least get my stuff somewhat ready Saturday night when I got home in case I did end up riding Sunday morning. Sunda...

Not much too exciting going on here. I've been debating a bit about not blogging for a while because I'm pretty boring, but realize I like writing, so you can read if you want, or sit back and hope for some more exciting stuff sometime down the road. I watched the temp drop 11 degrees in 4 minutes today in the car. It will drop another 20 degrees by morning. Welcome to Texas. Two drinks can be too much for me to drink. I really do not have a problem with that, but I'm not sure other people really understand when I say "no more." Everyone - young, old, single, married - needs to hear the sacred words "I love you" more than once in a blue moon. Not much is going as planned for me so far this year. Right now some of it may seem like a bad thing, but I know ultimately it may be better things did not go as planned, and some of it just probably really doesn't matter one way or the other. On that note, Lonestar 70.3 has gone from an "A" race...

I recently watched a sermon online about "The Rhythm of Work and Rest." It had some very points and lessons - ones which we could probably all learn a little bit from. If you have 36 minutes, watch it . I assume, though, your first thought is "I don't have 3 minutes to watch some sermon, not to mention 36." Point taken - I'm certainly not here to preach, simply to share. Anyway, if you don't have the time to watch it, here's a passage from the book The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring Sabbath , by Mark Buchanan which was read during the sermon. I like it. Even if you are not Christian, it can still be very meaningful. One measure for whether or not you are rested enough (besides falling asleep in board meetings) is to ask yourself this: "How much do I care about the things I care about?" When we lose concern for people, both lost and saved, for the bride of Christ, for friendship, for truth, for beauty, for goodness; wh...

Do you ever hear a song and think about a certain time in your life, or feel like you have a current "theme song", or hear a certain song and get filled with hope for the future? Are there some songs for which you think the lyrics seem to be written just for you, and others where you just think "what in the world are they talking about?" or "gees, I hope my life isn't ever that bad"? Anyway, I decided to do a little "past, present, and future" in song post and hope others will as well (consider yourself TAGGED) - I think it will be fun, and if nothing else, maybe a chance to hear an old favorite or learn something new. I may do this from time to time as well and see how they change. I think perceptions of past, present, and future are always changing no matter how even-keeled your life may seem. So, here's mine for the time being (and of course I'm sure it would be a different set of songs if you even asked me tomorrow - there are jus...

BEAUTIFUL weather (maybe our ONE weekend of Spring), great people, a race, an adventure by bike to a small diner at the Brenham airport, a crawfish boil, lots of baking, a visit from four of my favorite people in the whole wide world, and who knows what else. I'm excited. Perhaps more excited about a weekend than I have been in a looooong time. I know, everyone always looks forward to the weekend because you aren't working and get to play a bit, but I really get to play this weekend. Whohoo !

I just re-read my post from last night and had a few more thoughts. I don't think I'm saying it would be okay to say mean things or not treat me well if I did like myself better (i.e. I would handle it better, so it would be okay). I don't really think that is the case. Perhaps it just wouldn't be as soul-crushing for me when it did happen, or even more profound, maybe I would not feel some fear-driven need to put up with it. I also know many people have insecurities and I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me or for some "poor Kathleen" attention. I'm just more thinking out loud...as I usually do...and this happens to be a big thought on my mind right now. I also think many of us could hopefully learn a bit by identifying our insecurities and then asking - where did they come from? why do certain things bother us so bad? do they cause us to lash out at others when they really do not deserve it? why do we not trust certain people? do we really want ...

Someone told me that the other day and it was kind of a revelation to me. I have a nasty little secret that isn't always so secret: I don't like myself a good portion of the time, or just kind of like myself, but not necessarily enough to give me the respect I deserve. If someone compliments me, I smile and say "thank you" but usually write it off in my head, thinking something along the lines of "no, I'm really not that way, or I don't really do this or that," or "they don't really know me, so don't know I'm not that great." On the other hand, if someone says something negative or critical to me, I automatically assume it is set in stone. Even if the same person were to both compliment me one day and criticize the next, I only hear the bad; I only internalize the bad. I know this sounds all Debbie Downer-like, but I am a task-oriented problem solver. Identifying a problem is actually somewhat of a relief. I've known foreve...

(just for a little while) My muscles have no interest in doing anything other than nothing right now. Wednesday when I had my workout with my trainer, I could barely lift half the weight she had for me - I had to get lighter weights on almost everything we did. I think by the end, lifting a piece of paper would have been too much for me. I had not eaten enough before my run and then that workout, but could also tell the fatigue was from more than just one day of not eating enough - the past few weeks were starting to catch up. I swam Thursday instead of my planned brick, and then did a short 30 minute ride Friday. My run Saturday wasn't great, but I stopped my garmin at mile 2 and forgot to restart it, so I honestly have no idea how slow or fast it was...I just know my legs didn't feel great. My ride on Sunday was okay (nothing special, but nothing awful either), and Monica and I even did a short run after, so I had kind of forgotten how tired I was. I remembered again t...

Alright, time for a little "comment love" - a term used in the blogging world meaning, quite simply, "leave a comment!" I can see I have readers from all over the world (look at the little map a little way down on the right), obviously with the highest concentration being from this area, but I don't know who you are! (Most of you at least!). I'd love to know a little about who is reading my blog, what you like what you don't like, where you are from, etc. Anyone can comment at any time - you don't have to have a blogger or google profile. Just click on the "x comments" link below any post (x is the number of existing comments on any one post), then a box will pop up letting you type the comment. If you have a google/blogger profile you can use that, but if not, you can just click "anonymous", but be sure to sign your name or nickname or whatever with your comment. P.S. If you don't want to tell me much about yourself, or I al...

Sunday was my first-ever duathlon . I thought it may be my last before I even entered, and I may be right. I will not outright say "never again" but I'm also not jumping at the gun to do another. I prefer races that start in the water, not on dry land! The race consisted of a 3 mile run, a 15 mile bike, and another 3 mile run. The bike course was three 5-mile loops. Each loop had six or seven 90 degree turns, so it was not exactly a "fast course." Not that I would have been exactly "fast" anyway, but you get the point. It is hard to know how to pace your first run - someone said take the first mile 30 seconds slower than you can go, someone else said take the whole first run at a pace 30 seconds slower than you think you should go. I have no idea how fast (or slow) I can go right now, so that didn't help much either. I did manage to run my second run faster than my first, which many people do not do, so I guess I can at least say I was conservative...

I want a diet dp about twice a day these days (which is how often I was drinking them before lent). I'm not dying or anything without, but there have been a few times when one sounded realllly good. I often get the "you're not Catholic" reaction to me giving up things for Lent. That is correct, I am not Catholic, I'm Methodist, but I still like to take part. In the past I have basically just done the "self-denial/fasting" part (i.e. given one or many things up), however this year I am trying to bring more meaning to all of it, and really want to go further into it. The idea of using the time to not only give something up but to also work on bettering myself is flashing like a huge billboard in my mind right now. I have decided to better myself by working on body, spirit, and mind during this time. Body I think giving up all the crap food that I gave up along with training for a half ironman pretty much takes care of the body stuff! For this, I'm j...