Random things this year

So you might think I haven't been doing anything fun recently due to lack of blog updates and tales of weekend trips. Well, we've been a few places but nothing was really worth a full blog update so I figured I'd put all the mini events in one. Here goes some random things:

Limestone Rise Preserve
Matt found this random little preserve/trail in a bird book my parents got him for Christmas so we took a trip to just outside of Altamont for a little walk. It was a nice little area and we saw a herd of deer romping through the woods.

Matt's Birthday
Matt had a birthday as you probably figured. We had dinner at Jack's oyster house downtown (it was good but not amazing) followed by the free birthday boot of beer at the Biergarten. Yum!

Woodstock, NY
We took a day trip to Woodstock. Yes, THE Woodstock. It was a cute little place, pretty funky but kinda quiet during non tourist season. I want to go back in the summer and camp nearby and listen to some music. Had a really good falafel wrap at one of the little restaurants. Definitely a good place for vegetarians!

Cheese Making
We tried to make homemade mozzarella. Let's just say it started well but didn't quite end with tons of cheese. What we did make we put on pizza a few days later and it tasted pretty good. Will try harder next time.

Saratoga Springs
I had a living social deal for the Saratoga Olive Oil company (great selection of different olive oils and balsamic vinegars and you get to taste them all with bread) so we went back up to Saratoga Springs for the day. We stopped at the state park and walked around for a while. The spring water did not taste that good though! The park was followed by Chinese food, olive oil and a stop at the Irish pub (this seems to be a tradition now)!

Snow
There was finally a real snow storm in Albany - we got around 8 inches if I remember correctly.

Chip
So no real story, I just like this picture :-)

Work O'Clock

For those of you who are curious what I do at work, I wanted to give you the link to my work website. I don't want to talk about work much on this blog but for those of you who are interested you can find out what I do here:

http://elinormartin.weebly.com/

It's also linked from the SUNY Albany Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences website http://www.atmos.albany.edu/

FYI: The website is still a work in progress!

Owie!

With all the running and working I've been doing recently I'd been having a few aches and pains. The usual back and neck pain from sitting at a desk working on a laptop all day and some knee aches from running. Nothing was so bad that I couldn't go about my normal business but I knew I'd feel better without them so I had my first massage in over a year yesterday.

Pretty sure I made some quite interesting faces!

I don't want the kind of massage where someone rubs you and you fall asleep - why pay all that money to nap for an hour, I can do that at home for free. I want them to work all those muscles till they finally relax! This was probably the best massage I've had. Today my upper and lower back are the good kind of sore but I still feel better than before the massage. Especially in the neck, around the shoulder blades and my knee. Muscles hurt that I didn't even know I had while they were being worked. I even got lots of tips on how to stop getting so tense and to relieve the knee pain. There was some relaxing at the end but the deep tissue pain was still lingering but I did my best to enjoy a few moments of nothingness.

Must go back soon. Definitely after the half marathon! I hope I'll feel better running tonight now.

*Insert exciting blog title here*

This weekend was a good one (aside from one incident). Here is the summary!

1) Used my living social coupon to get two delicious paninis at the Italian Deli down the street from our apartment. Yum yum and indeed yum.

2) Got two new pet goldfish. One was slightly bigger than the other and kept bullying him. Said smaller fish (pickle) was found dead 24 hours after coming home. Murder by larger fish (Michael Phelps) suspected. RIP Pickle.

4) According to my Nike+ I ran my fastest ever mile somewhere in my 3 mile Saturday morning run. This is quite surprising as my old "record" was from when it wasn't calibrated correctly and thought a mile was shorter than it really was. Yay for getting better.

3) Did my longest run so far - 6.58 miles. It wasn't easy but I made it. Did I say that I signed up for a half marathon in May?? A long way to go!

4) Went to Massachusetts for the first time. Did some twilight snowboarding at Mt Jiminy. Considering my poor snowboard hadn't ventured out in over 4 years, I came out pretty unscathed. Sore legs and bruised knees (damn ice) but nothing major. It wasn't the best conditions (lots of ice and fake snow) but it was still fun.

5) Pretty sure I saw the tardis on the way home from snowboarding. Maybe I did hit my head?