And that’s a good thing.

All is not perfect in the crystal ball, however. Tomorrow I run 5, and I know I’m approaching, ahem, a slower time of the month. And then tomorrow afternoon I fly to Atlanta, and that will muck things up further, as I am now in one of those jobs where you’re supposed to eat lots of meals WITH people after the meetings, go out for drinks (although mine are mocktails) and generally act as if you don’t have to get up at 6 to get your miles in before the next round of real meetings.

Still, will do my best, and hope to get outdoors for at least one city run.

Tomorrow is a day off with my first fiver in many months planned on Sunday. Here’s hoping the impressive streak continues.

And then, because I’m starting to run with my sainted Blackberry (it is also becoming my mp3 players, as I type), I got to take photos. This run is near my children’s school, a beautiful shoreline out and back path.

A nice morning, all in all.

So, in terms of running, I’ve skipped a few days. Just hid under the covers when it was time. It is COLD (for here) and RAINY and I’m overwhelmed and the bed is better. I haven’t overeaten, so that’s something. I can’t eat ice cream for the dairy issues, and what’s the point of overeating if you can’t eat ice cream, really?

What I *have* done is start to plan to do the scariest thing I’ve ever, ever done. Yes, that.

Remodel the kitchen.

Our kitchen is not your garden variety in-need-of-a-freshening room. No, no. When we bought our house, 12 long years ago, the reason we got it at a good price was because it had the ugliest kitchen in the whole town, or at least the ugliest one on the market. The previous owner, the cheapest man alive, had gutted the original kitchen, which was probably out of date but sweet, and replaced the cabinets with (get this) used cabinets. No, no. Not cool, retro used cabinets. Not really nice salvaged from a demo cabinets. Used and the cheapest possible quality. And he jerry rigged them to fit into the space. Then he picked mis-matched tile, counter tops and flooring, and threw it all out there. Then he added some unreal ugly 1970′s brown appliances that mostly didn’t work.

We replaced the appliances, countertops and flooring in 1999, and painted the cabinets. But it is still very bad. And so, suddenly having a brief window of reasonable income (much of it will be going toward the oldest’s college tuition, starting in September), we thought this might be the only time we could imagine doing this in the next four to eight years.

Planning kitchens, folks, is fun. A lot of fun. I have a funny feeling it will be less fun when we’re actually living with the remodeling process, however. But still. The now is fun, and a fabulous distraction.

Below is one of the scores of photos I’ve bookmarked. Now, I would never be bold enough to have a hot pink kitchen (and I can’t possibly afford the zillion dollar stove), but other than that, I love this. I think in a cream…

You’re all invited to the christening.

OK, so, now I know why I will hate this run. Off to do it. Even if I can’t hear or stay awake in meetings, I still have my dignity.

Still, the overall pace was the same as last week’s four miler, and I was in a good mood for that one, so I suppose that means there is progress. And, despite trying to talk myself into an early turn-around, I didn’t bite, and did the whole thing.

Rewards: chocolate froyo for lunch in Berkeley and a late afternoon nap when I got home.

This run marks the end of two months of just getting back into the groove, plus a couple of weeks of making sure I was in the suggested condition for the half-marathon training for beginners program. I seem to be. The coming week bumps up the effort and mileage a bit, with the official beginning of the program. Wish me luck.

I had a Big Interview yesterday. I’m waiting for official, official confirmation that I’m hired, but the boss lady was talking about how to transfer my Blackberry account over to the state (for whom I’ll be working) and  other minutiae by the time I left, so it looks pretty solid. This is my first non-lackey job (although I’ve had some great lackey jobs – but I’ve never really been in a position of any kind of authority whatsoever), so I’m kind of in shock. I’ll actually be telling people what to do (including some people I used to work FOR), leading meetings, reporting to the CDC in Atlanta (with lots of trips there), and am gonna need a nicer briefcase. I woke up this morning thinking maybe it didn’t all happen, like a Cinderella dream.

I’m a little concerned about keeping up the running for the rest of the semester, assuming this all comes together. I will let one of the other jobs go, but it’ll be hard to let the 10 hour per week job off (they’ve paid my $9000 tuition for the semester, so I’d have to pay them back), and I still have classes, and I think this new job will require a steep learning curve, even though they’re saying they’re fine with me being part-time until late May. But I will look at it as needed therapy, and continue to schedule it into my daily calendar, and hope for the best. And I need to find places to run in Atlanta – two trips there in the next two months.

I {heart} my lipid panel, with a cholesterol of 199, way high good cholesterol and triglycerides of 57. I should live to be about 107, annoying my children every day, running around the block in my old lady stretch pants and weird shoes.

It is flippin’ cold and wet, here, and I have to run and then go to work when I’d really rather stay in bed with the laptop and dog. I hate being an adult, even if I do get to brag about my lipid panel.

One of the things that was kind of nice was that there were ketones aplenty, so my weight loss isn’t a figment of my scale’s and pants’ imagination. There’s *evidence.*

I was annoyed at the 66bpm pulse, though. But it was only about an hour after a run, and then I’d had to walk fast the mile to the doctor’s office because the bus came early and passed me by. I told the nursing assistant it was usually about 50bpm, and she said, oh, NOBODY has a pulse of 50 unless they’re really sick. Ha. Foolish woman.