So, I graduated from the National War College on Thursday, and we celebrated at a relatively new restaurant in DC, a seafood place called Azur. My friend D and Mom were with me and we split a whole bunch of the appetizers instead of doing a full meal.
The dessert...D's hazlenut and chocolate dessert was not worth the
calories (and was eventually removed from the bill...hopefully also the
menu in the near future) but my strawberry "salad" was good. Mom's
"cotton candy of the day" was a hit though - mom speculated that it was
guava, D thought it was mango and I didn't even venture a guess beyond
"tropical fruit". Turns out that it was pineapple. Yummy. But with all the eating, there had to be some payback, right?
On Tuesday I took mom to the trapeze school and introduced her to aerial fabic (aka silks). She's flown on the trapeze before, but she's got inner ear issues so upside down isn't really a good thing. There is a lot of upside down work in fabric, but you can avoid that in a first lesson, so that's what we did. I think she had fun. Probably more fun than on Saturday morning when I woke her up at the "crack of dawn" (her words...we didn't leave the house until 7:15) to join my Team in Training group for the weekly long run.
She looks pretty good at the turnaround point - 2.5 miles of five for the day. (Better than I did, which is why my picture from the midway point isn't up here.)
I don't look awful at the finish though, despite the big hill at the end. The big purple shirt just isn't flattering on me - to get it big enough to not be constricting across the shoulders, it's huge everywhere else. It's one of the side effects of circus arts - shoulders, lats and arms that don't fit the fashion norm. (Can't wait to get into my new house and set up the sewing machines!)
Mom looked pretty good at the finish, too! (We won't talk about her group getting lost and taking a completely different route back than the rest of us...we'll just be glad that they made it back safely.) I'd say my training is going really well, but we're only at the 5 mile long run mark, and since I know that I can run 13, that's the point where I'm going to be watching. My hip is slowly improving with weekly chiropractic adjustment and bi-weekly accupuncture. And strength training. Lots of strength training. I have until October to be completely healthy, so I'll just keep plugging away. And again, I'm running with Team in Training, which raises money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. If you're interested and so inclined, here is the link to my fund raising page (I am SO close!)
Tipper...so happy to see me after my endless trip to the restaurant restroom that her tail cleared an arc in the pine needles on the ground.
Congrats on graduating and on your award! Well done!
Posted by: BJ | June 20, 2013 at 02:01 PM
Congratulations on your Graduation, it is not easy to immerse yourself in such full on study at the best of times, but coming after being out and about on a big ship with daily action and interaction, desision making and planning, it must have been hard to step back and focus on the hard slog of study....well done.
Posted by: Margaret | June 24, 2013 at 07:01 PM