The Friday 5 (on Saturday!) |

(well, it shouuuullld have been my Friday post…’cept i realize i never finished this last night, so now it’s spilled over into Saturday. whoops. 🙂 better late than never, right?)

i decided i’m changing up my “Fun Facts Friday” posts to “The Friday 5.” they generally end up being 5 random things about my life anyway, so i’m liking this better.

1. i’m on a (forced) running rest. i haven’t run since Sunday — that’s entirely out of character and 100% attributed to the sickness. running + hacking cough does not = a good time. while i greatly dislike not running, i’ve managed to get some decent workouts in this week, sick and all:

Monday: winter walk around and across Grafton Lake
Tuesday: rest. we had a blizzard and i nearly died just walking down the icy sidewalks.
Wednesday: 50 minutes full-body elliptical, 20 minutes incline walking on a treadmill, 30 minutes circuit intervals (kettlebells, wall/ball jumps, box jumps, burpees, back rows, planks)
Thursday: boot camp circuit training (kicked my butt- super sore today)
Friday: another rest day, as my body is killing me from yesterday and i was up all night coughing.

so it was a lighter workout week for me this week for sure, and while i definitely miss the running, it would have been a bad move to push myself. it’s probably good for me to get comfortable with periods of rest, as i tend to freak out a bit if i can’t work out every day, and that obsessive mentality might not be the healthiest. certainly motivating, but possibly a bit on the edge of crazy. 🙂

2. i am such a dog person. we have always been a dog-keeping family. there was Spanky, my first black lab when i was 2-3 years old (guess who named her), and Rusty the mutt who ran away incessantly, and Oreo the English Springer who really needed to live in the country, and Missy the sweet Shih Tzu who was such a foundation part of our family that we had to get two to replace her, the adorable Moka and Kayla (who you’ve seen pop up around here before):

and Ryan has this amazing, bumbling, energetic, love-the-heck out of you Bernese Quinn/Quinners/Quinny, who i affectionately refer to as “my niece” and he equally-affectionately calls “the cow.”

from our snow romp last weekend.

i love everything about Quinners — except that i can’t go within 10 feet of her without her peeing everywhere. she’s frenetically obsessed with me and just can’t control herself, no matter how many times a day she sees me, so petting her is an issue. thank God i don’t have that effect on boys.

all this to say, i desperately wish i had the space and time to have a dog in NYC, because i am crushing on this breed sooooo harddddd:

a Bernedoodle: Bernese-Poodle mix. i cannot. can you? that face. must.own.one.day.

3. reading. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald. i’m a big Fitzgerald fan and love how he writes and brings his characters to life. this is the third of his books i’ve read (Gatsby and Tender is the Night), and to me, it surfaces the themes of the intricacies of love and intimacy, the institution of marriage, and the all-imposing question of, “Exactly what does one do with oneself?”ahhh, there it is. the ever-imposing philosophical question of life.

it’s set in NYC in the 1920s, the wondrous Jazz Age, detailing the life of the uber-chic do-nothing-with-themselves socialite crowd, and seems to me to be a bit of a mockery of the idleness of such a life. i’m enjoying it, both his writing and the frivolity of his characters, which he fleshes out with such great complexity it makes me insanely envious. i so enjoy reading truly magnificent writers, whose prose springs off the page and makes you question everything you ever thought you knew about good writing. i’m such a fan, Fitz.

4. faith.

5. favorite thing for the weekend: dancing. can’t get enough. i have two salsa events on tap for tonight: one from 5-9pm, the Capital Region Salsa Social, and the second from 9-?? potentially 8-9 hours of dancing…bliss.