Five Things: A Day in My Life

Happy Friday! It's time for the Friday Five linkup with Courtney at Eat Pray Run DC, Mar at Mar On The Run, and Cynthia at You Signed Up For What! I love day-in-the-life posts so was excited to see this as today’s Friday Five theme!

Here are five things that show a bit of my daily life. I used this past Tuesday as the example.

1. Morning workout. My alarm goes off at 4:40 a.m., and after turning it off I check the weather on my phone. After some kitty cuddling, I’m out of bed by about 4:50. I run Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings and do strength or yoga on Monday and Friday. This day is an easy run day. I usually put out a few different run outfits the night before to account for different weather. On Tuesday, it was a balmy 39 degrees, so I chose the lighter outfit. After I’m dressed I eat half a banana, drink a bunch of water and some fruit juice, do some dynamic stretches, and I’m out the door by about 5:20. I live close to the river trail, so I walk down to the trail and am running just before 5:30. Tuesday was the warmest day all year, and I later labeled it on Daily Mile as “best run ever.” I may have been exaggerating, but I’ve become so used to wearing all my layers that it was an amazing feeling to be out and running in much less (No hat! No heavy socks! No neck warmer! No jacket! No fleece-lined tights! No mittens over my gloves!) with no snow or ice on the ground. I felt like I was on a high all through the five-mile route across three bridges for a total of six bridge climbs, around PNC Park stadium and Heinz Field, and back. Because you run across five bridges in the Pittsburgh Half Marathon, I try to run on the bridges on most of my runs. I’m back at my house by about 6:40 and do about five minutes of stretching and eat my other half a banana before I get in the shower and get ready for work.
Pretty excited to be running in regular tights and just
a top with a tank underneath.

2. Dog walk 1. After I’ve eaten breakfast (on this day an Einstein’s 9-grain bagel, peanut butter, and almond milk), I get Django up (he loves to sleep in and often doesn’t want to get up) and we go for our morning walk. When it’s nice, we’re usually out for 30-45 minutes. When it was really bad this past winter, our walks were as short as 10 minutes. While we do have a small, fenced backyard, we use it so much in the summer that we don’t want him doing his business in it, so he goes on walks to do his business instead of using our yard. Tuesday was the first day all year I didn’t have to put his coat on him, and it was so nice to not have to dodge snow and ice. We just walked around my neighborhood for about 30 minutes, but on some days I take him down to the trail. There was a ton of garbage on the street that had been encased in ice for months, so he was really bad with trying to sniff all the garbage. His one bad habit is that he scavenges and eats garbage from the street, so I always have to be alert and keep putting him in a heel position beside me. Otherwise, he’s so fast that he will lunge forward and grab a chicken bone from the street and scarf it down before I even know what happened. Tuesday he did pee on a dead crow before I knew what he was doing (I felt really bad since that’s disrespectful), but otherwise he was a good boy. When we get back to the house I feed him and all the cats (my three and then my feral cats outside), grab my stuff, and leave for work.

I forgot to take new pics Tuesday, but this is one of my favorites of Django.

3. Work. I live in the Northside and work in Oakland, and it takes me 10 minutes to drive there. I park 10 minutes away from my office and then walk from my parking spot to the office. I work from home one day a week, but on Tuesday I go into the office. I’m the project manager for a web group, and we manage external and internal websites. In a nutshell, I’m responsible for doing all the coordination to keep our projects moving forward. I’m currently managing four projects, and all are in different phases. Some need a lot of daily coordination, and others don't need much. I'm usually in a lot of meetings at the beginning of the week, and on Tuesday I was in meetings for about half of the day. Even when I’m not in meetings, I spend a lot of time talking to my team to find out what’s going on that day and to talk through any issues and tasks that need to happen. Of course, I plan the projects in advance, but things change daily so I always need to be on top of what's going on. On Tuesday I brought my lunch and ate it at my desk while reading and commenting on blogs for about 15 minutes. Lunch was a whole-wheat wrap filled with smashed white beans, avocado, vegan mayo I made from tofu, and spinach; a sliced and salted bell pepper; and some sliced and salted Campari tomatoes. I also have fruit as a morning snack and fruit and nuts as an afternoon snack, and I drink four to five cups of tea during the day (usually mint tea, which helps with digestion of all the beans and veggies). I usually take at least a 10-minute walk at lunch to get out of the office for a bit, but it was raining so I just stayed in. I leave work shortly after 4 p.m. and am home by 4:30.

4. Dog walk 2. When it’s nice out, I usually take Django on a longer walk after work, either down to the trail or over in the park near our house. This whole year the weather has been so bad that the after-work walks have been just 10-15 minute potty walks. On Tuesday it was raining, but not too bad. Django has a bright yellow raincoat (he looks like the Gorton’s fisherman!), so I put his coat on and we go for a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. When we get back, I give him a good-boy treat and then go upstairs to change. But first, I hide. When he’s done with his treat, Django will run upstairs to look for me. If he doesn’t find me first, I jump out from where I’m hiding and yell “Boo!” He gets so excited! He starts running around in circles then will grab his toy and start throwing it around. He loves playing hide and seek! Greyhounds are low-energy dogs that spend most of their time sleeping but have short bursts of energy, so usually he is so tired from being silly and playing for a few minutes that he zonks out and sleeps until my husband comes home about an hour later.
This is not Django but a model for Gini's Greyhound Fashions,
where I got Django's raincoat.

5. Evening workout and blogging. With the dog sleeping, I feed the cats (my husband feeds the dog when he gets home) and then make my dinner. My husband will eat later when he gets home. We make our own meals since I'm vegan and he's an omnivore, though he will sometimes have something I've cooked as a side dish. We eat separately because I'm too hungry to wait for him to get home. It works for us. Tuesday's dinner was a mixed green salad with pear-cranberry balsamic vinegar and olive oil, baked sweet potato fries, and the same wrap I had for lunch (I love it!). I had some vegan Trader Joe's chocolate chips and mint tea for dessert. Later in the evening, I had a handful of pretzels as a snack. On some days of the week I do an evening workout, either strength or yoga, but not Tuesday. Instead, I wrote up a blog post and scheduled it to publish Wednesday morning, read and commented on other blogs, and did some menu planning for this weekend. While I did that my husband took the dog for another walk. Then we watched an episode of House of Cards on Netflix, me with two cats on my lap. We just started watching it and are at the start of the second season. At 9 p.m. I head upstairs, lay out my running outfit for the next day, figure out what I'm going to wear for work, pack my work bag, and am in bed by 9:30 and asleep about 10 seconds after my head hits the pillow.

That's a pretty typical day in my life. Pretty exciting, huh?  I'm looking forward to reading others' posts!

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