short month = short stories

you might have noticed.........February is the shortest month of the year.

you might have noticed..........I like to read books. (does that link work??)

well........I have this friend who likes to send me various lists of books to read. actually, I have several friends who send me lists of books to read. based on these lists, I currently have a list of 79 books to read........in addition to the authors I read already and the books I have somehow managed to find all on my own.

one recent list was Huffington Post: These Amazing Classic Books Are So Short You Have No Excuse Not To Read Them. yes, that is seriously the title! and what a challenge! but to really make it a challenge.......I decided I needed to read them all during.......yep, you guessed it.......the shortest month of the year!!

admittedly there are only 23 books on the list and 28 days in the month so there is a bit of cushion for me. which is good since I currently have 10 full sized books and 2 ebooks checked out to read in addition to those 23 oh-so-short books.

why have I mentioned all this to you? well.......in case you wanted to play along of course!!!

if you look at the photo above, I have tracked down all 23 books. (well, at least for those of you who live in Sacramento County and have a library card!) Passing can be requested through an interlibrary request. it is the one physical book I am contemplating purchasing and donating after I read it. the library e-books are available through Overdrive, a service to which most library systems subscribe. the ones that are grayed out I was able to download for free on either my Nook or Kindle app (hint! hint!). I have read both The Great Gatsby and A Christmas Carol before......and recently........so I will be skipping those. but I believe I was able to find both of them for free as well. and, thanks to a randomly odd education, we are in possession of Frankenstein and The Stranger. that means I only need to worry about getting half of the books I need from the library.

my plan of attack is to request the books I don't own first (and before this blog post goes live). that way I can read ones I own while the others are on their way. worst case, I will buy whatever I can't get in time.

do you think I can do it?  200 pages per day shouldn't be too difficult.....except on Super Bowl Sunday, the day of the Davis Stampede Half Marathon, the two days I am meeting friends to scrapbook.......oh dear!! maybe it will rain and I can get some serious training done......on a treadmill......while I read?

on your mark.........

get set..........

READ!!!!

let me know if you are going to get some short reading done in February. I'd love to chat books with you!

#DineDowntown Southern Style: The Porch

Did you resolve to eat out less often? Eat healthier? Blah, blah, blah........well you can start on January 18th! Why? Well, because it is the most wonderful time of the year! Not only is it MY birthday but it is also Dine Downtown Week! 10 days of awesomeness where several downtown Sacramento restaurants offer special $31 dollar menus to tempt you out into the cold. (the price went up a dollar this year for a good reason and a good cause: California Food Literacy so you can feel GOOD about going out to eat!)

This year I started my celebrating at The Porch Restaurant and Bar, a beautiful appropriately stylish but laid back Southern restaurant filled with mock windows giving the room an airy feel. Please note: the menu originally posted on the Dine Downtown site was wrong, though may have been updated since.

 

Because hubby and I were dining together, we were able to try almost every dish on the special menu. We did not try the Vegetable Pasta Plate but a gentleman at a nearby table did and seemed to be quite happy with his choice. From my vantage point, I would have been pleased and satisfied with the offering.

So, confession time.......I do not like beets.  Apparently I really liked them as a small child and must have eaten my share then because I tend to avoid them now. Well, The Porch's Fried Beet Salad is proof that everything is better deep fried! Add some Cara Cara oranges, Sierra Nevada Chevre, blueberries, and a citrus vinaigrette and you have a hit, even for beet unenthusiasts! The sweet soft cheese and vinaigrette meld together to make a wonderful sauce.

The Pork Belly Taco offered nice big juicy pieces of pork belly nestled on a little lettuce and tucked in with some fresh avocado and creme fraiche. I thought the crisping of the tortilla might make it a bit difficult to fold and eat, but the crispness was just enough to offer a contrast to the rich creaminess of the avocado and pork belly. And if you happen to have a little bit of tortilla leftover and dredged it through some of that cheesy citrus vinaigrette like my husband did, no one would blame you.........they'd probably be jealous!

For his entree, Hubby had the Compart Duroc Pork Tenderloin. See those little cubes at the bottom of the plate? They are bits of apple from the pecan, apple, onion relish. Pretty simply made with some black and red pepper but all together it becomes a sweet and wonderful accompaniment to the pork. Even with the fruit and the molasses, the dish wasn't sweet like I expected. Jeff said the bacon was his favorite part. It was nice and meaty and he could taste the applewood. Please note: I am not commenting on it......he didn't share! (I did get a bite of the pork.......but I think he saved the bacon for himself!)

Not getting to taste Jeff's bacon wasn't a problem since I had this big ol' plate of flaky buttermilk fried catfish. Oh my gracious The Porch does breading right! The fish meat was thick and juicy and the coating was flaky and crispy and seasoned perfectly! The andouille sausage was nice, but I could have skipped it........see how much catfish I have? But the most surprising part of the meal was the pimiento cheese grits. I took a bite. I took a second bite. Instantly an image of that goofy jar of Kraft cheese spread came to mind.......along with someone scraping every bit out of the jar to swirl into some grits. Yeah, that isn't what they do. Instead, The Porch makes their own pimiento cheese and oh is it worth it! A wonderful creamy taste with a bit of pimiento tang. Heaven!! Add in the pickled corn salsa and it could be a meal on its own.

For dessert, Hubby had the Wildflower Honey Creme Brulee.I thought it was a bit on the small side, but it was more than enough creamy honey goodness to satisfy him. The cream and berries went well to lighten up what could have easily become a heavy dish and provided a sweet ending to his meal.

That left the Red Velvet Float to me. I had never heard of Big Red before but liked the idea of a float......who doesn't? Well, Big Red is a cherry flavored cream soda that I was told is very popular in the South. Together with the buttermilk ice cream, it was a delicious treat. I was too full from the catfish to finish my dessert, but can see daydreaming about this float when the temperature breaks through 100F.

Now, while I don't think any combination of options of the Dine Downtown menu from The Porch will fail to leave you full and happy, if somehow you think you might have a smidge of room available, I would suggest you add an order of their Skillet Cornbread to your meal. Great cornbread and mouth watering homemade jam and jalapeno honey butter........or maybe get it the next time you go back? Because, if you go during Dine Downtown, you will probably go back. And isn't that the best part of the celebration.......to find new tasty places to eat?

Disclosure: Our meal was provided in exchange for this review and blog post. But, you know me......I tell it like it is! 

step two.......aka: another post for another day

a few days ago I mentioned having already made strides towards my single solitary goal for 2014 of completing a triathlon.

in 2013, I completed a total of 5 half marathons. wow! crazy considering I was pushing it walking 2 miles at a time this time last year. I am not at the speed I would like to be at yet but improved my half pace from 16 minutes to a 13:18 pace at the Nike Women's Half Marathon in San Francisco........even with all those awesome hills! I guess you could call that the first step towards completing a triathlon? first of three steps?

well........along comes January 4, 2014. and well, step number 2 is completed! (though I guess telling you that is like reading the last page of a book, isn't it?!?!?!)

but, along with a bunch of friends (another gift from the merry months of 2013) at TBF, we had some adventures Saturday morning!! see my beautiful friends?? see our beautiful day glow name stickers that say we are allowed in the transition area.....how cool!!!!

as hubby wasn't participating, he wasn't allowed into the transition area. (neener neener neener!) course, then he got roped into volunteering. his job was to make sure a bunch of us didn't crash into each other! (another spoiler: he was successful!) but I am getting off point now.......

anyway, my Saturday excursion into the unseasonably warm weather involved a 4 mile run broken in half by a 6.5 mile bike ride. the running I wasn't much worried about. even with the lessened focus on training in the past few weeks (like 8 of them)......I knew I could survive that. heck, I could walk if I needed to. the biking and transition between the two parts was the big question. afterall.....my beautiful bike, now christened (with multiple mimosas) Broderick, has less than 100 miles on it. I am still get confused shifting.......and oh my gosh trying to get a drink while riding is a scary scary thing......and this is all without the fact that I am in the middle of a race with a bunch of other riders around me who may or may not be more proficient than me.

I still have lots to learn.......I can't tell you how I did for the running versus the biking parts because while I have managed to figure out how to drink while riding without killing myself or anyone else........I am still working on learning my Garmin!

but I did it! see! proof!!! (a friend took this photo........while yelling at me to drink more!) and, I did it all in what I figured was the least possible amount of time I thought it could possibly take me........1 hour and 30 minutes! dang! for me that was awesome!

anyway, now I have completed a duathlon: running and biking! (yeah me!) 2 down, 1 to go........though I am not sure how in the world I am going to add swimming to the mix. good thing I have 51 weeks left of the year to figure it out!

2014 - the year without resolution

as my faithful readers know (all 7 of them lol!), 2013 was the Year of 24 filled with goals for weight loss, exercise, Scrapbooking, and blogging. my goal was to focus myself on balance and doing what I needed/wanted to do. and yes, I pretty much surpassed all my goals.

for 2014 I do not have a laundry list of things to accomplish before I will consider the year a success. no magic number I want to see on my scale. no number of books I need to read. nada. nothing. zilch.

I have one single solitary THING that I want to be able to say I have done before we start having to correct our check dates to 2015 (if anyone is still writing checks)...........

I am going to complete a triathlon!!! (duh dun duuuuuu!)

now we aren't talking IronMan here or anything.....more like what are called sprint triathlons like 0.5 mile swim, 20 mile bike, 4 mile run. nothing close to 140.6 miles of exertion thankyouverymuch!! and no, it just isn't just a matter of time. it is more a matter of not having the time!

but, that is pretty much it for 2014. my guess if I work diligently towards not making a fool of myself in a triathlon then I will be eating healthy and exercising regularly. right?? so without some scale or calorie obsessing, I should be in darn good shape by working towards that tri goal.

and........since the year has already started, I will tell you that I have made an awesome step toward my goal. but, that is a post for another day!

My Year of 24.....cutting to the chase!

so other than my procrastinated Christmas letter, I haven’t updated this blog since The Great Leaf Blowing Rant of August 27^th. and I haven’t acknowledged anything about my Year of 24 since the end of July (whose post was 12 days late). but you kind readers know me……you know I get somewhat obsessed about something and it kinda takes over my life……and therefore my time!

this is not going to be one of those insanely long “let’s tell them what they’ve missed posts”………just know that it was a lot and most of it starts off with “I woke up way to early and put on my running shoes.” perhaps during the bleak days of January I can tell you about all the fun you have missed!

instead, this will be an overall Year of 24 review so we can all see where I succeeded and where I failed……cuz wasn’t that the purpose of the whole thing? and, as a reminder…….somewhere along the way I realized that some of my goals changed.

24 scrapbook layouts

when I stopped counting in July, I was at 23 layouts for the year. I know that since then I haven’t attended any crops but I do know that I have 2 layouts on my table that are just waiting for journaling. so…….pretty darn close on this one! I’m going to call it good.

scrapbook purchasing versus usage was a subset of the layout count. I wanted to focus on using what I have and not buying more stuff. thankfully as I started focusing on other interests, I was smart enough to stop buying a bunch of crafty things. I picked up a few things for the card kit swap I was in but that is about it. unfortunately, I also stopped doing a lot of crafty stuff. so I am not sure I gained anything here.

24 cards for Operation Write Home

this one was aced pretty quickly in the year. by July, I had completed 63 cards and have continued to make a minimum of 3 cards per month for them. CHECK!

24 pounds lost

how bad is it that I stopped paying attention to this sometime around September? I still watched was I was eating and made sure to exercise but it seems to be more how I feel and look now…..and how well my body can handle everything I am throwing at it.

that being said……..you think I missed this one and am justifying it?!?!? oh, no! 32 pounds lost and never to be found again my friends! I expect another 10-15 to disappear during 2014 as I work towards not being the last person to finish the triathlons I have signed myself up for. (yes.......you read that right!)

24 Dolly walks

I know I was a bad puppy parent. Dolly did not get 24 walks from me per month. I did get the boys to step up and help out more by the end of the year than at the beginning so that alleviates some of my guilt. and since the secondary purpose of this goal was to get ME out for 24 walks per month, I think we can call it good, right?!?!?  

according to Endomondo, when I wrote this around the middle of December, Dolly and I together took 247 walks/runs and went 703 miles in 2013. I never used the program unless she was with me. our average distance was about 3 miles. not shabby!

I will also tell you here……..in case you haven’t actually spoken with me in real life because I have been telling just about everyone…….Dolly completed a half marathon in August! my dog rocks! she was a little pooped that afternoon, but she was a trooper through the entire run……often telling me in her adorable way that I was going to slow and to pick up the pace! (Dolly and I had just finished a 10K......she isn't even winded!)

24 blog posts

shocking…….not including THIS post, I had 32 posts in 2013! imagine what would have happened if I had continued to post on a regular basis?!?!? (bad blogger! bad bad blogger!)

if you remember……ha!.........I didn’t put a number on the books read. in fact, I commented that perhaps I needed to lay off the books a bit to accomplish the other goals I had set for myself. but since most of my book reading takes place on the train to and from work or at lunch, it wasn’t really impacted by my slight obsession with running. therefore it should come as no surprise that I read 66 books in 2013. and dang there were some good ones!! maybe I should do a review of a few sometime during those bleak days of January?!?!?

thanks for going along for the ride (did I tell you I even did a 30 mile bike ride in 2013??? probably should talk about that too, huh??). please feel free to harass me if you don’t hear from me or my blog in a timely manner during 2014. I’ve already started color coding my calendar to keep track of things so you know it is gonna be an adventure!

The Christmas Letter

so……..Christmas cards went out on Wednesday. If you didn’t get one it is either because we don’t have your snail mail address or you are the card whose address label printed funny and Jeff put aside to show me and now we don’t know where it is!

if so, this is what it looks like:

 

(don't mind that little yellow triangle in the middle of the photo.....that is the photo place trying to tell me the photo's resolution is crummy! it looks just fine people......chill out!)

here is a brief tour of what each photo is of……….more specifically than “here’s Ryan and David and Dolly”……..which really is all that one in the center is! above that is the photo of Jeff and I (with Dolly) at the Running with the Bears half marathon. you might remember reading about it HERE?!?!? this photo was post race. yes, we all three survived! to the right of that is boys in mud. no shocker except it was after a 5K obstacle race and the boys are a bit older than your average mud playing kiddo. in the bottom right is a photo taken at our 20^th anniversary dinner at a super swanky restaurant in town (The Kitchen......duh!). unbeknownst to us, or her, a friend who is an awesome professional photographer was on assignment there that night. not only did it provide for some fun conversation, but also resulted in a really nice photo of us! I guess once every 20 years?!?!? and last but not least, a family shot from the Red Shoe Crawl. who can resist an afternoon of walking around eating scrumptious tidbits? I might have mentioned it HERE.

as you can tell from the photos, 2013 was a pretty spectacular year for us Bergs. we ate good food, we went to fun events, and a few of us even got older (not me).  Ryan would like you to know he got his driver’s license……but I am pretty sure you heard me scream. Jeff has gotten more interested in bike riding and David has been dipping his toe into the world of running. sssshhh........the word “marathon” has even crossed his lips! as for me, I went from taking Dolly for 2 mile walks to completing 5 half marathons in 2013 and starting to prepare for a couple triathlons in 2014……all something I would have laughed at you about a year ago!

 

with all that and a kid graduating from high school, 2014 is looking pretty crazy too! (starting with a Polar Plunge on New Year's Day........at least what passes for one in California!) I hope 2014 brings you some equally fun adventures!  

p.s. because I KNOW you miss it SO MUCH.....I will be doing a Year of 24 wrap up.......more like clean up......before year end. sheesh! what a slacker, huh??

Can we please outlaw leaf blowers?

yes, I am serious!! I don't get them at all. basically a person stands there wasting gas, polluting the air, while blowing leaves/garbage/whatever from one spot to another and usually irritating everyone within 25 feet with dust and debris......you know, like from a business to the public street......where it will get blown back to the business by the passing cars so you can go blow it back out again the next day. perhaps it is some warped version of job security?? yeah, I don't think so either.

I have no problem with blowing debris into piles and then disposing of the pile (into a green waste container preferably). it is the whole blowing it from one spot to another that kills me.

so I Googled the idea of making it illegal. wow! there are sure some blowhards out there on the subject! everything from people who think the whole thing is idiotic to a guy who blames Obama (because multiple people blowing leaves back and forth between sites creates jobs.....seriously! I'd link but don't want to give the guy anymore traffic) to people who say that it is the crazy Californians who are freaky about the environment and are all whack jobs.

so it comes down to this: if you utilize a leaf blower to actually DO something productive, fine, go for it! I'd rather you use a rake.....you probably could use the exercise and think what you could spend the money you wasted on the blower and gas buying/doing/eating/whatever.  if you are just blowing things from one place to another, STOP! get yourself a freakin' rake and pick the stuff up for crying out loud!