11th Annual Alan C Sundberg, Jr. Memorial 5k Run

A beautiful morning for a run at Maclay Gardens. Everything felt pretty good and I actually had enough in me for a strong finish. I DID hold back a little during the race (but also felt a little rough), but was pretty happy with my time. Kinda nice to get back into running again. Oh, AND there were free melanoma screenings so I got checked out! This was also my first race running completely by my lonesome, which was a little odd. I like my running buddies! :-)

31:03

Weekend in Puerto Rico

This past weekend MC and I ventured to Puerto Rico for her friend Sasha's wedding. It was a lot of fun, but definitely a short, packed trip. I brought my nice camera, but we ended up being all over the place so much I only used my snapshot because I didn't feel like lugging the big one around. Hopefully next trip I will be better about the good pics. I was also really bad with respect to one of my favorite hobbies, writing postcards!!! We were so crazy busy I totally forgot to buy and send postcards. So for any of you postcard recipients out there, I apologize. I'll try to be better about that in the future :-) Anyhoo...

The weekend essentially began on thursday. We were planning on heading to Orlando (since our flight was leaving from there bright and early), but weren't really in that big of a hurry to get there. So I believe we rolled out around 7, putting us in Orlando around 11. We crashed at the Hampton Inn (of course!) and prepared for a long long friday.

We got up on friday (after about 5 hours of sleep) and trucked it on over to the airport. We were flying Jet Blue and I must say I was pretty impressed! We didn't have to pay to check a bag, everything was on time, and we even had a personal tv screen back in coach! We got to San Juan around midday and caught the shuttle over to Enterprise where we got to wait in line for a while, then got to try to be convinced that I really needed to pay 40 extra dollars a day for rental car insurance (didn't he notice we were renting the cheapest vehicle they offer?!). Then the true adventure began: driving in Puerto Rico.

Not only are the drivers crazy (e.g. neurological disorders that prevent them from not changing "lanes" sporadically at least once every 30 seconds), but the city planner must have thrown some spaghetti on a piece of paper and called it a road plan. I haven't checked the laws, but I'm pretty sure that there is something in the books about how no stretch of road can exceed 500 meters without forking. This caused us to get loss at about a rate of 80%. I was impressed. And I put "lanes" in quotes earlier because, while there is a semblance of a lane designator painted on many of the roads, it is apparently painted in a color that no Puerto Rican has the ability to see. I've driven in Boston, parts of New York City, and tons of other places, and this took spot #1 for high intensity driving.

So we finally make it to the hotel, which is very nice and fancy. The whole lobby pretty much becomes a club after about 7pm! We checked in to one of the "garden rooms." (i.e. you can only see trees)Since we had been traveling, we didn't get much to eat so one of the first places we hit was an italian place in our hotel that had awesome pizza, crazy expensive prices, one of the most out-of-it servers I have had in a long time, and of course local beer!After eating we met up with MC's friends Damion and Sarah, and Damion's girlfriend Kadian to head over to Old San Juan for some site-seeing. We grabbed a bite and a few drinks, then wandered around and saw the Christopher Columbus statue. We even got a group picture with (most of) it!From there we spied Christopher Columbus's castle and decided to check it out.Unfortunately you had to pay to actually get inside and check it out, but MC used the snazzy map to help figure out where, exactly, in Old San Juan we were.I had seen some coastline on the way in, so we proceeded past the castle in the hopes of catching a glimpse. On the way we saw a very important building. At least I think it was important. It looked fancy and there were a group of like 6 police officers standing outside the door. Yeah, so here it is.It didn't take us too long before we got to see some water. Damion, and the rest of us, stopped for a little while to soak in the scene.We trekked back to the car and made it back just in time for Sarah to leave for the rehearsal. We took it easy in the hotel briefly, then got ready and hopped back in the car to head to the rehearsal dinner. Of course, we got lost, but in getting lost found a super duper nice cabbie who actually led us almost all the way to the restaurant. Nice to know there are still some awesome people in the world. The rehearsal dinner was a lot of fun, the food was great, and the couple definitely looked happy!But, of course, who couldn't be happy when you have Mariachi!!!
And with Mariachi comes lots and lots of dancing (including Sasha's dad who was awesome)Luckily we had someone to follow home (though you can imagine how easy it is to follow someone in a place where driving is a feat in its own right!) and we promptly crashed after a very long day.

Saturday we took our time getting up, then met up with Damion and Kadian for a breakfast buffet at the resort overlooking some of the pools that were around the propertyMC was looking beautiful, as always, and luckily she couldn't see the hoard of birds waiting behind her watching for people to walk away from their tables so they could swoop in for scraps.After breakfast we decided to hit the beach, even though there WAS a snazzy bar right in the pool!We didn't have too long to spend out there, which is probably good because us gringos can't handle too much sun, but it was very nice and relaxing to be by the ocean.Even when days are busy and jam packed, some of us still know how to relax ;-)And then the outside fun was over and it was time to head back to the room to begin preparing for the wedding!The wedding was at 3, so we went downstair at around 2:15 to catch the shuttle. And what does it say about Puerto Rico that even the shuttle driver got lost!! Luckily that gave us plenty of time to take pictures of our purtified selves.We ended up getting there a little after three and were worried we were missing or holding up the wedding. Luckily none of the bridal party was there either! So we piled into the church and waited for everyone to arrive. A bunch of different delays occurred, but that gave us plenty of time to check out the venue and play with the panorama mode on my camera.Then the ceremony got rolling! Here's the beautiful bride being escorted down the aisle. I will admit I got a little scared about how long this wedding might be when the bride and groom pulled up seats...but luckily it really wasn't too long (for a catholic wedding). :-) And I present to you the newly wed couple!So we piled back in the shuttle and this time he knew where to take us and we headed to an awesome little place for the reception. Since I have a general dislike for dressing up, we always have to document whenever it happens. :-)Even though Damion likes to dress up, we still had to get a nice picture of him and Kadian as well.It was really fun to meet more of MC's friends and hear them talk about being lawyers, the ol' debate team, and how M.U.N. is F.U.N.After cocktail hour, the reception began and the bride and groom had the best first dance medley that I have been fortunate to witness. If only I had been able to get it on video!I had a lot of fun dancing, enjoying good food and good rum, and good company as well. I only wish I had recharged my camera the night before so I could have gotten more pictures! So after the reception was winding down, we hopped back in the shuttle to head back to the hotel. I think we ended up crashing at around 1 am, which is all fine and dandy unless you have to leave the hotel by 5am. Not cool.

So after about 3 hours of sleep, we passed plenty of party go'ers winding down their nights, checked out of the hotel, and hopped back in the good ol' rental car. Luckily there aren't many people out at 5 am, but of course we managed to get a little lost yet again. We finally make it and have to wait for the shuttle and end up getting to the airport with less than 30 minutes until our flight was supposed to leave. Talk about cutting it a little too close for comfort! Luckily we made it on just fine and everything went smoothly getting us back to Orlando. Good thing about flying out of Orlando: cheaper airfare. Bad thing: having to drive almost 4 hours after you get off the plane. It wasn't too bad of a drive, but I was definitely ready to get back home. Needless to say we mostly took it easy for the rest of the afternoon and I thoroughly enjoyed no longer having to navigate the streets of San Juan (among the other places we managed to accidentally visit). All-in-all it was a great trip, and could only have been made better by having more time to enjoy the place and hang out more with MC's crew. And to conclude, a few notes/points of interest from the trip.

• This was my first time to Puerto Rico
• cuba libre = rum and coke
  
• first time I have seen the bride and groom sit during a wedding
  
• mucho gusto = nice to meet you
  
• first time I have seen a wedding ceremony fade into a picture taking session because the church wouldn't let them re-enter for pictures if they left during the recessional
  
• felicidades = congratulations
  

Yeah, I'm not really good at updating this...

unless it is posting random pictures or one of the many postcards we received from Spain ;-) Hopefully I will start getting a little bit better, but I've learned not to make any promises. MC and I were actually talking about it this past weekend and we are going to shoot for making at least one post per week (probably excluding the random pics or postcards). I think that is a pretty good goal. Even if there isn't much exciting to talk about in my life, I'm sure I can find something to at least throw out a little blurb about. We shall see.

So anyhoo, I've probably forgotten most of things that have happened in the past several weeks so I'm just going to do a pretty sparse recap. One of the notable things was the meal we had for Top Chef night this past week. I made Cranberry Almond Chicken with Beet Spinach Salad. Both were recipes from Publix and the chicken was frickin' awesome! It definitely rivaled the cumin chicken with tomatillo sauce that I had mentioned before. Definitely a recipe that I will be making again. Pretty simple and easy too!!
I am sure that there have been plenty of other events going on, but they are escaping me right now, though, as you may have seen in one of the pictures I posted, I finally got my new office machine so I am still hard at work getting that all set up. I can't wait until it is all configured like I need and I can really get kickin' on some research!

So anyhoo, this past weekend was the Food and Wine festival in Orlando. MC, Lynn and Julia had all signed up for the 10k run associated with it even though Lynn and MC had been dealing with some injuries as of late. So Brian, Matt and I joined the womenfolk and made a fun weekend of it! MC and I left early Friday afternoon and met up with some old friends of hers for dinner. There were 4 kids running around and they were a hoot. Extremely entertaining and full of boundless energy! Dinner was wonderful and it was cool to just hang out, chitchat, and watch the kids run around. After dinner we met up with the crew at the hotel and crashed.

Saturday we got up and caught the shuttle over to Epcot. After taking care of a little "ticket misplacement," we entered Epcot and were ready to enjoy the day!
We met up with the crew at a small pub (yes, we started our day at a pub) and then moseyed on towards Paris.Enjoyed some good food there then kept on truckin'! Snapped a pic of the girls while Matt and Brian stopped at a non-denominational beer stand.then we moseyed on over to Japan where we saw...

pagodas,	crazy Japanese candy,
good luck kitty cats (which Julia got one for each of us),	and koi ponds.

We were doing a lot of walking and passed a lot of scenery so I had to try out some panoramas!Most of the afternoon was spent walking between countries and then taking small rest breaks to regroup and continue consuming whatever we recently purchased (as Brian and Julia demonstrate)We did decide to try out one ride. Not exactly sure what the name was, but it involved a boat and I think we had more fun waiting in line than we actually did once we got on the ride.Though a boat ride through the dark did frighten some of us!I was able to snap a couple of pics on the ride, but most didn't come out since I got reprimanded right after this one for using a flash.We bolted through the movie portion of the ride and headed over to Mexico for cervesas and margaritas. Some of the local fauna enjoyed watching us eat, drink, spill drinks, and be merry.Even Canada was represented, though last time I was there I really don't remember seeing quite so many totem poles.While it is a simple picture, I think it actually sums up a majority of the afternoon quite nicely :-)We were ready to wind it down a little bit and passed a pretty sunset on the way to the ESPN restaurant for dinner.We initially thought we would stay there until the Florida game, but after dinner we were all winding down pretty fast after a long day and decided to pack it on back to the hotel. Most of us ended up being asleep by about 9, which is the earliest MC and I have gone to bed in probably years.

The girls got up ridiculously early to head over to the race, while the boys decided to sleep in and watch my new favorite show, Plaza Sesamo. I think my Spanish would be coming along even better if I could watch Sesame Street in Spanish every day! :-) The girls enjoyed their 10k (as much as one can I guess), even though it was already pretty warm. They also got some pretty snazzy medals in the process!While the girls were getting showered up and packed to head home, Matt and I decided to check out the hotel video arcade. The game selection was in need of improving, but we still had a lot of fun, even if some of the games weren't really made for full-sized people.After the arcade we packed up and headed to Cracker Barrel for brunch then hit the road back to Tally. It was a pretty busy weekend, but I think we all had a lot of fun! Now I'm back in the office trying to be productive (at least kind of) before heading back out of town this weekend. Hopefully San Juan will provide enough fodder to spurn me to keep up with my proposed once-a-week posting schedule. :-)

Sender: Lauren

Sender: Dad

Sender: Lauren

Sender: Dad and Lauren

Sender: Lauren