Things That Are Awesome

Things that are awesome:

• The sparrow convention outside my window this morning (I think someone put out donuts).
• Three-Cup Tofu at Evergreen Chinese. Oh my goodness. I thought this would be tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch, but it turns out I had to eat all of it tonight.
  
• Homemade pitas. Along with my homemade hummus, these rocked last night's party. The impressiveness to actual difficulty ratio on these is hard to beat.
• The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. I accompanied my neighbor, who's taking her class there on Tuesday, on a stroll through the 19th century paintings this afternoon. It was great.
• My heat machine. It was seven degrees when I woke up this morning, and my heat machine hardly even noticed.
• Capilene long underwear. WOW.

Things that are halfway or probably awesome:

• My Christmas cards. The photos turned out a bit over-saturated, and I sort of got rubber cement all over the place. Still, they're going out tomorrow, and I hope you enjoy! If you haven't yet, see this post on how you can receive one.
• My new Saucony Triumph 6s. After three pairs of (essentially the same) Asics, in which I've run four marathons, I am trying some new shoes, on the advice of the Running Room consultant. These are apparently a bit less supportive, but have more cushioning and higher arches--? I have such a hard time keeping this all straight. He told me my knees align well over my ankles, and although I roll in very slightly (pronate), I also don't need to have a ton of support. This should hopefully help the foot fatigue I've been feeling recently.
• Winter running. Seriously. You wouldn't think so, but it's great once you warm up. You do have to work a little harder if it's snowy (it's like running in sand), but it's also invigorating and thrilling. Yesterday it was sunny, and although the temps were in the teens and they had let me down by not plowing the Greenway, I had a fabulous run. My favorite thing is that if I dress properly, I think I actually work up more of a sweat than I do when it's warm out.
• Treadmill running. Okay, usually this isn't my favorite thing at all, but tomorrow my neighbor is going to take me to the Y so that we can try out our new shoes (she got a pair of Nikes!) on the treadmill. If we don't like them, we can take them back to the Running Room.