Day 8

Remember these shoes?

These are my "trophy shoes," the shoes I bought after I got into the Boston Marathon in 2016. I really didn't care for the design that year but by Gawd I got them anyway because it was that year's Boston shoes.

So today I ran in them since I decided last week that my current shoes were beyond dead and my new running shoes aren't going to arrive until the end of this week. I wear a Brooks Ghost and all the shoes available locally in my size were Gawd-awful colors. If I'm going to spend $140 on running shoes I'm going to at least get them in a livable color... which is white. Running shoes should be white. Period.

Well, I'm going back to the dead shoes tomorrow because, while these had plenty of tread left, they were stiff as a board from sitting on a shelf for 8 years.

I ran 3+ miles on the hamster track today. Going in, I thought about running 5, however once I heard my feet slapping down on the track in these shoes, I decided the wiser thing to do would be to stop at 3. Normally you can't hear my steps if I'm running correctly so a noisy run means I'm not hitting the ground like I should. I did go ahead and run one more extra lap, then I walked an additional 6 laps to get a total of 4 miles of distance in.

My 3-Things today:

1. Give some things away in my Buy Nothing group.

2. Clean out the cubby next to our fireplace.

3. Sweep and vacuum the hardwood floors.

Check, check, and check.

I love my Buy Nothing group. It makes it so much easier to give away sentimental objects that are gathering dust in my house. Today one of the things I listed were these wooden African animals that I purchased in Eldoret, Kenya in 1997 while I was doing a 2-month long medical rotation there.

I remember haggling with the vendor over the price of the giraffes. I don't remember how much I paid for these, but I do remember that I was a poor medical student who took out an extra loan to have money to travel to Kenya that Spring. I then had to carry these halfway around the world to bring them home. 

There was a woman in my group who said she was on the board of directors for a school in Uganda and would love to have these for her home. On reading those words, I knew she was the right person to give these to. It's easier to part with things this way than leaving them in a donation bin.

The cubby next to our fireplace was meant for firewood but over the years has turned into a catch-all for miscellaneous objects. Most of those objects went straight to the trash. (My husband is a gunsmith and that "target" on the fireplace is what he uses to zero in scopes. I have yet to figure out how to talk him into taping this up only when he needs to use it.) All that's left to find homes for are these FIVE computer power cords which my husband swears he'll look at tomorrow, plus this portable DVD player which will probably get donated too.

Breakfast was oatmeal with dried cranberries and pepitas.

Lunch was white chicken chili.

I was hungry before dinner so I had a hardboiled egg.

Dinner was minestrone, sourdough crackers, and a salad with spinach, roasted beets, feta cheese and balsamic vinaigrette.