Back in May, Eric and I ventured to Raleigh to wander through an arts festival and experience the giant hand-sewn plastic tent that is Mirazozo. Photos below.

Eric and I have been diligently booking flights to all sorts of places after a summer of relative calm. Can you believe that we’ve stayed in NC for a solid two months? Crazy! :)

I’ve updated the sidebar with our 2010 destinations; we are looking forward to seeing family and friends in Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle before taking off on our 2nd Annual Thanksgiving in Europe trip. Lots of posts coming up this fall, so stay tuned.

Eric’s birthday was on Saturday, so I was happy to take my mind off the race the next day by hosting a paella party in his honor the night before. Everyone in the house was up by 6:15 on Sunday and we headed to Raleigh to get my bike and transition station set up before the 8am race start.

My swim time had me starting at 8:47am, so I knew there would be some waiting involved but only about 200 people made it into the pool before thunder halted the swim portion. Those who started the swim were allowed to finish and, ultimately, complete the entire triathlon. However, after well over an hour and with the thunder (and pouring rain!) still going strong, the race officials had to scrap the swim portion and have the remaining three quarters of the field (including yours truly) do a biathlon instead.

Many people left during the wait and even more decided to skip the race altogether once they announced the change, but I paid good money to participate so I decided to tough it out.

My shoes, socks and bike helmet were absolutely soaked from sitting out in the transition area, so I spent the whole bike ride trying not to slip off the pedals and frankly, just stay on the bike. The course was hilly but not too difficult and even though I didn’t get to swim in my new trisuit, I certainly experienced riding a bike while soaked to the bone.

coming in from the nine mile bike ride

As expected, my legs were pretty tired from the bike, so it took a little effort to get them moving for the run portion. I ran the entire two miles without stopping and even had enough energy for a smile at Eric and a burst of speed at the end.

starting the second lap of the run

finishing strong! (note my muddy shoes and legs)

I have no idea what my splits were yet, but I’ll post them here once the official results are up. I’m pretty sure I fell within the range of my goal despite the conditions.

One thing I did notice: people do not accurately submit their swim times. For example, I saw several women breast-stroking at the beginning of the race, so clearly I need to drop my race time as I could have passed several of these sub-200 starters and I was seeded at #480. Next time!

Race Results: I placed  212/322 overall – 47:03 for the bike and 20:39 for the run for a total of 1:09:07 with the transition. This means I would have easily met my goal of 1:20 had the swim been possible. Success!

I spent so much time sorting and posting the photos from our trip that the blog posts have been delayed. Sorry! I plan to write about the waterfalls we hiked to as well as where we stayed. Coming soon!

This past weekend, Eric put me to work helping him weed and do general clean-up duty around the yard. He only has a small window of work time with me because once the mosquitos get bad, I am inside for the rest of the season!

On Sunday, we tackled the brick patio that had slowly been shifting due to a tree root growing where it wasn’t supposed to.

I will cause you and your guests to trip and fall. Ha! Ha!

a super-highway system of roots under the patio

Of course, the root coverage was a lot more expansive than we had originally thought so a lot of bricks had to come out. But, the bonus was finding a ton of earthworms and transferring them to my raised bed. Another bonus was that we could do all the work in the shade during this time of year.

hooray for hatchets and other sharp garden tools

Eric put his focus on the difficult task of fixing a sunken part of the patio near the house and one section in front of the grill while I put the main part of the patio back together. It’s not perfectly even, but it looks way better than it did and we are no longer tripping on the bricks.

smooth and (mostly) flat

A very satisfying weekend despite my snarky post title. :)

I hope everyone had a lovely Easter weekend… we certainly enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather around these parts. We ate outside, went for long walks and had the windows open to freshen up the place.

Instead of a ham this year, I made beer-braised pork bbq, which not only fed everyone but the leftovers could easily sustain us for the rest of the week. Hope Eric doesn’t tire of pork sandwiches!

Most of all, we had fun visiting with my in-laws and Aunt Joy who spent the weekend with us this year. Riesling certainly enjoyed all the extra love and attention.

Riesling has taken to “killing” various toys which she then presents to me for both breakfast and dinner. I can only imagine that this is her idea of a trade. :) These antics are ramped up significantly when, say, beef stew is added to her ordinary kibble. We decided to capture it on video for your enjoyment… how can this not make you smile?

Like much of the Eastern US, we’ve been getting more than our fair share of snow this winter and although it’s fun to play in (and get snow days), we have decided enough is enough and we booked a trip to Puerto Rico next week. From snow and cold to sand and sunshine!

Most of this has melted by now, but it’s supposed to snow again tomorrow.

It’s been a crazy year in a lot of ways, so here’s a quick recap of what Eric, Riesling and I have been up to this year…

January—Eric started a new job at Syngenta Biotech and I celebrated the first anniversary of my web design business. Obama was inaugurated and it snowed in NC.

February—We enjoyed many beaches in St Maarten.

March—Visited friends in Berlin and my folks in Florida.

April—I got a new passport, drank some wine in Napa Valley and ate at the world famous French Laundry!

May—We tried three local restaurants for Triangle Restaurant Week,  got a fancy new grill, Eric gained a year and poor Riesling was attacked at the dog park.

June—Went to Seattle to see a friend get married and found some new Washington wineries.

July—Tried some Long Island wine on the 4th, partied with my sister’s friends in Chicago and got a complimentary wine tasting via Twitter.

August—I turned 33, finally got to see The Bean and my little sister got married.

September—Acquired multiple insect bites at one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, celebrated our 8 year anniversary, got completely soaked during our waterfall trip to Asheville and had a much deserved spa day.

October—Celebrated SchOctoberFest, saw U2 in concert, bought a new washing machine, had to rebook our Brussels flight after being stranded overnight in Atlanta and spent some quality time with Ryan and April in a beautiful setting.

November—Ate one of the best meals ever with family, and visited the two closest capital cities in Europe over Thanksgiving.

December—Drove 37 hours to visit family for the holidays and Riesling met her first lizard.

Happy New Year everyone!

You may have noticed the lack of photos and updates from our trip to Brussels last weekend… and that’s because we never made it.

Our flight was delayed over two hours out of Raleigh (due to Atlanta weather) and even though we were repeatedly told that all flights were delayed and our outgoing flight was probably delayed as well, we missed it. By a good 45 minutes. The Brussels flight wasn’t even listed on the monitors by the time we landed (never a good sign).

Once we missed the flight, Delta had automatically rebooked us on a flight for the next day, but that would have cut our time in Brussels to one day and it didn’t seem worth it to us. So we stood in line and waited on hold and booked a flight back to Raleigh with the idea of having the un-used miles redeposited back into our accounts.  We were still stuck in Atlanta for the night, but thankfully we have friends in town, so after a 45 minute MARTA trip we had some thai takeout and a couch to crash on.

After arriving home the next day we got back on the phone to see what, if anything, could be done about our non-refundable hotel reservations. The hotel representative in Belgium said they would make a one-time exception and offered to rebook us for a different date – when did we want to come?

Ummmm.

This prompted another 1+ hour phone call to Delta reservations to see if we could rebook the entire vacation for next March. Unbelievably, the agent was able to reuse our miles and extend our trip two more days for mid-March 2010.

Even though this trip was interrupted, we were ultimately able to salvage our miles and the hotel charges. A huge thanks to Sharisse and Theresa at Delta reservations for helping make a busted trip into a vacation for another time.