Tagged!
So, according to Rachel, you can play tag with your blog. Although it's better in real life, because if you don't want to get tagged, you just run away. She tagged me with this survey, which I guess is really the same as those forwards that say you must fill out the info and pass it along to someone else and Microsoft will pay you $10,000 the next day. But since I'm already swimming in cash, I've never filled one of those out before. If you hate them, read no further. But now, since I totally respect the game of tag, I'll play. Do you feel so accomplished Rachel?

Six Things That Make Me Happy
1. Rob singing "Woman" by Wolfmother on the top of his lungs
2. Taking a long nap
3. Taco Bell tostadas
4. Mountain biking any of my favorite trails (Sundance, Moab, Sycamore, "Space Mountain", Fountainhead, ...) on a sunny day, with good friends
5. School being cancelled for snow (the silver lining to winter on the east coast)
6. Church being cancelled for snow (yep, we got a phone call yesterday morning right before leaving. We went right back to bed. It was sooo relaxing.)

Six Strange Things About Me
1. I really like soymilk (Rob thinks it's only meant for people who are lactose intolerant)
2. I am too impatient to wait for elevators, which is the main reason I take the stairs
3. I talk, walk, laugh, scream, hit, cry, and even change clothing in my sleep
4. I feel down if I've gone a couple days without exercise
5. Guess doing math for pleasure isn't exactly the norm
6. I'm afraid of fish

Okay, Dayna and Rachelle, tag. You're it.

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Blue House Girls: Kelly, Lorena, and LeannaLast weekend my old "Blue house" room mate Kelly and her husband Sunny came and stayed with us in DC. Sunny works for Delta and they get to fly all over the place for free, which probably was a big help for Kelly in recognizing that he was "the one". Anyway, besides that fact that he is a great guy for her, I'm glad she found him so that we could have a mini blue house reunion with Kelly, Leanna, and me this weekend. We checked out some DC monuments, but probably spent most of our time together eating (our favorite past time) and playing games.

The Lincoln Memorial
Here we are playing "Ticket to Ride".
Challenge: identify the person who is losing.
Valentine's Date
Rob and I celebrated Valentine's Day early this year because he had to travel to New York this week for work. (Or I should say "got" to go to NY...he loves it when he gets to travel for work.) We went to the National Portrait Gallery, then out to eat at Ruth's Chris Steak House. It was the best steak ever and a really nice date. Thanks DNC and Sarah for the gift certificate, so that I didn't pass out when the check came. Since the cost was on par with a trip to Disneyland, we figured that should put us in some kind of elite snob club, so here we are doing our best to fit in with this society. Donald Trump, watch out. Here we come.
***Elbows on the table - bad manners normally - but totally classy in high society. If you were as classy as we are, you'd know.

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Snow Day!!!
Snow days: the best thing about living in DC. We got about an inch of snow last night, a wee little fall that is already mostly melted away, and that was enough for all the schools here to either be canceled or get a two hour delay. It doesn't take much here. My students love to talk about the time in a past year when school was canceled 24 hours in advance due to an impending storm. The storm never happened, and in fact it turned out to be a relatively nice day, but everyone still got the day off. I can't wait for that to happen! Gotta love DC. Take that Utah! It was soooo lovely to sleep in today.

So this week I got a VO2 max test. It is the coolest thing ever to someone who gets all worked up over biking, fitness, math and science. Hmmm, I won't go on too long about it, but this link on VO2 max explains it well if you are interested. It's pretty interesting, really. The cool thing is that this test gives you all sorts of interesting data and graphs, which can be analyzed to tell you exactly how to optimize training. I now know exactly how many calories I burn based on my heartrate, so I can properly fuel up. I also now know exactly how hard to ride on different days to work on different aspects of training, etc. Some people just like to go ride their bike, or go do a workout, but I LOVE to work with the numbers and basically treat my body like a science project.

Rob wants me to write that the US beat Mexico 2-0 in soccer tonight. He's very excited. He put on his US soccer jersey before coming to the couch to watch.

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