Vacation, Part Deux

The week back after taking vacation is usually pretty bad work-wise. Mine was no exception. Lots of stuff going on, things falling apart, the threat of city-leveling explosion... you know, all in a crappy day's work. I survived, but the stress of it all made me not want to do pretty much anything.

Back to the Vacation story.... where was I? Oh yes, we had landed in Seattle, and nothing bad had happened. It was almost lunch time Seattle time, and WAY past lunch time Duluth time, and so the first order of business was lunch. At IHOP. Which I hadn't had since I was in college oh so long ago. The Boy inhaled his food, and some of Aaron's food, and then some of Grandpa's food. I am no looking forward to when he's a teenager. Once we were all full and no longer grumpy, we made our way to Grandma and Grandpa Abramson's house.

The grandparents live in North Bend, which is where the TV show Twin Peaks was filmed. Which is pretty cool. The two older boys instantly named one of the two mountains near North Bend Buttcrack Mountain. That joke never got old for them. I wish I would have gotten a picture of it, but it never occurred to me to do that.

My first impressions of the Seattle area:

• It was warm. But not oppressive warm. When you got out of the sun for the most part it was quite pleasant.
• The trees are HUGE. Like insanely huge. Didn't know trees could get that big. And the ones I saw on the first day weren't even that big.
• The scenery was nothing like anything I had ever experienced, even in the Northwoods. I was in awe.

That first day Grandpa had gotten us tickets to the Day out with Thomas in the next town over. Which was cool, because boys love trains. And, well, it's Thomas. They had all done it in Duluth, but this one was way better. Albeit hotter. Some pictorial evidence:

 With Sir Topham Hatt

 Riding on Thomas

The view out the window at one point

The train ride itself wasn't too long, but the views were so amazing. Definitely worth it.

After doing the whole Thomas thing, we went to get ice cream at the local equivalent to Dairy Queen and then back to the grandparents house. I can't recall if it was an early evening or not, as we were all exhausted from getting up so early, the plane ride, and all the activity of the day. But we had some awesome pizza for dinner and it was really nice to get out of town. And Day Two of the Seattle adventure was yet to come...

The Rest of the Week's Runs

Running has been a lot harder than I feel it should be after taking not that long off. I don't know if it's the humidity, or running so early in the morning, or what. It's a bit disappointing to be going SO SLOWLY, but I need to cut myself some slack and just keep on going - eventually it will not be so hard. On Wednesday I ran 3.04 miles in 29:52, for an average pace of 9:49. On Saturday I got a bit lost (stupid dead end roads) and ran 3.95 miles in 40:09, for an average pace of 10:11. Here's to a new week and the change to improve!