"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." – Mary Oliver

Good Things Friday

A few of the good things from my week …

Cutback Week with Albert Parkrun

Waiting for the start of the Albert Parkrun. I’m about halfway back.

Last weekend I was still on my cutback week for running, which I love. It meant I had a shorter long run, which gave me a chance to do something different. I switched my long run to Saturday because the weekend was going to be hot but it was starting with a lovely cool morning on Saturday. I ran from home to the Albert Parkrun. This is the biggest Parkrun in Australia and last Saturday there were 956 participants. I ran the 5K loop at about what I think will be marathon pace, then after getting my time logged, ran to DB for breakfast with the running crew. All up it was 16K. G drove there and ran with the group so I had a lift home.

Beach Day

Saturday was 37.5C, our hottest day this summer, which is pretty unusual. My daughters came over and the younger one and I walked down to Elwood beach. We swam and lazed on the beach for a while before heading back home for lunch.

Another Puzzle finished

Meanwhile, our eldest stayed home and worked on the puzzle. After lunch, she finished it off. This was one that we gave her for Christmas, so it was brand new, but two pieces were missing. We looked everywhere for them. I’m not sure where they disappeared.

Midweek Lunch Date

Wednesday our power was off from 8:30 am until after lunch so G had moved his day off to avoid having a work day interrupted by low connectivity. We had no way of heating food and we didn’t want to open the fridge as they had said the power could be off until 5:30 pm so we walked a couple of k’s along the beach to the baths and had some lunch looking over the water. Bonus: the power was back on when we arrived home.

Riding my Bike to South Melbourne

So this involves a bit of a brain fart moment from me because I went Thursday and the food stalls at the market are not open then. I’d even looked on their website at the start of the week to check when they were open. The trip wasn’t completely wasted because I took the opportunity to go to Spotlight to pick up some bits and pieces I needed to make some repairs and also to get some of our special photos into an album. I also worked out a good way to get there that avoids busy roads or roads that don’t have wide bike lanes. So I’m ready for this week … and I will go on Wednesday.

Bonus Good Things:

  • I’ve been drinking my Quiet Mind tea this week. It’s a herbal tea from Tea 2 and has a lovely floral, fruity flavour. The girls gave it to me for my birthday and I’d kind of got out of the habit.
  • Our son arrived safely back home from Barcelona.
  • I got some bird netting for our tomatoes and am hoping that will stop whatever is eating them as soon as they start to ripen.
  • I made a couple of bookings for our time in Hobart—a walking tour and dinner at Aloft. Exciting! I’m leaving the other nights in Hobart free for now until we’ve sorted out when we’ll meet our friend who lives there now.
  • I’m finally feeling like I’m getting some gains in fitness. I usually find I have to slog it out for several weeks, which is very painful and then I’ll get a jump in fitness. I’m hoping this is it.
  • My beans are still producing and we ate some for dinner Thursday night.
  • A run of three days is forecast with 33C, 37C and 35C for this week, which seems a bit more like summer. Maybe a chance for some more swimming?
  • Our hike at Ferny.
  • Cool Bloggers Book Club started this week. I’d read the book, but was behind on reading blogs and didn’t remember until Thursday that it started Monday. We’re reading My Brilliant Friend.

How about you? Are you having normal weather for this time of year? Have you turned up somewhere only to find that it’s closed?


Comments

11 responses to “Good Things Friday”

  1. The beach!! It looks so inviting and wonderful!! What a lovely retreat for when the power goes off.

    1. Hubby was commenting the other day as we walked along the beach that this is why we moved to this suburb. And how happy he is that we did.

  2. TWO PIECES MISSING IN A NEW PUZZLE. *Screams into the void*

    I am swooning over that beach picture. The water looks so clear and lovely and after a week with lots of snow, I am craving some beach time 🙂

    Love these Good Things posts!

    1. LOL, yes there was a lot of searching. My husband was especially annoyed because the only contribution he made to the puzzle was to come over a couple of time to search the whole box to see if he could find those pieces to place in the gaps.

  3. Walking to the beach sounds like the perfect way to deal with the power being out. Beautiful.

    I’m so impressed by your running! Enjoy the cutback week. So glad that your son is home safely, hard when they are so far away.

    1. THanks J, yes we made them ost of our excuse of not being able to work.

  4. You can walk to the beach from your house??? That’s awesome. Your “short” long run sounds like a fun adventure. And… that puzzle. ARRRRG! I would be so annoyed! Do you think the company screwed up and never included those pieces? I think you should complain!

  5. I have turned up to a business meeting only to be at the office adress instead at the events venue. But I wasn’t the only one so it wasn’t entirly my fault.

    At most puzzle companies you can request missing pieces. Maybe that is an option.

    Homegrown veggies sound so good. I am thinking of gettingi into smaller things. I have seeds for radishes and peas. We’ll see if they make it in my balcony boxes.

  6. That’s a beautiful puzzle, but what a bummer that two pieces were missing. Ugh.

    You made the best of the power outage – the beach looks amazing.

    1. We are just finishing off our other daughter’s Christmas present puzzle and i’m hoping that doesn’t have missing pieces too.

  7. I meant to say, I know where this is in the Dolomites. Not far from where I’ll be skiing in a few weeks 🙂