Sports

Well I was planning on writing about food or something along those lines today, but then the Cubs won the freaking World Series and seeing that half of my readers are from Chicago, I figured I might as well write about something a little more relevant than a chili recipe and boost my page views.

Cubs. Wow.  Love it.

It's such an odd experience watching sports live out here in good ole' TLV.  We went to bed shortly after 11 pm last night, knowing that if we wanted to see the end of the final World Series game live, we would be setting the alarm for 5 am.  Luckily we have a husky who hasn't adjusted to the time change (our clocks fell back an hour last week) so she started stomping around on our bed hungry for breakfast around.... 4:45 AM.

Well we might as well get up and watch history in the making - right??

So instead of watching games with beers in hand, we watch games with bedhead and strong black coffee. Let's just hope our elderly neighbor next door didn't wake up to our screams of despair around 5:30 AM when that two-run homer was hit to tie up the game.

Shortly after the win was secured, we cheers'ed (is that a word?) our coffee mugs and Andrew headed off to work.  On the plus side, I got to watch some of the post-game interviews without the nagging thought of "I should probably go to bed now or I'm going to be a zombie tomorrow."

Instead it's more like, "I should probably start my day now, get out of my PJ's and be a productive member of society."

The second oddity is, baseball isn't a thing here.  Something I'm slowly realizing (approaching our three month mark) is that one of the things I really love about our good ole' US of A is that overall, we LOVE our sports probably harder than any country (outside of a few soccer-specific mad houses). The overzealous enthusiasm for the game of  baseball/football/hockey/soccer/insert favorite sport here is something that's impossible to recreate here - and probably in most countries.

First instinct upon winning was to throw on some red and blue and high five our door man on the way out of the building.  But the World Series probably doesn't even translate to anything in Hebrew if I had to guess.

So yeah, it's a little weird.  

Not bad, just different, and makes me appreciate our culture in that regard.

And appreciate the fact that we even have the ability to watch the games over here.

Wrapping up - congrats my Cubs fans.  You've been waiting 108 years and unless you're a Cleveland fan, there's no way you could watch that game and not smile out of the sheer joy that win just brought that team, the fans, and that my city.

Source: @ABCnews

And if you're a White Sox fan (like me) I hope you can suppress any negative emotions you may have, if you have any, and just be happy.  And if you're a Cleveland fan, I'm sorry.  And if you don't even care about baseball and are wondering why you just wasted five minutes reading this - I'll write about food or weather or something next week.

Cheers amigos - 

Mega-thankful March

Well well well, what do you know. It’s March! And in my mind...

March = Spring

Or at least pretty dang close.

Raise your hand if you’re ready for spring?

I read several blogs that take the time every day or week to acknowledge things they are thankful for. I like it, and decided that I’m going to take the month of March to acknowledge more things that I’m thankful for.

have i used this pic yet? i don't remember.

Let’s kick off this beautiful 1^st of the Month with a few things, shall we?

I’m thankful for my Friday morning spin class. At first my 5 AM alarm made me want to throw my phone against the wall and throw a fit like a small child. But now that I've consistently been going, and know the instructor, I definitely embrace it. I look forward to the instructor’s wacky stories about his wedding planning, and marathon training. I live vicariously through him while running is still banned.

He even throws a few random country songs in the mix during class. Love it.

My Friday morning home.

I’m thankful that I took the time to paint my nails last night. It’s part of my effort to stop chewing my cuticles to a bloody pulp, which I mentioned in my past post.

First time doing an accent nail! Thoughts?

I’m thankful for our awesome mail room peeps who so often help me out at work. So thankful in fact, that I brought them a little DD treat this morning. I also snagged a breakfast egg white sandwich for myself.

I’m thankful for my dentist appointment yesterday, where they sawed off my old fake front tooth, and gave me a crappy quasi-ugly temporary cap while my ‘real, forever crown’ gets made in the lab.

Oh wait, no I’m not. I’m not thankful for that. And I won’t be smiling for the next two weeks until I get my forever tooth.

I AM thankful that my foot is healing. I can feel it. I haven’t felt it yell at me for almost a week now.

#Score

Lastly, I’m thankful for my Chicago teams currently just tearing sh*t up. Do you know how happy it makes me to more often than not wake up to ESPN alerts telling me that both the Bulls and the Hawks won? I even wore my Black Hawks t-shirt to spin this morning.

That’s all I got. It’s Friday, it’s March. March Madness, baseball season, warm days, and miles of running trails are just around the corner. I can almost smell it.

Tell me a few things you're thankful for, in this very second!

Cheers!

I used to be an Olympian. Kind of.

I read something interesting the other day.

I read that recent Japanese research has found that ripe bananas (with brown spots) are actually really good for you, and have the ability to fight abnormal cells (cancer).

This intrigued me, mainly because I feel like ripe bananas tend to get a bad rap. Guilty as charged; I prefer them more on the green side versus brown. However, knowing this, when glancing at my bananas this morning when making a smoothie, I got happy that I was able to add some cancer-fighting action to my daily drink.

Anyways, what was this post suppose to be about? Oh yeah, how I used to by an Olympian.

Obviously that a semi-false statement. Let's correct it to be a little more true: I used to live, eat and train among Olympians. There we go.

whose that in the green ring? me.

I know I've mentioned this before, and that it's in the My Story section, but I couldn't help to feel extra proud while watching the opening ceremonies last night. Sidenote - did that opening sequence showing all of the amazing athletes make anyone else cry? #Guilty

Source

Spring 2010 I had the opportunity to intern at the Olympic Training Center out in Colorado Springs. It truly was a mind-blowing experience, even just to live in the dorms on the campus, dine at that state-of-the-art food hall three meals a day, and use the same workout facilities that some of these athletes we are watching over there in London used.

I got to swim in the same pool that Michael Phelps did.

No, that is not the pool.

Seriously though, aside from experiencing the sport administration side of things as an intern there, just seeing the day-to-day efforts these athletes put in was extremely humbling.

This is posted up at the Training Center. I love it.

Speaking of being humble, I've been trying to put forth effort the past two days in taking care of myself and listen to other's advice, and so have been doing all non-impact training. Yesterday I even managed to swim four consecutive laps in the pool, no stopping. I know that sounds easy, but for me it's not. I was quite proud.

I AM SO PROUD

So, as I sit here in my living room watching Phelps and Lochte tear it up in the pool over there with our Brit friends, I can't help but feel inspired to head over to the club and do some more laps today. I figure today should be fairly light, as I'll head out for 12 miles early tomorrow morning.

I can't remember the last time I ran 12 miles. Maybe sometime in May?

Cheers to a great weekend!