Marvelous Monday: Week 36

It is a marvelous Monday indeed. It's a holiday - Labor Day - and I just took Wish out for a walk around 8:30 a.m., and it was so quiet in the city. I could hear a lawnmower very far away, but that's it. It was almost as peaceful as it is during a snowfall but before people start shoveling. Ahh.

Where was I? Oh, right. Five marvelous tidbits to start the week:

1. Two friends are celebrating their first anniversary today. I can't believe it has been a year! That weekend in California was festive and wonderful and so special for all of our friends - and obviously for the bride and groom, too! - that thinking of it will always make me smile.

(Last week was also another anniversary for two other friends, who got married on the opposite side of the country, in Maine! That's another weekend that will always make me smile.)

2. This weekend I made pulled pork tacos via the crockpot!  It's the first time I've gotten the crockpot out since the winter, which is silly because a crockpot is actually a good summer cooking tool since it doesn't heat up the house like an oven does. I usually stick to meatless crockpot projects, so preparing a four-pound chunk of pork was an ordeal adventure for me. The recipe came together really quickly and easily, though, and the house smelled wonderful when I got home from work eight hours later. And then we got to enjoy pulled pork tacos for the Tennessee game!

And to be extra-festive, I tried another new recipe for chocolate-caramel cookies:

They have Rolos in the center. No kidding.

2. I did the second 20-miler of my training schedule on Saturday. The weather started out nice but got hot by the end, so red-faced and sweaty was the name of the game. Happy to have that one done, hoping the next 20 coincides with cooler weather. There is a cooldown coming later in the week that should bode well for future weekend long runs.

3. Speaking of marathon training, my plan calls for a few races in the next seven weeks to tune up for the big race later in October, and two of my favorite fall races fall perfectly into the schedule. I'm registering for those this week! (I'll elaborate more on them later.)

4. Book report: In the past couple of weeks, I finished Running the Rift, a novel about an Olympic-bound runner living in Rwanda before and during the genocide in that country. I'm struggling to find the right words to describe it - suffice to say, the story and its characters have stayed with me since I finished it, which is one benchmark of a truly powerful book. I absolutely recommend it. On a completely different note, I also read The Perks of Being a Wallflower, partly because it was on the young adult fiction list from a few weeks back and partly because a movie adaptation is coming out later this month. (Good timing!) And now I am onto Nell Freudenberger's The Newlyweds, which I put on my library list a long time ago. It gives me hope that someday I will be at the top of the list for Gone Girl, too.

5. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this much here before, but in the last six weeks or so, we have been encouraging Wish to like dog toys. When we adopted him in mid-May, we stopped at a pet supply store on the way home and, in a confused daze, I tried to pick out a range of toys that I thought a dog might like. And nothing worked. He didn't really retrieve, and he didn't like squeaky things, and he didn't really see the appeal of chew toys. Finally, one day, I brought home a little toy football, and he loved his football. (Read: The football is no more.) And then he saw Natty's dog playing with this blue toy bone that he hadn't touched in at least eight weeks, and then that became a fun toy. Basically, we have been praising him when he plays with the toys, retrieves a ball, and so on, and he's loving his little collection of toys now.

The final frontier was this plastic donut squeaky toy that I bought the day we brought him home. It has held zero appeal for Wish. Just now, post-walk, I heard a bunch of noise in the other room. It was our pup, having the best time in the world playing with his donut:

This Monday is off to a good start. What else will the day hold?  What's on tap for your Monday, Reader?