101 in 1,001: May update

Five months down!  I've got 13/101 complete and 16 items in progress.

We start, as usual, with an array of links:

The whole list

Last month's update

Track my progress (roughly) via Google doc

The May progress report
Last month, I vowed to continue my ongoing projects (including discovering the magic known as salted nut roll bars for #82) and also:

#20 Eat five fruits and vegetables every day for 10 days
[Begin] #46 Eat or shop at 10 new-to-me local businesses in Minneapolis
[Begin] #92 Read five classic books
[Begin] #23 Visit the dentist at least four times.

HA!  The only thing I actually completed from this list was going to the dentist! Fancy that! (Cavity free!)  I really whiffed on the others.  Rest assured (as though you're worried) I was still reading and I did get close to my daily fruits and vegetables on most days - just not 10 consecutive ones.  I was also supposed to go a happy hour at a new restaurant in Minneapolis and the event got postponed to this week.  Looks like I'll be starting #46 in June instead of May - fingers crossed.

But luckily I did get some other stuff done on the list.  Chiefly, #12 Get a dog.

Even as we got closer, I was hesitant to put #12 on my list of goals for a given month in case it didn't pan out. (Also, it feels kind of funny to set a goal to get a dog sometime in the next 31 days.)

Anyway, as you all know, Wish is here.

The moment he discovered his reflection in the mirror

Wish's arrival was a little all-consuming this month, but he is helping with some other objectives, including the weekly walk goal. I realize now that the dog owners among my readers must have been rolling their eyes like crazy every time I chirped about managing to go for a walk once a week. I am blowing this resolution out of the water now. We're talking, like, 20 walks per week. Thanks, Wishy!  To stretch, I think I might start tracking the walk-instead-of-drive once per week goal instead.

This month is another full one, but it's unofficially (and almost officially) summer in Minnesota and that means conditions are good for getting out on the town and trying some new things.

This month, I will...
[Continue] #46 Shop at 10 new-to-me local businesses in Minneapolis
[Continue] #44 Eat at 10 local new-to-me restaurants
#25 Renew my passport: I filled out the application and got my new photos taken this week, so this one is almost in the books.
#15 Pick strawberries
#58 Increase my retirement savings

Now please share!
I have some ideas for my June goals, but have you dined or shopped anywhere fun lately and want to pass along the recommendation? Any passport destinations or strawberry farms to suggest?  If you're trying the 101 project, what were your successes in May?  Also, I should be clear that I'm definitely still tackling the mini-list of summer activities I dreamed up last month. This month, I expect to make popsicles, go on a waterslide and use the grill that we just bought!!

Marvelous Monday: Week 23

Hey, it's June's first Marvelous Monday installment!  What's happening?

1) We are hosting four fabulous visitors beginning later this week and are so excited! I don't think it's possible to fit all of the activities into the week that Josh and I brainstormed, but if we even do half of them, it's going to be a pretty sweet week. I won't spoil the whole list in advance, but it's safe to say that waterslides, Twins games, and barbecues are in our future.

2) I ran a half-marathon yesterday!  I signed up for this four-pack of local half-marathons through the year back in December when there was a nice discount for doing so. My New Year's Day race was my favorite so far. Yesterday was nothing to write home about (the modern update - "nothing to blog about" - doesn't sound nearly as nice) in terms of my personal performance, but I liked the weather and course better than the St. Patrick's Day race.  I snuck in a couple of minutes under two hours and was happy that I held my pace through the second half relatively well, even though I didn't feel super. The last race in the series is at the end of October, which may be interesting given that I'm considering a marathon the weekend before that.  We'll see.

And guess what?  No pictures from the morning. None!  Not even a photo of my little medal.  That's retro, huh?

3) Yesterday we took Wish to my grandma's house and he was pleased as punch because he was charming all of my relatives and also got to lounge outside all day. Josh set up his crate outside in case Wish wanted/needed to go in, and the first thing Wish did was jump up on top of it and look around - something he has never done before. What a goofball. (Sidenote: Obedience class #2 is tonight.)

4) My Kindle library notifications are flying into my inbox fast and furiously, which is kind of treacherous because I won't have loads of reading time over the next couple of weeks - but it's still exciting nonetheless.  The main one - besides Salvage the Bones - is Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. Yikes. That's two consecutive books with "bones" in the title, isn't it? Maybe I should stick Cesar's Rules: Your Way to Train a Well-Behaved Dog, the other book I have on hold, in between the two for good measure.

5) I saw some beautiful clouds yesterday.  (Unsurprisingly, more on that later in the week.)

Also, I'm five months into my 101 in 1,001 project!  Look for an update on that soon, too.

Hope your week is starting out smoothly, Reader!

Clowning around

It was only a matter of time, wasn't it?

"The better to see you with, my dear."

Another sign of summer

Leave it to Sara to nudge me toward pesto again, after last summer's pesto bonanza that all stemmed from her garden!

My kitchen's first effort of 2012

This batch had mostly basil from my miniature herb garden, with a little bit of mint to round out the texture. I'll make it a little thicker once my basil starts to really go wild, but as ringing in June goes, this was a pretty delightful way to go. My mom would keep a tube of pesto in our fridge when we were kids, and my siblings and I were uniformly horrified by it. Now I'm kicking myself that I spent years of my life scoffing at pesto. (Yikes: does that mean I should give mushrooms another go?)

I'll just have to work hard to make up for all of that lost time.  Good practice for #86, too!

Weekly Wish

Well, Reader, I am doing just a lousy job at saving all of my Wish stories for one post per week. But I sort of tried this week. Partial credit?

Here is a recap of everything I wanted to say all week!

Sunday (and the weekend): Wish's first bath

Wish thoroughly enjoyed the sights and smell of the weekend up north. He did well in the car on both trips - with the exception of occasionally trying to squeeze my brother and sister out of their spots to maximize his middle seat space. But you may recall that my recap included a few mentions of rain, which turned the ground into some mud, in which Wish spent several hours sitting. And all of this sitting-in-mud led to him smelling terrible less than fresh. (Another apology to my brother and sister for having to sit with him in the back seat all the way home.)

It was time for a bath.

We planned to use the hose outside for the job as soon as we got home, but the skies opened up just as we got in the door, so we had to get him into the tub. He was so peeved that we would dare do such a thing, then he was eventually sort of resigned to the task but would not admit that he enjoyed four hands scrubbing his fur.

Then he got all riled up again when I broke out the "cool" function on the hairdryer to help expedite the process. Turned out he had a better idea. He jumped out of the tub and started doing the full-body dog shake over and over, which actually works really quickly, and then did his crazy run up and down the length of the apartment, perhaps to prove that he still maintained some semblance of independence. Thanks to the rosemary-mint shampoo, he smelled so much better and his coat was so shiny and clean. (He has more white in his fur than we realized!)

The whole point of this story is to post the picture I wanted to post all week. Kudos to Josh for suggesting that I get one photo of the mayhem.

Monday: Wish's first obedience class
I would've been lying if I said I wasn't nervous. I am learning a lot about being a dog owner and the different styles that everyone takes with their pup. I am working to shake my habit of being a little too uptight structured and trying to take on more of Josh's approach. I think he does a great job at balancing being firm with seeing that we have to give Wish a little length on his leash (metaphorically and literally) sometimes to give him the chance and trust him to make the right choice.

For all of the bravado Wish can exhibit toward other pups on the sidewalks, I think he was perplexed by the training class scene. There were eight other dogs, large and small, and he didn't make a peep for the first half hour. In fact, at one point he flopped down and rolled over, asking with his eyes if this was a good time for a belly rub. (Sorry, buddy.)  Later he did bark at a couple of foes pretty dogs, but I was really pleased with the class. We worked on "come when called," making eye contact with the owner, and loose-leash walking. I love the teacher - she's fabulous and really, really, clearly knows her stuff.

And then afterward? Wish was totally spent. (I posted this on Monday but couldn't resist showing you again.)

Tuesday: Wish's first run!
Tuesday was cool and overcast, and I grabbed my chance to try out a little run with Wish. We went two gentle miles and he trotted along merrily the whole time. I talked to him all the way through and gave him little treats from my running pouch-belt, which has escalated into a full-fledged fanny pack, much to Josh's dismay.

After the run, Wish gobbled his dinner and was wholly tuckered out - like, conked out on the floor at 8 p.m. (That happens to me after a good workout, too.) I think there was some element of "WHAT WILL HAPPEN TOMORROW NIGHT?" after his bath, training class and first run on three consecutive days.

Other highlights: FETCH!
When we brought him home, we were sort of bummed that Wish seemed to be less than zero percent interested in toys. Josh stumbled on a little soft baseball about a week later and tried lobbing it toward Wish, who turned out to be very interested in a game of fetch. He is so low-key at home that it's almost startling to see the enthusiasm with which he embraces the game. Wish races up to max speed to retrieve this ball, up and down our long apartment. Sometimes he is extra-playful and prances around with the ball in his mouth, refusing to give it back. I attempted to photograph this activity one day and love the results. Wish is the barely-there blur in the bottom-right corner.

We brought him home three weeks ago on Sunday and are learning new things every day.

There you have it!  Happy Friday, Reader!