Week highlights

The week started off with the normal busy work week & with the normal morning workouts.
Friday, the whirlwind started. I have to share the fun, exciting times with the not so fun exciting times.
Not that we were really surprised with how the banking industries are in a really bad position right now, but they ended Ron's contract at Wachovia on Friday. 10,000+ people they are notifiying. Since Ron is a contractor, he would be on the list, of course. YUCK>>> He's very good at what he does. It shows since he's only had 2 contracts in 12 years!! He'll come out on top, I'm sure! We decided to end the evening at our little hangout by relaxing at "Blakney" listening to music outside.

Saturday I completed one of the toughest things I've ever done. I swam 750meters at Lake Norman. They were having a practice event prior to the Lake Norman TRI at the end of August. It's the best TRI in Charlotte & closes in a couple of hours each year. It was sooooo hard. Like me, if you don't know how far that is, it's approx. 7 football fields, or 1/2mile. I hated it!! I went with a few other girls. I looked at the lake and how far out I had to go and back and was getting ready to back out. Then who showed up to swim with me and support me? Ashley, my awesome IRONMAN friend. She just completed the Austria Ironman about two weeks ago. She told me she would come out and swim with me. I told me no, don't bother, I'll be okay. Well, she was my little angel! I would not have finished without her!! I got to the first booie(sp?) and told her I couldn't do it, that I had to go back. She said no, that I could do it and coached me to keep going. I kept going off course, and she stayed right with me and guided me the whole time. She is so strong and such a great competitor. She often wins some of the TRIs. I was so tired, that I had to roll over and float on my back so many times I couldn't even count. I felt like such a "VARSITY LOOSER", as they call it now. That's a loser, with a capital "V"! She was so good and encouraged me and told me how great I was doing to whole time. It was really, really pitiful, but I got through it. It took me 30mins, which don't seem like a lot, but the mental part of it tired me out so bad that I had plan to run afterwards and bailed on that! I went home, and went to bed and slept for two hours! And it was only a silly 30min swim! I'm suppose to go back next Saturday for another practice swim. I'm not sure at this point if I'll go or not. If I don't go, that means I won't be doing the TRI. I'll give it some thought. I'm sure Ashley won't be there next week to support and guide me. Actually, I guess she shouldn't. She can't be there on race day, so I guess I need to do it one time by myself to see if I can get through it. Stay tuned......I just know it wasn't fun at all, so I'm not sure about putting myself through that again. By the way, it was so bad, I had a lifeguard come by on a boat once or twice to ask if I was okay. Sweet Ashley said, she is find I'm swimming with her! So sad! If I go next week, they might just make the decision to pull me out of the water! That' their decision/call when they see someone isn't doing that great!!

On another note, Ron and I did attend a birthday party of one of our new "Bee team" cycling friends. That was a lot of fun. Much more fun than Saturday morning! The girls that swam Saturday morning spent some time trying to determine if we wanted to go back to Lake Norman and try the swim again. We all agreed since misery loves company, but we'll see when next Saturday gets here!

Sunday afternoon we're going cycling with the Bee team, which should be much more fun than that darn crazy swim!

One thing I do love is checking my mail and getting surprises from my CO friends. Angie sent Ron and I a cute little memory of Italy.(thank you Angie :-) I miss my CO buddies, and I've been thinking of a way to get out to see them sometime this fall.

July & Hawaii

A couple of years ago we spent July 4th grilling on Maui & watching the Tour de France on the Big Island. It was Ron, me, Brittany, Chase & Stanage. I can't help but think about Hawaii off and on during the whole month of July. I have a friend who is there right now, enjoying her first visit to Hawaii. I remember the excitement when I first visited Hawaii. Well, I remember my excitement every time I know I'm going to Hawaii!!! What a special place. I love it~~ There is a little store about 3 miles from where I live, that now sells Hawaiian "stuff". I need to go checkout the place and taste their 'shaved ice', which I love as much as Italy's gelato!

On another note....The jeep

Well, Ron decided to sell the jeep. We always jump into the Vette instead of the jeep when we decide to go somewhere on the weekends. He said it was hard to see it go, but why keep something that we don't drive. So after thinking about it a month or so, he finally let it go. He gets so attached to his cars!! He couldn't watch it go down the driveway when the guy came and bought it!!! Oh well, now we only have 5-6 cars in the driveway most of the time now!

Ron says : The depression lasted for only a few days vs weeks with the last Corvette sale. Still look at these when passed on the road. It was a 'Hawaiian vacation feeling' type of ride, for me. Hawaii was where we rented one of these for the first time. I am now pulling the the targa top out of the Vette when the weather permits. Gives me the same convertible feel with a smoother ride.

A friend I haven't seen in a while - Nice surprise!

As for this weekend, it's been a little busy as well.
Friday night we celebrated my neice's birthday(not the one who got married, the other one :-). She's 21 today.

Saturday morning was the usual event. Up early to do a 10mi run with my two running buddies Jay and Mike. Mike is always ready to run, and ALWAYS seems to have a "good run". His motto "Hills Are Our Friends". Jay and I wasn't having that great of a run, so Mike did all the encourgement and pulled us along. It was sooooo HUMID, but we got through it. Then off to Pilates!

Ron wanted to attend one of his "Corvette Club" gatherings Saturday evening, so we went out to dinner with the club. Some of the things they do are pretty cheezy, but Ron likes to get with them and talk "cars", so I went along to support him.

Afterwards we decided to stop by our nearby community shopping area to listen to some outdoor live Jazz/Blues. It's a shopping center and a gathering spot for shopping and dining.
Ron said a lady singing Jazz/Blues was scheduled to be there and he knew I love jazz.
We sit down and to my surprise the singer was a friend of mine (Kim) that I haven't seen in a year or so!! (She has a band and sings Jazz/Blues in the Charlotte area.)
The last time I saw her we were in Georgia running the half marathon. Well, all except Mike, who ran the full marathon! The only reason we ran together was because she was pregnant! She is faster than me of course. Her baby is 8 months old and she's training for NY marathon this fall.
It was so nice seeing her and catching up with her. She'll be back to our area in September, and Ron and I will go back to listen to her band again. We arrived so late last night that we only caught 4-5 songs of the band before they quit for the night.

Today, (Sunday) We spent some quite time on the deck this morning drinking coffee and watching the humming birds. We'll spend lunch with Ron's mom and dad, catch up on some household things, then off to our Sunday afternoon cycling ride with the "Bee Team"! It'll be a slow recovery ride today!!!

Last Weekend was like Christmas!

Sally and I at the Villa in Italy. How happy we are!














Here's my painting on the wall in my Power Room of Venice.














Here's my Chandelier. What do I do now? You won't be
seeing this hanging for a while!

Here's both sides of the great bookmark that Angie gave all the Italy girls! -----------------

Last weekend was a busy weekend. As you can see Ron blogged, but I didn't get around to it.

It was a like Christmas because I got a lot of fun, wonderful, surprising things in the mail!
My friend Angie sent the Italy girls a bookmark of the picture she had painted of our Italian villa. That was so thoughtful of her, and what a nice keepsake! (Thank you Angie!)

A day or so later, I received a nice surprise package from my friend Sally. Sally remembers the little things in life that her friends enjoy. (Thank you Sally)

I am very blessed to have such caring, thoughtful, wonderful, fun, crazy friends!

I also received my painting of Venice, from a picture that we took during our Italy trip.
Angie found her blog and had her paint a picture of our Villa while we were in Italy. It's fabulous!

Last, but not least my Venetian chandelier finally came from Murano!! I've had it a week and finally unpacked it this morning!

Y2Y Cycle Ride

On Saturday, July 12th, Pam, Jerry Kelley and I rode in the Y2Y cycle ride. There were two routes : 31 miles and 62 miles. I took the 31mile route and was done in about 1 1/2 hours and Pam and Jerry did the 62 miles that took them 3 1/2 hours. In this North Carolina heat and humidity, I liked my option best. I finished the ride, went home took a shower, watched the end of one of the Tour de France stages and ate a bite, before Pam even called and said they were on their last 10 miles. :)

You will see pictures of Pam and Jerry, as my bike had been retired to the garage for well over 2 hours. So no bike pictures for me.

For those that don't know Jerry, he will be at the Cooper River Bridge Run in 2009. He is a carbon copy of Sally regarding all that high energy and also as Sally, a complete 'nut'. Lots of fun to be around and always makes me laugh. Check out his expression in his photo. I had just rode up beside him in our Jeep and shouted " Can't you people, GET OFF THE ROAD". You can see that he was thinking of 'something to say', but laughed when he saw it was me.

As usual, Pam ' the animal', did well with her ride and she has impressed the new bike club we are now riding with. She swam & rode 20-25miles on Sunday, while I played golf! She tends to end up with the sprinter guys and holds her own. Though she is a bit modest about it. I know I won't say ' On your left' to her anymore. Got my doors blown off with that comment and nearly had a heart attack ( HR monitor beeping and showing 120% ) trying to play catch up.

Looks like a funny movie

This morning I went running with the Saturday morning gang, then swam for a little while.

For lunch, Ron and I decided to ride over to "On the Border" for a light lunch. Tips are not good lately at the restaurant, so we like to go over every once in a while and leave Brittany a pretty good tip.

I couldn't wait to get home and take a nap. At that point Ron decided it would be a good idea to stop and get a couple of movies to watch this afternoon.

He chose "Vantage Point" & I chose "P.S I Love You". On the way out I saw another movie "Love in the time of Cholera"! This was the book I was reading in December while I was spending some time with Sally in CO. I never got around to finishing the book so I had to get the movie!!

Anyway, I was watching the previews of other movies before "Love in the time of Cholera" and a move caught my eye. This movie looks like it's going to be a hoot!!!!!! For all my running buddies you've got to watch it. It's coming out this fall, and the previews looked pretty funny. It's called "Run Fatboy Run". Has anyone heard of it?

Happy July 4th!!

Thursday night Ron and I kicked off the long holiday weekend by going to "Summer Pops In the Park". It was nice and relaxing listening to the music and we enjoyed it. Being a long holiday weekend, the event, which is every weekend from May-July 4th was very crowded.

Toward the end we had a group of 9 kids (college age) sit down in front of us on a blanket. No big deal, because the place was pretty packed anyway. They proceeded to have a lot of conversation among themselves. Unfortunately, they were pretty distracting. I could hear their conversation over the music. It was getting late,(for us) and we had to go by the grocery store and prepare something for a cookout the next day, so we decided to skip the fireworks and head back home.

Friday morning we had plans to met our new cycling group at a house for a ride to Waxhaw, watch the Waxhaw town parade, then ride back. The parade was fun. We even saw Sue Myrick, our N. C. Senator! And a friend that Ron and I haven't seen in years was in the parade, and is one of the town commissioners. That was a surprise!

Afterwards we had a nice cookout. We rode with this group last Sunday afternoon, and they were so nice and invited us to the ride/cookout on the 4th. They are a fun group of people who like to cycle, socialize, and EAT. They call themselves the "Bee Team". They're not a bunch of skinny, fast, furious, serious cyclist who are all about "time". You can ride your own speed (fast, med, or slow) & there is always others around to chat/ride with. Check out their website: http://www.thebeeteam.org/

I've attached one picture of the "pops in the park" and some of the parade. See Ron's chicken that he caught. He's going to start taking "Chicken" on vacation like Sally took "Superman" and Dick & Angie takes "Bibendum & Gianni ". Too bad "Chicken" missed the Italy trip! haha

Roses blooming at home......

Way too many car pictures on this blog, so I decided to girlie it back up!! We have a couple of rose bushes in our backyard and we got our first roses this week. Ron always keeps a check on them when he mows & brings a couple in the house to me. :-) They smell so sweet when they come from your own backyard.....My favorite flower is the tulip, but I'll take a rose or two any day!!

Yet a few more pics. Pam's gonna kill me

More Porsche pics...sorry. Just making this blog more 'manly'.

Porsche Parade : Charlotte

Well. Porsche took over Charlotte for July 4th with their annual Porsche Parade. This event goes from city to city and being the car enthusist that I am, I had to go out and take a look. I fell in love with the 930 Carrera GT ( sorry Dick, if I misstated, but not up on all of these models ). There was two ; one gray and one orange that I took too many pictures of, but what do you do.

Loved the Orange one to the left. WOW.

Anyway, I have attached some of the pictures. There were a few Porsche celebrities signing autographs, but I did not know who they were. Probably either Racers or Designers. I was kinda in a restricted area, so did not try to find out. Basically, I was suppose to have a Porsche Club of America badge to be down at the event, so I kinda slid in on the coat tails of a mother and daughter. Guess they thought I was the dad. Got in, so who cares. BTW, I did find a nice poster that I will be sending out to Dick to return the favor for shipping us the Montespertoli wine posters. Glad Pam was not there, as this stuff interest her about as much as ceramics interest me :). Angie,,,share the pics with Dick, as he probably has more interest here.

Anyway,,,enjoy.