2024 Europe Trip: Day 5, Dresden, Germany
Day 5, Thursday April 18th! Here’s my short recap from Instagram:
Day 5 (April 18) – the one thing I wanted to do in Dresden besides meet Katja was to see a castle! So after brunch we went to @schlossmoritzburg. Then we rode the Schwebebahn, which I only found out about from the Dresden Starbucks mug I bought that morning 😂 We ended the evening with a walk 🥹
2024 Europe Trip: Day 4, Leipzig, Germany
Day 4, Wednesday April 17th! Here’s my short recap from Instagram:
On Day 4 (April 17) we drove from Dresden to Leipzig to meet up with my good friend Katja and her kids. It was our first time meeting in person (as it was with Anita in the Netherlands!) and everything just clicked and we got on like old friends (which also happened with Anita) – because we are! Just internet friends.
We had a lovely day exploring Leipzig, touring the Bach Museum, eating lots of yummy food, and chatting. We made so many special memories 🥹 Katja and her children are wonderful and it was so hard to say goodbye, but I’m also so grateful we got all that time together ❤️
Random Thoughts Thursday 449
- Here’s my mani from last week! Next week I will go all pink to match my marathon outfit.
- As mentioned, I canceled my strength class today to get more sleep. I’m proud of me! It’s hard for me to not start my morning with a workout. I was up at 5:20 to feed the outdoor cats and was like “Ugh! It’s so nice out! I should run!” but I told myself no and got another hour of (fitbull, bad dream filled) sleep.
- Sidebar – it’s such a weird feeling to be like “I shouldn’t waste this nice weather by sleeping” as if that is the only time the weather will ever be like that again. Weather FOMO.
- I was out doing grocery pickup Tuesday after work and randomly saw Steven flying back to the airport! He was doing a solo flight to the training area and back.
- I had cupping done during my massage last week to help with my back, and it’s the first time I’ve had it done since I’ve been on blood thinners. One of the marks was really red! It’s almost faded away now. The cupping felt good and really helped. I totally didn’t care that it left marks, but I did get a few funny remarks at class.
- We’re planning to do a garden this year. We’ll focus on the things we loved from last year – black krim tomatoes, some baby tomatoes, some Valley Green brand of green beans, basil, cilantro, maybe one cucumber seed? Ha. We didn’t get anything planted indoors before now. Steven put some black krim seeds into soil this weekend to see if they do anything. We’re also going to do succession planting instead of planting everything all at once.
- REI update – as of Monday it had been a week since I called and I still hadn’t received the box of GUs I ordered. I called REI and they said it hadn’t shipped yet because a manager has to check it. I asked them to cancel it and refund me (they will) – I ordered them a month ago for a marathon that is 2.5 weeks away. I won’t need them anymore by the time they arrive!!!!
2024 Europe Trip: Day 3, Amsterdam, the Netherlands to Dresden, Germany
Day 3, Tuesday April 16th! Here’s my short recap from Instagram:
Day 3 (April 16) in Europe was a travel day. AMS 👉 FRA 👉 DRS. I highly recommend NOT connecting in Frankfort, Germany if you can avoid it 😂 But hey! That Duty Free shop did have vegan Kit Kats, and I was very excited about that!
2024 Europe Trip: Day 2, Amsterdam & Hoorn, the Netherlands
Day 2, Monday April 15th! Here’s my short recap from Instagram:
Day 2 (Monday April 15) was mostly spent exploring the rural area north of Amsterdam. I’m super basic and REALLY wanted to see tulip fields, which amused Anita to no end since they’re so normal there – like seeing corn or soy fields is to me. But we saw them and they were gorgeous! Even with the horrible weather.
We really enjoyed getting a tour of where Anita grew up, seeing her home, and checking out Dutch grocery stores and shopping areas. It was as such a special treat to get the “local” experience! And so so wonderful to meet Anita in person. She’s amazing. My heart is so happy 🥹
We had dinner with another rock painter then went to drinks with a bunch of rock painters. It meant so much to me that so many of them traveled to see me 🥹 Such a wonderful group of people. I could have chatted for hours!
Reading Update (2024 #25-27)
[25] Hello Stranger by Katherine Center
Fiction / Romance / Romantic Comedy, saw on “Available Now” on Libby, Audiobook
Synopsis: Sadie finally has her big break – after struggling as a portrait artist for years, she’s a finalist in a prestigious competition, and just needs to paint the perfect portrait to win the $10,000 first place prize. That’ll show her father who’s still super disappointed she isn’t practicing medicine like him and chose the difficult artist life instead. But Sadie has to have emergency brain surgery and it leaves her face blind – she can no longer see the faces she needs to paint – they’re scrambled! Sadie is one to refuse help from anyone, but maybe the neighbor she seems to be building a relationship with can help her try some unusual techniques to paint it?
Review: Wow. I’m making this book sound WAY more interesting than it is. This book was incredibly frustrating to listen to. Sadie is a bit of a brat and so, so annoying. The “twist” was incredibly obvious from the beginning and so painful to get to. So so painful. There’s a lot of subplot – Sadie takes her sick elderly dog (he survives; it’s a romance novel after all) to a new vet and falls in love with him based on his gait (remember, she can’t see faces). Sadie only feeds her dog human food and I felt so frustrated that she wasn’t taking better care of him. Sadie’s mom died when she was 14 and that was a HUGE focus of the book. Her mom was also a portrait artist and died when she was a finalist in the same competition Sadie is in. Sadie’s dad remarried right away and the woman had a daughter Sadie’s age who was horrible as a teenager and did a lot of bad things and blamed them on Sadie, and for whatever reason, still follows Sadie around and bullies her as an adult. Long story long, I was not rooting for Sadie. She made me absolutely crazy. This is the second time I haven’t really care for a book by this author – I need to remember that when I see her cute covers.
Recommend: Gawd no
[26] Full Measures (Flight & Glory, #1) by Rebecca Yarros
Fiction / Women, Saw on Kindle Unlimited and I sometimes love Yarros’s books, Kindle
Synopsis: Ember is home from college for winter break when she gets the horrible news her dad died in the war. She steps up to take care of her family, and pushes her own needs aside. Josh, her high school crush and now her brother’s hockey coach, sees her and tries to help. She’s incredibly attracted to him, but doesn’t want to jump into a new relationship (oh yeah, she caught her boyfriend cheating with her roomate right after her dad died).
Review: Gosh, this book. This SERIES. I think these books are a lot of things people DON’T like about romances:
- A man always saving the day for a woman.
- The miscommunication trope. OMFG JUST TELL EACH OTHER WHAT IS GOING ON.
- The secret trope? One character has a secret we know that the romantic partner doesn’t, and one character has a secret that we and the romantic partner don’t know. GAH. It makes it hard to follow what is going on sometimes because the author is leaving details out.
- The man telling the woman she is perfect over and over.
Basically, repeat this review for the book below. But you know what? As much as I was rolling my eyes, I wanted to finish reading it, so what does that say about me? Then I went on to read the next one and already started the third in the series. So, yeah.
Recommend? Not really, ha!
[27] Eyes Turned Skyward (Flight & Glory, #2) by Rebecca Yarros
Fiction / Women, Saw on Kindle Unlimited/next in series, Kindle
Synopsis: Paisley has a heart condition and is worried she’ll die young – like her old sister with the same condition did – so she’s checking items off a bucket list, including going to the beach in Florida, even though she can’t swim. She’s thrown in the water and a man named Jagger (who was Josh’s roomate in the first book) saves her and performs CPR. They’re instantly attracted to each other but also think they will never see each other again… until they bump into each other in the town they both happen to live in in Alabama, where Paisley goes to school and works, and Jagger is in flight school.
Review: Same as above
Recommend? Not really, ha!
2024 Europe Trip: Day 1, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
It’s been two weeks since we landed in Amsterdam! Absolute craziness! This month has flown by.
On the plane on the way to Amsterdam on Saturday April 13th
I’m so excited to be recapping our trip. We had an absolutely amazing time.
I was thinking I’d try to make these posts short and to the point, but yeah, I know that’s not going to be the case! I’ll write a post for each day and give you the Instagram recap at the beginning and then you can read the entire thing if you want the deets!
So! Day 1! Sunday April 14th! Here’s what I wrote on Instagram:
We’re in Europe! For a very very very early 40th birthday gift to myself (seriously early – my birthday is the end of July) we came to Europe to see the architecture, eat amazing food, and meet lots of my friends!
We flew out last Saturday the 13th and landed in Amsterdam on the 14th. We spent the day walking around, eating, visiting with my friend Anita and her husband Mike, and going on a boat tour.
Worn out
In what will be a surprise to ABSOLUTELY FREAKING NO ONE, continuing my regular frequency of strength classes (4-5 a week) while upping the running mileage to train for a marathon has left me feeling worn out and creaky. It became apparent to me right before we left for our trip. I was in class lifting the minimum (mostly because of a pulled muscle but still) and was like “I don’t remember the last time I’ve really pushed myself here! I’m just going through the motions.” Oops?
I was hopeful my almost-40 body would easily adapt to the increased mileage and still allow me to go all out in class, but hello reality! And science (especially gravity)!. Ha ha ha. This is where I really figured I would be – creaky and a little low on energy. I’d likely be here at peak week of marathon training regardless if I was lifting.
So! The marathon is three weeks from tomorrow. I have one more biggish week of running and am thinking about skipping a class to get some more sleep. Then I plan to cut down on running after the race (still doing one long run a week, but less than 15 miles) and get back to pushing myself at strength class.
That’s the plan for now anyway! I want to get back to the energy levels I felt before running so much (which is a bit of a conundrum – mentally I absolutely love all the running, but this is not sustainable year-round).
All that being said, I had a wonderful 20 miler yesterday. I’m a bit shocked, because my sleep has been garbage since we got back from Europe, and I woke up with a super low body battery, but I got out there and felt strong. A little bored at the end, but that won’t be the case at the race!
Random Thoughts Thursday 448
Gosh, I have so many random bullets for today since I haven’t written one of these in weeks! Let’s go!
- Here is my mani from two weeks ago!
- My marathon is just over 3 weeks away! I ran 20 miles the day before we flew to Europe, and did 3 runs in Europe, and 10 miles this Tuesday when we got back. I got in at least 17,000 steps each day we were there (and over 30K one day!). I’ll do two more long runs before I start a taper two weeks out.
Brussels run
- I was listening to a podcast on my Tuesday run and the ads were in German since it downloaded to my phone in Germany! I didn’t mind the German ads since I mostly didn’t know what they are saying.
- Speaking of languages, I switched from Dutch to Spanish on Duolingo Monday morning. My Dutch was atrocious in Europe, but I tried, and had fun with it!
- We sent 18 postcards (2 from the Netherlands, 8 from Germany, 8 from Belgium) while we were there, and one already arrived, in a week’s time! Woo hoo!
- I’ve had chest pain (right pec) since Saturday the 6th. I think it’s from a crab bridge walk we did in class on Thursday the 4th. It was pretty bad – bending over hurt and I had a lot of limitations in class. I was hoping it would go completely away during the trip, and it almost has, but while we were away, I hit my head on a shower bar and tweaked my back, directly across from where I have the chest pain! I’m a mess. I can’t wait for my massage tomorrow.
- Random complaint. I ordered a box of GUs from REI and they sent me one single GU. Sigh. So I called them and they send they would send me a box, then they sent me one single GU again. So I called intending to ask for a refund and they said they would send it again, and have a manager look at it before it goes out. Think I will get just one again?
- Media I am excited about: Dune 2 in May (I preordered the blu ray/digital copy), reading the new Emily Henry (Funny Story), watching The Idea of You in May, and listening to Iron Flame on graphic audio when it comes out in May.
It’s been a minute
Long time no blog!
On The Giant Wheel in Brussels, Belgium
We left for our Europe trip on Saturday April 13th and got back this Monday the 22nd. I took my computer with me to Europe in case I felt inspired to write but I opened it exactly once, to download photos halfway through our trip.
I was so immersed in each day, that it didn’t even occur to me to post some photos on my personal Instagram grid until we had been there for seven days and had a free hour until we met friends. I worked on three posts and immediately got frustrated with technology, and didn’t post again until we were on the plane ride home (I paid for one hour of internet to do a few posts and they gave me internet for the whole flight so I just kept going. Thanks, United!).
It’s funny – while we were there I commented often on how nice it was to be in Europe with a smart phone and be able to look up information and communicate with people. But at the same time, I was taking a huge break from being available (via the technology I was so grateful for), and felt more in the moment than I usually do back home (although that has gotten much better over the last 1.5 years).
All that to say, the vacation was absolutely wonderful. We saw so many cool things, ate so many delicious foods, and most importantly, connected with several friends, most of whom it was our first time meeting in person. My heart is so full after this trip. Each day was really special, and it was the people we were with who made it so. Hopefully I get the motivation to recap it soon. I am still wary of my computer!
Hi! I’m Kim, a 40-something-year-old living in northeastern Illinois with my husband Steven, and our cats, Khaleesi, Apollo, Starbuck, and Eddard aka Ned. My current main hobbies are running, painting rocks, flying, reading, and eating. I follow a vegan lifestyle and work in an account management role. I write about a variety of topics and consider this a “life” blog – a place I can share anything that’s on my mind. Please visit the “About” page to get a better idea of who I am! 🙂
