First off, thanks for everyone’s congratulations on getting our plane tickets! It’s a really big deal for us and having a lot of positive reinforcement makes it that much more exciting. I’ve been discovering a lot of blogs online about people that are doing the same thing we are, which is always fun to read. They are filled with so many tips and travel advice, I find them a lot more helpful than regular travel sites or books. I’ve officially booked all of our lodging accommodations in Iceland for all but the last night. I have some pictures of the cottage we rented for three nights near Hella, in southern Iceland, and I would post them here, but I plan to take tons of pictures with my nice camera when we get there, so I’m just going to wait until then and not spoil the surprise. I look at the pictures on the website daily though… It looks absolutely incredible. And the woman we’re renting it from has been so friendly and sent along so much information about day trips from the cottage and the nearest town/beaches/geothermal pools. Plus it’s on a huge amount of acreage and there are trails all over the property, so finding places to run will be easy! I have read that weekends are pretty happening in Reykjavik, so we’ll spend Saturday night at Bus Hostel, which looks like it has a really cool common area and bar, and hopefully we’ll meet some nice people. This will be my first stay at a hostel (which is kind of ridiculous, after all the traveling I’ve done. But I was always by myself and felt safest just renting a cheap hotel room.), but I booked a private room, with a shared bathroom. I’m sure after we get in the swing of things we’ll start staying in the dorm-type rooms with bunk beds to save money, but I’m just easing us into it at this point.

I also found this website, which I think is the coolest thing ever. It’s two guys that have this company (not sure if it’s actually a company since it’s free) and basically you just call them up if you’re visiting Reykjavik and want to go on a run, and they’ll meet you and take you around on however long of a run you want. I’m thinking I’ll do this for my long run that Sunday morning after we stay at the hostel. Seriously, what a cool idea, and so selfless! If you can’t tell, I’m so very excited about our Iceland trip.

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I love planning. If I could make a living planning things for people, I think I would love it. Even though wedding planning was super stressful and hard at times, I still loved the whole process. And planning trips? Even better. I get almost an adrenaline rush when I’m doing it (is that weird?). I just love all the researching that goes into it, and finding the perfect places to stay, the perfect itinerary, etc. It’s a good thing Jeremy is okay with me doing all the planning because I don’t think I could handle someone else taking the reins and me not being in control of it.

Weekly Recap

I had a bit of a different week, as I had to report for jury duty on Wednesday. Everyone told me that if I told the judge about my deadlines with the newspaper, he/she would excuse me. But it didn’t quite happen that way. I was among about 100 people at first, and they eventually called about 20 of us into the courtroom. Twelve jurors were already chosen, but they brought in the 20 of us to choose an alternate juror. Lo and behold, my name was randomly the one they chose (second after a woman that got excused because she had a moral issue with the jury system), and I had to go sit up in the juror’s box and get sworn in, then I was asked questions by the judge and two lawyers, while speaking into a microphone in front of everyone. I have pretty bad stage fright, but I surprisingly wasn’t too nervous for this. I told the judge about the tight newspaper deadlines, etc., but the lawyers decided to keep me on. So everyone got excused to go home besides me and the other twelve jurors.

So I spent most of the day yesterday in court, and the case is expected to go until Wednesday. It is pretty interesting stuff! Otherwise, my week of workouts looked liked this:

Monday – rest

Tuesday – bootcamp + sprints

Wednesday – bootcamp + sprints

Thursday – 6 miles

Friday – rest

Saturday – 11 miles

My long run this morning felt really good, I was even able to ramp up the speed at mile 10. I’m feeling good about the Mermaid Series half in two weeks. I’m going to go into it with reasonable expectations, and just enjoy the race and spending the weekend with my grandma. Hope everyone’s weekend has been going well!