There is nothing special about today, but I thought I would do a midweek TGIF regarding the past 7 days!

The high of my week was a trip north to the redwoods with my brother and his girlfriend's family. We had a good time hiking, playing games and hanging out, and on the way home we stopped and took a nice dip in the Russian river to top off the weekend.

The low of my week was a bit of a crazy busy workweek last week along with some ongoing work drama.

A book I am reading is The Boys in the Boat, except that I got the hardback from the library and then left it at home since I have been riding my bike to work and it is actually due today, so I am not going to finish it until I check it out again.

A podcast I am listening to is the Freakonomics issue of "how to create suspense". It is interesting, as they talk about how there is a perfect number of plot twists or surprises in a book or movie in order to keep people interested.

A workout I did was this Fitness Blender workout. They have a TON of different workouts on YouTube and you can also go to their site and search by workout length, calorie burn or intensity. I have been doing one to two of the 30 - 40 minute HIIT workouts per week and I have been enjoying them!

The best money I spent was probably my mortgage. I know, it's not exciting, but it sure is no joke!

My plans for the weekend include going up to my parent's neck of the woods for some camping and to see my dad run his first half marathon!

Happy Tuesday! What was the high point of your last 7 days? 

Looking back at this blog, I noticed that I am generally posting only a couple times a month, one of them being the "looking back" theme. Ah, well, such is life!! Just like everything, blogging and/or writing comes and goes and right now, I am happy with life and feel that I am getting things done, even if it doesn't include keeping up with this space! I do miss the connection that I have with many other bloggers, but I am keeping an eye on many of your blogs, even if I am not commenting!!

And now, welcome August; goodbye July.

Running: July was supposed to be a bit of a higher month for me. However, it ended up being one of my lowest months in a very long time. Lack of training, an injury and an unfinished race (sad recap to follow) meant that in July I ended up running only about 106 miles. On a good note, I started riding my bike to the BART each morning and afternoon. It's only about 1.8 miles each way, but it adds up to about 15 - 20 miles a week of biking. In addition, I am starting a 2 x per week HIIT class, which are about 30 - 45 minutes each.

The TRT

Reading: You can see the skew and maybe the reason my mileage was low when I tell you that this month I read 11 books. Okay, really I read 10 and a half. I started the Bone Clocks and just could not get into it, so I set it down half way. Some of my favorites were:

Still Alice by Lisa Genova
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Emmuska Orczy
The Last Letter From Your Lover by Jojo Moyes

Travel: I started the month off in central Oregon, on our annual "girls trip", which includes my friend, her two daughters and her Mom, except this year it was also her dad, her brother and her sister's family, which included three kids and a husband. It was a loud, crazy houseful but it was a lot of fun. I even took the boys trail running with me twice and they enjoyed the change of scenery (they are road runners and cyclists). I also went to Tahoe for TRT.

Otherwise: My other two weekends were spent painting and sorting and organizing around the house and then finally having a housewarming party, which was a hit. It was fun to finally get all the friends together, especially since there were some friends I haven't seen in a while, due to all the running and working and home stuff. I ended up having a lot of extra beer, but I am sure I can find a home for it!

If you came to my housewarming party, what kind of drink would you bring? What book should I put on the library wait list?