nik in the desert: October 2007

I can't believe it's the end of October. I've been a lousy blogger. It was really busy earlier in the month at school as I had to grade all 750+ of my students. Then, from October 14th to the 21st, I went on vacation back to Minnesota. I will try to get some pictures up of that in this post.

This week was back to reality and back to work. It wasn't so hard working but it was definitely hard getting up at 6.00a again. Curt and I are also training for the Rock and Roll half-marathon in January, so we have started running more for that. The evenings are getting to be perfect for running. It is getting dark here around 6-6.15 now. We won't be doing daylight savings time next weekend - we stay on the same time year round. That means we will only be one hour behind Minnesota, which is kind of nice.

This morning, Curt was at work so I walked downtown to the Phoenix Public Market. I bought some vine-ripened tomatoes, mixed greens, butternut squash and a little loaf of banana nut bread. I stopped at a coffeeshop on the way back and had some quiche and an iced chai. The coffeeshop is cool - it is a 'cafe/gallery', and everything in it is free trade. They have art and cool things for sale in addition to coffee, sandwiches and snacks. There is also a yoga studio in the building that I may start frequenting.

Not much is going on in the next few months. Curt started a new job in sales on Thursday. He will be working Tuesday-Saturday, slightly later hours (9 or 10 to 6 or 7) so that will be different. We may have some CouchSurfers staying with us this week which would be fun. It is my birthday next Saturday but I don't think I'll do anything too crazy. We are having people from my school over tomorrow night for the October "Family Dinner." Once a month, people take turns hosting and having people over to their house or at a restaurant. We'll have a small gathering but it should be fun. We are going to hang out down by the pool, eat, drink and then we reserved the mini-movie theater to watch "Shaun of the Dead", which is a hilarious spoof zombie-movie. :)

For your viewing enjoyment, here are some pictures of my trip.