New Haven, I love you

Nancy came home early from work today because she didn't feel well. I always feel a little guilty being happy that she's coming home, since I should want her to feel well and not have to leave work. I like to tease and tell her she's pregnant whenever she's not well in the morning. Luckily, all she needed was some Tylenol and a nap and we had the rest of the day free. We decided to head out to New Haven to one of our favorite restaurants, Mamouns. I've been going there pretty regularly for the past 15 years, and still get the same thing every time, the combination plate without meat. I don't think I'll ever get sick of it, as long as I keep it to an every other month treat.

It comes with falafel balls, baba ghanoush, hummus, lettuce, tomatoes, and tahini sauce. Nancy usually gets the combination plate with lamb, which is the same thing as the combo plate without meat, except lamb replaces the falafel balls. I've tried it, but I don't really like lamb that much. In fact, I really DISlike it.

Elliette tried her first bit of falafel, and seemed to enjoy it, but after a few bites found it to be more fun to smoosh it up and drop it on the floor. She made quite a mess before we were able to intervene, so we made sure to leave a good tip. She also had a few bites of the Syrian rice, which we later discovered make her have sloppy, sloppy poops. Awesome. Got to file that away for future reference.

After gorging on some yum-yummies, we walked over to Cutlers Records to look for some CDs. Nancys new car has a CD player, so she was looking for some good jams for her hour commute to work. We got two "Decemberists" disks, The Crane Wife, and The Hazards of Love. I'm listening to The Crane Wife right now, and the title track is amazing (we have a Marianne Faithfull disk with her doing a cover of it), but the rest aren't, in my opinion, as good as anything from Picaresque (an older disk of theirs). As we left, we walked past this very cool mailbox.

Running has been on my mind more than usual lately, probably because the 50K trail race I was training all year for is this weekend. Unfortunately, due to a lingering foot injury, there is no way I would make it through. The race coordinator, Jerry, was nice enough to refund my entry fee and send a note wishing me a speedy recovery. I've been padding out and easy few miles on the treadmill twice a day, every other day, just to try and keep some sort of base fitness without over doing it. I'm really hoping that this winter will be injury free so I can get into the North Face Endurance Challenge next April in New York. The past three years I've remembered too late and it was all full. I know the trails around the Bear Mt. area pretty well, so even if I can't train up for the 50K or 50 miler, I can probably churn out a pretty fast 10K. Here's to hoping for at least 6 months without injury!