Uh-Oh

Remember this game? And this one? I've kind of lost my touch, but it's still in there somewhere, I can feel it!

WARNING: Don't read until after Thanksgiving!

I'm reeeeeally picky about women's voices, and I'm even pickier about what versions of O Holy Night I enjoy listening to because to me it's a song that should be sung with light pure voices and is often sung operatically instead (blecccchhhhhhh!), with heavy vibrato. So, I'm always on the lookout for good versions of the song, and while I was browsing through Christmas music on youtube and Amazon today (I know, I know...), I came across this:

Celtic Woman/Chloe Agnew - O Holy Night

Oh my goodness! I LOVE it! These voices are exactly the kind I love! They sing so beautifully!

This one is for Eloise: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKrx-4Awe70&feature=related
(Look into Celtic Woman in general... Warning: The video looks a little cheesy sometimes.)

Here are a few other great Christmas songs I came across today, to give you a little head start for the upcoming holiday season:

Michael Buble - The Christmas Song Who am I kidding? Anything Michael Buble! (White Christmas, I'll Be Home for Christmas, Let it Snow...)

The Carpenters - There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays Okay, anything Carpenters too.

Harry Connick Jr. - Christmas Waltz (no recording--can anyone find one?)

And of course, all the classics by Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby, etc.

Coventry Carol

Josh Groban - What Child is This?

Are you sick of this yet?

You probably think I'm lame for always posting these, but I don't listen to the radio so it's amazing I ever find them at all...

Here's another song I'm loving right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nTSU-mFWGs

Actually, I'm liking the singer in general.

What He Said

TrueWilderness.blogspot.com

Palo Alto Moonlight Run

Well, I did it! I ran a 5k race without walking! It was very tiring, but I think it was worse than it normally would have been since it was night time. That's just not nearly as nice a time to run as the morning!

Anyway, I convinced Peter to come with me and he was going to take a picture of me at the finish line but somehow he didn't see me and I didn't see him, so all we got was a couple of post race pictures.

The course was almost entirely flat, but it was dark, aside from the nearly full moon, so lots of people had headlamps and flashlights (I brought a little flashlight). It was also veeeeeeeeery crowded. The 5k run alone had 840 people in it, and since I was pretty slow, I started off pretty close to the back, which means that my time really would have been a few minutes better because it took a really long time to be able to start running, with so many people starting a race at the same time.

In case you have a morbid curiosity of just how slow I really am, I ran it in 33:43 and my mile pace was an average of 10:51, coming in 535 place overall and 46th for my division (out of 83). So, basically, I'm just a normal average slow person--I beat my first goal, but wasn't thinking about the numbers of people slowing me down when I made the goal, and I feel pretty confident that I would have been at about a 10 minute mile pace if it hadn't been so crowded. I feel like once I was running, I was going faster than my normal slow pace. (To further embarrass myself, I'll mention that I paced myself on two different sets of elementary aged girls running with their parents. I managed to pass them both with 1 mile to go when they stopped for water and I never saw them again, but I also started slowing down once I didn't have such good pacers anymore.)

Anyway, I'm definitely no runner, but I'm still proud that I ran a 5K! Maybe someday I'll be able to do a 10K (though if I do, I better run habitually first).

Some of my current song faves

It's all about the dancing baby! What have I been doing all my life? I could have been DANCING!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3xx72NGrUc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PNSg2NTRNc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sei-eEjy4g (Don't listen to this one if you're sensitive to drug and gun references...)

Running

A few weeks ago, I signed up for a 5K race that happens to be this Friday night, despite the fact that I never run and even when I do, I'm really slow. So, once the week of the race rolled around Monday morning, I decided I better figure out if I'm gonna cut it and I went for a run with Littler after dropping Little off at her first day of co-op preschool. It was a hilly run and I ran 2.65 miles without walking any of it! The best part was that it felt GOOD! From the first moment I started running it felt good, and that has NEVER happened to me before! I was really stoked, so the next morning I went to the gym with a friend and ran 5K on the treadmill. Wow! That felt good too, but it also gave me huge blisters on my feet and made my muscles reeeeeeally sore (they're much better today, although not fully recovered), so I decided that I'll take it easy until the race. The race is a moonlight run, so it will be dark aside from the light of the moon, meaning it will be at the end of the day, after dinner, etc. On the treadmill I ran it in about 33:30 (slow, I know...) and my ultimate hope is to finish under 30 minutes, but my first goal is to beat 35 minutes. We'll see how that works out, but wish me luck and hope that running will feel as good Friday night as it did Monday and Tuesday!