Jillian Als

Entries in Philadelphia (9)

Wednesday

Nov252009

a time to give thanks

Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 6:34PM

Happy Thanksgiving my little o-m-g-er's! I am sitting here in Providence Airport severely delayed (figures) and thought it might be a good time to blog. I'm pretty sure weather.com sucks at predicting weather, which is ridiculous considering the fact that their domain is weather.com. They had sun predicted all week (even this morning!) for today. No such thing. Fog = USAirway travelers' worst nightmare.

Hope you all have nice little Thanksgiving plans. I'm going to one of my dad's sister's house. There should be a good crowd. The Curley's know how to have a good laugh!

What are your plans? Which football game are you most excited about? Us Philly fans absolutely hate the Cowboys so ideally I'd like to watch them LOSE. ;) Other than that, not particularly excited about any of them. If it's not raining it might be fun to have a family game of touch football but it's unrealistic to think my family is that organized. :P

So let's talk Black Friday. I am definitely contemplating getting up at an absurd hour to go buy the rest of my family Christmas presents. It might be a recipe for disaster, though. I feel like I will get anxiety and probably start pushing people. But Target is offering a 32" LCD flat screen for $246! Holy crap! If I had any need for such a monster I would buy one.

I.hate.Providence.Airport. Their only bar is closing at 7 when flights are delayed out the wazoo. Lame with a capital L.

Enough bitterness. I will leave you all on a happy note... all the things I am thankful for!

My family (yep hubby this includes you!)
My friends
Lady Gaga
The internet

Go ahead and laugh, I am ridiculous. What are you thankful for?

xoxo

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Jillian Als |

4th of July is better with family!

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 10:25AM

With no real intentions of going home for the weekend, I bought a train ticket to Philadelphia last Thursday for the holiday weekend. Best decision, ever. It's so nice to spend the 4th with family and I haven't done that in almost a decade I bet.

I watched fireworks with the fam on Friday night, made s'mores and promptly passed out with the children at 11pm. Saturday I got up and ran a 5k with Jack and my aunt. Yes they both beat me. Yes I got beat by a 7 (almost 8)-year-old. But we all know I'm a slow runner.

The rest of the 4th was spent poolside and I got to throw Maya around in the water because she ways a feather in water. My back would beg to differ but it was worth it. I got to swim around like a kid again. So impressed with Jack and Maya and their pure athleticism at such a young age. I'm thinking Olympics 2020 for them both? ;)

I also got to spend some QT with my padre, time I don't get very often. It's nice when we can get along amicably in each other's presence! No... just worry about him sometimes. Great to spend some time with him, though.

I also got to see my fabulous Crisi ladies on Sunday evening before leaving town. They're finally moving to Malvern after all these years, can you believe it?! So strange but very happy for them.

My weekend came to an end as I took an overnight train from Philadelphia to Boston with a layover in NYC. 8 hour trip and I slept most of it... though not very soundly. Totally worth it, though!

It's raining here again in Boston. It's dark outside. I want to go back to sunny Philadelphia and play in the pool again! Back to work it is, though...

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Jillian Als |

2 Comments |

tagged

Philadelphia,

jack and maya,

running,

travel

Monday

May042009

01:41:41

Monday, May 4, 2009 at 5:54PM

Broad Street Run 2009 - 23,093 finishers - holy crap! I was one of them! :D

Ten miles, I did it! I can't believe it but I actually finished the 10 mile race without stopping to walk or fall too much off a 10 min/mi pace. I think the more impressive bit worth mentioning is that the last two miles of the race it POURED cats and dogs rain on us! I did anticipate some rain, and it was just scattered sprinkles throughout the majority of the race, however, I wasn't prepared for the downpour during the two most physically challenging miles!

Here is a "before" picture. The "after" picture is literally so bad of me that I really can't share it.

So Mike and I finished the race side by side like two mops in a bucket. The other bad part about the rain was having to SLOWLLLLY walk through these crowds to get food and water after crossing the finish line. We were soaked through and through. Got back to the minivan and said… let’s bounce! The Downingtown Running Club had a bunch of stuff to tailgate with, too. So it was kind of a shame. It totally would have been my style to eat a burger and relax in the sun. Unfortunately, shivering in the rain made everything less fun.

But all in all, the race felt really good. I felt really comfortable with my pace, as slow as it may be. It managed to keep Mike by my side and he has never run more than five miles. He certainly kept me going through certain miles that felt longer than others. He also put up with my weaving traffic of slower runners – I get annoyed easily, we all know this. haha.

We finished in 1 hour 41 minutes, a time I am pretty proud of. I think I will be just fine to run a half marathon in the near future. One of my aunt's friends running with us said that once I've done 10 mi then I might as well train for a marathon. According to her (a very experienced marathon runner) it's making the jump from 3 mi to 7 mi for non-distance runners that is the hardest bit. I don't know if I am convinced. She said that I could do a marathon in the fall if I wanted to. If I wanted to. Hmm.

I was thinking if I were to do a marathon, obviously I've toyed with the idea in the past, then I would want to wait until next spring. I would like to build my stamina as a runner and speed up a bit if at all possible. So my thoughts were to make it a destination marathon like London Marathon or Copenhagen Marathon.

Again, those lofty and ambitious goals of mine. I still have to tackle the half marathon next. I had the very quick idea to do the Big Lake Half next Saturday with Carissa in New Hampshire. I took a look at the race description and thought that "rolling hills" is a good thing when describing a drive in the country but not to run. I just, to be honest, have incorporated very few hills into my training. Boston can be pretty flat, especially along The Charles.

I also will have you all know that the race was over as of like 11am yesterday and I still haven't had one single drink! I could really go for a cold beer right now. I am in the airport which is one of my favorite places to grab a beer but PHL is telling me that despite all this rain my flight is actually ON TIME. Never (ever) happens in PHL so I'm not sure what is going on. Do they serve beer on puddle jumpers? ;)

Oh wait, just made an announcement. My plane due to depart in an hour hasn't even left Boston, yet. On to finding a suitable pint of beer!

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Jillian Als |

forget face masks - will need an oxygen mask come sunday

Thursday, April 30, 2009 at 11:03AM

So you're probably thinking that when I've decided not to make this blog all about myself anymore that I suddenly have nothing to say, haha. Let's just say I have been hugely busy and nothing to show for it!! At least it feels that way, highly frustrating. Don't worry, I haven't dropped off due to a Swine Flu infection, haha. ew.

What have I been doing worth sharing? Well I have been trying to launch my project all last week but hitting hiccups along the way, as all projects do. We did a "soft launch" (sorry for the industry speak) on Tuesday. Aiming for full launch early next week. I will blog more specifically about this mysterious project at that point!

The weather in Boston over the last seven days has been monumentally higher than avg April temps. Tuesday we hit 94 deg!! Back to normal for the next week I think, though. This is good because a 10 mi race in 90 deg weather isn't going to cut it!

Speaking of the race. It is a mere 3 days away...eek! I might die but I am uber excited just the same. The one and only Mike Prible has signed up to run with me. Thank you Mike, please let the EMS people know that I have no known allergies and no prior heart conditions.

This does mean I'm coming home to PA but unfortunately I am only going to be home for .2 seconds, running for 1 hour and then in hospital for 2 days. No but seriously, flying in Sat afternoon and leaving Monday afternoon. Apologies in advance if I don't get to see all my fam and faves. :)

Has anyone reading this ran the Broad Street Run before and have any good tips or tricks???

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Jillian Als |

nine things in two-thousand-nine

Saturday, January 3, 2009 at 5:22PM

Well, it's the New Year. With only two official blog posts in the month of December it's safe to say that I was really busy this holiday season. Christmas at home was truly wonderful. My fiance is the perfect man. He made me a dvd about us getting married - if I find a way to post it, I will!

We stayed with my aunt & uncle and I was cuddled and snuggled every day by my favorite little children in the whole wide world. They got me the coolest present - my very own Black Lab Webkin!! Now, for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about - in essence Webkinz is an online pet community. Thor, the black lab, is very spoiled. I'm addicted to a couple of the games on the site so I'm building up revenue for him to build him an empire.

Now - we all know that this is the time of year where we make New Year's Resolutions. I asked Christian what his resolutions are and he said "to get married." Pfff, what a little sarcastic brat (whom I love dearly!). The following are what I consider to be my 9 resolutions for 2009 in no particular order:

1. blog more - do you like that?
2. have better posture - slouching makes for hunchbacks
3. stop cursing like a sailor - it's seriously an issue sometimes
4. run more - this would help achieve the whole (now half) marathon thing
5. stay on top of my health - this means calling the dentist on Monday
6. do something incredible at my job - get them to move me to London
7. keep my nails strong and healthy (that one's for you babe)
8. manage finances better - aka pay off my stupid credit cards... this unfortunately includes me picking up shifts at Cactus pfff
9. stay in better touch with friends and relatives - can you all remind me of your birthdays?

Well that's a lot to get going on, whaddya reckon? I think maybe one additional one would be to stay organized so I can actually attempt to achieve numbers 1 through 9 above. What is also not mentioned here is that I'm planning a wedding hahaha. Let's all laugh at me as I attempt to get through 2009 sanely.

I just asked my roommate what his new years resolution is and he said, "to save some f**king money." Okay, this was him swearing - not me already breaking resolution number 3! Oh man, I'm slouching. This is going to be a pretty impressive year if I'm able to pull off all 9.

Does anyone else ever get the feeling that there are not enough hours in the day? Or do you think we're all too quick to make excuses? I won't even try to make excuses for not running for the past 2+ weeks. I will just likely want to kill myself when I get to the gym on Monday, out of shape and fighting some stupid other new year ressie for the good treadmills at BSC.

There is still tomorrow to look forward to. Tomorrow is EAGLES playoff game number one. I still am so happy about last week's whoopin on the Cowboys and when the stars aligned to get the birds into the playoffs. Let's do this, Philadelphia.

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Jillian Als |

2 Comments |

tagged

Philadelphia,

eagles,

health,

resolutions,

running,

wedding