Trips, Running, and Baking

I've already broken my rule of blogging twice a month. I didn't check, but I think my last one was over a month ago now. But they would have been boring, anyway.

Two weeks ago I took a trip with my husband to Seattle. It was great fun. He had to work during the days, so I wandered about, testing a bunch of coffee shops (Caffe Vita was excellent, and Cafe Allegro, the oldest espresso bar in the city, was right next to an amazing used bookstore!). I saw some of the sights, but mostly steered away from any tourist stuff.

(Actual picture I took)

There was a heatwave going on and Vancouver had forest fires causing a smoky smog. At nights we got to go to some nice restaurants. We were even celebrating our Fourth Anniversary (eight years together total). I can't believe how fast time goes by. The anniversary dinner was right on Lake Union. It was beautiful.

So that happened and was great.

As I said last time, I'm training to do well in a half marathon. The official race date is September 30, so it's coming up fast. I was getting a bit of pain in my legs, so I reduced my non-running day exercise. Last time I said I was doing yoga, but I think that was too strenuous on my legs for proper recovery. I'm still doing some light cross training and stretching. The pain is gone, so I really think that was the problem.

I don't know if I've said this before, but I'm super into baking---mostly bread, mostly sourdough. I decided to stretch out of my comfort zone and try sourdough pretzels:

They were super tasty, but they puffed up quite a bit. I also didn't shape them very well, so it was almost a pretzel roll.

The last bit of news is that the third Merlin's Grove book is well underway. The rough draft should be done any day now. I'll spend September whipping it into shape, and then I'll hopefully release it sometime in October. I'm quite happy with it so far. The magic was pretty light in the first one. It ramps up a bit in the second. This third novel just fully embraces that it's in both the fantasy and romance genres. Hopefully that excites fans of the series and doesn't scare them away.