Well, tonight I ran outside for the first time I can remember.  I had stopped running completely for probably 4 months, until last week I started running just a mile on the treadmill after tae kwon do classes.  When I was running last I was running on the treadmill for months – it just appealed to me for a while.

All I ran was a mile and a quarter before class tonight, but that’s all it took. I feel the addiction starting again…

I have to say, as not-common-sense as it may sound I think running barefoot outside is so much better for my feet than running on the treadmill.  On the treadmill my toes get sore from rubbing on the tread, outside my feet feel fine.  I did see a lot of little broken glass in 2 places tonight, but that’s pretty easy to see reflecting the street lights.

Anyways, the long and short of it is I do believe it’s time to get back on the running horse and start working on getting some mileage going!

So no photo today.  The prompt was landmark, I really didn’t have anything older to fit that prompt and I didn’t even get outside today on my lunch so I had no chance of getting a photo today.  All good though – it’s been a great day.

Have you ever tried barefoot running?  If you like running and you haven’t tried it barefoot, what’s stopping you?  Give it a try!

How do you connect with your family?  Today’s photo prompt was connect – and as usual a few ideas came to mind but I decided to go with family.  A couple years ago we all REALLY connected –  everyone got together, and went tubing for a few hours – with all of our tubes tied together.  This picture is about a quarter of the total.

I connect with my daughter usually doing things like watching Supernatural and Walking Dead (Do I get an awesome mom of the year award for that?) or hysterical videos she is always showing me of things like this. Strangely addictive.  You’re welcome.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diU70KshcjA?rel=0]

Then there’s my son’s, our biggest thing right now is Tae Kwon Doe, but there’s also the occasional Mine Craft session.  I’ll spare you a photo.  🙂

I swap seeds and gardening photos with one of my nieces, talk dinosaurs and super heroes with my littlest nephews, everyone has their own thing!

How about you, is there any particular way you connect with your family? Do you find yourself doing completely different things with everyone in the family?

I decided to try something completely different for me for this post.  That was supposed to be the point of this month, right?  I prefer to take pictures of non-human animals and of places and things but today I had my daughter (an actual person!) pose for my pictures.  The prompt today was solitude.  As my daughter COULD be mistaken for the girl from The Ring she was perfect.

As usual I couldn’t pick out my favorite picture but instead of creating a collage of my choices I though I would just post them individually and ask you to let me know which one you like best for the prompt ‘solitude’.

  You can see that they are all 3 really the same picture, it’ just a slight style difference.  You can also see that they are taken with a cell phone camera and that I haven’t had it long enough to figure out the settings.  🙂 We were asked to use the ‘rule of three’ when framing the shots, which is why I tried the different angles of the same shot. Ignoring the quality of the photo, what do you think?

The photo prompt today was bliss.  What’s bliss? Happiness and joy and all that sort of thing.

I can think of lots of images to represent bliss. Everything from a dog let outside the first time coming home from the shelter, to pictures of family, to images not so appropriate for my blog.  But as I was trying to think of what to take a photo of while driving in to work this morning really all I could think of was why on earth was traffic moving so slow all morning and how was it possible that I sat at the same light 3 times? I should have been to work early and now if I sat here long enough I was going to be late.

And then I saw this. BLISS.

Green means GO!

Funny how a word can mean different things at different times.  What’s your interpretation of bliss?

It’s only about 10:00, this still counts as Wednesday.  🙂

The prompt for today’s photo is water.  That kind of made me laugh because I realized that most of my pictures are of water.  Easy peasy.  In the interest of fair play I went on my lunch break today and took a few pictures.  As seems be the trend I couldn’t decide on my favorite so I cheated and created another collage.  I cheat at pool too, these things are out of my control. Really.

I actually do have a favorite, it’s the middle picture. I love photos of reflections on water where you can hardly tell which way is up and which way is down.

Water, water everywhere.

Now that I’ve decided to follow the Photo 101 prompts I’ve suddenly thought of all kinds of other things to write about too.  I’m busily getting back into running and the garden is (semi) growing again, tae kwon do is going well. If all of that isn’t enough to inspire me I’m heading out this weekend to the WOWsummit in Orlando. If you are in the area check out their site. It’s a weekend full of healthy parenting speakers and brands like Zevia and EnviroKidz giving out samples and answering questions.  I’m pretty excited about it and hoping to find some healthy, non-GMO products that my kids will love.  I’m not sure how I’m going to do on my photo prompts while I”m there though!

The photo prompt today was streets.   I love pictures of streets, trails, and rivers; they look inviting and always make me wonder what is just around the next bend.  If you ever were to look through my pictures on my computer there is a disproportional amount of them of rivers and trails.

It just so happens I took the picture below on on my way home from work right before I got the photo prompt.  I love this picture, the trees and windmill behind a busy street full of cars is exactly how it is where I live. I was sitting at one of the last lights before my neighborhood, within walking distance of home.

This afternoon while I took a walk on my lunch break I took a couple of other pictures of streets.  These are different angles of the same street, Linebaugh Ave. As seen from walking on the street, from walking below, and walking directly below.

If I’d had time I would have liked to add some pictures of the streets in my neighborhood.  They are all curved enough to make pulling out a a driveway a challenge and most of them have either water on one side, trees on one side, or both.  The ones that have both I avoid like the plague when I run outside at night.  Which I haven’t done in way too long….

In addition to #NaBloPoMo I also signed up for Photography 101 this month.  All or nothing, right?  The photo theme of the day is ‘home’.  That’s a word that means different things to different people and which has meant very different things to me at different times.

I’ve lived in Arizona most of my life, and a few years in California as well.  I felt at home in those places, or I thought I did. I was perfectly fine with either one of them really.

But then I moved to Florida and I found that home isn’t just where the heart is as so many people say. Home is the place that when you get there you find you don’t want to leave.  I’ve only been here 8 years but after the first year I was already hooked.  Visiting other places is fun and I’d love to go back and visit the desert and the mountains, but Florida is home to me.

Well, it’s 10:30at night on the second day of NaBloPoMo and I haven’t posted yet.  The daily prompt didn’t really light any fires for me, it asked that you retell a story that someone had recently told you.  But it did bring to mind a text conversation that I had with my 17 year old niece last night.

She is trying very hard to convince her mom that she should get a pet that is hers and hers alone, which she can take with her when she eventually moves out.  She originally texted me to ask where I got my kittens a few months ago.  I let her know that I got them at the Tampa Bay Humane Society, the same place I got my two younger dogs.  Just to let you know, this place is spectacular. The people are so friendly and the animals seem to be healthy and kept clean and well.  Not an easy feat with as many as they have at times!

Then I promptly tried to talk her out of a kitten.  In all fairness, I am a dog person, I’ve never quite trusted cats.  The only reason I got the two I have is because I am a total pushover and my kids really wanted them.  My daughter got straight As last year and somehow worked that into a visit to the Humane Society to get a kitten.  Somehow we came home with two…

I have to admit that the little beasts have grown on me and now I am very much attached to them – but don’t tell them that!  However, cats can get anywhere they would like to, including on top of the bookshelf, the desk, inside my daughter’s backpack (they stay in her room most of the time) and basically wherever you put whatever it is you don’t want them to get into.

I’m skipping the entire subject of dogs simply because the average parent isn’t going to think that a dog is low maintenance – they need and deserve as much time as you can give them, and being a teenager means you have to convince your parents that your idea is a good one.

So what does that leave? I’ve had chickens, and as neat as an idea as that was it didn’t work out.  We’ve had little pets like fish (too much work cleaning their tank and they are kind of boring) and hamsters (They bite. Enough said.) which I was not too thrilled with.  The other two pets we have experience with are a rabbit and rats.

We go our rabbit on accident – and as a result it has lived in my bathroom for about 7 or 8 months.  I would get it a hutch but it’s used to having it’s own room and a hutch just seems so small in comparison.  And as odd as it may seem I have gotten used to him (or her) being there – he runs up to me when I go in the room, and I can sit on the floor in there with him, which of course I couldn’t do if he was in a hutch. I never would have picked a rabbit as a pet but I can tell you now that they are very affectionate and really a cool pet if you keep them inside.  Not to mention the fact that they are automatically litter box trained as well as or better than a cat. The down side?  (S)he chews on EVERYTHING including the floorboards, the door, and several phone cords when left out in my room. There may be a way to stop that, but I haven’t found it yet.

So what then is the ideal?  Strange as it may sound I recommended getting rats. They are inexpensive, we got our cage for about $20 on Craig’s List, obviously they don’t eat much, and the only other thing you really need to buy is the litter for the bottom of their cage.  They seem to love attention and people in general, and I’ve never seen one bite.  And if you have the time and the inclination, you can teach them a pretty amazing variety of tricks.  Check this video out that I found on YouTube:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jo_EG7XqZQ?rel=0] So, what do you think?  What kind of pet would you recommend for a teenager?  They are old enough to take care of a pet but young enough that they still need to convince their parents that they can, and in all reality taking care of a really labor intensive pet may be a bit overwhelming at times.  Let me know what you would suggest.

Hello strangers! Welcome to complete randomness.  Maybe for a while, maybe permanently, I’ll let you know if you care to come back and find out.  🙂

When I started writing here in January 2011 this was a personal journal of something new I was trying – running.  I just wrote about how far I ran and how hard it was.  Then I started writing about other things as well, mostly fun things here in Florida like paddle boarding or festivals and posting the occasional recipe.

I’ve gone back and forth between writing quite a bit and not writing at all for long stretches of time, and I’ve tried several ‘writing challenges’ to get me back into the swing of things but I haven’t finished any of them.  Why?  Because I tend to feel that I should stay ‘on subject’ and write mostly about running.  But just like with writing I go through phases of not running at all.  I’ve just started running again after several months off, I want to start writing steady again too.  But how to get back to writing consistently?

This month I am trying something totally different for me.  I’m joining Blogher.com’s NaBloPoMo, which is a commitment to write a post every day this month.  I’ve tried challenges like this before, but I usually stop writing because I have a hard time tying the writing prompts into anything related to what I usually write about.  So this time I’m going to go at it a bit different.  I won’t be limiting myself to any subject at all for the entire month.  I might write about running and things fun to do in Florida, but I also might try writing a piece of fiction related to nothing at all or I may do a post that is just pictures.  Photography is an area I think I’d have fun doing more of.

So if you’ve been following this blog please bear with my wandering and rambling, but I think it is time I get more zen out of writing Kinda Zennish.  🙂

Just to get the randomness officially started, here is a picture of Boots, one of our 3 would-have-been-snake-food rats. How do all people not see how cute and friendly rats are??

Have you ever found you have set limits on yourself that were unnecessary in hindsight?

Are you joining NaBloPoMo or another writing challenge? If so what made you decide to join or what are you doing differently than you have before in your writing?

I received two VIP tickets to Guavaween in exchange for hosting this giveaway and writing a review. As always, my opinions are all mine.

Are you in the Tampa area? Do you have a distinct lack of (awesome) plans this Saturday night? Well, I have a solution for you!

Guavaween is back. For 2014 it’s been recreated into a Voodoo Carnival at the Cuban Club! Now I really wish I could have binge watched Season 4 of American Horror Story last weekend… because YES there will be a freak show. As if just plain people watching won’t be worth the trip. 🙂

I have to admit, I’ve never been to Guavaween before.  I love a good party and all, but this one always sounded a little over the top and uncontained.  But not this year!

This year Guavaween is at the Cuban Club, the same location that The Summer of Rum Festival was, which I loved so much.  This may be because the same team, Big City Events, which put on that festival has taken over Guavaween this year. Lucky for us!

There are going to be 5 themed areas:

Funhouse Avenue with voodoo magic and a Freakshow Carnival

Dumaine Street Courtyard – music, a costume contest, and random street performers

Laveau Lounge to get your fortune read (and more voodoo juice)

Sideshow Theater for live performances from Burlesque troupe shows, freak shows and a midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. (I used to watch Rocky Horror every weekend, I’ll have to stop in!)

Club Ju-Jū – where to go for dancing and laser lights (I’m not a big dancer but I can be amused for untold hours by blinking lights…)

So now that you’ve decided that you are going too, what do you need to know? You can get your tickets here.

General Admission Tickets : $18 Limited Presale | $20 Advance | $25 Regular| $30 Door (if available)
VIP Voodoo Experience: $80 Limited Presale | $85 Advance | $95 Regular| $125 Door (if available)

You can find out everything else you need to know including where to park on Guavaweentampa.com.

Want to save your money to spend on your costume and voodoo juice?  Enter to win one of 3 pairs of General Admission tickets here!
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