The Weekend That Was

Other than an embarrassing display of football by OU on Saturday night, this weekend has been pretty good. I left work a little early on Friday so we could go pick up a Ryder truck and head to Bartlesville. My good friend Shawn was nice enough to give us his dining room table, so we went to go pick it up. Beth and I didn't have a dining room in our last house so we obviously didn't have a table when we moved to Tulsa. Our dining room has just been empty for the past 6 months. And honestly, a dining room table was pretty low on our priority list of things we need for our house now. Now, thanks to Shawn, we don't have to worry about a dining room table. The table he gave us is great. It's a 70 inch round table that is super high quality. In fact, the top of the table is so heavy that it took three guys to move it(not including the base of the table). Anyway, we got some help moving it in to our house and here's what it looks like:




On our way back from Bartlesville, we decided to stop at Hideaway Pizza for dinner. After dinner, we went home, watched "The Office", and went to bed since we had to get up early on Saturday morning.

Last Wednesday, I saw online that Jenks(suburb just south of Tulsa) was having its annual half-marathon. I thought about it for a second and decided that it might be fun for Beth and I to run in it. The last time we ran a half marathon was January of 2008. In fact, we haven't even run 13.1 miles since then. So I asked Beth and she said it'd be fine to run in it and it was set. The race started at 8 a.m., which meant we had to be up around 6:30 a.m. to get ready to head to the race.

The race was very small. In fact, there were only about 190 people who participated in the half marathon. Last week there were over 8000 runners in the Tulsa Run. The weather was also a lot warmer this weekend. Instead of temperatures in the 40s, it was 62 degrees when the race started. This meant that about a mile in to the race, we already had a sweat going. It didn't help that the race had about 3 miles worth of hills. Anyway, we finished the race and overall had a good time. Our goal was to run under an hour and forty minutes. Unfortunately that didn't happen. I finished around an hour and forty two minutes and Beth finished one minute behind me. The results were still good enough for both of us to win our age group and for Beth to finish 4th among all girls. Not too bad for not training.



Last night we went and had dinner at Carrabba's. We love Carrabba's and couldn't remember the last time we had been. Overall, it was good. Not quite as good as going to the one in Houston, but oh well.

Today we have just been running a few errands and getting things done around the house. Beth is going to Houston next weekend for her annual trip to The Nutcracker Market with her Mom and Janet. I'm sure she'll have a great time and hopefully find some great stuff.

Tulsa Run

This picture was on a website for the Tulsa Run. Can you find us in the picture?

Tulsa Run and the Suite Life

Beth and I have had a really good weekend. Friday night we went out to dinner to Los Cabos. It's a Mexican restaurant in Broken Arrow that we had been meaning to try for a really long time. My Mom bought us a gift card to there for letting her stay with us a few weeks ago. It was really nice of her to do that and very thoughtful of her since she knew we had been wanting to try there. Overall we thought it was pretty good. It was kind of weird that we had to wait about 20 minutes even though it was almost 8:30 p.m. by the time we got there. That combined with a somewhat obnoxious waitress, were the only drawbacks to the night. We really enjoyed our food and will definitely be going back. After dinner, we came home and relaxed and went to bed early since we had to get up for the Tulsa Run in the morning.

This year's Tulsa Run was better than last year on many levels. The first thing is, we got to sleep over an hour longer. Last year we were staying in Bartlesville and had to get up around 6:30, plus we had no idea what to do once we got there. This year, we decided we weren't going to get there too early and get stuck standing around in the 40 degree weather. We did however meet up with my friend Shawn and hangout with him before the race. With about 10 minutes before the race, we decided to head over and lineup in the herd of people. It was actually pretty warm as everyone was huddled up. We kind of pushed through the crowd a little bit, but ended up starting about 3/4 of the way back in the crowd. This meant that we had to spend the first mile or so weaving in and out of people, trying to get a good pace going.

The weather was perfect for the race. It was about 44 degrees when we started with sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. Beth and I both felt pretty good throughout the entire 9.3 miles. We ran together for all but the last mile and a half. Overall, we both finished better than we did last year.

Beth's Results(based on chip time):
Time 1:07:26
7:15 minutes per mile
248th place overall(out of 3793 runners)
33rd place for women(out of 1798 runners)
9th place in age group(out of 288 runners)

Tony's Results
Time 1:06:05
7:06 minutes per mile
200th place overall(out of 3793 runners)
180th place for men(out of 1991 runners)
26th place in age group(out of 231 runners)

Before the Race

After the Race


After the race, we came home and relaxed a little bit before heading to Norman for the OU game. We were lucky enough to get two tickets up in a suite for the game so that was fun to get a little different experience. We had tons of food in the suite from prime rib to chips and queso to cheesecake and hot tamales. Needless to say we werent' hungry when we left. The other good thing was Beth could watch the Texas/Oklahoma State game on tv while I was watching the OU game on the field. Here's a picture of when we went down closer to the field:



Since we got home late last night from Norman, we took advantage of the clocks moving back an hour and slept in a little bit. After we got up, we made breakfast, read the paper, and just lounged around. We finally decided it was time to get to work and get our office organized. We bought new chairs about a month ago. Thanks to Mr. Dale, we got a new set of shelves with a media center from Crate and Barrel last week. So we spent today putting that together and getting everything organized. The house is slowly coming together.

Our new shelves in the office


A View of the whole office


Tonight we are having BBQ chicken from the Crockpot. I just took 3 chicken breasts and threw them in the Crockpot, threw in an onion, and poured BBQ sauce on top of it. And after 5 hours, it's time to eat shredded BBQ chicken sandwiches with homemade potato chips. What a deal!

Oktoberfest, Pumpkins, and Meatballs Oh My!

Beth and I went to Oktoberfest last night. I would say that overall we had fun. Although it was definitely interesting and a great place to people watch. It was basically a bunch of huge tents set up with stages and then also booths selling food. And of course beer. It cost five bucks per person to get in and then you had to exchange money for tickets to buy beer and food. They had a ton of beer choices with German beers and American beers, but the prices were outrageous. The options were $7 a pint or $19 a pitcher for import beers and $5 a pint or $15 a pitcher for American beers. I can honestly say that I have never paid over $5 for a pint of beer anywhere. Especially not for weak Oklahoma beer. Even when I was in Germany with a less than favorable exchange rate, I could buy a pint for about $3. Anyway, needless to say I think we spent a lot less money than most people out there.

We did manage to hang around for a while and check things out. We got a pitcher of Warsteiner Premium which is a pretty good German beer and we also got a huge pretzel. There was tons of music and dancing going on as well and they even had amusement park type rides. I've always been a little skeptical about the types of rides that they set up and take down in only a few hours. Is this really safe?





Before Oktoberfest yesterday, we headed down to Riverside and did a 9 mile run. The weather was great and we ran on a path that we hadn't run before. We've come to realize that there are way more trails than we ever thought. As we start training for our marathon, it'll be a great place to do our long runs.

The Sooners had a great showing yesterday and I think we are finally moving in the right direction. Even without our starting quarterback, tight end, and running back, we managed to beat a ranked team at home.

Today we slept in a just relaxed for a little while before heading to the grocery store for our weekly shopping. We've started taking in other stores ads tot Wal-Mart and having them match the price. Up until last week we had never done that before, but it's easy to do and a great way to save money and keep yourself from driving all over town to get the best deals.

After the store we went to the mall for a while and then headed home to watch some football and carve our pumpkin. Right now Beth is in the process of making Apple Sauce Meatballs for dinner and I can't wait. She's made them once before and they were great. Supposedly it's a Lewis family favorite(especially for Mr. Dale).






Here are some pics of Beth making the famous apple sauce meatballs:






On a side note, Stacy played great in her first tournament in Asia. She finished in 7th place at 3 under par. Next week she heads to Korea for her next tournament. I'd give a link for the results but it's all in Japanese so it'd be kind of pointless. Below are a few pics of Stacy in Japan.

Meeting with Scoliosis Patients



Signing Autographs


The Driving Range!

The Weekend

Beth and I had a nice relaxing night last night. A cold front came through and it really made us not feel like doing much of anything. We did however, manage to go eat at one of our favorite restaurants, Charleston's. We got a $10 off coupon in the mail a few weeks ago and it expired next week so we decided to take advantage of it. After dinner, we came home and just relaxed. We watched The Office from Thursday night and got a good laugh. I definitely think that this season is a lot better than last season.

Yesterday when I checked our mail, this is what we got:





Beth and I both got our miniature(and I mean miniature) #1 pins that we got for winning our age group and Beth received 25 dollars in cold hard cash for placing third overall for females. Way to go Beth!

Today we are going to head over to Riverside for an 8 or 9 mile run before coming back home to watch OU play Kansas. It's been a pretty disappointing season for Oklahoma football, but considering our three losses came to teams ranked inside the top 16 without our Heisman QB and All-American tight end, I don't think we have too much to be ashamed of. It is after all, Oklahoma Football and we'll be back.

After football, we are heading back down to Riverside for Oktoberfest. Supposedly Tulsa has one of the best Oktoberfest festivals in the country so I'm looking forward to it.

Beth's sister Stacy is in Japan right now playing in a JLPGA event. We got a chance to talk to her via Blackberry Messenger this morning. Sounds like she's doing well. She's currently in 7th place in this week's tournament with one round to go. She also got a chance to meet with scoliosis patients in Japan which she really enjoyed. Stacy's done a great job being a voice for scoliosis patients and showing that anything is possible even if you are born with scoliosis. After this, she's got a tournament in Korea and then heading back to Japan for one more tournament.

Next weekend is the Tulsa Run. We ran the race last year and had a great time. Hopefully the weather will be nice and it'll be another great run.

Woolaroc Road Race 2009

Tony mentioned that we signed up for the Woolaroc run and the day has come and gone. This morning we woke up kind of early, 6:30 am, and made the hour drive up to Woolaroc. We posted about visiting Woolaroc over the summer, where we had that buffalo go right by our car! Anyways, the race this morning was an 8k, about 5 miles. Temperature was about 46 degrees this morning, so it was a little chilly starting out. It took me almost 2 miles to warm up! There were about 220 participants, so it's kind of a small run, more local folks. We got to run around the property on the entry and exit roads. There were quite a few more hills than we remembered! Several were pretty long, so that got us warmed up too!

The big news from the race is that Tony and I both won our respective age groups, which doesn't happen very often! Plus, they do cash prizes for 1st through 3rd place for men and women, well, yours truely got 3rd place for women! The prize is $25...which basically covers the entry fee, but still pretty cool! Tony joked and asked me if I was prepared to turn pro since I was accepting prize money. Very funny babe. We actually left before they did the results because we wanted to get home in time for the OU/Texas game. So one of Debbie's (Tony's mom) friends picked up our stuff and is going to mail it to us...so nice of her! Tony's mom came a long with us and did the walk part of the event. She's been here all week. Will post more about that kind of stuff later. Here are some pictures from the day.

Also, you can click here if you want to see the race results online.

Tony & Shawn

The Wysocki's

Tony and his Mom

Tony finishing

Beth finishing

Our buffalo friends

Landscaping!

We finally got our landscaping done tonight. I stopped by Home Depot today on my lunch break and bought a few more bags of mulch. Unfortunately on my way home it started raining and once I got inside the house, it started pouring. Luckily the rain slowed down long enough for us to get the mulch down and snap a few pictures of our masterpiece. We are going to wait and see how all of these plants grow before we decide what else, if anything, we want to do.