my goal and the giveaway winner!

Thank you all so much for your sweet birthday comments. They really, truly made my day about 58% lovelier than it would have been otherwise. Even just knowing that someone bothers to pop by here and read all of my blathering on - it makes me all warm and fuzzy. (I had three in-person "I read your blog!" encounters this week. LOVE it!) Thank you!

Some of the suggestions offered for things to tackle in my 30th year were to take up the banjo, or dive into fibre arts of some kind. Hide tanning was one of the more notable suggestions, and Teresa, I'll let you know when I find a safe way to do it. Tanya, I hope that your forsythia branches are cut and sitting in water. In no time, they will be gorgeous! Amber, if a banjo fell from the sky, I would jump right in there with you guys. I want to see a video of you playing! Al, I think there is much exploring to be done, and I already have plans for later this month. Lauren, a year of relaxing does sound kind of appealing, too. I might last for a week or two, but then I think I would get antsy. All of these are wonderful suggestions! I can't do everything at once. I would love to try all of these things (and more!) tomorrow, but that's just not going to happen. I need to pace myself, and hopefully I'll have a lovely, long life to tackle all of the new things there are to learn. Joanne, your suggestion of taking up running is going to be the one I tackle. (It's also one that I've been thinking about for awhile and fits perfectly with where I am right now.)

That cute little guy carrying the stool is extremely persistent, and he's my inspiration. He will try, and try, and try again. He's now walking very well and doesn't do this often anymore, but when he was learning, he would slide that stool along in front of him as he walked across the floor. After a lot of practice, when he would run into something, he would pick the stool up, look pleased as punch, carefully put it down again, and keep going. And it took him a lot of practicing to get to that point. He's like that with everything - he will not give up.

Several years ago I ran for awhile, and it felt SO good. I do plenty of things to make our food and home as healthy as possible, but I do very little to exercise this body that's taking me through life. Adam told me the kicker today, as heard on Quirks and Quarks: the jist is that in a study, regular exercise resulted in participants scoring 15 - 20% higher on cognitive functioning tests. That is significant! And of course, there are many other benefits as well. So with a healthy heart and smarter brain as goals, I'm going to start on a walk / run buildup-to-5k. And then we'll see what happens after I reach 5k again.

Who's with me?

Oh, and the winner!

The authoritative random number generator chose number 12, so Genevieve is the birthday giveaway winner! Genevieve, please send me an e-mail (grahamsherrie (at) yahoo (dot) com) with your mailing address, and I'll put some lovelies in the mail this week for you! I'm so glad that you came out of lurkerdom!