Spaghetti Squash & Recovery

Tonight, after a long day of work following a long week to boot (the simultaneous winding down and gearing up of a law practice is exhausting!), E and I opted for a simple dinner:

-bread
-garlic, spicy pepper infused olive oil (a hand-made gift from S)
-fancy salts (a Christmas gift from E's sister)
-baked spaghetti squash
-balsamic vinegar
-spices (black pepper, paprika, cumin, to the individual taste)
-wine

We mixed the various ingredients according to our preferences and enjoyed the simplicity, happy to be home without a work day tomorrow.

Brother, not surprisingly, found this meal a little too bay area for his taste, and opted for a bowl of ramen. In case you didn't know, ramen technology has advanced significantly in the last 10 years. The modern ramen brother prefers involves no less than 3 packets, including something called, "soup booster." I have to assume (and it smells as if) these advances are better than the dry cups of noodles that I preferred to eat without cooking in the bone lab in the mid 1990's, but I haven't yet ventured to confirm my suspicion.

And now, after sending out my last marked up contract for the day, preparing dinner for E, and confirming that the laundry really is just going to wait 'til I get back into town on Sunday, I'm ready to relax -- I've got a couch beckoning me with my book and a People magazine with my name on it (literally).

Tomorrow, I will wake early to run before heading to my hometown to drop off brother for a day with friends while I head to one of sister's many wedding related events.

Did you catch that? After much icing and anti-inflammatories, I can finally run again! Yay! The sciatica is officially on the mend and I've gone for two runs of > 2 miles each, so far, without negative side effects. As badly as I want to bump it up to 3, 4, 5, or even 6 miles, I'm trying to remember that a slow increase is most likely to save me future pain and increase the likelihood that I can continue to run.

And, I'm not going to lie. While there are too many reasons to count that make me feel as if this move is the right one for me, one of the things I'm most looking forward to, with respect to being a solo practitioner, is calendaring and keeping my commitments to exercise every day.

So, I need to exercise enough restraint that I can take advantage of that option once it's available.

Wish me luck!