These Rainy Seattle Days

I wake up this morning for a light run, welcoming the mist of Seattle. Our track is located right alongside a portion of the Burke Gilman Trail and the Ship Canal into Lake Union. It's a beautiful sight, especially during the fall. But the fall seems like a distant season, and this winter keeps dragging on; at least I see daffodils beginning to bloom.

As our team is running at the UW open this weekend, today was a pace and shake out day. I'll be running the 800 meters for the first time ever! It will be interesting to see the outcome, but I will try and push hard until past the finish. This weekend should also be a huge qualifying meet for our conference meet next weekend in Nampa, ID. If I do not make it this year, I am content, because I look forward to the 400m hurdles in the outdoor season.

I am sitting here listening to Brandi Carlile, relaxing after a day of good classes. I had Biomechanics this morning, and even though I was majorly dissed by our prof., I still enjoyed measuring our group's range of motion for various joints. In Anatomy Lab today we did three systems in one day: lymphatic, circulatory, and immune systems. It was frustrating that the models did not have the correct numbers to check your answers.

As it is almost Friday! There is a team dinner that I will be going to, and look forward to burritos. Compared to Cross Country in the fall, the track team doesn't get together as much. But that's okay, we all are pretty busy during this winter quarter.

I also finally cooked cajun shrimp and rice, (which will warm you up on any cold winter day). For all these years, my mother had always made this delicious dinner. Now that I am cooking for myself, I decided to try it out! Peeling the shells off of the shrimp was quite a task (I had to defrost them in running cold water, and I think the more defrosted ones were more difficult to peel off the shell). Maybe I just wasn't fast enough. But after I took off all the shells, I placed the shrimp in the skillet, mixed in the cajun seasoning, cut up onion, Worcestershire sauce and a little bit of butter. Now comes the easy part! All I had to do was saute the dish for roughly ten minutes, until they were nice and pink. I didn't stir much, and was making homemade salsa while waiting for the shrimp to finish. Here is my salsa recipe I learned from Roger's Mama! (amount varies):

tomatoes
onion
garlic
tomato paste
cilantro
crushed red pepper

-> easy as cake in a box! :)

In joy,
Kayla