This is part two of my random things from August. If you missed part 1, you can find it HERE.

1. Earlier this month I got a bird feeder! Barry and I were at the local hardware shop and it caught my eye. Barry likes to indulge me, I think, and surprised me by agreeing to get one. We have it hung up in the tree outside our dining room window. I haven’t seen any birds on it, yet, but I’m keeping watch! Remember all the baby birds in my hanging baskets last summer?

2. I have a friend/coworker (she was a friend from college before she became a coworker) who is having a baby boy in October. Her baby shower is this weekend. One of the things I got her was this onesie. She’s also a fellow Hokie Alum, so I hope she likes it. Start em young, and raise em right!

3. Remember when I was trying to decide what to do with my race bibs? Well for now they are staying on the wall. I finally decided to just add another column for my most recent race bibs (the one on the far left below).

I have run eleven races so far this year (remember it’s race palooza! Where I run any and all races I want). So hanging this new column has created another conundrum – it’s full and I have plenty of races left in 2014. I kind of feel like I’m back where I started with this one 🙂

4. I still subscribe to StrideBox each month and this month there were two products I was really excited about. First was a new flavor of 2nd Surge energy gel: pina colada. Second was an energy wafer from Power Bar, a new product for them. I tried the new energy gel during a tempo run and ended up hating it, haha. It was too coconut-y for me.

If you remember, I don’t like coconut. You may be wondering why I thought I might like the pina colada flavor. It’s because I’ve had other pina colada-flavored things that I did like. I guess the pineapple just has to outweigh the coconut flavor for me to like it. However, I loved the Power Bar wafer (and failed to take a picture before eating it).

It tasted a lot like a sugar wafer, with a berry filling. I would definitely eat this as a light pre-race snack. Now I just have to actually find them in a store in our area!

5. Check out this awesome view I had from the top of Draper Mountain one morning last week. We don’t get mountain peaks poking up through the clouds much on the East Coast.

The clouds kind of looked like an ocean, and my dad said they looked thick enough to walk on. It was really neat to see!

Do you enjoy going to baby showers? I think they’re fun, especially when it’s for someone’s first baby (like my coworker)
Do you have any ties to college teams?
Have you tried any new foods or running fuel lately? I made green peppers stuffed with sausage the other night, and they were pretty good!