Clutter My World: Clutter My World...In New York City!

Hi everyone! I just returned from a wonderful weekend in New York City and believe it or not, my first time in Central Park! If you don't already know by now...in the past 7 years (wow, it's been that long!), running has become one of my passions and while I would not say that I'm obsessed, I do enjoy a good race every now and then and have been known to train for them 3-4 days per week. (I used to run 5-6 days/week until I herniated a disc and was told by my PT that I can't do that anymore if I want to keep running...I actually took that advice!)

This past weekend I had the good fortune to run the More Magazine Women's Half-Marathon with 3 of my sorority sisters (ADPi) from our days at the University of Michigan. Linda came from Birmingham, Michigan....Lisa came from Grand Rapids, Michigan....Lucy came from New Jersey (she's a Michigander to her core!), and Kathy came from Pennsylvania...not to run, just to enjoy! Until we celebrated our 50th birthdays together in 2008, I hadn't seen Lucy or Kathy for 28 years! Lucy and Lisa have always been runners and while I used to marvel at their ability to run, I also used to think they were crazy! Lisa has run 7 marathons, Lucy two, me one and this was Linda's first half marathon!

We had a great weekend in New York and while we didn't do everything we had planned, we sure had fun. We saw the play, Chicago, on Thursday night...getting tickets at the last minute at a pretty good discount just by going to the box office 15 minutes before the show started! We took the subway to SOHO and Nolita and did some shopping...I even found a Custo outlet...probably the funkiest clothes on the planet...check out their website at

www.custo-barcelona.com, we waited for 2 hours for "the best pancakes in the City" at the Clinton St. Baking Company (www.clintonstreetbaking.com)...I have to say, they were delicious....I had the Banana Walnut pancakes with the best Maple butter I have ever tasted...and finally, we ran the half marathon on Sunday morning in Central Park...in the POURING rain! The weather had been great all weekend and rain was forecast but we were hoping that it would at least wait until the afternoon...well, it didn't. I'm not sure I would have run the race but Lucy, Linda and Lisa wouldn't let me sleep in! Not only was it pouring...but it was cold and by the end of the race, even with all of the tech layers that we had on plus the big size black garbage bags that we had over us, we were looking like drowned rats! I think even the rats in NYC were drier than we were! We had a blast, in spite of the rain and I think it was one of the more fun races that I have ever done...probably because I didn't race it but ran at a leisurely pace so that I could talk to my friends. After the race, just to get a little warm, we treated ourselves to a nice warm coffee at the Starbucks in Trump Tower...and I must say we did not look like any of the clientele!

Speaking of rain...I think it's supposed to rain in Boulder this weekend. Now, I know that you don't like to come out in the rain...but we have received in some wonderful "clutter" at Clutter this week and I think you should let those raindrops keep falling on your head as you wander down to Clutter...here are a few of the things that you will see: