9 Year Anniversary and now a major conflict!

Yesterday Tristan and I celebrated our 9 year anniversary. For our 3rd anniversary we got a cat (Sagwa) but since then we have no idea what to get each other to celebrate. We are very fortunate to have stable jobs with the gov't that while not paying as much as our industry statistician counterparts does put food on our table, kibble on our pets table and enable quite a few vacations and trips a year. We also can get whatever we want or need ourselves since we both work so it is hard for Tristan to get me anything (read this as running gear:-) or me to get Tristan anything (read this as mountaineering gear:-). So pretty much we celebrate by having an anniversary trip. During our early years when we were fresh PhD's we would go to southwestern VA but we now have expanded our horizons to VT/NH.

Last we did have our anniversary trip and had lots of fun. Although 8 out of 11 days there was rain of which 3 of these days it rained from sunrise to sunset (and 2 of these were during my events of the VT50 and NH marathon). One day that it rained nearly the entire day we climbed Mt Madison, during this hike we had one mile that took us 1 hour!!! Other days the rain started in the late afternoon so we were able to get decent hikes in during the morning/early afternoon.

Since coming back, I am swamped at work (10-12+ hour workdays), but hope I can upload some pictures this weekend (which by the way is a Holiday weekend for me...I love Columbus Day...and every other federal holiday because we get the day off, WAHOO!).

This brings me to the conflict that Tristan and I are facing today. Long time readers will know Thursday is Bruster's Ice Cream half price banana split (if you bring your own banana). But the 8th of the month is half price Gelati Day at Carmens (which my blog continues to be the 3rd website if you google Carmen's Italian Ice). Today is Thursday October 8th. That means Tristan, Gilligan and I have a decision to make. Do we go for a treat that is available once a week: Brusters (although we missed it last Thursday) or do we go for a treat that is available once a month: Carmen's. Bruster's is closer to the Fleet Feet Running Store where we participate in the weekly fun run. But Carmen's occurs only once a month. This is a quagmire!