Holy Cow!

It’s mid-way through April. How did that happen? I haven’t posted anything in the last almost three weeks so here goes the official update:

Shamrock Shuffle: Well, it came and went and I actually finished. For someone who had to give up their gym membership I’m pretty proud of myself. I was doing pretty well for someone out of shape up until mile 2 when I went to get some water, and was cut off by some jerk who was running in the wrong pace group. I went down. Hard. It was slippery from all the un-drank beverages that people were throwing around. I walked it off for about 1/2 a mile and then started up again. At about 1.5 miles to go some race volunteer told us “1 mile to go” and I thought WOW! I can do this. Yeah, thanks ass hole, when I got to Michigan Ave. and saw how much more running I had in front of me my lower half of my body SHUT DOWN. And I went from a 10 minute/mile pace to taking 28 minutes to complete the last mile. I’m not even kidding you. I could barely walk, my feet felt like I had been forcing them through an experiment in rug burn for 4 miles.  They actually make you run over an uphill bridge into the final turn and stretch of the course. Of course when I force myself to run the final stretch to the line there are the Marathon Photo people. All ready to take my picture and hope that I’ll shell out some additional $ to commemorate the experience of self torture. (Days later they sent me a link to look at my picture; I promptly deleted that email and expected that to be the end of it only to return from Denver to see they had sent me thumbnails in the snail mail, I shredded those).

Jordannah and I decided to reward ourselves with some breakfast at Flattop. I hobbled down Michigan praying for a cab and when we got there it was like additional torture to continually hobble up to the ingredient bar to make my selections. When I got home I pooped out on the sofa and recouped just in time to hit up Outback for dinner and experience an awkward encounter with some fellow Penn Staters.
Apparently because I’m a gluten for punishment I’ve signed up for the Ravenswood Run 5K, at least it’s 2 miles less than the Shuffle so I’m hoping between the shorter distance and my spanking new running shoes I’ll do better. Oh yeah, turns out I was running in shoes that are COMPLETELY WRONG for my feet and a size too small.

Denver : So, shortly after the Shuffle I went to Denver with my mom. No, I didn’t feel I deserved a vacation after 2 months of not working but we had bought these tickets for cheap back in January so there was no point in not going with no pressing engagements coming up. I LOVED Denver and Boulder and would gladly live there some day. We went to Estes Park on the first full day and my Mom was rather taken with all of the Elk that were just hanging out on the side of the road (PHOTO TO COME IN UPDATE). At least 15 pictures were taken because my camera “is digital, and we can just delete it if we don’t like it” my mom said that at least 50 times during our trip.

Our trip back wasn’t so pleasant. We got to the airport and saw a huge line to check in at the American desk. We get to the end of the line and this security guard who works at the airport engages in a confusing conversation with me only to finally say 5 minutes in – all American Airlines flights nationwide have been canceled by the FAA. AWESOME! As much as I love Colorado, once you get yourself psyched up for going home, that’s what you want to do, go home. While standing in line I called the number that they gave us to try and get on one of the 3 United flights going out that night only to find out that United was refusing to take American’s passengers. Friendly Skies my ass. We stayed in line and managed to get on a Frontier flight into Midway that arrived at Midnight. About 3.5 hours later than we should have gotten into O’Hare. Fine. American was probably going to cancel all flights the next day so we weren’t left with many options.

We finally make it on the plane, and we’re taxiing into the gate when Joe sends me a text message:

“FUCK”

Me: What?

Joe: “Car battery died”

Me: WHAT?!?!

At that point my Mom and I had reached the maximum exposure time, were cranky passengers and I just wanted to go home. We managed to get AAA out to Midway’s “Cell Phone” lot and dropped my mom off and made it home at 3:30 AM. It was a long day, and not necessarily the best end to a otherwise great trip but my personal motto is “If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any.”

Since arriving back home to a disaster (i.e. Joe let the dogs pee and shit everywhere, left dishes with half eaten wings on the edge of the counter so Emma jumped up to get to them and broke 2 of my 6 dishes, bottles and cans left EVERYWHERE, etc.) the job search continues and I’m trying to “buckle” down and work on my thesis. I’ve been saying “buckle down” for 3 months now so I should probably find myself some new pep words.

Signing off now…