Inane Chatter

How does a whole Saturday, no, a whole weekend disappear like that?  It had productive moments, but mostly – I need a do-over.

On the non-productive front, we started two new shows over breakfast.  Grimm looks like it could be really good.  The other show, Once Upon a Time, looks interesting, but maybe not quite as good as Grimm.  I still want to watch it.

One of the things we didn’t do was buy a new flower pot to plant the remaining avocado sprout.  John said flower pot to me and all I could think of was this:

It starts a little late, but I can’t find the beginning of the scene on YouTube. Close enough.

We weren’t particularly in the mood for Halloween this year.  John picked up some candy yesterday, but we didn’t decorate, we didn’t look for costumes for ourselves, and as of this morning, we’d decided to pretend we weren’t home.  I had visions of us leaving all the downstairs lights off and hiding in our room with dinner, the dogs, and the Roku, blinds closed.  I would have put a bowl of candy on the front porch, but that would have been it.  Then John got home and decided we weren’t going to be those neighbors.  Instead, the lights are on, the doorbell is ringing, the dogs are going nuts (Riley LOVES Halloween – he’s so excited he gets to say hi to all the little kids), and we’re holding dinner until the rush is over.  But the kids are cute.  This one little boy was pretty clearly dressed as Thor, so I asked the idiot question: “Are you Thor?”  “NO.  I’m FIVE.”  I stopped asking.  Another little girl ran back to her parents yelling, “I petted the doggie!”  That’s SO much better than candy.

The other night, John and I got up at 2am to let Riley out.  (Riley has been having intestinal difficulties, and we were trying to avoid waking up to another gigantic mess.)  I stepped out onto the deck to shoo him into the yard, and I heard hooting.  Like actual owl-type hooting.  The kind I’ve only ever heard exaggerated in scary nighttime scenes in Disney movies.  And those are always set deep in the woods or on farms or something.  I certainly didn’t expect to hear it in our treeless suburban neighborhood.  And then I heard a second one.  TWO OWLS.  In my backyard.  At 2 in the morning.  May I never hear that again (if only because I prefer not to be up at 2 in the morning).

Hey, I managed to embarrass myself on Twitter this morning.  On the plus side, John Scalzi replied to my tweet.  On the minus side, I came off looking like an idiot.

And on top of that, I look like a nerd trying to impress someone with a big word.  In my defense, I ran out of characters when I tried to say “irrelevant to the discussion” instead.  I was being concise.

I’m going to hide now.

Update: To make the whole Twitter thing worse, I was just catching up on my blog reading, went to Whatever, and found that the article was apparently in yesterday’s Washington Post and John Scalzi posted it on his own blog then.  So now I’m an idiot who clearly doesn’t keep up with his blog.  Just great.

I made breakfast!  Like, real breakfast.  On a WEEKDAY.  Because this particular weekday happens to be John’s birthday, and he happens to love breakfast sandwiches.  I made him two bacon, egg, and cheese croissant-wiches.  And coffee.  Because I’m cool like that.  And also because it’s his birthday.  More because it’s his birthday.

Happy Birthday, John!

I am, I am!  Tomorrow is Les Mis.  YAY!  Tonight, I pick Sparky up from the airport.  Yay!  Also, it’s Friday (yay!) so PRESUMABLY, I can sleep in a bit tomorrow.  Got up before 5 this morning, people.  (John is not pleased.  I tried REALLY hard to have everything I needed in the guest room so I wouldn’t wake him while I got ready, but I needed one little thing and, of course, I needed it 15 minutes before his alarm was going to go off.  Sorry, John.)  We’re having a kick-off meeting this morning, and I was in charge of bringing bagels, and traffic has been HORRIBLE this week, so I figured I’d just get out the door earlier.  Guess what?  I over-corrected.  I was up the elevator and in my little conference room by 7:20.  Just a little bit earlier than necessary.  A tad.  Still, it’s better than the alternative.

Can someone please get Maroon 5′s “Moves Like Jagger” out of my head?  I don’t like it.  I keep trying to force it out, but it creeps its way back in every time I think I’ve won.  Stupid little whistling part.

I did it.  I ran the Army Ten-Miler, and I did it 13 minutes faster than any of my workouts.  And it hurt like hell.  The day was just shy of perfect.  The temperatures were low and it wasn’t raining, but the sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  A cloudy day would have kept us cooler AND probably not given me a sunburn.  (I wore sunblock.  On my face.  I didn’t consider the back of my neck ’cause it’s usually covered with hair.)  And speaking of hair, I had no hair disasters!  Yay!  Over the last few weeks, my braids have come out of the bun repeatedly, come loose altogether (the bottom hair bands lost forever) twice, and generally behaved like Houdini getting out of a straitjacket.  This morning, though, my braid felt secure in its bun and it didn’t even jiggle.  It came down when I took it down, approximately 8 hours after I put it up.  Good bun.  Good braid.  Good me!  Practice works!  (I’ve been wearing my hair in a braid at every opportunity lately.)

So John and I got up at 5:15 yesterday morning, took care of the dogs, ate some toast, and headed to the Pentagon.  We’d been debating the metro vs parking issue for weeks, but when I heard that there’s only bus service between two of the stations on the line nearest us and we’d have to drive most of the way in just to find a station with uninterrupted service to the Pentagon, I convinced John that parking at Pentagon City would be easier.  Less stressful.  He wasn’t hard to convince.  We got to the parking garage right at 7, just as planned, and joined the mobs of runners trying to get to the port-a-potties near the starting line.  30,000-ish runners = long lines for the bathroom.  EVERYone has to go.  Almost everyone.  I’ll come back to that.

John and I were in different starting waves, so we split up to wait in our own personal crowds.  Eventually (couldn’t tell you if the race started on time, but I can tell you we waited and waited and waited and waited….), my crowd started shuffling towards the start we couldn’t see.  We must have been half a mile away, and we were packed in.  A guy behind me started mooing.  He switched to baaing when we stopped laughing at the moos.

John ran this race 5 years ago with a goal of finishing in 1 hour, 40 minutes (10 10-minute miles).  He said people were packed so close in at the beginning that his first mile took him 13 minutes or something crazy like that.  He made up the time later on and finished EXACTLY when he’d planned.  Magic.  I wasn’t counting on magic, so the possibility of a really slow first mile was pretty scary to me.  Luckily, my pack spread out pretty quickly once we finally got across the starting line, so it wasn’t really an issue.  The main race clock (and the timers at the mile markers) were set to the actual race start (which was about 20 minutes before I started), so I relied on my own watch to track my time, starting the timer as I passed under the yellow and black balloons.  (The Army needs to get better colors – yellow (or gold – whatever) and black make for some seriously ugly balloons.) Once I got past the first mile and realized I wasn’t going to have any crowd-related pacing problems, I let go of the what-if-I-don’t-make-it-through-five-miles-fast-enough-and-they-don’t-let-me-finish anxiety and concentrated on moving.  On concentrating.  On keeping my legs churning and my feet landing mid-foot or further forward (my right heel was giving me some trouble).  And then I got the 3-mile mark and found I was averaging well under 11-minute miles.  And then I got to five miles and saw that my average pace was 10:12.  Too fast!  So I slowed down for the last five miles, knowing I was going to be paying for the faster start later.

I did.  I still am.  But it’s a good hurt.  I worked hard for this hurt.  But I’d like it to stop now.  The second half of the race is a blur of bright sunshine and cowbell.  (LOTS of spectators had cowbells.)  I remember thinking the 14th Street Bridge would never end.  And I remember wondering whose bright idea it was to put three (four?) hills in the last two miles.  And then I saw Amanda and Greg and Alex near the finish (thanks for cheering me on, guys!) and then I could see the finish and then I smiled and then it was over.  And then we (John was waiting for me) came to almost a complete halt in a sea of people all struggling to get water (John had some for me because he’s wonderful.  And fast.) and get out and sit down.  For a while it hurt more to be standing still than it had when I was still running.  And we were like a mile from the car.  So we got our bananas and muffins and water and trudged all the way back to the mall parking garage.  When we finally got home (after a ridiculous search for a breakfast place – we at Anthony’s in Falls Church.  French toast!  Exactly right.), we put aside all plans to actually get much thesis and calculus work done, showered, and collapsed on the couch for some well-deserved TV.

It was fun.  No – it was painful and I was afraid it would never end.  But I would do it again.  I don’t want it to be so hard.  If I keep doing it, it’ll get easier.  If I keep repeating that, it might come true.

Moment of truth.  I’m going to check the official results.  Before I do, did I tell you that John finished a full 10 minutes faster than the last time he ran this race?  Because he’s cool.

Okay – my official time was 1:48:47.  (Only one second off what my watch said.  Look at me!  I know how to work a stopwatch!)  I beat my 2-hour expectations by a substantial margin and only missed John’s first time by just under 9 minutes.  Maybe next time. 

Now I’m going to take more ibuprofen and go back to bed.  Lots more ibuprofen.

Right, I said I’d come back to the bathroom thing (many moons and paragraphs ago).  Yeah, the race had only barely started when, by the dozens, guys started hopping the guardrail on Route 110 and sprinting for the treeline to pee.  It was hilarious and a little disconcerting.  Was it planned?  Is that the best place?  Did they pass the word around?  Are these the guys who didn’t want to wait in the long port-a-potty lines?  Or just the ones who drank another liter of water while waiting for the race to start?  I mean, I have to go practically once an hour, more when I’m drinking lots of water, and yet I managed to plan ahead so that my last chance before the race started was enough to get me all the way home, almost six hours later.  Which, now that I think about it, pretty much means I was dehydrated.  Or a crazy-efficient sweater.  Sweat-er.  One who sweats.  Not the cable-knit kind.

That’s enough.  Go to bed already.

John and I drove back into DC today to pick up our race packets for tomorrow’s race.  (The Army Ten-Miler is tomorrow, by the way.  Have I mentioned that?  Talked about it much?  Nah, certainly not on those days I actually ran 10 miles.  This is probably coming as a complete surprise to you guys.  Because you know how much I don’t like to talk about what’s going on with me.)  For some reason (to do with costs, I’m sure), they refuse to mail the packets out ahead of time (seriously, just charge us all an extra few bucks and mail them the week before – we’re paying a ton to register anyway), so everyone has to come into town on the Friday or Saturday before the race to check in and pick them up.  It’s where we get our race bibs (and activate them) and our t-shirts, and it gives a ton of vendors the opportunity to sell lots of over-priced stuff (marked on sale, but not really) to over-excited runners.  This year (maybe every year, but it’s my first year, so what do I know?), packet pick-up was at the DC Armory.  Not an easy place to get to, unless you’re going by metro, but unless you live near the metro already or are staying in a hotel for the weekend, you’re probably not going by metro.  Actually, it’s not that hard to get to, but for once in my life, I didn’t look at a map first.  I relied on my phone’s Google navigation with GPS.  So we went the long way around.  Through not-great neighborhoods.  Listening to my phone telling us to make impossible left turns and then re-route us through worse areas to correct the mistake I made of not turning left onto a road with three lanes of traffic that didn’t go in that direction.  Silly me.  Our way back out was MUCH easier and is how we should have gotten there in the first place.  Thankfully, the race itself does not start at the DC Armory and does not require us to go anywhere near it, either by car or on foot.

If you’re local and you want to go into DC early tomorrow morning (it’s going to be a BEAUTIFUL day) and cheer on a shitload of runners while enjoying the monuments, well, that would be cool.    The course map is on the website (linked above) so you can find a good place to watch (there are restrictions on what you can bring to the finish area, but you don’t have to watch from there – anywhere along the mall on the Independence side would be a good spot) if you’re coming.  I’ll be wearing blue shorts and a navy blue tank top if you want to keep an eye out.  Purple race bib.  I expect it to take me about two hours (because I am SLOW) and I’m in the third wave (starts at 8:15), so calculate accordingly if you’re looking for me at a certain mile-marker.  I’m hoping adrenaline will help my pace, but I mostly just care about not getting directed straight to the finish line (and being unable to finish the race) if I don’t make it to the 5-mile mark by 9:35.  I say I’m worried about that, but I’ve done it enough times now that I’m about as certain as I can be that I’ll beat that particular deadline by at least 20 minutes.  The five miles after that will be the hard ones.

With that, I’m going to try not to think too hard about it anymore tonight.  John and I are going to pick up dinner (spaghetti) and settle in and watch Chariots of Fire and go to bed early.  Tomorrow morning is going to arrive WAY earlier than usual.

John and I have lived in this house for almost six years.  We know the people in three houses around us by name, and of those three, we only know the last names of the people immediately next door.  We say hi on the sidewalk, help them shovel snow, and occasionally chat with the kids.  Six years.  Pathetic and anti-social, that’s us.  In our defense, everyone in this neighborhood has kids (except us, of course), so they all know each other from school and play groups and the bus stop.  Paper-thin, I know.  We haven’t made an effort, and honestly, we haven’t minded all that much.  I’ve met a few more people who live nearby since I joined the gym six months ago, but that hasn’t lead to real relationships.  Until now, possibly.  Maybe.  Friday afternoon, a woman I know from the gym called to invite me to play bunco with her club that night.  They need 12 people, and two of their regulars couldn’t make it.  “Is it a problem that I don’t know what bunco is?”  “Not in the least.  Bring $10.”  Yeah, that doesn’t sound shady at all. Come play a game you’ve barely heard of.  We’ll take your money.  She said it’s easy and mindless, and the club is really just an excuse to for the members to eat, drink, chat, and maybe win a few dollars.  I went.  She wasn’t lying – all you have to do is count, and the rest of pure chance.  I can do that.  And with only $10 at stake, it’s no big deal if I lose.  Which I did not do.  There are twelve rounds (six winners in each round), and I won the most rounds, so I took home $40.  Not a bad way to be introduced to a game.  I’m certain it’ll never happen again.  (This is how it starts.)  I played, I met 10 new people, it was enjoyable enough, and John and I were invited to a block party the next day.  That was a bit more awkward than bunco night, but shortly after we sat down at a picnic table with our food, a couple came over, said “Oh, good – faces we recognize!”, and sat down.  They’re the neighbors across the street and over one house, the ones with the very friendly cat and five kids (mostly grown, all living at home).  Now we know their first names (but not their last name – what is wrong with us?).  Had a good time chatting with them for over an hour.  So, yay.  Neighbors.

There was a spider in my car today.  It was crawling across the roof (upside down, on the inside of the sunroof), and I know this because I was watching it when I should have been watching the road.  Spiders are not allowed in my car!  Maybe I need to put up a sign.  Maybe our new neighbor friends are exterminators.  Except they’re not.  Every single person we met was either a teacher or a government contractor.  Not that those are bad things to be, but they don’t help me much when I’m trying to keep a crazed and bloodthirsty spider at bay while making a left turn.  Inconsiderate of them, to say the least.

I had a strange day.  Got so frustrated with work I was nearly in tears.  Got over it because there’s a lot of funny stuff on the internet.  I know, right?

My favorite tweet today:

My favorite reddit…thing today (it’s actually from yesterday, but it kept me amused today, too):

Must go.  If I stay here any longer, I’ll eat the entire container of rice pudding.  (John’s brilliant idea – who gets a craving for rice pudding, of all things?  So good.)  Anyway, I’d like to pretend today’s odd day never happened, so I’m going to take my book and go to bed and start fresh tomorrow.

Had a very busy weekend, but not a very productive one.  Feeling a little guilty about that.  But not overmuch (that’s for tomorrow, when panic sets in) because I just watched three hours of Doctor Who with John, and while all three episodes were fantastic, the first one we watched today (season 3′s “Blink”) was the absolute best hour of TV I have EVER SEEN.  It was a GREAT episode, totally stands alone but still captures the Doctor, and on top of that, was effectively and freakishly scary.  Creepy.  SO well done.  Lots of caps.  Sorry.  I feel very strongly about that episode.  Greg, I think this is one of the ones you mentioned – anything you needed to tell us?

We stopped after Part II of the next three-parter, but we’ll probably watch Part III before we go to bed.  I don’t know how I managed before Doctor Who.

As for the rest of the weekend, remind me to tell you about bunco, Oktoberfest, a TON of neighbors I’ve never met before (despite living here for almost 6 years), and running just under 9 miles in the rain.  No need to remind me to tell you about that last bit, actually.  That’s all there is to say about it.  Oh, except I RAN THE WHOLE THING, including that hill I hate.  But that’s all. 

I want to keep babbling, mostly about Doctor Who and some about The Guild (we’ll start watching the current season soon – finished season 4 yesterday), but since what I’m hearing in my head is not remotely coherent (a lot of squeeing and why don’t we own that? and what the hell took us so long to get here?), I’m going to spare you.  Instead I’ll see if John can hurry up with his game so we can get back to Doctor Who.  I have priorities.

Did you guys see this? Cracks me up. I sing it ALL the time now.

(I know – I need to tone down the obsession. I just can’t help myself.)

…but I recently had two “Are you kidding me?” moments.  One was today.  I usually keep a close eye on the forecast, but for some reason this week, I just haven’t.  John’ll tell you I prefer to trust weather.com than my own arm stuck out the front door.  I didn’t do either of those things today.  I just left the house to go to the store in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops.  It was 60 degrees out, overcast, and breezy.  I was a little chilly.  In my defense, it was 80 yesterday and it isn’t fall yet…  But a guy at Wegmans still totally made fun of me.

My other moment was last weekend, and it was more of the “oh, that really DOES make a difference” kind.  I was helping John unload the IKEA boxes from the car on Saturday, and I usually have a really hard time wrestling with the bookshelf boxes.  Those things are heavy, and in the past, I’ve nearly dropped them on the way into the house because I just couldn’t hold my end up anymore.  Not this time, though.  I wouldn’t say it was easy or that the shelves were light (I certainly can’t carry them on my own), but it was no big deal.  I find it very unlikely that they’ve gotten lighter since my birthday (the last time we bought some), so the only conclusion I can come to is, hey!  Those strength classes I’ve been going to twice a week for the last seven months?  They work!  Amazing, mixed with a little of course they do, ya idiot.

The books (the fiction), they have been reorganized and reshelved.  I finished just a few minutes ago.  For now, they’re all flush against the front edge (John loves it), but I have a compromise in mind.  I’ll try it tomorrow.  I have pictures, but my phone’s USB cable is upstairs (and the pictures aren’t that great – let’s hope for sunlight tomorrow) and I’m not willing to go get it.  Once I go upstairs tonight, I’m not coming back down.  I also weeded out all the duplicates today.  We have multiple copies of 54 books.  In some cases (The Left Hand of Darkness, War and Remembrance), we have three copies.  There are a couple others we have two of, but for various reasons, I want to keep them in our collection.  The duplicates will probably join the inventory in the basement.  Unless we find someone who’s dying to have a hardcover edition of The Hidden City (the third book in David Eddings’ The Tamuli) or a copy of The Winds of War that is falling apart (most of the books are in pretty good shape, but not this one so much).  Or any of the 48 books I didn’t name.  47.  John doesn’t want to get rid of the extra copy of Johnny Tremain.  (Just like I don’t want to get rid of my extra copy of Anne of Green Gables.  Sure, I have the box set, but I remember reading that copy.)

In other than book news, I found two of the greatest videos ever on The Daily What today.

The first is a bunch of cows looking crazy interested in a Dixieland combo in a field in France. Good music, funny cows.

The second is a juggling video. AMAZING.

A question for the anal ages:

Do you line up your books along the back of the bookshelf, leaving room for other things (like little framed pictures or empty vases or the small ceramic turtle you bought in Mexico) in front?  Or do you shelve them so the spines all line up evenly along the front of the shelf?  And if you do it the second way, do you do anything with the empty space between the books and the back of the shelf?

I’ve always done it the first way.  John has asked me to try it the second way because it’s neater.  I’ll give him that.  I’m not convinced it’s better, though.  I have this irrational fear that wild animals or spiders or some other unpleasant things are going to move in and nest in that unused space.  Because I can’t see it.  And I’m usually so vigilant.

I wish I hadn’t put that thought into words.

Seriously, could today have been any better?  Only if it had unicorns and sparkles.  And it’s not over yet.  There’s hope.  Sure, we got up super early on a Saturday, but it was only so we could go to the giant used book sale that happens every six weeks in a warehouse in Annapolis.  Worth it.  AND I had a croissant and my favorite candy-coffee from Starbucks for breakfast on the way (tall, skim, no whip white mocha with two pumps of toffee nut – yes, I’m one of those now).  Extra worth the early wake-up.  AND we hung out with Jess while looking for books and then having bagels.  Better than extra worth it.  And THEN we went to IKEA and bought two more bookshelves, upper shelf extensions for those two plus the six at home that didn’t already have them, plus two wall shelves to go over the couch (and hold more books – maybe the graphic novels?).  We’ve spent the afternoon since then putting the shelves and the extension together while watching Law & Order: SVU, and now we’re going to pick up dinner from somewhere and settle in and watch a movie.

A day like today makes me so very happy.  Books, best friend, shelves, dinner, and a movie, a whole day hanging out with John, and sure, I didn’t do any calculus like originally planned, but John and I worked it out on the way home from IKEA.  Today we get the furniture part out of the way and relax a little.  Tomorrow, we’ll run, mow the lawn (it grew, like, two feet in 8 days), and do homework (my calculus, his thesis).  Sunday is the responsible day.

This week was a short week (thank you for Labor Day – I love three-day weekends) that still managed to feel like a regular week, but Friday is finally here.  Tomorrow I get to see Jess at a great big book used book sale and then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend immersed in calculus.  Except for Sunday morning when I have to run.  And except for later Sunday morning when I’ll help John with the lawn, assuming it dries out.  I’ll have to pretend the internet doesn’t exist, I think.  Give it the cold shoulder.  Hope it doesn’t take offense and will let me back in later.  How forgiving is the internet?  I know it never forgets, which is somewhat (a lot) scary.

I have been busy.  Good busy and bad busy.  The bad busy parts stress me out.  The good busy parts are things I could do all the time, every day.  And if I could get rid of the bad busy parts, I’d have time for things I like to do when I’m not doing the good busy parts, like playing on the internet.  Like READING.  John looked over at my book the other night, noticed I wasn’t even halfway through it, and told me it felt like I’d been reading that book forEVER.  I’m not sure in exactly what way how long I spend reading a particular book affects him, but if he noticed I haven’t been reading much, then I really haven’t been reading much.  Tragic.

I spent most of the last three days (all weekend and much of Monday) working on my statistics project.  (This is one of the good busy things.)  Nothing about it was hard, but there were a lot of pieces and the instructions were confusing.  I tried to get clarification from my professor, but since I never heard back, I made some decisions based on what the instructions would have said if I’d written them.  I hope they were the right decisions.  I turned it in late last night.  One big task done.  Yay!  Actually, that was the main good busy thing.  The one that took most of my time.  I talked to Corey finally (he’s going to disown me if I put him off any longer) – hooray for change!  Also, I, uh, bought more wine from my favorite local wineries and went to Borders.  Again.  These were very important errands.  Really.  Oh, and I saw Crazy, Stupid, Love Saturday night with a woman I know from the gym.  It was cute.  Ryan Gosling’s ears are too small to be believed.  Seriously tiny ears.

I did one other kinda major good busy thing this weekend.  Big accomplishment for me.  (Big.)  I ran 10 miles Sunday morning.  Ten whole miles.  I wasn’t very fast, and I walked a little bit, but I did it.  I am no longer afraid that I won’t be able to finish the race in October.  I did it.  The last mile was really hard (it wasn’t early morning anymore and the sun was high and the shade had disappeared and I’d been running for nearly two hours and it was my tenth mile), but I realized as I started it that I’d never run this far before (8 miles – two weeks ago – was my longest run until Sunday morning).  And with every step I took, I was running farther.  Each step was one more than I’d ever run before.  There aren’t very many times I’ll be able to say that.

So that was my weekend.  The good busy stuff is all cool and great (now that I’ve turned in my statistics project), but it doesn’t end there.  I have two more quizzes and a final to complete by next Thursday for statistics, and my next calculus class (differential equations this semester) started yesterday.  I’m so glad my classes only overlap by a week and a half.  Any more than that and I’d be seriously considering quitting my job.  I don’t know how people manage working full-time and going to school at the same time.  With just one class at a time and no extra-curricular work activities (don’t get me started), when I can leave work at work, I can manage.  Anything more and my head starts to spin, Exorcist-style.  (It’s not pretty.)  But yesterday, even though it was a Monday and I had work to do and a project to finish, was a really good day.  The weather was perfect, I had the windows open to catch the very breezy breeze, I got a lot done, my legs didn’t hurt from the run the day before, and my strength class that night was calming.  (I really like my gym.)

———Break for earthquake———

This post was going to have an ending, but then there was an earthquake.  Nothing else got done today.  The earthquake ate my ending.

It’s already sad that Borders is going out of business, but who would have guessed they’d be funny about it?

John pointed it out to me the last time we were there, clearing out the science fiction section.  (Well, that part was only me – I’m why you can’t find any of the books you’ve been looking for.  Sorry.)  But really, it’s great that invisibility cloaks are 20% off, but what’s to stop you from just grabbing one and running?  Other than the obvious.

If you were a dog, would you want to be an outside dog or an inside dog?  A big dog or a little dog?  A dog with responsibilities or a pet without a care in the world?  I’m watching our two sleep the day away, and I’m just a teensy bit jealous.  Only a teensy bit.  I think they’re sleeping because they’re bored.  I’m not entertaining them.  (I’m working.  Clearly.)  I’m not sure I’d want to be a dog if it meant (as it must) giving up reading.  And talking.  Somebody asked me the other day if all this working from home is isolating.  I don’t feel particularly isolated.  I’m not talking as much as I would if I were in the office, but I don’t think I’m making up for it when John gets home.  (John may disagree.)  I don’t feel starved for human contact.  I talk to the dogs (although not as much as you might think), and I spend plenty of time emailing and calling work people for work stuff.  In fact, I think I spend too much time on that and not enough time on what I wanted to get done in the quiet of home.  Hey, if I turn into a dog, I won’t have to work. Unless I’m a working dog.  But working dogs always seem to enjoy their jobs, so maybe that would be okay.

This seemed really funny to me at the time, but now I can’t decide if it’s funny or if I’m just an idiot.  Let’s start with the part where I look good.

Yesterday morning, I ran 8 miles.

Please applaud now.  By the time you get to the end of the story, you may want to pretend you don’t know me.

The first half was really really hard, but I felt really good the whole second half.  I’d like to think that was partly because I didn’t feel loose and warmed up until I was well into my third mile, but I’m sure it was mostly because the last four miles were all downhill.  There was something weird going on with my right foot, though.  It felt like it was asleep half the time, all pins and needles, concentrated behind my toes and around the ball of my foot.  Other times, I could feel this weird rubbing pain along the outside of my big toe.  All in my right foot.  I kept wiggling my toes and trying to lean towards the outer right side while running, but it wasn’t really getting better.  Weird, a little worrisome, but with a little adjustment I could get by.  I figured I’d take a closer look when I got home.  I changed my stride a bit, headed back downhill, and kinda forgot about it for a while.  Later, I was stretching in the kitchen, and when I bent down to reach for my toes (I’d say I was touching my toes, but my whole life I’ve never been able to do that and I’d hate to lie to you), I noticed something a little off.

Look closely.  Do those look like the same shoe to you?  No?  Yeah.  They’re not.

The shoe on my left foot is one half of my current running pair.  The shoe on my right foot is not.  I stopped running in that pair of shoes at least 9 months ago, if not more, because they were shot.  It hurt to run in them.  That certainly explains the weird pains and pins and needles in my right foot only.  And now I feel like an idiot.  I ran 8 miles in two different shoes and I DIDN’T NOTICE.  Except I kinda did.  Kinda.  In my defense, we got up very early and it was overcast and gloomy and we didn’t turn the light on in the bedroom and hey, come on, they look a LOT alike.

But not that alike.  I guess it could have been worse.  At least I had one right shoe and one left shoe and I wore them on the correct feet.  John says I should even it out by running another 8 miles wearing the opposite shoe from each pair.  John thinks he’s pretty funny.  I will make sure my retired running shoes find a new home.  Far away from my current running shoes.  This will not happen again.

Over the last year or so, I’ve noticed something weird about the house.  Very weird.  Every once in a while, in the middle of the day, the house shudders.  The whole house.  You can feel it more downstairs than up.  The first few times it happened, I dashed to the basement to see if the furnace had just died or if the washing machine had attacked the dryer.  Nothing was out of place, nothing looked out of the ordinary.  Then I started to wonder if it was an earthquake.  We did have an itty bitty one not that long ago.  But it had happened at least half a dozen times – wouldn’t there be something in the news about half a dozen earthquakes?  Then I started to worry about crazy things, like sinkholes.  Invasions of mole people burrowing up from under the foundation.  Being stalked by bio-engineered Tyrannosaurus Rexes.  Tyrannosaurus Rex.  Tyrannosauruses.  Tyrannosauri.  It’s like the glass of water in the movie, only with a bigger thud.  Earlier this week, I realized the house shudder thing has never happened on a weekend.  Only on weekdays.  And, except for this week, I’m rarely home on weekdays.  This week, I noticed that it has happened around 11:30am each day.  I mentioned the weekday thing to John yesterday or the day before, wondering if maybe it happens every day during the week, and he had a brilliant thought.  We live not far from a quarry.  Things explode at quarries.  Maybe that’s what we’re feeling.  And they’re only open on weekdays…  I put “call the quarry” on my to-do list.  So today, I was working from home, 11:30 rolled around, and a few minutes later, the house shook.  I picked up the phone and called.  “Do you make things explode at 11:30 every weekday?”  “Well, it’s not always exactly 11:30, but…yeah.”  “Thank you.  That makes me very happy.”  Mystery solved!

Note to self: if we’re ever in a position where we can sell the house, make sure potential buyers leave before 11am or show up after noon.  It’s like that scene in Mary Poppins, only not as entertaining.  “Posts, everyone!”