this post perfectly encapsulates the title of this blog
the unofficial nickname for august in my office is apparently "No One Come To Work Except the Lower Level Staff Ha Ha They Are Sitting in Front of a Computer While We Sip Mojitos on the Porch of Our Beach House" month. so i'm bored. so you get a painfully detailed account of my weekend.
friday: what the hell happened friday? i have some sort of disorder where i can't remember anything longer than 36 hours ago. oh yes. that was the evening i got a free donut from krispy kreme after work (my 45th free donut of the week and counting), because they are opening a store across the street from my office. (haha; now that i do dcist i will link ONLY TO THEM EVER). post free-donut, i met up with kriston and tommy and we went to the big hunt. which was torture for me, because there was nothing that i wanted more than a friday happy hour beer, but i was running the next day and could not partake of the alcohol goodness. i was much more restrained than the last time i went out drinking with susan the night before a run, saying, "just one drink!" and then ended up moaning on the floor of an orange line metro car three hours later. kriston's roommates erik and jeremy came out and had a few drinks, and we all chatted, and i'm sure i annoyed the waitress to no end by asking for 32 glasses of water. a runner's gotta hydrate!
saturday: i have to apologize, but i'm going to talk about my run. i know that lately you cannot get away with talking with me for more than 15 minutes without learning every detail ever about marathon training, or what sports drink i really like, or hearing about the blisters from hell i am getting. i'm sorry. i can't help myself. i don't know what's happened. but it's too late to stop. i got up at 5:15am, as i normally have to do for my weekend long-distance run. this run was to be 18 miles, which is officially the longest i've ever run. (we're training up to 22 miles.) you know, i was going to include some detailed description of the run, where we went, and what i was thinking the entire time, but it's not necessary: i can just say it sucked. actually, the first 15 miles were rather good, but the last three were like some sort of bizarre painful descent into a halucinatory hell where the tidal basin running path turns into a bed of coals lined with leaping flames and cackling devils, urging me to launch my sauconys at some tourists and go to sleep under that tree over there.
post-run, i rewarded myself with a trip to the mall, where i indulged at h&m and nordstroms and finally bought a new pair of jeans. i have owned one pair of jeans for about two years and, well, it was time to drop the dough for a second. but i saw so many pairs of jeans for almost $200! does anyone actually buy these jeans? are they magic jeans? do they cook breakfast for you?
saturday evening, i went out with tommy and charles to a party thrown by genevieve, whom we met through susan and kriston's pub quiz team, but who also went to uva and to charles' high school. yes. small world and that. genevieve lives in an enormous nine-person house near the cathedral, and the entire atmosphere kind of reminded me of a (good) frat party -- bud and miller lites in abundance, much flip cup action, hanging out on the big porch, etc. i learned many things at the party, such as the fact that matt makes $1,000 a month in blog ads, and that my tolerance for inane small talk about college or the do you know this person game has finally reached boiling point. really, it's not anybody's fault but my own, but i seriously suck at small talk.
sunday morning i spent watching most of the women's marathon in greece. it was inspiring, but it was also terrifying, because every other story about a female marathoner ended with "and she was carted off the racetrack in a wheelchair." not that i'm putting the kind of strain on my body that olympic marathoners are - they run 5:30 minute or less miles the whole entire way. as charles put it, "so if i ran the last mile with them, i would still lose, to a girl, who has already run 25 miles." the british marathoner paula radcliffe, who was widely expected to win, had a huge mental breakdown at mile 22, after having led the race for much of the way. some tiny japanese woman won, and an american, who came into the stadium sobbing and wobbling all over the place, took bronze.
i have to say, i am enjoying the olympics much more than i expected to. i am fascinated by almost all the sports, especially swimming. and table tennis. did you know that china has won 16 golds out of a possible 19 since the sport's debut in 1988? why are the chinese so good at ping pong? really. this is a mystery unparalleled to anything except the earth's creation. i leave it up to you, dear readers, to give me some bullshit answers.
Comments
those clips from the first women's marathon were pretty amazing -- the winner was literally staggering toward the finish line like a caveman. Which is probably why the announcers were talking about the possibility of brain damage.
The biggest Olympic surprise to me has been my lack of interest in beach volleyball, given the amount of attractive women in bikinis involved. I mean, okay, that's good and all, but two girls in bikinis playing a pretty repetitive game just can't compete with, say, the internet.
Indoor women's volleyball, on the other hand, is pretty awesome. Between the amazing physical variation between different positions and those knee pad/sock thingies, the teams end up looking like elite female assassin-squads created from genetically manipulated catholic schoolgirls. I think a violent cartoon version of this could make a lot of money in Japan.
Or, say, my house.
I love Krispy Kremes.
Post A Comment