Marathoning

And just like that, I finished my second full marathon y'all.  The 35th Marine Corps Marathon, held on Halloween 2010.  'Twas a lovely day in the District and Biscuit and I scooted our old hineys* past the finish line almost 15 minutes faster than we did last year, which was an amazing feat considering (1) we were both severely under-trained; and (2) we literally walked the last 7 miles.  Makes me wonder what in the shiz I was doing last year.  (*A highlight during the run occurred when Biscuit asked me how I was feeling at approximately mile 14, to which I responded "my old knees are hanging in there."  This comment caught the attention of a little old man running behind us, and injected him with enough energy to pass us quickly and tell us we were, in fact, NOT old and he didn't appreciate the comment.  Sheesh!)

Here's a picture of my very own cheering section (who were holding a sign that read "Bless all y'all"):

In related news, my podcast this morning retold the story of the very first marathon, which originated as the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger. The legend states that he was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon (in which he had just fought), which took place in August or September, 490 BC.  It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the assembly, exclaiming "Νενικήκαμεν" (Nenikékamen, 'We have won.') before collapsing and dying.  I feel 'ya, Pheidippides 'ol sport!  So do three of my toenails who similarly collapsed and died upon crossing the finish line.  RIP all. 

Last related marathon note, CNN is reporting this morning that a Chilean miner is planning on competing in this weekend's NYC Marathon less than one month after being rescued.  I'd say that if Biscuit and I can do it, anyone can, but this guy is just flat out asking for an intimate rendez-vous with a mid-course medical tent.

Happy Tuesday, darlings!  Enjoy the brisk weather and reward yourselves with some low fat eggnog- it's now on sale in Safeway and you know I'll enjoy a glass while I put up my Christmas decorations this weekend!  (Fair game after Halloween folks.)

xo

Book Review: One Day by David Nicholls

I would honestly like to know:  are we ever going to get some decent fall weather in the District?  I've just about had it with my only two options being plastering my 'fro to my head or looking like a Treasure Troll wandering the streets of DC.  It's nearly November and I'm scared to change my wardrobe because surely some other 80 degree monsoon is lurking around the corner.

ANYWHO.  Back to the book review.  Though I'm not sure I can seriously review this little morsel.  It was a summer reading choice for one of my book clubs (Yes.  I'm in two book clubs.), point being that it was a crack pop love story that would be easy to read, perhaps, while aimlessly bobbing in some body of water with a cocktail in your hand (or whatever else it is you people do for your summers).  Dexter Mahew and Emma Morley bob and weave in and out of a life long cat-and-mouse game, which had its surprisingly charming moments, and its more unsurprisingly dull ones.  Not what I'd call clever (which we all know is my holy grail for literature, music, men, life), but it had its own warmth that inadvertently attached you fondly to the characters and would result in moderate sadness if, say, one of them were to die at the end just after they finally found love.

Whoops!  Spoiler alert.  My B!  Not like any of y'all would deep dive into this high-grade smut.  And it's really the only eventful thing in the whole flipping 450 pages (Promise I wouldn't spoil a good one!  Honest!).  Tragedy is delicious, especially when it's foreshadowed by a bit 'o haunting- which reminds me, Happy Halloween!...

She philosophically noted dates as they came past in the revolution of the ear;...her own birthday; and every other day individualized by incidents in which she had taken some share.  She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there.  When was it?  ~ Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles

Rain rain go away...

...come back on Sunday so they'll cancel the marathon.  HA.  Not really - I mean, just because I'm undertrained from taking 2.5 weeks off due to some pesky injury doesn't mean everyone else should be robbed of their day of glory.  But for reals I could use a wish right nooow wish right nooow wish right nooow.

Hold on to your hineys because momma's got the writin' bug tonight.  And it's been nearly one month since I've been even remotely interested in hanging out with my laptop at home so we have lots to catch up on friends!

First stop:  American History Friday Series!  As we all know, I work an extra hour per day and somehow the federal government thinks that means I deserve every other Friday off.  Well my momma told me never to look a gift horse in the mouth so I breeze out of headquarters every other Thursday with the top down and don't look back (not my top y'all...speaking figuratively here).  And with my insatiable curiosity and lack of a primary history education (thanks for nothing Gilchrist County), the only logical choice for my Fridays was to enforce a mandatory American History Friday Series.  America, you sassy sassy minx!  Here are some highlights of late:

The Pope-Leighy house is Frank Lloyd Wright's (to be confused with Howard Rourke) only work in the DC area.  Unfortunately the tiny man who gave me the tour wouldn't let me snap any pics inside, not to mention my digital camera bit the big one on this outing (RIP), so all I have is this camera phone documentation.  Lovely house and oh so FLW.  If you haven't read about this man's personal life or visited any of his brilliant architectural masterpieces, call in sick tomorrow and do something with your life!  And hope you never get stuck on a tasteful tour of one of his homes with me because I can't stop running my yapper about his torrid affair with Mamah Cheney and gosh can you just believe it all?! (Which undoubtedly makes the tiny man wonder who's giving this tour anyway?)

Two Fridays later, I hopped on the train for a long-overdue trip to the National Aquarium in Baltimore. *yawn* Folks, if you grew up in Florida and began your aquatic adventures at Sea World as a child, spare yourself the $25 and don't waste your time in aquariums. Period. I wandered through stinky isles of fish pools and plastic replicas of coral reefs, just waiting to turn a corner and pet a sting ray or walk through a glass tunnel within a massive shark tank. Instead I turned a corner and found more stinky fish pools and more plastic replicas of nature's aquatic wonders. But I will say I was thrilled to finally discover (1) the world's smallest species of monkey, the pygmy marmoset (this image doesn't do him justice so please feast your eyes upon this google image search); and (2) a group of lizards is called a "lounge."


And (drum roll please), during my most recent trip to Vegas for the lovely Jan Smith's nuptials, I arrived early and managed to rent a car and drive out to see the Hoover Dam! Holy smokes! This place is one huge terrifying mass of huge-ness and I loved every minute of exploring it! 

Above is a picture of the dam, which I took while dangling from the newly-opened Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge below (seriously scary y'all):

 
And there you have it folks:  American History Friday Series.  Though admittedly most of this has little to do with history.  American Friday Series?  And there goes my writing bug because I'm fresh out of narrative and giving bedroom eyes to my big, comfy bed at the ripe hour of 8pm. 
 
Sweet dreams darlings!
 
xo

Reading (or not) as of late

I couldn't do it.  I just. couldn't. finish. this. book.

And I chose it for our book club meeting!  For shame.

Heller's stream of consciousness, war-time, trite attempts at being clever were just too disorganized and sporadic and I couldn't take more than 200 pages without feeling like I was punishing myself.

So, friends, if you enjoyed this read, snaps to you!  Because I thought it sucked and can't believe it's been heralded as a best seller of our time!

New York state of mind?

Tom Wolfe's describes some interesting northeastern religious tension...which is almost exactly the opposite of the southern experience (Catholic, Protestant and Jewish balances):

The Mayor shook his head some more.  He found the Christian churches baffling.  When he was growing up, the goyim were all Catholics, unless you counted the shvartzer, which nobody did.  They didn't even rate being called goyim.  The Catholics were two types, the Irish and the Italians.  The Irish were stupid and liked to fight and inflict pain.  The Italians were stupid and slob-like.  Both were unpleasant, but the lineup was easy enough to comprehend.  He was in college before he realized there was this whole other set of goyim, the Protestants.  He never saw any.  There were only Jews, Irishmen, and Italians in college, but he heard about them, and he learned that some of the most famous people in New York were this type of goyim, the Protestants, people like the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, the Roosevelts, the Astors, the Morgans.  The term Wasp was invented much later.  The Protestants were split up into such a crazy bunch of sects nobody could even keep track of them all.  It was all very pagan and spooky, when it wasn't ridiculous.  They were all worshipping some obscure Jew from halfway around the world.  The Rockefellers were!  The Roosevelts even!  Very spooky it was, and yet these Protestants ran the biggest law firms, the banks, the investment houses, the big corporations.  He never saw such people in the flesh, except at ceremonies.  Otherwise they didn't exist in New York.  They barely even showed up in the voting surveys.  In sheer numbers they were a nullity - and yet there they were.  And now one of these sects, the Episcopalians, had a black bishop.  You could joke about the Wasps, and he often did so with his friends, and yet they weren't so much funny as creepy.

Post-labor day blues? Probably not.

Happy fall y'all!  I must admit that I preempted the season by giving myself a mani last night with Lancome's lovely dark purple shade from fall 2009.  One of my favorite things about fall (aside from college football of course) is dark nail polish- such a UK classic touch and it always reminds me of my lovely Scottish friend Lucy who introduced me to edgy manis- and I'm really excited to have just nailed down a weekend to visit her in Manhattan.  First weekend in December, I'm big apple-bound to see the only woman I know who can drink more champagne than I can.  I'll drink to that!

Speaking of Lucy and running, here we are at last year's New York Marathon cheering on her sweet husband Stewart and friends (homemade signs and all)- such a fun day and I would love to run this race myself next year!

More great news:  Biscuit and I both finished our half mary in under two hours!  I would post pics of us at the finish but I'd just been at elevated (try 10 out of 10), complete physical exertion for nearly two hours and let's just say I look the part.  Biscuit smoked me by 3 minutes, which is typical for her speedy little self.  While thrilled with my personal record ("PR" in runner lingo), the run was not my best and the entire two hours were a true struggle.  I'm afraid despite its dormant years, I haven't fully outgrown my exercise-induced asthma (was diagnosed in high school but haven't had problems since mid-college) and I'm making an appointment with a doc to get back on the inhaler train.  From mile 1 my chest was so tight I could barely breath- not the greatest conditions for 13.1 miles in the summer heat.  Makes me even more proud of the accomplishment because it was such a struggle.  Onto this weekend's race:  Parks Half Marathon in Bethesda, MD.  I'm allowed to shoot the breeze this time, given my goal was met in Daytona...err...Virginia Beach.

Hope y'all had a lovely Labor Day and are enjoying your four day work week! x

New season, new style.

Happy Wednesday, lovelies.  At 6pm tomorrow, I officially start a 4-day weekend, which will be a much-needed sanctuary from all of the secretarial shiz my boss has been tasking me with lately.  Thank God I have my own intellectual and professional curiosity; otherwise my brain would rust over and I'd have dropped three reading levels by now.

But on to lighter topics, such as my utter and complete lack of style.  I have been wearing the same crap since high school- literally.  I've never been a serious shopper, and my sister somehow managed to usurp all of the trendy genes from the pool.  I need to ditch my gap jeans and polos and get some fall basics that will give me a little more of an edge and, most importantly, won't make me look older than I already am for pete's sake.

First stop:  haircut.  I'm getting bangs at 3pm on Friday.  As much as I'd like to emulate Charlotte York, the reality is that having my locks one length results in me looking like Ozzy Osbourne by the end of the evening (not to mention with my recent eating issues, I am more likely than ever to rip the head off a live bird with my teeth).  So here's what I'm thinking...

No doubt Jennifer's first reaction will be to laugh her face off when I hand her a picture of Mischa Barton and say "make me look like this."  But hopefully she can take me to a place where I accomplish two things:  (1) I no longer look like the Prince of Darkness; and (2) I have a style that would encourage me to wear my hair down more often and more naturally (as in not board straight after 45+ minutes of styling).

Second attempt at stepping up my game:  I finally gave in and bought leggings.  Like a really nice pair.  I know you may be wondering how (and perhaps why) I could fit my ass into a pair of equestrian-style leggings.  I'm wondering the same thing, as I ordered them online today and don't yet have the answer to those questions.  But I love the look, paired with a great sweater and some boots and given the fact that I refuse to wear anything but boots when the temperature drops below 50 degrees, I may as well let them enjoy the chill out from under my jeans- better them than me.

Remaining pieces on my list:  cowgirl boots, shortie suede boots, a pair of designer skinny jeans and an obnoxiously busy-looking oversized clutch.  I figure with all of these items, I'll look 5 years younger, 10 pounds lighter, and Mischa Barton will be taking pictures of me to her stylist.

xo