I think I’m the only girl who…

HATES shopping. I just don’t have the patience for it. Taking all your clothes off and putting right back on five times in a row is just not my idea of fun. 

 

I have to find a dress to wear to the wedding and I rarely have the excuse to buy pretty and fancy dresses, so I want it to be good. Too bad I suck at shopping. I got two possibilities tonight, but I definitely I will be venturing over to International tomorrow. C’est la vie. 

 

This has been an extremely long week and I’m SO glad it’s over. I sincerely hope that next week isn’t nearly as bad, but nothing can spoil the fact that I’m going to Jax on Friday! I’m so excited… and I just can’t hide it! 

 

Training on Tuesday was great. H really wanted to do four miles, so we convinced the rest of the runners to do four as well. It’s so nice going someplace new for a run. Although honestly, running in florida is like running through a sauna. I always manage to get hotter and sweatier AFTER I stop running. There is a race this weekend called “run through hell” in Tampa and I think that it’s the most apropos name for a summer run in Florida. I ran on Monday but unfortunately wasn’t able to run wednesday-friday and today was spent being lazy. I am debating getting up early tomorrow to run, but it’s my only chance to sleep in since I had work this morning (ugh!). I think the reality will be that I end up running in the evening, which is fine… as long as I don’t bail on myself. 

 

I might have found a corporate sponsor for TNT. I just need to make a stellar packet to give to them on money. I also need to get some other stuff together for TNT. OOh and apparently our thank you notes were a huge success. Now all I need is more people to give me money so that I can send out cute thank you notes! 

 

I have about 130 pages left of Eclipse. Perhaps I’ll end up finishing it tonight, if not, then definitely tomorrow… but I’m off to read. 

Eclipse is calling my name.

I just wanted to write that I forced myself to run today despite my headache. I think that while it’s ill-advised, taking some ibuprofen for my headache before a run, helps make it go away quicker. Since I get all that blood pumping the medicine gets to my head faster. So yay, a new remedy for headaches and I get my daily exercise. 

 

I *might* run tomorrow morning, but probably not since I have TNT training in the evening. I do think I’m going to go curl up in my bed and read some more eclipse. I’ve been sucked in, haha. 

 

Goodnight and good luck! 

Just in case

Just in case anyone forgot and needed my fundraising page weblink here it is: 

 

Please, give the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society your money! 

 

Oh and we got ANOTHER call today. Someone’s interested in the couch! Hallelujah! 

And the productivity continues.

Today, well this weekend has actually been surprisingly productive in regards to our Team in Training progress. We’ve already sold the microwave and armoire off craigslist (which I LOVE) and we only posted things last night! I also got pictures printed and got all the thank you cards done and other things for the mail. THEN I updated my TNT donation page with current information, send a message out to people on the facebook group AND made an event invitation for the next yard sale. 

What I didn’t get done was running. But I guess that’s what tomorrow is for and then Tuesday is the actual TNT training session. OOH yeah and I ordered a new running hat and some tshirts from the TNT website so I can be a walking billboard and hope and pray that people will want to hand me money as I walk down the street. Now that would be a wonderful thing. 

Anyone want to hand me some money? Really all I need is say $1200… I would be perfectly content with just a small $1200 contribution. 

 

Seriously though, there are people who need help, support, drugs, services and care… and by donating to my fund, you’ll be helping children and adults who are suffering from leukemia, lymphoma and other blood related cancers. 

 

How is it already 9:00 pm on sunday evening? Where did my weekend go? Well, I guess I’m going to go read some more Eclipse since A has me addicted to the Twilight series. 

 

Team in Training update

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. It’s also been a while since I’ve talked about my team in training progress. 

Last Saturday H and I went to the Ft. Desoto run. The last Ft. Desoto one we had to walk because of her teeth surgery, but we ran 5 miles last week. It’s more than we’ve been running recently, but it felt great. Although I do remember why I had such a hard time running last summer. It’s hot, humid and gross and it takes A LOT of motivation to make yourself go running when the weather is miserable. I haven’t been doing a very good job of forcing myself to go running and I’m feeling it. My fitness level is dropping and I’ve been missing out on the runner’s high. Most importantly though, I feel like I’m letting people and my conscience down in regards to my commitment to team in training. I need to turn things around, so here is my vow to make it to all team practices and to run at a minimum of three times a week. Even if it’s just two miles, I need to get out there and do SOMETHING. Ideally though, I should be having long runs of about 5-7 miles and weekly runs between 3-4 miles. Today while at Borders (always a BAD idea), I ended up buying a book called “Ultra Marathon: Confessions of an all-night runner.” I figure it’ll be a nice break from the current vampire books and chick lit that I’m reading. Not to mention, it should kick my butt out of lazy gear. 

 

On the fundraising side of things, I’ve been extremely stressed recently. Our recommitment date is August 8th. We each need to have raised $1050 by that date, if not we need to decide what we want to do. It’s a scary thought. Even more frightening is fearing that I might not be able to do it, which is not a thought I want. So we had a family meeting today to figure out how to make this a reality.  

It was a productive day, which is great. I got all our money in the mail, so hopefully our accounts will be updated soon. That is a big load off my mind. I also posted the furniture pieces left over from the yard sale on craigslist. I LOVE craigslist! Three different people already called and one actually came and got the armoire, so H and I are $20 closer to our goal and one less armoire in our carport. Let’s see… I have a date set for the next yard sale/bake sale, which hopefully will be equally successful and pictures picked out for thank you notes. Tomorrow I need to make the flier for the yard sale and e-mail people about it and then finish thank you notes. But I’m feeling slightly less stressed and that’s is exciting. 

 

So recap: 

I’ve run 72 miles since starting TNT training and I’ve raised $477. It’s still a long way from my goal, but it’s definitely a start. 

Word Vomit Part 3: Books

I just finished reading Good in Bed. Yet another chick lit book that I’ve seen on the shelves at Borders for years and even on the shelves of my friends and resisted reading.  I’m not entirely sure why, because I loved it. I’m pretty easy when it comes to chick lit, as long as the characters are compelling and there’s a decent plot, I’m happy. Regardless, I really enjoyed reading it. It was completely different from what I expected, but I don’t know what I expected. The aspect of the book that intrigued me the most were two of the prominent themes: fatness and gayness. Maybe not so much on the gayness front, although there is a lot of discussion of gay lifestyle and how it fits into the larger family picture. In respect to fat, there is specifically a quote in the book talking about how “fatness” …”is the last acceptable prejudice, [and] that fat people are the only safe targets in our politically correct world” (15), which is exactly what I want to write my research paper about. I think it’s a sign from above… I need to start doing my research and then flesh out my final paper from Race and Gender. I brought the plays with me that I need to reread, so maybe I’ll take notes in the margin so when I get home I can start doing internet research.  

 

I also think I’m going to suck it up and start the Twilight series. I don’t know why I have such reservations about reading them, but I do. I think it’s the vampire stuff. I’m really not a fan of vampire themes or fantasy/sci-fi in general. But honestly, I trust the opinions of A and S, so I think I’ll just leap in and try it. 

Word Vomit Part 2: Career Stuff

You know what’s crazy? So I’m in the car, riding home and as per usual NPR is playing in the background. Well, I’m watching Sex and the City on my computer and I hear a story about the Tony awards (which is airing on Sunday night, yay!) and musicals. I pause the dvd and start listening to the story and it’s talking about how we should burst out into song more often. It was an interesting piece, but that’s not the point. The point is, they were talking about all these new shows like, In the Heights and it got me thinking… I have several friends, former classmates, who have left Tallahassee and moved to NYC and are making names for themselves. One friend is working on In the Heights, I’m not exactly sure what his role is, but something I think in marketing or advertising. Another friend is working with The Adding Machine and finally a friend who is working in the public relations/marketing area of things but she’s always attending these up and coming shows. Problem is, what am I doing? Nothing. I’m living at home and working in a field that I have ZERO interest in pursuing and not getting myself any closer to grad school. 

 

I need a change. I need to make a difference in my own life. I need to do what will help me get where I want to be going. 

Word Vomit Part 1: TNT/Training

I think my loquacious moment has passed. I wrote a novella to A the other day, haha. That being said, I thought I should blog about my run yesterday. It was our last day in North Carolina and since we literally did nothing the entire time we were up here (well, besides construction), we ventured out to Black Rock Mountain state park in Georgia. It’s only like 15 minutes from the house, but I believe it’s the state park with the highest elevation, or it might be the highest point of elevation in Georgia. Either way, it was a crazy run. We parked at one of the look out points and I took off uphill. I was winded in a matter of minutes. It is surprisingly hard to run uphill, not that I expected it to be easy, but much harder than I would have thought. The first half mile was uphill and then the next half mile was downhill with a few small ups. It was only a two mile run. One mile to the campground where I turned around and then came the fun. Since I haven’t been maintaining my running base I was already tired and the lovely downhill I had on the first half of the run, suddenly became a treacherous uphill. Ugh. 

 

As I was running I saw an old man out for his evening constitutional and a little girl returning to her cabin from the playground. But the most amusing part was that as I was trudging uphill the park ranger drove past me and he started a conversation… he wanted to know if I was training for anything in particular, so I told him that it was the Nike Women’s Half Marathon. He thought that it was awesome and it turns out that he typically runs three to four marathons a year, but thinks that the half  marathon is the perfect distance. He said I’m going to love it. It was really cool. I definitely think that running is a universal bonding point. Sort of how IB was a common ground for discussion for me in high school, running is that for me as an adult. It’s awesome, I love it. 

 

Anyway, as I was finishing up my run I realized that first of all, I need to get serious about my training. True, I ran twice this week, both hill workouts and I have a run tomorrow, but I’ve been slacking. I haven’t been taking this seriously and I need to start doing that. Second of all, hills are a killer. I HAVE to prepare myself for them, both mentally and physically. I realize that I’m training in hot humid weather, but that edge is not going to magically make me able to conquer the hills. So I’ll have to train hardcore and find some hills, man made or otherwise and run the heck out of them, oh and gain some mental toughness. It’s going to be like the toughness that I use to overcome the first mile of every run… once I can get past that first mile, it usually feels amazing to be running. I think that if I can conquer the uphill, the downhill will be exhilarating.  

Whoa Hills…

Wow. I just got my butt kicked. This Florida girl is not used to running on hilly country roads. I was significantly more winded running here than I am when I’m back at home. I think part of the problem was that I got my motivation to run and conquer my fear of the dogs too late in the day. I left the house about 10:30 in the morning and it definitely was starting to heat up by then. Obviously not as humid as running in Florida, but still humid and HOT. I also had a harder time finding my rhythm because I was trying to be aware of speeding cars/trucks which could be whipping around blind corners and plow into me. That meant that I was constantly switching sides of the road to accommodate traffic vs. blind corners. 

 

I felt really tired, but I think that’s due to my lack of training recently. I hope that by running on these hills that I’ll be doing myself some favors and perhaps compensate for some of my slacking. I managed to do 2.29 miles. The first half being downhill and then the second half, and the half which was I already feeling fatigued, was uphill. Running downhill does wonders for my pace. I was running under a 9 minute mile when going downhill. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s probably a bad thing. I think tomorrow I need to focus on going SLOWLY down the hills, for my knees and energy level’s sake. That way when I am ready to start the uphill trek, I’ll have some energy left in my reserve. 

 

They say it’s supposed to rain today/tomorrow. It’d be kinda nice if it did. Although I’m not sure I’d do my run in the rain here, just because I’m worried about the whole cars not seeing me issue… 

Dial Up

Sweat bees are the pits. I don’t ever remember them being an issue in the past but this time they continue to fly around me as I sit outside and read. UGH. 

 

I totally spent nearly the entire day reading and a lot of it reading outside. It’s a beautiful thing. I started and finished “Stupid and Contagious” which A has recommended I read multiple times. When I first started it I wasn’t really a fan. I was a little irritated and unsure why A loved it so much. But as I kept reading, the annoying quirks turned into lovable quirks and so by the time I was done reading, I didn’t want to give it up. I hate how I’ll rush through books and then be thoroughly disappointed that it’s over. Although now I think I do want to go read another Caprice Crane book. But I STILL want to find Something Borrowed because gosh darn it, that book was ALWAYS on the Borders buy 1 get 1 1/2 off table and now I can’t find it anywhere. Bullocks. 

 

Tonight at dinner I was eavesdropping on the table behind me and the guy was asking the waitress for advice on his computer. Somehow the topic of internet came up and the guy said he had AOL (seriously, who still uses AOL? I didn’t know it was still around.) and this other internet provider, FastNet or something? Anyway, the waitress was confused as to why he was paying for TWO internet providers and the guy explained that some of the stuff he wanted to do, he wasn’t capable of doing on AOL. He had no idea that he could ditch AOL and just use the IMing feature for free and stick with the other internet provider. The whole conversation amused me greatly because being up here is like stepping backwards in time about 7 years. 

 

I haven’t been running up here yet. It’s driving me crazy, but it’s all my own fault. I’m afraid of the dogs. Up here dogs aren’t your typical suburban dogs who know boundaries. These dogs run free. They know no boundaries. They might try and gnaw my legs off. Ugh. I do have mace to carry with me, but I’m afraid that even if there was a dog gnawing my leg off, that I would still have a hard time spraying it in the face. 

 

But I do need to conquer my fears. So maybe after I finish writing this, I’ll embrace my fears and go run. 

 

I think we might go to Black Rock Mountain (I think that’s the right name…) and have a picnic and I’ll run. That would be nice. A definite hill work out. 

 

Oh yeah, so on Saturday H called us and said there was a stranger at the door. It turns out that it was someone from the yard sale. A woman who had expressed interest in the sewing machine came back and wanted to know if we had sold it. Which we hadn’t, so I guess once we return we’ll get in touch with her and make an exchange. Awesome. 

 

I’m really looking forward to the Ft. Desoto training run/potluck and then BG. Then hopefully relaxing all day on Sunday. It’ll be a good conclusion to my vacation.