October 2003 Archives

happy halloween! (cue spooky music) in honor of the day, i am wearing my red sequined devil ears. and a "spooky" t-shirt i got last year from target. and tonight we are going to the aeros game, where the first 3,000 people in the door get a free glow-in-the-dark hockey mask. i am going to be so disappointed if we are not among the first 3,000.

last night was hectic. i had softball at 6 (a few solid hits, but right to outfielders, so still nothing doing there), then a spaceweek wrap-up meeting (er, annoyance) at 7, then over to debbie's to carve my jack-o-lantern at 8:30. it's a good thing i had an excuse to leave the spaceweek meeting, otherwise i might have strangled someone. poor becca had to sit through it all because it was at her house; that'll teach her to volunteer her house as a meeting place. ;)

my jack-o-lantern, however, is very cool, and very sinister. rawr!

i got home from pumpkin carving exhausted, as has been the theme ever since i got back from greece. i just can't seem to get enough sleep, and am beginning to wonder if i really am coming down with something. last night was a bad night, as my fatigue combined with a moment of obsessive-compulsiveness. whew. i get in these moods where all of a sudden i become frustrated with any mess in my apartment. last night when i got home, i couldn't go to bed until i had cleaned up the pile of clothes in the middle of the floor, washed the pots in the sink, and put away some papers that have been sitting on my desk for weeks. so i stayed up even later, exacerbating my tiredness, all because the mess was making me antsy.

i am so weird.

in other news, karen sent becca a postcard from pisa. it had, obviously, the leaning tower of pisa on it, on top of which karen had drawn a stick figure leaning over the edge and said "karen pretending to be sarah." my love of climbing things and leaning over the edge lives on. hurrah.

the woman who lives in the apartment beneath mine apparently has a new boyfriend. a new boyfriend who likes to park parallel to the road behind both her garage and my garage (thus blocking me in) instead of in the visitor's parking spots that are literally 20 feet away. i first noticed his large, white suburban on monday when i got back from atlanta and went home at 9:30 a.m. to change clothes before coming to work. that day, i just parked in the visitor's spot and forgot all about it. but today i walked out to find myself completely blocked in my garage, hemmed in on all sides by the building, my neighbor's car, some bushes, and my neighbor's boyfriend's car. sigh.

i knocked on her door, and 5 minutes later the boyfriend finally appeared to move his car, looking slightly annoyed. perhaps i should have just had him towed; that might have annoyed him less, eh?

now i know i've been out of town for much of the last month, and maybe she thought i moved out or something, but seriously--is it really necessary to park where you're blocking someone's garage when there's a legitimate visitor's spot 20 feet away?

people are weird.

i feel obliged to mention cari today, since she says being mentioned in anyone's diary is a huge highlight for her. ah, she is still so new to the online diary thing that she still gets excited about it!

just kidding, cari. thanks for adoring me and being amused by me. i do what i can. ;)

james also mentioned me the other day in an entry pondering the blogging/diaryland community. he said i am most likely to read his blog, which i take as victory over carter and christina, who are my obsessive blog-reading competition. (i knew james was updating again even before he advertised the fact, so ha!) his observation that there always seems to be something stirring in my soul was interesting. i liked his wording. i guess i do have a tendency for the melodramatic when i write things down. i've stopped trying to fight it; it's easier that way.

well, this has been a waste of an entry, yes? only because i really didn't do anything last night except run errands. bought a new dvd (bend it like beckham), scoped out the new super target (ah, heaven), bought a case for my ipod so i can go running with it, bought a usb cord for the ipod (even the cords come in cute little boxes! i want to buy all the accessories just for the cute little boxes!!), bought a scrapbook for greece stuff, finally bought some new towels to replace the ones that mysteriously disappeared when i moved a couple months ago (dude, seriously, they disappeared, i have no idea what happened to them). then came home to watch my new indulgence--the o.c.

for the past day or so i have been deep in a classical/instrumental music mood. i put all of my classical mp3s onto my ipod last night, so i can listen to lovely music all day. i'm currently listening to alfred reed's "russian christmas music," which got stuck in my head yesterday despite not having heard it in at least a year. it's called christmas music, but it doesn't conjure christmas for me. it's a lovely 15-minute piece that we played it in band in high school; i liked it then, and i like it now.

gotta go do some "real" work now.

i'm five years old today. government years, that is. at the flight operations meeting this morning, i got my five year service award--a pin and a certificate "in grateful recognition and appreciation of faithful service to the national aeronautics and space administration and to the government of the united states of america." despite what your or my opinions of our government might be, i have to say it made me feel pretty good to see those words in print, even if it was just a dinky length-of-service award. i feel sort of proud. i don't know if i would feel that way if i were in private industry.

anyway. that's that.

last night buzz and i went for the first long run of my half marathon training! this morning i registered for the houston half-marathon, to be held january 18 in conjunction with the full marathon. that means i have a little less than 3 months to prepare for 13.1 miles, which is 5.6 miles farther than i have ever run before. my goal is to run the half marathon in january, and then complete a full marathon within a year of that (meaning any race up to and including the 2005 houston marathon).

buzz is planning to use the houston half as a final tune-up for the austin marathon in february, while if all goes well, i will try to run the austin half. last night we ran for just over 70 minutes, and though we didn't measure the distance, we probably covered around 6.5 miles. last night was a slow distance run, just to gain time on our feet, since my goal finish time for the half marathon will probably be around 2.5 hours. last night was good as we ran around the trails and roads of the space center.

we left the gilruth at 5:15 and settled into what i call my "comfort pace," which is just under 11 minutes per mile, and the pace at which i feel i could run indefinitely. we ran as the sun went down, and finished with a sprint in the dark back to the fence separating the space center from the gilruth. walk through the gate, and we were done. i felt good. i'm a bit sore today, and tired, but pleasantly surprised that i was able to cover the distance and time last night after not running for the past month. (i've been active with soccer, softball, adventure races, and greece, but i hadn't actually run lately.)

it's funny to me that i have become one of "the runners" around here, and in my group of friends, despite the fact that i am really slow and will never be winning any races. josh came in this morning asking me for advice on a sports medicine clinic, and i was able to provide it. i'm also the one everyone goes to for news on upcoming races. i'm also the one wanting to plan a race next spring.

it's sort of crazy. if you'd told me 3 years that i would be running 70 minutes last night as my first long training run for my attempt at a half marathon, and that within a year i wanted to run a full marathon, i would probably have laughed. this whole process of becoming more athletic is fascinating to me. between running, soccer, and rock climbing, i'm starting to actually feel fit. i look at my legs and arms in the mirror and think "oh, that's what it looks like to have muscle" or "oh, that's what it looks like to have clothes that fit properly." pretty cool.

last night i cooked owl cookies and brought them in to work today. i sent out an email announcing the arrival of the "world-famous halloween owl cookies" and have had a steady stream of visitors ever since. yay.

if i could change one thing, it might be this: i am always quick with a sarcastic comment, but find myself rendered speechless and fumbling for words at times when i want them more than ever. in the end, i have to trust that those i care about know that i care about them, despite what i may say. sometimes it feels like walking a tightrope.

thanks to those of you who sent good thoughts my way for my intern pitch. it went well, and despite being nervous all day, i relaxed while i was actually giving the pitch. this can probably be attributed to the fact that the "big boss" who was supposed to see the pitch did not come. i'm sure he had other important things to do, but it is frustrating to work so hard on something only to feel ignored, or that no one really cared about what you had to say. i got my raise. yay. i said all along that the raise was all i cared about, but i discovered yesterday that i was wrong. the raise is nice, to be sure, but i also cared about the opportunity to talk about what i've been doing for 16 months.

i can't really explain the disappointment, other than to say that i am. disappointed. i don't feel angry or annoyed. just deflated.

and tired. there are some sad things going on that i don't know how to explain, or make sense of. i have an overwhelming sense of needing to move on. despite all my vacation recently, i still feel too keyed up, and in need of a day to just stay at home and sleep. i may get this wish, as i've been feeling vaguely ill for about a week now. but it hasn't turned into anything full blown. last night i had soup for dinner, and that was comforting.

well, back to the same old same old at work. it's nice that the stress of the intern pitch is over.

i am all sorts of stressed about my intern pitch this afternoon. send happy thoughts my way.

things i adore:

• my sister. she is awesome to begin with, plus she got up at 5:30 this morning to take me to the airport. there is no better sister in the world than katie.
• my sister's fiance. he is awesome, and funny, and too good at foosball, and bought me chik-fil-a. the only fault i have found to date is that joel has no older brother.
• crate and barrel.

• daniel's father. picture the absent-minded professor and you will picture daniel's dad. tufts of white hair, glasses that make his eyeballs look larger than life, a goofy smile, a faraway look, and a german accent.
• daniel's mother, who has the coolest accent in her voice. it sounds very regal.
• virginia's father, who used to be in the alabama state legislature and will henceforth scream "politician!" every time i look back at the pictures from the wedding.
• silly string.
• the mayor of opelika, who made us breakfast.
• the marlins winning the world series. seriously, what is up with that? i'm glad it wasn't the yankees, but come on, the marlins??
• the wedding photographer, who had to try to do his job amidst a reception full of semi-professional photographers, including the groom himself.
• the bathroom that jen and i shared. it had no shower, but two bathtubs. i guess so that we could take baths together. but no bubble bath.

• george bush intercontinental airport. construction is everywhere, and their signage is so bad that last thursday i parked in not the hourly parking, but also not the economy parking. apparently i was in long-term parking, which is a whopping $12 a day. as i pulled out of the parking lot this morning, already stressed about my pitch and groggy from getting up early, i was hit with a $51 parking bill. holy crap.
• it is colder today in houston than it is in atlanta or auburn.
• the mayor of opelika, who locked me out of my room for hours.
• suits. i've made it 25 years without a suit, through interviews and presentations and the like, and i think i've done pretty well for myself. so why did i suddenly allow people to convince me that i need one? i don't know. jackets make me look stupid. instead, i bought just a skirt, and am wearing that for my pitch.

incidentally, i splurged on an ipod before we went to greece. and sunday when we got back, i downloaded the brand-spanking-new itunes for windows. and i'm happy to report that...

i'm absolutely, completely, crazy, head over heels in love with them both.

betsy and buzz say i'm too hard on myself when we go rock climbing. i want too much too fast; i have trouble being patient in trying a route over and over and over again; i view resting on the rope as failure instead of a means to an end, which is the hope of eventually climbing the route in a single effort.

i'm starting to realize that maybe i'm too hard on myself in other aspects of my life as well. self-motivation is better with a bit of moderation, i suppose.

i am so stressed out. the stress i was feeling pre-greece has returned. i am exhausted, and have much to do. i haven't caught up on sleep since i got back because i've had three straight nights of activity--soccer, rock climbing, volleyball. thankfully, last night were the final 2 games of our volleyball season, and i don't plan on returning. instead, i think i'll trade tuesday volleyball for friday soccer. or maybe just nothing. maybe i just need to scale back.

on the bright side, all the stress and hectic-ness abated while i was soaking up some mediterranean sunshine and climbing around some really cool rocks. last night, as promised, i did post some commentary and pictures from the trip. my mom has already requested more, so i'll try to comply in a week or two. :)

and while we're on the bright side, the first run-through of my intern pitch went very well yesterday afternoon. despite the fact that i finished the presentation only minutes before the dry run, and hadn't even been able to mentally go through the slides in order, i did a good job on the fly. my bosses and coworkers had only minor suggestions, and despite the bulky 31-slide presentation, i managed to talk it all in only 23 minutes. (i know that goes against the one minute per slide rule, but trust me, 31 slides is as small as it's gonna get.) we are allotted "approximately 20 minutes," which allows about 10 minutes for questions. so with a couple more practices, i will be set to jet off to atlanta for the weekend and not worry about the presentation till showtime on monday.

i am really looking forward to seeing my sister this weekend. my mom sent me two pictures in the mail yesterday, so i figure it's time to share the news here on my journal: my sister got engaged about a month and a half ago! i get to be maid of honor when they get married after they graduate from tech in 2005, and i am so excited. here she is with joel:

aren't they cute? :)

it's a good thing i was on vacation all last week, because boy am i stressed out today with this stupid intern pitch. i have to do a dry run in an hour, and i just finished putting it together. i haven't practiced it at all yet.

the "greece picture teaser" will hopefully be online later tonight, to be located here.

it's going to be a hectic three days here at work before i leave again on thursday to head to auburn via atlanta for daniel's wedding. i found out on friday before we left for greece that my intern pitch will be next monday, so that leaves me today, tomorrow, and wednesday to write the pitch, practice it, show it to my boss, and show it to my boss's boss. next monday i'll present to my boss's boss's boss, along with becca and jason. all three of us have our pitches on the same day, so that will be fun.

(note for the curious: it's called an intern pitch not because i am an intern, but because for the first year or two of a person's full-time work here, they are in the "technical intern" program. basically, it's a test-out time just to make sure you're a good employee, and as such, you can be fired without the normal difficulty of firing a government worker. after this pitch i'll no longer be an intern and thus will have even more job security, but by far the best part of giving the pitch is the sizeable pay raise that goes with it!)

i also found out that next wednesday i'll be receiving my 5-year government service award, which i get, despite having only been full-time for 16 months, because of all my co-op time. my first day as a co-op was in 1997, but my "adjusted" start date is august 1998, so i'm finally receiving the 5 year service award (they only do the ceremony quarterly) that i officially received back in august of this year. yes, it's unnecessarily complicated. but still cool.

anyway. becca and i got back to houston yesterday afternoon just after 2:00 and i was back at my apartment by 3:30 after a lonnnnng plane flight. the more long flights i take, the less i like them. i get so stiff and sore; if it's like this at 25 i can't think about how much i'll hate it when i'm 75. our trip was great, and i will post some pictures soon. i have 28 good ones that i will get online sometime this evening; take them as a preview of a bigger posting that will probably have to wait until i get back from the wedding and have finished my intern pitch. i'll also try to post some journal entries.

in the meantime, the highlight list goes like this:

• two nights in athens with visits to the flea market, the acropolis, and the ancient agora
  
• three nights on the island of santorini with beautiful sunsets, whitewashed, blue-domed churches, black beaches, red cliffs, tons of sun, incredibly blue water and (of course) an update on game 6 of the nlcs
  
• two nights in meteora with a day of walking all over tall pillars of rocks and the 6 monasteries perched precariously atop them
  
• one more night in athens and a lot of souvenir shopping
  
• SOOOOO much good food
  

our plane leaves this afternoon, and since about 7:00 last night i have been in traditional sarah-traveling-frenzy mode.

i don't really know why i get so stressed out just before going somewhere, but there's no arguing the fact that i do. and it seems like the farther away i'm going, the worse it gets. since we're going to greece, which will be the farthest away i've ever been, the frenzy is at a max. not to mention that there is the worry of strikes that are currently ongoing in athens. hopefully the taxi drivers will get over it in time to be ready to drive us around! eek eek eek.

but i have my passport and i have underwear, and really, those are the two essentials, right?

anyway. we fly direct from houston to frankfurt, where we have a four hour layover during which i'm sure we'll sleep on the airport floor or something similarly uncomfortable. then we hop on a flight to athens, finally arriving around 5:00 greece-time on saturday. we'll find karen, eat something, and crash at the hostel. then it's exploring athens, going to santorini, maybe another island, maybe delphi, maybe meteora...we don't really have a plan. that's what the 14 hour flight is for. :)

we get back on the 19th and will be back at work on the 20th. i'll update then.

last night gavin and i drove over to challenger park to check things out as a potential course for our yuri's night 5k. we've had some scheduling issues, and so in addition to moving the race to april 3, we may also move the location. in challenger park, we could do a semi-trail run, which might alienate some runners but would encourage others. not to mention that challenger park is quite appropriate for a space-themed race.

now if only we could find a trail map...

after getting home, i did pretty much nothing all night except sit in front of the tv. after three hours of chaos at the high school for the lance bass visit, i was exhausted. remind me never to become a celebrity!

tomorrow becca and i leave for greece to meet karen in athens on saturday, and i still have so many things to do before i leave. i'll be gone for all of next week, then back for three days, then gone for four more to atlanta/auburn for daniel's wedding. i'm glad the space week stuff is over, and that my vacations are here. but it will also be nice once the trips are past and i have a whole weekend at home with nothing scheduled. i am ready for some down time.

i am too frustrated and annoyed and stressed out by too many things right now, so it's probably best to just not talk about any of them.

so i met lance bass (of nsync) today. or rather, i said a few sentences to lance bass while trying to manage the accelerating chaos at rayburn high school.

i don't think i ever really mentioned what all this is about, so here's the quick recap: i have been helping organize houston's world space week activities. world space week was declared by the united nations in 1999 and is held every year, around the world, from october 4-10. for more information, you can visit http://www.spaceweek.org, which i plug merely because, ahem, i designed the page. it's not my best web design ever, but let's just say it's a hell of a lot better than what was there before, and becca and buzz and gavin and jen will all back me up on that one.

anyway, this year the world space week powers-that-be got lance bass to come to houston as world space week youth spokesperson, because he was supposed to fly in space last year, because he likes space, and because kids like him. so he's in town visiting houston schools and giving them telescopes donated by a non-profit foundation called permission to dream, doing a mini-media blitz, promoting world space week, and basically saying "yay space." and this afternoon jen and i were his technical liaisons at rayburn high school in pasadena.

i don't have the patience to describe the whole three hours at the high school as things snowballed more and more out of control (a schedule? what's a schedule?), but, in the end, everything turned out ok, the kids loved him, the class finally got their telescope, and the news people got their footage. happiness all around.

and lance's personal assistant jesse is cuter than he is.

if you want my opinion.

i posted late yesterday, so if you didn't get a chance to read my epic-length recounting of the adventure race, go back and read it. i posted the pictures that chris took; there was also an official race photographer, so i'll post the pictures they took whenever they get around to putting them on their website.

yesterday i didn't end up leaving work until 6, which i guess is good since it turns out i have to leave early this afternoon to help finalize plans for tomorrow's world space week activities. lance bass is coming to houston as world space week spokesperson, and jen and i are his technical liaisons for his visit to a local high school tomorrow. this morning a woman won tickets on the radio to see him when he goes to the radio station on friday, and she called him her fantasy boyfriend. this woman is 48 years old.

yep. should be interesting, to say the least.

i'm still tired. but i am a little more excited about greece today, which is good. the thing is, in the past year, and especially in the past 6 months or so, i have really turned into a homebody. i know this sounds funny coming from a person who is constantly running off to rock climbing or a race or a movie or dinner or some other crazy activity, but it's somehow true. as much as i like all the other things i do, i also really like just spending time with me, myself, and i in my little apartment.

i know. i contradict myself.

last night nick told me he hoped i got more into the trip, because greece is beautiful. this i knew. so i decided to picture myself sitting on some little restaurant terrace on the island of santorini in the sunshine, eating yummy mediterannean food (which i know i will enjoy, despite the fact that, as becca continuously laments, i don't like olives and feta). and that sounds nice.

still not really pumped about the plane flight though. is it possible to get cabin fever on an airplane?

what a weekend. i am exhausted.

i know i should be really excited about going to greece, especially considering the money i've already spent on a plane ticket. but i just feel blah about it. add the fact that there is apparently a massive strike going on in the country this week, and it just stresses me out.

i'm tired.

chris and debbie and i left town friday around 4 bound for marble falls, texas, about 40 miles west of austin. we stopped for dinner at the applebee's near where leila and brian used to live, and i watched the cubs defeat the braves in game 3. we got to the hotel shortly after 10 and crashed pretty quickly, considering the alarm was set for 5 a.m.

5 a.m. came far too soon, as it always does, and we groggily headed towards muleshoe bend recreation area, the site of the adventure race. we reassembled the borrowed mountain bikes, in the dark. it was extremely frustrating, as the bikes are pieces of crap. we finally got them assembled and put our stuff in the transition area, then rode a few hundred feet farther where chris was able to park his van practically on top of the finish line. prime parking, aw yeah.

we sat around killing time, and then decided to go back over to the transition area to drop off a few final items. it was at this point that debbie asked me to grab my hex wrench and raise the handlebars on her bike. it turns out this unscrewing was one time too many, as the screw would not go back in (i suspected a stripped groove, since the screw itself was fine), and the handlebars thus were far too loose. a mere 20 minutes from race time, and we had one unrideable bike!

thinking fast, we rolled it over to the bike repair tent, where our hero-of-the-day bicycle repair man was able to force the screw through the stripped portion of the grooves and tighten the handlebars. we left the tent to the echos of his warning: "just take it easy, ok?" oooook. this should be interesting.

with the race start only five minutes away, we were told only that we would start the race on foot. part of the "thrill" of adventure racing is that you're never quite sure what you're going to have to do, or what order you'll have to do it in. every team (there were maybe 150 teams) was given an envelope, and when the starter finally called "go!" we all ripped them open to find a full sheet of single-space, 12-point text. only about 4 sentences, in the middle of the page, were actually applicable. they told us to find the volunteer holding the sign with the number of dots corresponding to the last number of our team number (thus, 3, since we were team #163) and they'd tell us where to go. off we went. we were told to keep going staight, where the letter said we'd find a field full of tennis balls. we had to find the ball with our team number on it.

our team name was the hobbling wonder chicks, thanks to debbie's bad knees, so we weren't running. we walked briskly to the field, at which point we were in the back of the pack. this turned out to help us, because we only had to search through about 20 tennis balls instead of over a hundred, so we found our ball in about 10 seconds and kept going. we walked a mile or so and then encountered the first mystery challenge. we had to throw the tennis ball in leapfrog fashion about 200 feet--debbie throwing to me, me catching, then standing still while she moved forward, then me throwing to her, her standing still while i moved forward, her throwing to me again, etc. we did that and rounded a corner to find the second mystery challenge--kicking the tennis ball about 200 feet through the grass. after that we walked back to the transition area, where we found the third mystery challenge--trying to throw the tennis ball into a cardboard box from concentric circles. with each miss, we got to move in to the next closest circle. after that, it was time to transition to the bikes.

the park was very scenic, and we enjoyed riding the bikes through tall grass and along the shores of lake travis. soon the trail headed into the woods and turned into a single-track mountain biking trail. some sections were too rocky for our mountain biking inexperience, and so we got off and walked through the tough parts. at one point, we got back up behind a long line of racers for a good 15 minutes or so because of a large dip in the trail that only the really good bikers could successfully ride. but we were past that soon enough, and got to the next mystery challenge. here, we weren't allowed to talk, and had to get across 30 feet of grass without touching the ground. we had one 1.5 foot square piece of plywood per person, so we had to stand close together on one board while i reached down and picked up the other board and tossed it in front of us. then we'd move to that board, and repeat. we totally rocked that challenge, and passed a few teams who were having more trouble.

we rode some more, and then encountered the next challenge. a volunteer (a cute irish volunteer with an awesome accent!) had a number between 1 and 1000, and we had to figure it out based on guessing and being told "higher" or "lower." from there, it was more biking through the woods to the final challenge of the biking portion, a sheet of paper with three puzzles. we had to do two out of three; the first was to list 18 words that all rhymed with each other, the second was a word search, and the third was a cryptogram. i did the 18 rhyming words (at, bat, cat, flat, fat, hat, splat...) while debbie got to work on the cryptogram. when i finished the rhymes, i started from the end of the cryptogram, and we were finished in lightning fast time. then we were back on the bikes and finally back to the transition area. the biking portion was really long (we were on the bikes for more than two hours) and debbie and i were both getting pretty darn tired at the end.

the last portion involved going in the water, but first we had to leave the transition area, crawl on our stomachs underneath a cargo net, walk across a pipe like a balance beam (i fell off and had to start over!), and fill a large piece of pvc pipe with water until it came out a set of holes in the middle of the pipe. making this more difficult was the fact that both the water carrier and the water receiver pipes had holes in the bottom that we had to make sure to cover with our hands. we finished those challenges and made our way to the lake shore, where we had to wade across about a hundred feet of waist-deep water.

on the other side, we then had to follow a zig-zag route while walking on two-by-four boards like skis. with debbie playing drill sargeant (left! right! left! right!) we zigged and zagged like nobody's business. after that came the "adventure tubing" part of the race, which involved navigating maybe 1/5 of a mile of water with a large innertube. we started sitting in the tubes and paddling with our arms, but that was pretty tiring. then we discovered that the water was shallow enough to simply walk along dragging the tube behind us. that worked almost until the end, when the water got deep and we simply side-stroked, still pulling the innertubes. the life jackets that we were required to wear made swimming more of a challenge than usual, but c'est la vie.

we climbed out of the lake and dropped off our tubes, and headed up the hill for the final two challenges. the first was the hardest of the day--two metal pipes were laid on the ground in a v-shape, close on one end and about 5 or 6 feet apart on the other end. one team member had to be blindfolded (me), and we had to each stand on one pipe and make our way to the other end. we started out holding onto each other shoulders for balance, but by the end we were grabbing each other's forearms, and starting to get wobbly. it was close, but we made it. go team hobble!

the last challenge was simply to bounce to the back of a moonwalk and then back out the door, and then we power-walked to the finish line, finishing in four hours and 5 minutes! (the winners finished in just over 2 hours, while the last people crossed the line just under 5 hours.)

anyway. the is the speed retelling of the race. it was a lot of fun, and debbie and i are already planning to do it again next year.

we came back from austin on saturday and nick fixed us a lovely dinner. i crashed, exhausted, only to get up at 5:45 a.m. to go volunteer at the space city 10-miler, a road race put on by the local running store. i went to help and to gain some race-planning experience in preparation for directing the 5k we're putting on next spring. i helped at the registration table, and then cut the timing chips off at least a hundred sweaty, just-run-10-miles shoes. now that was quite an icky job, but at the same time, it was fun to watch everyone finishing. the winner came in just over 52 minutes. damn. that's at least twice as fast as i'd be able to run 10 miles. it was really impressive. the guy was all muscle and sinew; i swear he must have had like 0.5% body fat. but volunteering was a lot of fun, and i got to cheer for laurie, josh, jess, and buzz as they successfully finished the race. next year i'll hopefully be in it as well. at the moment, i'm entertaining thoughts of registering for the half-marathon in january (it's run simultaneously with the houston marathon). i would have just over three months to prepare, which is enough time if i start now.

yesterday afternoon i was so zonked that i took a three hour nap in front of the sox-a's game. if you know me, you know i must have been really tired, because i almost never take naps, mainly because they only leave me feeling fuzzy-headed and confused. but yesterday i was so tired that the nap actually did help, and it revitalized me enough for sunday night soccer. we played a team from galveston that i remember from last season for their rough play. nothing has changed; they were still pushing and elbowing like no tomorrow. even i lost my temper at one point and yelled at a girl who had pushed me repeated as i turned the ball upfield, and if you've ever played soccer with me, you know that it takes a lot to make me lose my temper and yell. i figure soccer is a tough game, and some jostling is expected. but this team really took it to the extreme. they got two yellow cards, and probably deserved more. it was absurd.

the soccer game continued through most of the braves-cubs game, and i only got to see the last two innings. i'm sad that the braves lost. carter and i watched the last inning together via phone. it was disappointing. wood and prior both pitched very well, but i can't help but feel like the braves sort of defeated themselves. the offense that's been so overwhelming all season long was absent.

and another winter begins. i'll watch the lcs and world series, but it won't be the same.

whew. i just wrote a book.

well, i finally got a hit in softball last night. i went 1-for-7, and am batting something like .050 for the season, but hey--i got a hit. and two rbi's. thank god. i would be really mad this morning if i still hadn't gotten one.

i wore my "yankees suck" shirt, but it didn't have the desired effect, and the yankees won last night. ah well.

debbie and i are taking a stab at this adventure race thing tomorrow. it should be fun. yesterday in preparation, we went to academy and then to oshman's and each bought one of those little backpacks that carry a water bladder in them. i've been thinking about getting one for biking anyway, so this seemed like a good excuse. it will come in quite handy tomorrow as we race for close to five hours. it even has enough pocket room for some granola bars and an extra tire tube. wahoo.

it will be a busy weekend. i'll be west of austin for tonight and most of tomorrow. sunday morning i'm helping out at the space city 10-miler to get some race organizing experience. then we have a soccer game sunday night. whew.

exhale.

with each pitch, i hold my breath and hope for a strike (if it's the braves pitching) or a hit (if they're at bat). i want them to win so badly. alone in my apartment, i cheer as loudly and as frantically as if i were sitting in the stands in atlanta. i wonder if my downstairs neighbor can hear me jumping up and down. then i realize that i don't really care, because i won't be able to stop doing it until they either win the world series or die trying. the anxiety only gets worse with each passing post-season.

every march when the ncaa tournament rolled around, my dad used to say that he couldn't watch duke play. especially not in the big games. he just got too nervous. now i understand.

debbie and chris and i took two las palmas mountain bikes over to bike barn last night to get them checked out before debbie and i ride them in the women's adventure race we're doing this weekend. they're in ok shape, but the bike store man laughed when we told him what we were doing, saying "you do realize these bikes weight like a hundred pounds, right?" well, not a hundred pounds, but they are heavy. still, nothing we can do about it short of buying ourselves mountain bikes, which is dumb considering we live in flat-as-a-pancake houston.

anyway. the bikes are in good enough condition i suppose, so off we shall go on saturday. the adventure race involves mountain biking, trail running, "adventure tubing" and mystery challenges. the tubing part is just pulling yourself across a lake on an inner tube, while the mystery challenges can be anything from doing a puzzle to climbing a cargo net. it's not a relay, so debbie and i have to stay together. they say good teams will finish in two hours, and everyone should finish in five. since i'm slow and debbie has rocks for knees, i figure we'll be on the five hour side. :) it should be fun.

happy october!

i've been waiting for a week for this month to get here so i could say that, and then this morning i forgot. how could i?

i love october. it is one of my two favorite months.

they say good pitching beats good hitting.

who are "they" anyway? i hate "them."

the braves lost. kerry wood pitched a good game, but honestly, i think the braves beat themselves. wood wasn't perfect; he threw a lot of balls and put a lot of men on base. the braves just weren't hitting.

and then their defense shot themselves in the foot. russ ortiz brilliantly pitched out of a jam in the 3rd, and a bases-loaded, no-outs jam in the 4th. in the 6th he loaded the bases again, then got a strikeout and a double play ball...but robert fick bobbled the catch and thus an inning-ending double play turned into an inning-continuing single out.

sigh.

the fox broadcast of the game was quite annoying. i didn't like the announcers. and they kept on showing kerry wood's wife, squinching her eyes and gasping and cheering and crap. ugh. it was driving me crazy. i almost muted the sound, except i don't like muting it because then i can't pace around my apartment without losing track of the game.

ah. such are my problems.

i'm stressed out. the weather outside is perfect.