Training Pays Off

A few months ago, my friend Jill said on Twitter:

Fun workout this morning w/my marathon training group. Ran ~13mi total, including a 2mi tempo & 800 meter repeats around a wood chip trail

And I thought, “That’s crazy. I could never just go out and run 13 miles on a Saturday morning.”

Fast forward to last night after wine tasting with some friends of mine visiting from out of town. It turns out that Mike has just run a marathon and that he had Jeff are training for another race right now. So Jeff says to me, “We’re looking to go on a ten to twelve mile run in the morning. Where should we go?” I start to think about, I start describing a few ideas, and then I stop and say, “I’ll meet you at your hotel at 6:30.”

This morning, the three us went on an eleven mile run. It’s not quite the half-marathon distance Jill was talking about, but it’s still a substantial amount of running. The fact that I could just decide last night that I was going to do it and then pull it off made me feel — quite frankly — awesome.

Update

Fitness: Ran 11 miles

She's Right

The Boss
A play in one scene

The Players
Sarah, a barista
Paul, a regular patron
First Woman, a coffee drinker
Second Woman, another coffee drinker

The Scene
A Starbucks, at the end of lunch hour.

Sarah stands at the espresso machine. Paul sits at the bar, typing on his laptop. The two women stand, waiting for their drinks.

Paul rises, closes his laptop, and begins to put it in his bag.

Sarah: You can’t leave.

Paul: You’re not the boss of me.

First Woman: My daughter used to say that to her swim teacher when she was four.

Second Woman: I wonder where she learned it?

First Woman: I don’t know. But she still says it all the time.

Paul: I have to go back to work.

Sarah: I guess that’s okay.

First Woman: Because someone there is the boss of him.

Exit Paul

Update

Fitness: Rest day
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 0 words, 173 seven-day average, 282 average, 54239 total, 761 to go for the week

Fishing for Compliments

I spend many of my lunch hours at Starbucks, writing. I like to perch at the end of the bar because it’s high, it’s got a nice surface, and it affords a good view of the room. I also get to chat with the baristas, which often leads to awesome conversations. Suffice it to say, I like it there.

Yesterday, I was randomly selected to fill out a survey online about how they were doing. It took five whole minutes of my time, and considering I was able to do it from their free wifi, I wasn’t going to complain. I got to say complimentary things about the people who generally make my lunch hours pleasant. In return, I was given a voucher for a free beverage.

Today, when I redeemed that voucher, I was again “randomly” selected to fill out the same survey…

Update

Fitness: Ran 5 miles
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 314 words, 410 seven-day average, 283 average, 49869 total, 631 to go for the week; 16-day streak

The Importance of Proper Citations

In college, my friend Nathan told me an apocryphal story involving weddings that became relevant yesterday. It used to be a common tradition in the 1800s that if you couldn’t attend a wedding, you would send a Bible verse to express your feelings to the happy couple. The story goes that in one such situation, the uncle of the bride was sending a verse via telegram. Part of the verse in question, from the First Epistle of John, was read at Diana and Adam’s wedding yesterday:

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Because the uncle in question was cheap and you had to pay by the letter for telegrams, instead of sending the whole verse, he just sent the citation: 1 John 7-8, 16-18. When the telegram arrived at the wedding, someone pulled out a Bible to read the verse. They made a slight mistake however and read from the Gospel of John (John 7-8, 16-18) instead, whose text is slightly different:

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

Oops.

Update

Fitness: Rest day
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 302 words, 398 seven-day average, 281 average, 48566 total, 1934 to go for the week; 13-day streak

Moderation, Baby

This week’s Fourth Friday Challenge requires the explanation up front. Becky says: “Five minute, no-edit challenge. You are not allowed to backspace, correct, undo. Type for five minutes, then stop. If you want inspiration, start with thinking about the word PLANT.”

bq.”I’m a plant.”
bq.”Don’t they usually call men like you a fruit?”
bq.”No, I work for the FBI.”

I love Clue and its ilk. And by ilk, I mean movies and shows with impossible dialog. Conversations so witty no one could ever actually have them, but that deep down I hold out hope against hope that someone somewhere somehow could. So things like Oscar Wilde plays and Aaron Sorkin TV shows.

The odd thing is that I’m not at all tempted to try and create things like this myuself. I don’t do it in improv, I don’t do it in games, and I don’t do it in my writing. And eyet I love, love, loev it. (By the way, this no backspacing thing is annoying. Thanks becky.)

So that’s funny. The sense I had was that one of the reasons I don’t try to write that kind of humor is that it requires too much polishing. And hyet here I am getting annoyed about not being able to polish my work. I guess I’m all about the happy medium.

Update

Fitness: Pushups (12-13-10-10-15)
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 529 words, 373 seven-day average, 273 average, 40681 total, 319 to go for the week; 16-day streak