Number.
I called Melissa yesterday to see how her race registration went. It was the only day the race organizers were allowing registration in Manhattan (instead of Long Island) so she had to do it then to avoid traffic.
Me: "So, how did it go?"
Mel: (excited) "OH, it was good. We've got light blue swim caps and I got a bag of stuff we're supposed to eat during the race."
Me: "You mean, like, GU and Powerbars and stuff?"
Mel: "Yeah, little packets of things and a big cookie! Oh boy, there better be food at the end of the race waiting for me, like, a BIG bowl of pasta!"
Me: "Uh, you're supposed to eat pasta the night before. (Hello!) Did you get a shirt too?"
Mel: "Yeah, it's beige. And oh, guess what your number is!"
Me: "Um, I have no idea. There's like, 500+ to choose from."
Mel: "Well, MINE is 68."
Me: "Oh lordy, please don't tell me that mine is.."
Mel: (interrupting) "Yep, SIXTY-NINE!"
Five hundred numbers to choose from, and I'm number frickin' 69. So much for not being noticed too much.
Virginia Beach.
Spent less than two hours there with T. I doubt we'll be returning. Photographic reasons to follow:
Enough said.
Advertisement.
V: "Mom, can you please send me that photo of us on the couch. You know, that one on the fireplace?"
M: [groan] "I GUESS I can scan it in for you. Why do you want it?"
V: "To show Craig."
M: "WHAT?!? Are you serious? He's going to think it's a Pampers ad for Chinese refugees."
Got any ideas for a caption for this photo? The first one that comes to mind is: "Hi Mom!! I just licked my butt, and now, I'm licking your face!!!"
What I say:
This is why I don't cook.
What I mean:
This is what happens when you broil an apple pie by accident.
Calcio.
On Saturday afternoon, we took a quick trip to Six Flags for company day to check out the park. We didn't go on any rides mostly because we weren't in the mood. Noteworthy events include the following:
1. Free ice cream
2. The Blast-from-the-Past annoying 80s lady
3. Me confessing that I like to invent personalities for people I don't know, so I can preemtively dislike them.
4. Winning a GT bumble bee by whacking moles (which just so you know, my made-in-China "Bizz" is actually a wasp in real life, and a variety of bee)
5. Leaving the lights on by accident, and pushing Craig's car because I can't drive stick. A big thank-you to the guy who helped us on the second to last try.
6. Words of wisdom overheard near the locker room (Dad to child in patronizing tone): "Make sure you go potty before your soccer game."
Um, yep. Duly noted.
Later that evening, we got back and I procrastinated as long as I could before leaving to go to an unknown field, to play with an unknown team. I had Craig stay home because I was already pretty anxious to begin with. Everyone I spoke to said that I was being kind of mean doing that, and maybe that's true, so I think at some point I'm going to have to buckle and tell him what league and where we're at and such. But honestly, does he REALLY have to come watch me falling into holes, tripping, getting hit with the ball, and finally, hiding behind the goalie??
Actually, only one of those things happened, so I'll leave it to your imagination to guess.
I left with maybe a half hour to spare, and managed to whittle it down to 5 minutes because I got totally lost. The team was very nice and excited to have new players (probably because they don't know yet what they've acquired, haha) and Anne introduced herself informing me that we'd be subbing for each other playing defense. Cool. Hiding in the back sounds good to me. You'd think I never played before, but I swear I have. Somehow.
What's funny is when Craig informs me of a rule once in a while, and I'm like, "Really???" I don't know how I survived up until this point, but I've just been operating with the following rules:
1. Don't pick up the ball. (No touching or blocking with hands/arms)
2. Don't do anything that might hurt somebody else.
3. Goal side is THAT WAY (pointing to opposite side).
4. When the ball goes out of bounds, let somebody else deal with that. I'm OK with throw ins but anything else, I don't know.
5. When the whistle blows, see what everybody else is doing.
6. No strategic hanging out. (Offsides to you soccer folks.)
Anyway, to make a long story short, it was really fun and the time flew by. It was also a new experience because I've never played on a real grass field before complete with hard spots (and harder spots) and irregularities. I think the field was full sized, and I've never played on one of those before. (The indoor ones and IM ones were short.) In fact, I don't really remember a whole lot except for sprinting occasionally, being kinda in the way, and tapping the ball away from blue, or back upfield.
Later that evening, I went back to Craig's and probably told a very incoherent story with my tail wagging the whole time. The next day we went out to the nearby high school because they have a bunch of very nice fields adjacent to tennis courts. Perfect! We played lazy tennis for a while, where you don't leave the service boxes, talked about getting a ping pong table for the garage, and then after, Craig showed me some soccer stuff. He's very patient, which is great, AND even better, he doesn't look. We have a no looking rule that was invented during embarrassing tennis play. I think I forgot everything already because I'm partially hopeless and was definitely in tired-goldfish mode last night.
It's been over two years since I last played (though under very different circumstances). Finally, I am starting to remember why I even got involved in the first place.
The Mean Lady.
I owe you guys some photos from my last adventure. I will try to post them sometime this week. I know you really want to see what a mullet counter looks like.
The weather is definitely changing, so instead of lamenting over the end of summer, I am going to embrace fall with open arms. But let me grab my sweatshirt first! The leaves are starting to change and there are touches of yellow and brown peeking out from the trees. I have upped my dosage of allergy meds because those pretty colors also mean that a whole bunch of nature is dying creating a bunch of dry and crumbled allergens.
Despite this, I'm still excited about the fall. Halloween is coming up, and not only do the local supermarkets have aisles of candy set up in the center of their stores, but they also have gigantic inflatable lawn "snow globes" in the front of the store where you can have your very own Santa and Rudolph trapped in a gigantic hamster ball full of perpetually circulating packing peanuts for only $149.99. I'm going to buy one to put in my parking spots in front of the condo. Not only will it take up BOTH of my parking spots, but it will also piss off the condo association. :) Nothing screams, "White trash lives here!" more than inflatable lawn ornamentation. (Except for maybe tires cut in half, or those concrete "sculptures".)
Panic struck my brain this morning when I realized that all the little kiddies in the area are most definitely going to hit up my complex because it's prime trick-or-treating territory. I know they're analyzing the routes already because I did the same thing as a kid. Not only do you want to go to a rich neighborhood, but you want to go to one where there are very few stairs and the doors are clustered. Well, what do you know? Crap.
So the lazy teenagers who are definitely way too old for trick or treating (and this qualifies as anyone who has an at least minimum wage job where you can BUY your own freakin' candy!) will be walking into the shared corridor, ringing FOUR bells at the same time and waiting. I'll be home running up and down the stairs because the steps to my townhouse are enclosed.
I can be ghetto and use the leave-the-candy-out-on-the-stoop-and-when-it's-gone,-it's-gone method. But that seems kind of lazy. Or, I could leave a note that says, "Ring bell, stand in driveway." Then throw the candy off the patio. Or I could dangle the candy bucket off the edge of the patio at a height where they can barely reach in (muhuhahaha). Or, I could just say screw-the-whole-damn-thing and leave the lights off, not answer the door, and be the mean lady.
Butterflies.
There was a store called Mariposa in South Street Seaport a while ago that sold beautiful exotic framed butterflies. I've certainly never seen any of the ones they had on display fluttering about New York City. But New York isn't exactly the butterfly capital of the world either.
And while their wings were beautiful and intricate, reflecting the light with an eerie luminescence, the fact remains that we're talking about a bug in a box. And isn't it somewhat insane to pay upwards of $100 for a dead insect in a box?
Craig says that if you touch a butterflies wings, it won't be able to fly anymore. I wouldn't try to catch one anyway because I bet those suckers bite. If those bright striped wings don't scream stay-the-hell-away-from-me, I'm sure they've got venomous fangs for phase two. So I caught one with my camera instead:
He was actually quite large and moved very quickly. Then, getting into my car the other day, I noticed this one laying in the gutter:
When you find something that beautiful, you can't resist the compulsion to keep it. But then sanity clicked in and screamed, "It's still a DEAD BUG, no matter how you look at it." DEAD BUG. DEAD. BUG. So I left it alone, and it still feels like a shame.
EXCITING NEWS!
!!! Craig bought a bike this weekend !!!
And now for the not so exciting news: Craig's on travel for a week in Norfolk, VA. *Sniffle-sniffle* That should give me plenty of time to get back into triathlon training. Now that I've got time, how do I get motivation to actually DO it? Maybe I should call Bonzai and tell them I need to bump up the size on my wetsuit. Hmm...
Beware the Printer Police!
Warning. This is a rant.
The office was pretty cleared out yesterday at 5pm. I had been waiting for most people to leave because I had a big print job to do. Something like 30 individual files, so if you're faster than I am, you would be able to slip in your own print job. Anyway, most people had left already since the weather was so nice. You could already hear the crickets chirping. So I quickly sent everything down to the printer and went downstairs to check email for 20 minutes. When I got back upstairs, the printer was out of paper, and had only completed maybe 4 of the print jobs. Dammit.
Refill printer with the short stack that was near it. Should be just enough to cover my print job. Then I had to leave the office because it was getting late.
This morning I get in, and the stack is on my desk. The coversheet has some angry scribbling in capital letters: "NICE ETIQUETTE- (arrow pointing to my user name) TEND TO LARGE PRINT JOBS, REFILL PAPER"
I'm telling you, some people in this office really have a stick up their ass. It took whoever did that more time to scribble all that in caps than it would have to stick more paper in the printer.
So I neatly folded up the section with the angry scribbling to photocopy and added, "FYI- NICE ETIQUETTE- TEND TO LARGE PRINT JOBS, REFILL PAPER :) HAVE A NICE DAY!" and taped it onto every single printer in the office.
Actually, I didn't do that but I was tempted to.
