Food food food hungry arugula pesto

I will write a better post about this, but I just wanted everyone to know that it is 2:25 AM and I'm eating Finny's arugula pesto that I won. A smaller spoon is not helping me eat less. This pesto is so f'ing good, I can't stand it. I want more, more, MORE!

What I am eating at this moment.

Mercer Island 10k: No Scraped-up Faces!

I am actually running in this picture even though I appear to be walking.

I teach my students how to cite correctly, and they always think it's weird that you have to cite yourself. So: remember that blogger I said I follow? Well, her (blogging) name is Finny. We seem to be corresponding, and I have mentioned her about 3 times already, so I should probably start calling her by her name instead of 'that girl.' Anyway, the following post is an email that I sent to Finny in response to her nice and encouraging interest in my running exploits:

I haven't gotten back to you about my first race because I was DISAPPOINTED because of lots of reasons. 1. being that I was late. 2. being that my time was 67:00 and I did NOT think that was right because, even though I've only been training for a month, that's like, 5 minutes slower than it should have been according to the pace I have been running when I train. But this is what happened:

There was lots of traffic and I didn't budget enough time so I had to run HALF A MILE to the race from my parking spot and THEN I had to find the registration table and get my number and THEN I went to the start line and there were tumbleweeds blowing across the path. Everyone had gone. And I asked a lady, "Did they already go?" and she said yes and I said DAMNIT. Then she said, you have your chip you can still run it will time you when you cross the start line and the finish line. So I threw on my dumb free tshirt (which usually I wouldn't care about but this WAS my first race ever, after all, and I didn't want a thief to steal it) and started running. And I caught up to people. And I passed them. And the route was F'ING HILLY. Seriously. That's what everyone said: this route is a very hilly route, one of the hilliest. At one point I ran too fast up a hill and then had to (the shame) walk for approximately 29 seconds. That is what I am most disappointed about.

Oh, also. I forgot to start my watch when I crossed the line and then remembered after (what I thought was) one to one and a half minutes. So my OWN measurement of my time wasn't accurate, and I didn't know how far off it was.

But I finished. I had told my sister I was nervous that I would fall and scrape my face up and then everyone would talk about that poor but ambitious girl who fell and scraped her face up but then got up and ran the rest of the race with her face scraped. And I didn't even fall!

So then I went and checked my time after eating two free bananas and a quarter of a free wet bagel (it was raining, did I forget to say that?) and it said 1:07:00 (there was only ONE time listed, not two, so the other ladies and I just had to guess that this was the chip time)! And I was like, what! No way! No way I started my watch SEVEN minutes late! But then my boyfriend was like, you know it was 6.2 miles not 6 and it was hilly and blah blah blah so I thought, maybe he's right. Maybe I did just do it in 67 minutes.

BUT THEN I JUST CHECKED THE TIMES ON THE WEBSITE and my chip time was 1:01:00! HAAAAAAAY. That's what I thought. Thank you for including the beginning of the race when I wasn't there in my time that you posted for everyone to see, but ACTUALLY I ran this hilly route wearing two shirts and a jacket (death) and walked for approximately 29 seconds and STILL ran SIX WHOLE MINUTES faster than you said! So, my pace was 9:57. Not too shabby for a month of training, if I do say so myself.

Thank you for your excitement. Goodbye!

I Won! I Won! Again!

You guys, blog contests are THA BEST! Because I win them. If I had never won one I would never say that.

Remember back when I first posted about running like, a month ago? And I mentioned the snarky, bitchy blogger I follow who blogs about running so I would, too? WELL! She grew some plants this winter and ate them and made things out of them and one of the things she made was pesto. Arugula pesto. The plant she grew was arugula. AND THEN SHE MADE PESTO OUT OF IT. And then she had a contest and the winner (me) won some of the pesto! :D :D :D So now I will have something besides butter and salt and pepper :( to put on my plain ol' boiled noodles.

Moving on. There is a REALLY CUTE little girl in the coffee shop right now who is saying, "Blue is closest to blue. Green is closest to green. Orange is closer to [pause, mumble] orange." And then, "4 plus 4 is 8. ... What's 8 plus 8? 10?"

Also the bus drove right past me today but it's ok because I was busy taking pictures and saying to myself (and outloud), "There are pretty things everywhere!"

Except for this. This is not pretty.

A Jog to the Thrift

The thrift store is 3 miles away from my house, so I jogged there yesterday, nosed around, walked to the Fred Meyer, bought some peanut butter, then took the bus home.

I didn't want to jog. My body is so stiff! I've decided it must be because of these two reasons: (1) I've been popping joints almost as long as I can remember, and it makes me stiff. When I was in my heyday of joint-popping, in high school, I would wake up in the middle of the night and be unable to twist open a little pot of Carmex! I don't pop as much now as I did then (in fact I try not to at all. Mostly I've been popping the index finger on my right hand, that's it!). and (2) (and this might really be the real reason) I'm running more, and more often, than I ever have in my life. So my body is just probably stiff and sore.

I'm glad I continued jogging, though, because eventually my body warmed up and it didn't hurt at all and then all of the sudden I was on 125th (3 miles away) and I was like, whoa. I'm here already. So! After my failed run on Wednesday when I mapped the WORST ROUTE EVER (these were not just hills, yall, they were MOUNTAINS), I was worried I didn't have it in me to be A Runner. But then yesterday I ran like it was NOTHIN.

And to the thrift store I ran. And I'm going to do something now that I would find extremely annoying if someone else did it and I would think this other person was trying to prove his or her bookishness or quirkiness or something that you just should not have to prove. But, sigh. I bought these 5 books!:

1. Nevermind I can't do it. I feel too lame. I will tell you if you can guess them!

Finished my last final paper!

Now I just finish grading and write a lit review on plain language guidelines.

I was going to post the abstract for my paper, but reading over it now, I don't like it. So NEVERMIND!

Quick Running Update and a MISSED CONNECTION!

I should take way longer to explain this, but I'm too busy freaking out with Laura.

A stranger from Germany (hi, Sven!) found my blog by doing an image search for Kings of Leon. He found his way to my picasa, then poked around in the albums, then saw a picture of a friend of mine and EMAILED me to say how enamored he is of her! HAHA! I love it! I seriously love it.

Running update: I ran 7 miles last weekend. I was scared to. But I did it! First time I've ever gotten mad at the rain in Seattle. And it only took 70 minutes. I'm okay with that.

Mercer Island 10k this weekend!

Mercer Island 10k!

I have registered for my first race! It's even sweeter because it's on Mercer Island, and Mercer is where I went to undergrad. These are related, right?

I guess it's officially the "Seattle Cancer Care 10k Run," not the Mercer Island 10k. Tomato, tomato.

SO! It's on Sunday, March 22. Just about one month from now. Easy! I even get a dumb free t-shirt that I will eventually have to throw away. AND Joe Kelly is running it, too!

I would have registered for two other races at this point, but BOTH of their registration pages are down. One is a 5k - St. Pat's Dash in Seattle - and the other is a 10k - Bridge to Brews in Portland. My calendar is as follows:

Monday, February 23: today
Sunday, March 15: St. Pat's Dash 5k
Sunday, March 22: Mercer Island 10k
Sunday, April 19: Bridge to Brews 10k

and then....

Sunday, May 10: Kirkland Half Marathon!

-or-

Sunday, May 17: Capital City Half Marathon!