Hometown: The Roch, MI (aka. The Crotch, aka. Crotchscratcher, aka. Crotchmolester, aka. Rochester)
Currently Living: Clawson, MI
Height: 5'8
Weight: Ha ha, yeah right
Favorite Color: Blue (preferably navy)
Profession: Researcher
Favorite Nickname: Trick, Sloan
Favorite Drinks:Vodka Tonic, Guinness, Diet Dr. Pepper, Dirty Martinis, red wine
Favorite TV Show: Friends, Sex & The City, Project Runway, The Amazing Race, Iron Chef America
Least Favorite TV Show: A Baby Story, I Love Lucy, Martha Stewart, Everybody Loves Raymond, every hour long drama
Favorite Books: The History of Love, Beloved, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Fight Club, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The of Being, SurUnbearable Lightness vivor, Empire Falls, The Corrections, The Bell Jar
Favorite Movies: Little Miss Sunshine, Anchorman, The 40 Year Old Virgin, Wordplay, American Beauty, Life is Beautiful, Amelie, Breakfast Club, Singin In The Rain, Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Sleeping Beauty, Dancer in the Dark, Duets, The Virgin Suicides, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Austin Powers I, II & III, My Best Friends Wedding, Moulin Rouge, Tommy Boy, Billy Madison, The Shining, Gone With The Wind, Bridget Jones' Diary, Chicago, Love Actually
Guilty Pleasure Movies: Xanadu, Dirty Dancing, Overboard, Groundhog Day, Steel Magnolias, 10 Things I Hate About You, Bond movies, Footloose, Clue, Murder By Death, High Spirits, A Cinderella Story
What I Do Too Much: Check email, crossword puzzles, complain about my job to friends and family,
Obsessions: sushi, Indian food, ranch dressing, toenail polish, song lyrics, hands, awards shows, symmetry, avocados, maps, dreams, This American Life, the display in my car that tracks my MPG
Pet Peeves: loud eaters, slurping, gulping, arrogance, snoring, bad grammar, repetition, late mergers, ripping cardboard, the word "chunky", intolerance, couples in a restaurant sitting on the same side of a booth, pop-up ads, privacy manager, men that drive without shirts on, being foolish, unfairly jumping to conclusions, being made fun of, cat-calling, people who type too hard
Greatest Fear: crossing bridges
Relaxing Activites: late night drives to sing by myself, headstands, hot baths,
Wish I Was: Ansel Adams, Jenifer Aniston, in love, living alone
Prized Possessions: ring from my grandparents, flower pot of my Grandma's, electric blanket (temporarily broken), tongue scraper, my bed
Craziest Thing Ever Done: getting a tattoo, strip Jenga
Things I Eventually Want To Do: skydive, buy a guitar, learn how to play the aforementioned guitar, take flying lessons, travel to France, write a novel, learn how to play the harp, tap dancing lessons, run a marathon
Friday, September 22, 2006 No body every warned you, or told you what to do....It seems as though it's been a while since I've had any genuinely bizzare events happen that give me a, "WTF??!!" kind of a feeling. Maybe it's because I haven't been paying attention. But one came looking for me yesterday.
When I was walking back from the library on campus to work, I have to walk past the entrance to the parking structure of our hospital. After a certain time, they have these roll down gates that block the entrances so people can't just walk in. So as I was walking past, there was a guy who seemed to be standing in front of the gates trying to get in, which looked suspicious to me. But instead, he stepped a little off to the side, onto the grass, and just dropped trou. I don't know what he was doing for sure considering that I was a bit far away (thank god) and wearing my glasses with my piss poor prescription (thank god), but I swear that he was going #2. Now, I admit that his shirt was really long and his pants were really baggy, and he may have just been squatting to rest his feet? Or stretch out his quads? But either way, it looked exacty how I imagine I look when using the facilities while camping. The best part was that there were 3 police officers standing no more than 25 yards up the driveway not really batting an eyelash. They were probably thinking there was something wrong with me considering that I had this completely puzzled and disgusted look on my face when I walked past all of them. Freakshow. I get a little bit of a dry heave just thinking about it even now.
Well, I'm in the process of crafting a thoughtful and detailed entry on the state of my mind right now. Mostly as a result of having to go back and read 5 years worth of blog entires in order to edit, and partly a result of just taking the boy and life into account lately. Maybe I'll get around to that later on today.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006 Alcohol, my permanent accessory....Well I guess it means it was a successful birthday weekend when you end up getting a cold and spend 4 days sounding like you're honking like a duck, snoring when you sleep from being stuffed up, and generally feeling really really awesome. And hot. Ok, fine not really, but nonetheless, I've felt like crap. But it was worth it...oh, was it worth it.
Thursday night (birthday night) treated Kelly, Suz and I to dinner and drinks all around town in Birmingham. We had the most fantastic dinner at Streetside, which has yummy seafood, and as a testament to how great their food is, I woke up on Friday morning and the very first thought that came into my mind was, "oooo...scallops...". But we gallavanted about town and by the end of the night came to discover that we had not paid for a single drink. Not that we were workin that angle or anything. What would happen is we would order our round of drinks and somewhere along the way, some guy came over to talk (to Suzy)and discover it was my birthday and there would be shots all around and drinks and then when we would go to leave and cash out, someone would dive for the bill and take care of it all. So we had an absolute blast the whole evening.
When I came home, the boy met me at my place where we had one of our infamous, impromptu dance parties until 3 in the morning. Just the 2 of us. Dancing. Like fools. In our living room. At one point I looked across the room at him with mouth wide open in a goofy smile, doing some kind of running-in-place-part-aerobics move and couldn't have been happier. And why does our dancing always turn into aerobics?
Friday, we had a sizable posse (family and friends) head out to go downtown for dinner and a performance. The performance was actually the boy's -- he's a performance artist. We have all heard so much about it for months (songs and all), so we were all very excited to see it all in motion. The show was great and the night was a lot of fun. I know I've mentioned this in the past, but man has Detroit come a long way. There was a Tiger's game that night, and from where we were sitting, you'd have thought it was the funky downtown of Chicago or something. It was just a cool thing to sit outside of a bar and be in the middle of a very cool happening city.
Saturday, I made a repeat appearance and the boy's show with Amy and Dave who couldn't go the night before. But not before we sat and watched the greatest UofM game on tv at the Hard Rock. Accompanied by yummy Oberon and the most enormous plate of fried appetizers I've ever seen. Can't go wrong there. By the end of the night though I was getting to feeling pretty damn crappy with a sore throat and was happy to just go home and sleep.
So I've started undertaking two rather sizable tasks. One being going through the blog to de-identify it. By taking out everyone's last name that I've ever mentioned and to get rid of some of the more identifiable things I've written about various stuff. Which pretty much means reading 5 years worth of stuff that I've written. So it's a rather slow and tedious process. My other sizable task is that of putting all of my cds on my computer. One of the greatest b-day gifts I received from all of my family was an iPod. I've always said I would never buy one for myself, so they took it upon themselves to bring me into the new millenium of technology. So in order to have the fantastic playlists that I'm envisioning in my head, I need to have all of my cds in iTunes. Which is an enormous pain in the ass. It's been 3 days, every minute that I'm home, and I'm not even half done. I didn't really consider ahead of time if my computer is going to revolt in overload protest, but it seems ok so far. So if I'm lame and not writing, it's because I'm rereading all of my lameness over the years or staring at the little orange symbol telling me that it's importing a song. I'm cool. What can I say.
Well, I have work to do, and the fact that I'm sitting in the backyard with the portable home office all set up out here ensures that I should get little to nothing done. Hasta for now. My most sincere thanks to all who came out to play with me this weekend. I loved every single cotton-pickin' minute of it. Sanks!
3:24 PM
Monday, September 11, 2006 And I'll keep on runnin', this never-ending race....Well ladies and gentlemen....we survived the triathlon. And for the first time in all of the athletic endeavors that I've undertaken in the past few years....I loved it!!
The day started with any number of dumbass Suzy and Lisa moves. First, we woke up late, which doesn't bode well when the race site is about an hour away. Then, I'm a dumbass and have been using my roommate's bike and helmet, I had a big panic attack because I couldn't find her helmet in the garage. At 6:30 in the morning the day of the race. So I had to dial in a favor to our cheerleader, Amy, who was coming to uhhh...cheerlead? to bring a helmet for me. How hard would it have been for me to buy a damn helmet...ohhh...maybe beforehand? Not that hard, but did I mention that I'm a dumbass? So once we were finally tri-bound, because Suz and I are cool and "S-M-R-T" we thought we had the bikes all tied up tight on the bike rack, only to have to pull over to the side of the highway because one of them was dangling off. Those bungee cords are tricky little bastards.
Once we finally arrived, anxiety-ridden, we could finally focus on the rather sizable task at hand (ok, so I was still anxiety-ridden until Amy arrived with the helmet shortly before they closed the transition area). The swim went great for both Suz and I -- I came in 7th overall for all the women (out of around 85ish I think) and Suz came in seconderfourthish for her age group. I loved the swim, except for that moment toward the end when the 1st place male swimming the same distance who started about 5 minutes behind me passed me. Bastard. And although we both busted some serious ass on the 14.7-although-eventually-around-16-to-17-mile bike, there were some hinderances that made that part not too enjoyable.
First off, I was off on the bike at what seemed towards the front only because there weren't a lot of people around me when I was getting my clothing on and there were lots of bikes still in the transition area. But it's kind of hard to tell who's doing what event because there are people who are doing the long distance version who were finishing the swim around the same time as we were. So the signs on the bike course were posted incorrectly at first, and the sprinters turned around way too early and figured it out once we had gotten almost all the way back to the beginning. So I probably ended up doing 2-3 miles more than I was supposed to. Which sucks, because not only was my bike time slower than it should have been, but then I was frustrated and playing catch-up.
Second off, this was my first triathlon, and I don't have a five zillion dollar, space age metal, 4lb titanium road bike with wafer thin tires. I have a borrowed clunky mountain bike (which I would never even bring anywhere close to a mountain since I loathe even the smallest incline). So I think that I only passed 2 people on the entire bike course even though I was busting my ass and riding harder and faster than we ever ever did in training. Well, maybe 2 and a half people. Ohhhh, that evil 11-year old half.
So while I was trying to catch-up after my lost time, I was clipping along pretty well and managed to pass a little 11-year old boy who was friendly and said hi and told me I was doing a great job. Cute right? Nice pleasant mannered young boy who can do a triathlon? Sounds like an amazing kid. Well I don't know why the kid chose me of all the slow-bies with the awesome non-road bike, but he latched on to my rear tire and didn't let go the entire time (not literally).
Now I suppose I could try to read something good into this situation. Maybe he thought I had a nice ass in the bike seat and wanted a closer look. Maybe he liked my mingling aroma of lake water and sweat. Maybe he just figured I looked like the easiest pickins of everyone who had passed by him thusfar. But seriously, this little shit drafted off me for miles and miles and miles. Once I caught up to Suz, we were both annoyed beyond belief and didn't know what to do about it. Drafting is illegal in these events, and they're supposed to call it and disqualify anyone who's doing it. However, every single person who rode by us (he was drafting off both of us at this point) just cheered him on, and said things like, "Way to go kiddo!" and "Keep up the good work!" And instead, when Suz and I were riding next to each other, some dude rode by and yelled at us, saying it was a safety hazard. I, in that moment, was hoping his bike seat was doing its civic duty leaving his cojones black and blue. I know, it's evil and I shouldn't wish that kind of misery on people, but at least I didn't wish for a pole to shove into the spokes of his tire right?
So Drafter McDraftee found someone to chat with towards the last couple miles (yes, that makes almost a full hour with someone attached to my ass. **And insert dirty joke here**). The run went pretty well. I felt much much better than I had on any of our training runs, and didn't find myself wishing at every step that I wasn't running, which is how it usually works. I just stuck to slow and steady and finished happy and proud (and yes that little shit did finish in front of me, but not Suz). So we were crazy pumped up and on this great high for the rest of the day. (Enough for Suz to clean her entire place and enough for me to take a 3 hour nap). But I actually really enjoyed the whole event and would most definitely do them again in the future. That is, once I can sell a kidney or ovary for enough money to buy a better bike.
Oh, and if anyone offered me a hot oil massage, I wouldn't care about thongs, Mr. Universe poses or the boy's objections. I'm a massage whore. What can I say?
8:03 PM
Thursday, September 07, 2006 I guess I got to beat myself up again....
Notes from all over:
~ Suz and I are doing our triathlon in approximately 45 hours. I'm getting a little nervous. I don't know why. I have to keep reminding myself that it's not going to be worse than the marathon. Nothing could be worse than the marathon.
~ I almost ran into a deer on my bike on Monday. Had I been a fraction of a second quicker there would have been a massive deer-on-human collision in the middle of Paint Creek Trail. Or had the other little deer hiding in the trees decided to bolt like his buddies, then it probably would have been Suz with the collision. But it was enough for me to slam on the brakes and let out a couple screams.
~ As a result of said bike ride with the wild kingdom encounter and the 3-mile run immediately following, both Suzy and I have been hobbling around like we just did 8 million lunges. And needless to say, I'm completely baffled. We've biked the distance (and more than) before. We've run the distance (and more than) before. We've done bike/runs before of almost the same distances. We took the same route as we have before. So what is the damn difference that has rendered my legs unable to go down stairs, sit down without wincing, and dread peeing? I don't get it. Baffled. All I have to say is that my legs better not have any traces of pain come Saturday, because I don't need anything else that's going to make this venture anymore challenging.
~ My mom was in town for 2 weeks, which partly explains the absence. We had such a such a great time while she was here -- We had a big spaghetti dinner the night before the Crim (a race up in Flint that Suz, Laura, Kevin, Brian S., Shelly, Gary and Graham and I all ran) and had a good time being silly. Later that day after the Crim, Blancho showed us how to make pierogies. So look out, this little Polack is going to be firing them up. (Now don't interpret that to mean I'm making another whole batch. Oh no. I'll just be unfreezing the ones we made. Are you kidding? Making those damn things took all friggin day. With lots of flour and dough all over the place. And if you're Amy, you ended up with flour handprints on your ass). I had everyone over for a BBQ, which was incredibly anxiety-inducing to host 15 people at our li'l house, with the threat of rain. But the weather held out and we recommenced the family tradition of aggressive badminton games. When the birdie didn't stick in the racket that is. Plus we just kind of hung out, went to dinner, and had a couple bonus days, since her flight was pushed back in thanks to Ernesto.
Well, time to get back to work. Oh yeah, did I mention that I'm not leaving my job? That all this drama for the last year had a big culmination of nothing. What can I say? They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. How can you turn down a big fat raise and an office? Where do I sign.
If I'm not around here tomorrow, wish Suz and I luck. We're probably going to need it!! Hasta.
12:33 PM
