No Broken Bones

Spent this weekend in Chicago with my brother the triathlete. I was so proud of him. Here's a few pics from his race.

What a great job he did! 51st out of 579! Not too shabby for his first ever triathlon. Speaking of firsts, I had my first running accident this weekend. I was running on Sunday around my brother's neighborhood and the sidewalk jumped up and bit me. I ended up spread eagle on the sidewalk on a VERY busy street. But I got up and ran three miles (until the pain got unbearable).

Luckily, I got in to the dentist today and it's good as new!! In addition to all that fun, I FINALLY got my living room rug at IKEA. And I got a new display case for my martini glasses. I've been looking for one for a few years and I found one at a good price. Then I had the joy of trying to put it together...

And I'm home for a whole week and a half!! YAY!!! Maybe I'll have time to blog more this week.

Spiritual Run

Those of you who know me well know that I don't go to church but consider myself a spiritual person. For me, it's not about the building. It's about a personal belief. Those of youwho know me also know how I feel about certain musicians/ bands. So tonight my co-worker and I went for a run. We are in Marquette for work. Tonight I had my first spiritual run. Sounds weird I know but there is something spiritual to me about running in the dark on a perfect U.P. summer night along Lake Superior listening to Linkin Park. I had my best run yet. I think I may sleep better tonight than I have in a while.

T Minus 107 Days

When I write it like that, it feels like it's forever away but when I get up in the morning and run, I feel like I'm never gonna make it and boy do I wish I had longer than 107 days to train. Okay, that might be a bit dramatic because training really is getting easier if only a little bit at a time. I know I keep bugging everyone but if you haven't already done so, please go to my St. Jude donation page to donate to my fundraising efforts. http://heroes.stjude.org/runshoegirlrun I've found a great cross-training workout too. Well, maybe not cross training since it requires lower body more than upper body. The local ski mountain has a ski jump with 500 stairs to the top and then about a 2.5 mile loop back down and around. Everyone has been telling me about the stairs and that it's a good workout but I've been hesitant because I really thought it would kill my legs and hurt my training runs. Well I finally tried it out and it was great! I am definitely a believer! On another note, I thought I'd share this picture with you all. I'm not sure what the heck it really is but it's the "mascot" of Rhinelander, WI. Let's see who can come up with the best name for him.

Conundrum

Here's how I am torn today:

Men's Gold Medal Basketball game. I want my boyfriend Marc to get a gold medal and I want the US to win too. Who do I cheer for???

"Half" The Battle

So today I did 6 miles...it was brutal. But the good news is that a) I survived and b) 6 miles is almost half of a half so I'm on my way to being able to complete the half-marathon. I walked more than I wanted to but I didn't give up. I thought about giving up a few times but I kept at it. I may not be able to walk tomorrow but that's okay :) This week I was home all week and it was a welcome change. I think Rolo was glad to have me home all week as well. She was quite obnoxiously needy and wouldn't seem to leave me alone. Have to travel a few days this week but just to Tomah, WI so I can drive there and it's not too far. I went to see the movie "The Campaign" last night and I completely and utterly recommend it. It was HILARIOUS!! Not much else going on this weekend. Hope ya'll are enjoying your Saturday!

Klosterman's 23 Questions

Apparently the link didn't work so here are the questions. Read at your own risk! In Chuck Klosterman's book, Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, A Low Culture Manifesto (Now With a New Middle), Chuck presents 23 questions he uses to figure out if he can REALLY love someone. 1. Let us assume you met a rudimentary magician. Let us assume he can do five simple tricks—he can pull a rabbit out of his hat, he can make a coin disappear, he can turn the ace of spades into the Joker card, and two others in a similar vein. These are his only tricks and he can’t learn any more; he can only do these five. HOWEVER, it turns out he’s doing these five tricks with real magic. It’s not an illusion; he can actually conjure the bunny out of the ether and he can move the coin through space. He’s legitimately magical, but extremely limited in scope and influence. Would this person be more impressive than Albert Einstein? 2. Let us assume a fully grown, completely healthy Clydesdale horse has his hooves shackled to the ground while his head is held in place with thick rope. He is conscious and standing upright, but completely immobile. And let us assume that—for some reason—every political prisoner on earth (as cited by Amnesty International) will be released from captivity if you can kick this horse to death in less than twenty minutes. You are allowed to wear steel-toed boots. Would you attempt to do this? 3. Let us assume there are two boxes on a table. In one box, there is a relatively normal turtle; in the other, Adolf Hitler’s skull. You have to select one of these items for your home. If you select the turtle, you can’t give it away and you have to keep it alive for two years; if either of these parameters are not met, you will be fined $999 by the state. If you select Hitler’s skull, you are required to display it in a semi-prominent location in your living room for the same amount of time, although you will be paid a stipend of $120 per month for doing so. Display of the skull must be apolitical. Which option do you select? 4. Genetic engineers at Johns Hopkins University announce that they have developed a so-called “super gorilla.” Though the animal cannot speak, it has a sign language lexicon of over twelve thousand words, an I.Q. of almost 85, and—most notably—a vague sense of self-awareness. Oddly, the creature (who weighs seven hundred pounds) becomes fascinated by football. The gorilla aspires to play the game at its highest level and quickly develops the rudimentary skills of a defensive end. ESPN analyst Tom Jackson speculates that this gorilla would be “borderline unblockable” and would likely average six sacks a game (although Jackson concedes the beast might be susceptible to counters and misdirection plays). Meanwhile, the gorilla has made it clear he would never intentionally injure any opponent. You are commissioner of the NFL: Would you allow this gorilla to sign with the Oakland Raiders? 5. You meet your soul mate. However, there is a catch: Every three years, someone will break both of your soul mate’s collarbones with a Crescent wrench, and there is only one way you can stop this from happening: You must swallow a pill that will make every song you hear—for the rest of your life—sound as if it’s being performed by the band Alice in Chains. When you hear Creedence Clearwater Revival on the radio, it will sound (to your ears) like it’s being played by Alice in Chains. If you see Radiohead live, every one of their tunes will sound like it’s being covered by Alice in Chains. When you hear a commercial jingle on TV, it will sound like Alice in Chains; if you sing to yourself in the shower, your voice will sound like deceased Alice vocalist Layne Staley performing a capella (but it will only sound this way to you). Would you swallow the pill? 6. At long last, someone invents “the dream VCR.” This machine allows you to tape an entire evening’s worth of your own dreams, which you can then watch at your leisure. However, the inventor of the dream VCR will only allow you to use this device of you agree to a strange caveat: When you watch your dreams, you must do so with your family and your closest friends in the same room. They get to watch your dreams along with you. And if you don’t agree to this, you can’t use the dream VCR. Would you still do this? 7. Defying all expectation, a group of Scottish marine biologists capture a live Loch Ness Monster. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, a bear hunter in the Pacific Northwest shoots a Sasquatch in the thigh, thereby allowing zoologists to take the furry monster into captivity. These events happen on the same afternoon. That evening, the president announces he may have thyroid cancer and will undergo a biopsy later that week. You are the front page editor of The New York Times: What do you play as the biggest story? 8. You meet the perfect person. Romantically, this person is ideal: You find them physically attractive, intellectually stimulating, consistently funny, and deeply compassionate. However, they have one quirk: This individual is obsessed with Jim Henson’s gothic puppet fantasy The Dark Crystal. Beyond watching it on DVD at least once a month, he/she peppers casual conversation with Dark Crystal references, uses Dark Crystal analogies to explain everyday events, and occasionally likes to talk intensely about the film’s “deeper philosophy.” Would this be enough to stop you from marrying this individual? 9. A novel titled Interior Mirror is released to mammoth commerical success (despite middling reviews). However, a curious social trend emerges: Though no one can prove a direct scientific link, it appears that almost 30 percent of the people who read this book immediately become homosexual. Many of these newfound homosexuals credit the book for helping them reach this conclusion about their orientation, despite the fact that Interior Mirror is ostensibly a crime novel with no homoerotic content (and was written by a straight man). Would this phenomenon increase (or decrease) the likelihood of you reading this book? 10. This is the opening line of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City: “You are not the kind of guy who would be in a place like this at this time of the morning.” Think about that line in the context of the novel (assuming you’ve read it). Now go to your CD collection and find Heart’s Little Queen album (assuming you own it). Listen to the opening riff to “Barracuda.” Which of these two introductions is a higher form of art? 11. You are watching a movie in a crowded theater. Though the plot is mediocre, you find yourself dazzled by the special effects. But with twenty minutes left in the film, you are struck with an undeniable feeling of doom: You are suddenly certain your mother has just died. There is no logical reason for this to be true, but you are certain of it. You are overtaken with the irrational metaphysical sense that—somewhere—your mom has just perished. But this is only an intuitive, amorphous feeling; there is no evidence for this, and your mother has not been ill. Would you immediately exit the theater, or would you finish watching the movie? 12. You meet a wizard in downtown Chicago. The wizard tells you he can make you more attractive if you pay him money. When you ask how this process works, the wizard points to a random person on the street. You look at this random stranger. The wizard says, “I will now make them a dollar more attractive.” He waves his magic wand. Ostensibly, this person does not change at all; as far as you can tell, nothing is different. But—somehow—this person is suddenly a little more appealing. The tangible difference is invisible to the naked eye, but you can’t deny that this person is vaguely sexier. This wizard has a weird rule, though—you can only pay him once. You can’t keep giving him money until you’re satisfied. You can only pay him one lump sum up front. How much cash do you give the wizard? 13. Every person you have ever slept with is invited to a banquet where you are the guest of honor. No one will be in attendance except you, the collection of your former lovers, and the catering service. After the meal, you are asked to give a fifteen-minute speech to the assembly. What do you talk about? 14. For reasons that cannot be explained, cats can suddenly read at a twelfth-grade level. They can’t talk and they can’t write, but they can read silently and understand the text. Many cats love this new skill, because they now have something to do all day while they lay around the house; however, a few cats become depressed, because reading forces them to realize the limitations of their existence (not to mention the utter frustration of being unable to express themselves). This being the case, do you think the average cat would enjoy Garfield, or would cats find this cartoon to be an insulting caricature? 15.You have a brain tumor. Though there is no discomfort at the moment, this tumor would unquestionably kill you in six months. However, your life can (and will) be saved by an operation; the only downside is that there will be a brutal incision to your frontal lobe. After the surgery, you will be significantly less intelligent. You will still be a fully functioning adult, but you will be less logical, you will have a terrible memory, and you will have little ability to understand complex concepts or difficult ideas. The surgery is in two weeks. How do you spend the next fourteen days? 16. Someone builds and optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it’s essentially a crystal ball that shows a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you finally peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching a Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. Your chair is surrounded by books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that—for some unknown reason—you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute; no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed. The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it? 17. You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you’ve never before visited), drinking Bacardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is. “Be careful of that guy,” you are told. “He is a man with a past.” A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who this new individual is. “Be careful of that guy, too,” he says. “He is a man with no past.” Which of these two people do you trust less? 18. You have won a prize. The prize has two options, and you can choose either (but not both). The first option is a year in Europe with a monthly stipend of $2,000. The second option is ten minutes on the moon. Which option do you select? 19. Your best friend is taking a nap on the floor of your living room. Suddenly, you are faced with a bizarre existential problem: This friend is going to die unless you kick them (as hard as you can) in the rib cage. If you don’t kick them while they slumber, they will never wake up. However, you can never explain this to your friend; if you later inform them that you did this to save their life, they will also die from that. So you have to kick a sleeping friend in the ribs, and you can’t tell them why. Since you cannot tell your friend the truth, what excuse will you fabricate to explain this (seemingly inexplicable) attack? 20. For whatever the reason, two unauthorized movies are made about your life. The first is an independently released documentary, primarily comprised of interviews with people who know you and bootleg footage from your actual life. Critics are describing the documentary as “brutally honest and relentlessly fair.” Meanwhile, Columbia Tri-Star has produced a big-budget biopic of your life, casting major Hollywood stars as you and all your acquaintances; though the movie is based on actual events, screenwriters have taken some liberties with the facts. Critics are split on the artistic merits of this fictionalized account, but audiences love it. Which film would you be most interested in seeing? 21. Imagine you could go back to the age of five and relive the rest of your life, knowing everything that you know now. You will reexperience your entire adolescence with both the cognitive ability of an adult and the memories of everything you’ve learned form having lived your life previously. Would you lose your virginity earlier or later than you did the first time around (and by how many years)? 22. You work in an office. Generally, you are popular with your coworkers. However, you discover that there are currently two rumors circulating the office gossip mill, and both involve you. The first rumor is that you got drunk at the office holiday party and had sex with one of your married coworkers. This rumor is completely true, but most people don’t believe it. The second rumor is that you have been stealing hundreds of dollars of office supplies (and then selling them to cover a gambling debt). This rumor is completely false, but virtually everyone assumes it is factual. Which of these two rumors is most troubling to you? 23. Consider this possibility: a. Think about deceased TV star John Ritter. b. Now, pretend Ritter had never become famous. Pretend he was never affected by the trappings of fame, and try to imagine what his personality would have been like. c. Now, imagine that this person—the unfamous John Ritter—is a character in a situation comedy. d. Now, you are also a character in this sitcom, and the unfamous John Ritter character is your sitcom father. e. However, this sitcom is actually your real life. In other words, you are living inside a sitcom: Everything about our life is a construction, featuring the unfamous John Ritter playing himself (in the role of your TV father). But this is not a sitcom. This is your real life. How would you feel about this?

My Whole Life is an Existential Problem!

Yes, there is a story behind that title. I'll get to that later. Let me apologize in advance for the length of this post. It's been a few weeks and there have been lots of adventures so it's gonna be a long one! So a few weeks ago, I got to go to Denver for work. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it when that happens. I get to see my friends and hang out in the city I love! Started with drinks and dinner with one of my fave people, Michelle. I know I don't normally call people out in my blog but since it was a relatively tame dinner, I figured it's okay. We had a great time though! It reminded me that I really need to make an effort to see the important people in my life more often.

I was in Denver for the second week of my leadership class and everything I (and my classmates) had been told about this week made it sound miserable. It's what we call the Management Assessment Center and is basically where we are thrown into "real life" scenarios and evaluated on how we handle them. We also got results from two other on-line assessments we had done prior to class. So basically, it was a week of lots of introspection and evaluation and here's what you do well and here's where you need to improve. It wasn't NEARLY as stressful as others had made it out to be but it was definitely exhausting! So, of course, we had to unwind every night. Tuesday was the most tiresome day as that was the actual assessment center day. So here's what we did that evening...

Yeah, that's us sitting by the pool having a few beverages. The young (I mean this kid looked 12) manager came out at one point and told us we could not have beverages by the pool and we needed to take it to our rooms. That was around 8pm. Yeah, we sat there with our beverages until the pool closed at 10pm. I'm not saying we are rebels but we had had a long day so we deserved a little R&R! The best night, though, was Thursday. It was our last full day of class so we decided to celebrate. By the way, I should add in here that my results of the assessment center were much better than I expected. The main organizer/instructor came up to me at one point in the hall and said that I "blew their averages". So that made me quite happy. Two of us started early...

We HAD to...$4 champagne cocktails for happy hour. They were so yummi!! I won't tell you how many we each had but I will say we left many unsampled from the menu. Then the boys decided to join us and it went down hill from there. But boy did we have a fantastic, amazing time.

I discovered a FANTASTIC conversation starter while out enjoying beverages with your peeps...Klosterman's 23 Questions. Okay, I'm not sure if that link will work so after I post this, I will post just the questions. Now remember, these questions are funny, offensive, deep (on some level) and are just flat out hilarious! Those of us that went out that night have all agreed that between now and when we meet in September, we will each create our own question and share. I can't wait to hear what they all came up with. If any of you have a good idea for a question, let me know! So at the end of the night, one of the people I was out with said "Hey...we should all have a word that we have to say in class tomorrow and whoever says it first wins." So various words were assigned..."virgin", "promiscuous", "algorythm", "flacid" and I can't remember the others. My word was flacid. Now I'm not sure how the heck one can bring this word into a serious conversation about leadership but I was up for the challenge. Unfortunately, when it was my turn to present, I completely forgot about using the word. So the guy who's word was promiscuous went after me and I kid you not, he used the word in the middle of what he was saying and it actually made sense! Now, you have to know that promiscuous has more than one definition but it was HILARIOUS as the whole class started cracking up! Lucky for me, the guy who won is not a big drinker so I will only have to buy him like one or two beers! Oh yeah...and then there was an attempt to draw tattoos with a pen...

So that was Denver...came home for about 72 hours and then left for DC. The beauty of flying out of Iron Mountain sometimes is that you have to leave at 6am so you get to DC around noon. So I got to be a tourist...

And of course I did my training run. Which was great because I ran in a part of DC I'd not been to before and it was a very trendy little neighborhood. So that's where I went Wednesday for dinner. I decided to rent a bike from the "bikeshare" that was across the street from the restaurant and ride back to my hotel rather than walk. It wasn't a far walk but I thought it would be fun. So as I was riding back trying not to fall over or run into anyone, I could not for the life of me remember where any of the "bikeshare" drop off places near my hotel were. I had seen at least four of them the previous day but do you think I could find any at that time? I literally rode around in circles for like 10 minutes trying to find one. Eventually, I found one and as I was walking the 7 or 8 blocks back to my hotel, what did I see? Two more drop off places! It would have been faster for me to just walk from the restaurant to my hotel. Sometimes I am such a blond!! Thursday, I went to the baseball game, of course!! Yep. George was my date!

Friday was another tourist day (there are benefits to a tiny airport with limited flights).

If you are ever in DC, I absolutely recommend the Ford Theater. It's a free, self-guided tour and completely worth the time. And I finished with the wax museum. It has always creeped me out but still fascinated me at the same time.

I know this post is getting long-winded. Big surprise that MK is long-winded huh? So I will finish by saying that the title of this post comes from a response to one of Klosterman's 23 questions that I asked one of my girlfriends this past Sunday at brunch. If you read the questions, you will know what I mean! Happy mid-week everyone!! I promise to post more often. Especially now that I am not traveling as freaking much. At least for August, anyway.

Short Post

So it's been a while what with me being gone so much. So I am just going to post some pics and let you all come up with your own stories until I have time to fill you in.

Oh...and still running while on travel all this time! Woot woot!!