Dying of College

Holla, y'all. Haven't updated from Wisconsin yet so here I go.

I am sick to my heart of hearing about the f***ing weather. I'm going to start keeping a tally of how many minutes per hour are spent discussing or obsessing over the weather or watching others do the same. First of all, it isn't that bad. People are acting like it's the End Times and I'm like, you guys? How long have you all lived in WISCONSIN? It's some ice and rain and slush. Big whoop. Also, the thing about the weather is no matter how much you worry or talk or obsess over it, you can't do a damn thing about it and it's going to be however it's going to be so it's kind of a waste of energy.

Unfortunately the actually pretty bad ice/sleet we got yesterday prevented me and my parents from driving to Lake Geneva to visit my aunt, which was a bummer. We're hoping to make it over there on Saturday. But today it's been nothing but rain, which does make for a messy unpleasantness, but the roads are fine and it's just irritating, not paralyzing. And it's going to stay rain until tomorrow afternoon, which is good news because mostly we're just worried about my aunts and uncles and cousins coming in from Milwaukee/Chicago. There shouldn't be a problem.

Mostly I've just been hanging out at my grandma's house with my parents, or hanging here at the hotel with my parents, or hanging out in my own hotel room. Thank goodness I got my own room. I love my parents and all, but I can't imagine being stuck in that room all the time. In my own room I can sit on the computer or watch "Intervention" or read my Kindle or whatever...IN PEACE. Too much togetherness is a recipe for crabbiness.

I am rather proud of myself for another reason, too. I'd been wondering how I'd exercise here. I thought I could walk outdoors, but the weather was proving difficult. I realized I was overlooking the glaringly obvious. I called the local athletic club and asked if I could buy a week's membership, and they said sure! So I did, and I've been able to work out a few times! Go, me.

Tonight I went to church with my folks. That was...a little surreal. They were very active in the same church I grew up going to, and of course being on the road they can't go often, but they do when they're in town. The church is undergoing some remodeling, so services are being held down in the fellowship hall. Kinda weird. The two pastors (who I don't know, the ones I knew retired long ago) are a married couple, with the woman the senior pastor. It was nice, I suppose. I always feel like a poseur, or vaguely like I'm disrespecting the congregation by imposing my atheistic self in their midst. Which is kinda silly, of course. But I can't help it. It was nice to see some of the people I remember from way back when. My parents were VERY popular. Four or five people looked at me and said "Are you The Daughter?" This was my identity for the evening. The Daughter. Heh. Why yes, I am The Daughter.

But I opened my Christmas Eve present, which is always new jammies. They're a little big but supercute this year. The rain and wind continue outside but I am snug and warm in my hotel room with my parents across the hall and tomorrow there will be green bean casserole.

Happy holidays!

I are in Wisconsin.

I made great time on my trip. It's amazing how much faster that trip goes in a nice car.

Because yes, I'm driving a rental. A nice new Pontiac G6. Mine will get fixed when I get back. It was great to see my folks and my grandparents, everyone was suitably amazed to see this much less of me, all is well.

Quick update from the land of cheese.

Well, my pre-holiday season just took an abrupt left turn out of "awesome" and into "suck-ass."

Thursday night I had this super fun unexpected evening of the kind that makes me love my life. More on that later, with pictures.

Last night I'm coming out of CVS and...my car's broken down. Yeah. It won't idle. The engine turns over and runs only as long as I'm giving it gas, the minute I take my foot off to shift out of park it dies. Fuuuuuuuck.

It's towed to a mechanic, who's like "it could be several things, it's generally screwed."

I have no time for this. Leaving tomorrow. So, rental car. My damn car can sit out in the cold and snow for a week for all I care.

But you know? I've gone from being pissed to grateful. Thank you, crappy car. Thank you for breaking down HERE and NOW instead of while I'm out on the road, or in Janesville. Thank you for breaking down at a CVS three blocks from my house so I could walk home. If you had to be this irritating and expensive, thank you for doing it with relatively less inconvenience than there could have been.

Today's List of Happy Things!

1. Raspberry Zinger tea. Mmmmmmm tea.

2. The song "Grace Kelly" by Mika. It's always a party in my office when this song comes up on the MadPod.

3. Birthday party tonight for Jessimi! Yay!

4. Taking clothing to the consignment store = win because of room in closet + potential moola.

5. I am happy with the winner of SYTYCD (trying to be spoiler-free). I would have been perhaps slightly more happy with the 2nd place finisher (who was so damn good that it sometimes hurt to watch him because he was painfully achingly good), but the show has a looooong history of the better dancer taking second place to a dancer who is also great but more diverse/personable. Travis Wall and Danny Tidwell both finished second too, remember. There actually...I don't think there has been a season in which the BEST dancer won, although season 5 came close. Man, this season flew by though, didn't it? Now I anticipate the next season when BILLY BELL WILL PWN YOU ALL. I have confidence in this. He better frickin show up, is all I'm sayin.

6. After the consignment store but before the birthday party I will have about an hour to kill, so I plan to go to the tea salon next door to the consignment store, have some of their KILLER tea and read a book on my Kindle. I'm absurdly excited about this plan.

This morning coming out of Starbucks, I saw that a car had pulled up next to mine and a young couple were getting out, so I couldn't get to my driver's door right away. I stood and waited for them. The woman was quite laboriously hauling herself out of the passenger side with some difficulty. That, coupled with the fact that there's an OB/GYN office two doors down from the Starbucks, led me and my Holmesian intellect to deduce that the woman was pregnant. She closed the car door and I saw that yes, she was probably eight months' pregnant.

"Sorry," she says, smiling at me.

"No problem," sez I. "You've got the ultimate excuse for everything right now."

She laughed. Her husband goes, "Don't say that!"

hee.

Last night on the way home I stopped at CVS because I needed moisturizer and eye makeup remover. When I came out, there was a large van parked next to my car (no, there wasn't a serial killer in it). I did a double take as I approached because a large Schnauzer was sitting straight up in the driver's seat, looking right out the windshield, and it looked eerily like he was about to start up the van and drive away.

hee.

Today, there need to be hangars. Lots and lots of hangars. I'm taking a big load of clothes to the consignment store tomorrow and they need to be on hangars, the plastic kind like they use in stores. I'm thinking Big Lots. I think I'm also going to go back to Kohl's (where everything was on MEGA SALE last night) and get a holiday sweater. They had some really nice ones for $20. Not too cheesy.

Today is also Awesome Shoe Day.



That is all.

For the last four days, my mother has been doing Mad Holiday Baking Frenzy. Don't ask me how she manages to bake like twenty dozen cookies, ten different kinds, in an RV kitchen. She's hardcore like that.

My dad has been oh so helpfully posting pictures of the baking. Because that is what he does.

Yeah, those posts are kinda like torture. No, scratch that...they're EXACTLY like torture.

Instead of dwelling upon delicious delicious cookies I cannot eat I will post this list of

Things I've Learned At The Gym

1. Whatever you do, don't judge what you're doing against what other people are doing. Do what you gotta do. You're the one living in your body.

2. Some people come to the gym in carefully coordinated workout outfits with full makeup and perfect hair. I don't understand these people. I can't stand to work out in makeup, I take it off before I go, and my hair goes back in a headband. I wear old too-big t-shirts and track pants.

3. The gym has a smell. Like school has a smell and libraries have a smell. Not a bad smell, but an immediately identifiable smell. Like rubber sneaker soles and chlorine.

4. Some people come to the gym with their families and work out together. These people are known as "adorable." Tonight I saw a dad and his sixteenish son jogging on neighboring treadmills. They were telling each other jokes. I was ded from cute.

5. Talk to the trainers. They want to help you. That's why they became trainers. And no, they won't a) laugh at you or b) charge you money if you ask about how to properly use the arc trainer.

6. The stair-climber machines are scary. They look like the world's tiniest escalators. There are people who do them backwards. These people are known as "insane."

7. There are all kinds of people at the gym. Fat people, skinny people, old people, young people. Really fit people, not so fit people. People who are there for srs bzness, people who are there for fun. People who keep to themselves. And then there are people who smile at you and say hi in the locker room and make you feel like you belong. These people are known as "awesome."

8. I don't know how anyone works out without music! How do they do all that in silence?? It boggles the mind.

9. I have a favorite treadmill. It's in the first row behind the stepper machines, fourth from the center. If someone is on it when I arrive, I make the irritated face. Other treadmills are jittery. I don't like those.

And this concludes what I have learned so far at the gym.

Me, Dayna and Brian went out looking at Christmas lights last night. Lots of pretty houses, not so many batshit-crazy houses. Here are a couple of the more ostentatious entries.



You can't tell from this photo but there is a moving Ferris wheel in front of the above house.

OMG DEXTER OMFG KSDFFIEWTKFJMDSFHPSDFUAHF;LDSFJPDSIFH

just sayin.

I'm back.

My 5K was kind of awesome, akshully. It was cold and wet, yeah. Here are all the cold, wet peoples waiting to start the race.



I started out pretty far back (very few walkers, honestly, most everyone was running...I guess not that many walkers are hardcore enough to come out in this weather) and didn't really move up much, but I don't care. I finished in almost the exact same time I made on the Jingle Bell Run, which I thought was pretty good considering it was RAINING and also I had to watch my footing because sometimes there was slippery slush.

I wasn't that cold. My arms were the coldest part of me for the first twenty minutes or so. My quilty vest kept my chest warm. My legs were never cold at all. My feet got pretty wet and kinda cold but not intolerably so. Otherwise it was fine. The rain was drizzly and constant. I did have to take my glasses off because they were too raindroppy. And hey, I got a mug! They were supposed to be for the first 50 finishers, runners and walkers, but honestly I don't think they HAD 50 walkers. So we all got one.

I think I've figured out why I walk nearly as fast as I can and I always seem slow compared to others. I HAVE SHORT LEGS. The other night at the gym there was this guy next to me walking, and we were walking exactly in step, the exact same pace. I peeked at his display. My speed = 3.4 mph. His speed = 4.2 mph. That's how much shorter my legs are. I'm five foot seven (not short) but I have like a 27 inch inseam. When I'm sitting down I look like I must be six feet tall because I'm all torso. So there's a definite upper limit on how fast I can go on these stumpy legs. Oh well. So I'll never break any land-speed records. Big deal.

I was helped on my way by the special 5K mix I made on the iPod. It's just one hour long, and I've arranged the songs in order of tempo for the pace I want to keep. I'm listing the songs I use under the cut in case anyone's interested or wants to swipe the playlist.

( Lori's 5K Playlist )

Afterward I went to the gym to get in the hot tub. I impressed the hell out of a few people that I'd walked a 5K in this weather (I still had my number pinned to my vest when I went into the locker room). It wasn't until I undressed that I realized how wet I'd really been. My nylon track pants were soaked but I never felt it. My vest was soaked, my tee was soaked, my underarmor shirt was wet and my bra was wet. My socks were wet. I was wet.

But getting in that hot tub was the closest damn thing to a spontaneous orgasm I think I've ever had. WOW that felt good. Another nice thing is that now I know where there's another 5K I can walk. The race today was on a local bike path, out and back, and I can totally walk that anytime.

Then I took myself out for some breakfast with my wild post-hot-tub hair. I'd brought dry clothes to change into, thank goodness. Couple of poached eggs and coffee and now I'm home again. I put all my race clothes right into the laundry.

After this morning's events, one thing is very VERY clear.

I need a new bathing suit. Like whoa.

Oh, and in case you were wondering what a BAMF looks like, THIS is what a BAMF looks like.

So. It's 8:30 on a Sunday morning.

It's 34 degrees out. And yes, it's raining. Not pouring deluge monsoon raining, but steady drizzle raining.

And I am going out for my 5K.

I have a Champion all-weather wicking shirt underneath a regular cotton long-sleeve tee, over which I will wear and quilty nylon vest. I have cotton leggings over which I will wear nylon track pants. I have wool socks which I will wear inside my old shoes, which are enclosed and leather, instead of my Mizunos which are mesh.

I have a thermal headwrap and thermal gloves.

I also have my bathing suit, so that I can go directly from the race to my gym and sit in the hot tub until my bones thaw out.

List of People You Don't Want to Sit Near At the Coffeehouse

1. Mostly deaf senior citizens having an animated conversation THIS LOUD.
2. See #1.

Busy Saturday.

But at least I started it out right. I got a massage. Mmmmmm massage. Then home, shower, dress, run out the door. Ran a couple Christmas-related errands, then off to Target for home stuff and to find a wicking shirt to wear in the RAIN tomorrow for my 5K. Found one. Now I'm at work. Yeah, work. I don't quite have enough vacation days for the trip home I'm doing so I'm working some extra on weekends to make up for it. After I'm done here I have to return a couple of things to Avenue then I'm going to camp out at Scottie's with my laptop and write my movie preview article.

On the way down here to work I realized I hadn't eaten anything, so I called ahead to Bob Evans for a no-chicken cobb salad, small. When I arrived they presented me with THE COBB SALAD THAT ATE MANHATTAN. For serious, yo. Huge cobb salad which I'll be picking at all day, probably.

Today's outfit beneath the cut. People said they liked seeing these so I'll do it from time to time. And yes, I actually put on an intentional outfit and makeup and stuff today, on Saturday. Feeling better about myself makes me want to look as nice as I can when I'm, you know, among people.

( Clothings )

Grumble grumble.

According to the weather forecast, it's going to be raining tomorrow morning. I'm signed up for another 5K that starts at 9:00 a.m., when it'll be 37 degrees and...raining.

I just don't know if I can deal with that. Cold, fine. I can handle cold. But cold AND rain? I could wear a poncho but I don't know if there's any clothing that'll keep me warm when I'm also WET.

Fuck. I was looking forward to it. Plus I PAID for it. Am I complete wuss if I bow out of a 5K in the rain?

I made a nice new iTunes playlist for it, too. A perfectly 5K-long playlist that takes me through the appropriate paces.

Grumble grumble.