solutions

ever think about why people always want to give you a solution when all you want is to vent? there's this person in my life (and no it's not my husband or a family member or even a close friend), but this person is still a person in my life who is there a lot for some reason. i vent, she/he vents, we all vent. but when i vent, i don't want answers, unless of course i say, "what should i do?" or "what do you think?" or just plain "help!" but this person is relentless with the solution offering. and it's so matter of fact. like duh, you idiot. why are you talking about this, when the solution is so obvious? if it was a consoling solution, more like "hey, think about this" i might be more open, but instead i'm left with the duh/idiot look not having a solution or a comeback except to stare, which has been proven time and time again to be ineffective.
perhaps solutions are obvious, but it's not always about that. sometimes, it's just talking and conversation and making a point. no solution needed.

rebounding

I have officially bounced back from 12 years of making B's (and the occasional C) in math, that'd be all my schooling since 5th grade. I got an A in statistics, which is crazy. I ran all over the house. Will thought I was nuts, but it's just because he wasn't THERE when I couldn't do the math for the majority of my life. I know stats is no calculus and geometry and all that, but it's like word problem after word problem after ridiculous t-test and hypothesis test and whatnot, and I got an A. woohoo!

In other news, there's 14 days left of school. Then it's summer and beaches and travel and the GYM and playing with my dogs and reading actual books. By the way, Cormac McCarthy's latest, The Road, I recommend it. The ole "water runner" mentioned it to me and I checked it out. Well worth the eyeball to the page time.

another year, another bridge run

over the weekend, i completed my 11th cooper river bridge run. i think it's 11. the first one was in 9th grade. and there were a couple absences due to torn ligaments and lack of motivation. but none the less, i do think it was my 11th trip to charleston for the event. i went back and looked at results starting in 1996. apparently 1999 was my year to peak b/c i ran a 49: something. that's hilarious. b/c this past weekend i clocked a 1:16. i did manage to walk 2 miles this time rather than running the whole thing, so that adds a little time. it's just funny to think about how you used to be and how you are now. reality of aging...setting in. oh well. i still haven't conquered the half marathon like our buddies rob and amanda, but that's ok. i'm doing a 5 miler in a month. i'll run the whole thing this time and i won't die.

i need to recount ONE event from this weekend at the race tho. my sis and her husband, rob and i set out at 6:50 AM to head over to the race start. we park and start walking down to the starbucks to meet another pal who i would be running/walking with. once we find her, my sis and i head off for the habitual porta potty stop. why rob didn't have to go i have no idea. after being in the potty line for 2 min., i realized that this is indeed a dumb idea to waste key stretching/chatting time while waiting to wee. so my sis and i run off down a side road, find a nice looking building that turned out to be a law firm with a big tree in back, so we ran in back of the tree and shaved about 30 min. off the predicted porta potty time by just handling our business like we were out camping. no big deal. this whole process of running to the porta potties, finding a tree, and jogging back to the starbucks where we would meet up with everyone took no more than 5 minutes. we get back and i ask my brother in law, where's rob? the response, "oh, he left." really? i say, thinking this is an early april fool's. but no, what had actually happened is that the annoying announcer lady who we nicknamed BARB (or maybe sharon) b/c she sounded like she was from Minnes-OH-ta, had been saying, "runners, get in line! it's almost time" (we still had 30 minutes to spare). well apparently, rob panicked, thought momentarily, will they care if i go ahead?, decided that we wouldn't care, and ran off to get in a pack of some 40, 000 people to wait for 30 minutes before ever beginning the race. needless to say, i had a leisurely walk to the start, stretched, chatted and laughed at Barb with the other people around me, and then started right on time. granted, rob ran the whole thing and my game plan from the start was to walk some, so it REALLY didn't matter, but still, i find it funny. panicky rob.

update

the bathroom is blue. not the right shade of blue. it always looks different on the wall in large portions. it's not hideous, just not what we wanted. i will be working up the nerve to post a pic. it's pretty much done, just have to work on the cabinets. looks like we might be painting it ANOTHER shade of blue in the future. try number 2.

top 5 reasons

here's the top 5 reasons i had to go running today:

1. i made these cookies this morning (b/c we had a "weather day" which meant no school and also meant "must make cookies"). they're called mudslide cookies. they have real chocolate and eggs and cocoa and other good stuff. they're not out of a box. that means that they are good. the recipe came out of cooking light magazine, but still when you eat 3 of them, that means you had too many and should go run around to burn off at least 1 of them.
2. i'm supposed to run/walk/hobble across the cooper river bridge with 20,000+ other people in less than 2 weeks. i have one friend that i'm supposed to meet up with to do this. she wants to run, i want to meander. and rob is clearly going to beat me seeing as how he is now a half-marathoner.
3. i have to wear a bathing suit in may.
4. i strained my shoulder. apparently last week while i was couched with a stomach virus, i strained my shoulder. it's like the shoulder blade on my left side. i seriously strained it by doing nothing. who knew laziness and eating only crackers and gatorade could injure you? it can. i was all good during the run, but it hurt like hell after. the other thing is that right where the sports bra goes on my back, is where it hurts, this didn't feel that good either. hopefully being active will reverse the laziness-induced strain. i'll keep you posted.
5. the flowers in my neighborhood have bloomed and the wind was blowing a little and the sun was out and the sky was blue.

those are the top 5 reasons for running today. the run was great by the way.


in other news the bathroom is now without wallpaper. this means that tomorrow, after a LONG meeting that will most likely zap my brain and a statistics class, which will pretty much get whatever's left, i get to paint. this is good. and on another side note, my dog, lily, was just caught standing on the table trying to drink will's beer. she's had a rough day apparently.

it's taking over!

friday/yesterday/today i painted a room. it's blue, oh so blue. not quite the blue i wanted but it will have to be b/c i can't paint it again or i would lose my mind. now i'm waiting on this wallpaper steamer/remover thing to heat up so i can go hack at this gorgeous turquoise wallpaper that has little white shells all over it. yep, not my choice of wallpaper, and so it's comin' down! this is the bathroom, the bathroom whose renovations began a mole hill and turned into a mountain, mt. st. huge. but it looks like it will be ALMOST done by this coming weekend. my life this week will revolve around work and the walls of my bathroom (and my dogs and my husband too i guess, but mostly the walls). it's a simple life i lead. AND i'm very excited b/c V8 has a new juice flavor, blueberry pomegranate. that has GOT to be good for us!

this was a boring post. all the interesting things are not happening around here. my weekend:
friday: work (sat in meeting all day) & paint
sat: paint, sell tickets at a baseball game, statistics homework
sun: paint, paint, steam
mon: more of the same...see? i need to get out!

what up doc?

here's the news from barmount dr. will and i have just wrapped up renovation weekend 2007 Part I. i have a feeling there will be parts 2-100, but we have started. we could have been on one of those tlc tv shows. it was rockin'. i was the resident painter. the office and living room are pretty much done, with some great new colors. (the lady before us had everything, walls AND trim, the same color, kind of a baby puke beige. mmhmm!). i still have to touch up the ceiling in the living room from the paint that seemed to sneak up there from the walls (AMANDA! you know what i'm talking about??). someone blew that popcorn ceiling crap all over our house. why do people like that? anyway, little is to be done about that now. so you can picture me for the next three nights with a tiny little paint brush, covering the "not-supposed-to-be-there yellow" with the "supposed-to-be-there white." yep, that'll suck. i still have to do the trim in the LR too. painting the trim is like pulling your teeth (or your hair) out! at least that's how i feel about it right now. that's what's left before tackling the walls in one of the bathrooms. see while i was painting, will was knocking out tiles, cutting holes in dry wall, etc. (he does all the fancy stuff) and so now MY bathroom is on it's way to being the coolest room in the house. i'll take a pic when it's done. and another bonus, if you come to visit me, it will be YOUR bathroom. so if you want to have THAT experience, come on down!

that's pretty much it for the weekend, it was nonstop working on house stuff and i think we went to lowe's/home depot approximately 5 times. that's a lot in my opinion. now is a good time to buy stock in either of those stores if you were considering that you should buy some new stock(s). we will be keeping the in business for approximately forever.