I have been busy. I'm not sure doing what, but I've been busy.
I finally finished watching the entire Buffy the Vampire Slayer series. It was so good, that the day after I finished the final episode, I started at the very beginning again. Goat was very worried upon learning that I was watching a second time, as he rarely saw me during the evenings while I was in my Buffy obsession. Watching it a second time is so great because now I know the fate of all the characters I got really hung up on loving or hating the first time around, and I can now just enjoy the show.
Like Drusilla.
She reminds me of one of 'those girls'. We all knew one in high school or many if you went to acting school. They are those girls that are constantly on the verge of emotional collapse, and have a habit of making every single nuance of the universe all about them. Upon entering any room, whether it is a doctor's office, the gym (which they rarely go to as they can't fathom lifting a weight as the weight of the world constantly bears down upon them) or the theater, they manage to suck every molecule of air from that room. Many of them also have a sixth-sense/ESP/seer trait as well. They not only bear the brunt of tapping into every feeling that every human ever had, but the feelings of those beyond as well. Other notable traits include precisely timed temper tantrums, illness or emotional strife; a trail of men that pine for their affections and a mysterious lack of energy felt by anyone who spends more than five minutes with these girls. Despite my loathing of these girls in the real world, I have come to love Drusilla during this second watching of Buffy.
Willow is my favorite character in the show. Oddly, Buffy is one of my least favorites.
I have been spending much time at Goat's house as he has the kick ass porch action. Front
and back porches! Plus he has a grill, growlers of beer and a door that goes directly from his house to his back yard (at my house, I have to walk the dogs around to dump them in the back yard). Plus, it being Goat's house, I get to be with him while enjoying all the porch, beer and grill time. I got to enjoy climbing around on a backhoe when he got a new sewer line dug last week. Big piles of dirt and large machinerey? I'm there!!
I planted flowers in the front yard. Now I just need to keep them alive.
I have become more obsessed with Trader Joe's. Dark chocolate covered mini pretzels, cuban mojito simmer sauce, koorma simmer sauce, woven wheat thins, double glouchester with chives, Cellar No. 8 cabernet sauvignon, the salsa kit and the carne asada. That's all there is to say about that.
One fine day, I went to buy some new running shoes because I needed something to do besides the elliptical and I'm not really that interested in going to the gym. Goat and I had run a few times together and actually liked it. So the super cool lady that sold me my running shoes encouraged me to sign up for the running class. It was a 4 week class, class was once a week and they promised that by week number 5 we would be ready to run a 5k. It was part of the class and the class fee included the entry fee to the 5k. I was pretty convinced that an overweight, out of shape, recently quit ex-smoker such as myself would have to be dragged across the finish line by my friends or carted over it on a gurney. So I managed to get my inner critic in a sleeper hold just long enough to try the class and see what happened.
I used to be pretty active, riding my bike all over town every day, and all over dirt trails on the weekends. I used to rock climb and hike and occasionally ran uphill just for poops and giggles. I've been wanting to reawaken that part of me, that girl that would ride her bike in rush hour traffic in downtown Seattle for fun. I have really been missing her. Well, I found out that I love to run, it's like an ache that I have now and I just have to run. The thing that frustrates me is that my body is not in the kind of shape I need it to be in to run as fast and as far as I want to go. I'm really trying to be patient, I run three days a week and weight train two and even that gets exhausting, but slow progress is much better than none at all. I'm trying to focus on the movement and how good it feels to just go. No one is chasing me, I'm not running to anything, not running from anything, just going.
The class was really cool. We did 3 minute running and 2 minute walking intervals for about 3 miles. Each week the running intervals got longer and the walking shorter and we had running homework. After our run, we would have a cool speaker talk to the class about running. One week a podiatrist came in, the next a nutritionist, the next a physical therapist. They all came armed with extremely helpful, runner specific information and answered all my overly enthusiastic questions. I am a self proclaimed anatomy and physiology nerd, I read medical text for fun, so my head burned with wanting to know all the wisdom they were willing to impart.
Then there were the people who lead the classes, the employees of Running Fit. Super cool, inspiring, positive people who are obsessed with running. Two of them ran in this year's Boston Marathon that, for the first time in it's 111 year history, was almost canceled due to weather. They are bad asses of the truest kind and so happy to answer even more of my questions. I never though our class would be ready to run the 5k. Prior to the run, I had not run more than 2 miles at once and I was a little panicky about it. My goal was to run the whole 3.2 miles, no matter how slow I ran it. So I did. I ran the whole thing. Not only that, I averaged a 10 minute mile, which, for a girl who is way out of shape and only 121 days into her non-smoking life, ain't too shabby.
I have another 5k the day after tomorrow. 3.2 miles of running in the dirt, through the woods and the finish line is at the top of a sledding hill. I'll let you know how it goes.
I have more to talk about, but I have to go now.
Till next time, my friends...
