Triathlon!

Tomorrow I will get up, go to work, just like normal. Then I’ll come home. And then I drive to Long Beach. None of this is out of the ordinary.

Except tomorrow I will get on a boat instead of go to class. I’ll go to Catalina Island. I’ll spend the night. And Saturday morning I will get up and I will race in a triathlon.

I’m feeling relatively good about my preparation. Between work and school I didn’t get in as much training as I would have liked, but I did enough. I think. I guess I’ll find out for sure in a few days! I was able to average one of each workout a week. I can do each of the events at race distance, and I even had brick workouts where I did two events back-to-back. Right now my goals are to finish, to not be last, and to have fun. And maybe even finish in the top 50% of my age group. Under 2 hours. And look hot in a wetsuit J

I’m not nervous. Yet. I’m sure I won’t sleep on Friday night. But right now I am feeling mostly excited for the challenge.

I’ll be back next week with a race report and results!

Busy Busy

I. Am. Busy.

I've been busy in my life. I've played a college sport. I've gone to school full time and worked full time simultaneously. I've always been the kind of person who thrives on having absolutely no free time. But this time is a whole 'nother ball game, people.

Work is super fantastic. I found the greatest job - I'm nannying for this cute little family. They have 2 adorable boys, ages 5 and 2, and I seriously spend most of my days playing legos and riding bikes. I even get some homework done during nap time! Its amazing.

School is going really well. So far. I’m doing really well on keeping on top of assignments and readings, and I’ve had 3 midterms and done well on all of them. I can’t say the material is hard/easy, its just something I’m genuinely interested in. We are just getting to the point in the semester that we are getting bombarded with midterms and papers and assignments etc etc etc. (Sidenote: tomorrow we’ll be halfway through the semester. Holy shnikes.) But hopefully I can continue to stay on top of things and make it out the next 8 weeks alive!

My triathlon is in LESS than 3 weeks now – yikes! I took last week off, but otherwise I have been pretty consistently getting in at least 1 of each workout a week. I’m able to do all of the race distances already except for the swim, so I have some work to do the next few weeks, but I think between a little more practice and a little endorphin kick on race day that I will be just fine. I’m so excited about this new challenge and I’m already thinking ahead to what my next race will be! I’m debating between just running or sticking with the tri stuff – but I think I’ll wait and see how Nov 6^th goes before I make any decisions!

However – I am looking at doing a half marathon in January, and maybe (BIG maybe) a full in March. And an Olympic or international distance tri at some point in 2011. I am fully on my way to becoming one of THOSE annoying race people. Especially once I finish school!

And, hey. I’ve been thinking it, so I’m going to come out and say it. I want to run the Boston Marathon. And I don’t want to do it because I’m raising money for cancer or something – who does that? No. I want to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Which means I need to run TWO marathons in under 3 hours, 40 minutes. That’s roughly 7:15 a mile. My fastest race pace so far is about 8:30. For a 10k. I have a LOT of work to do.

OK, it’s time for bed, before I make any more ridiculous proclamations. To end on a good note: I started to write a paper and all I did was type the section headings before I got distracted by this post. Sounds like a good night’s work to me!

No matter how trendy...

One should never wear socks with strappy dress shoes.

It is not cute.

The end.

My House is Scary

My house intimidates me.

It could be the huge financial responsibility, the weight we will drag along for the next 30 (!) years. It could be amount of space we now have, and now have to clean. It could be knowing that this is it, all our eggs are in one basket, all we've got is each other and these walls. Or it could be the firsts.

Yes, the firsts. This week has been full of them: first night, first shower, first meal, etc etc. And there are many more to come. And I feel like each of these firsts sets the tone for the next stage in our lives. For example, I baked my first cake in my new oven on Thursday. It came out sub-par. What does this mean for the hundreds of cakes I will bake here over the course of time? Will they all be cursed? Or can I break the first curse?

Whats worse is, that, in the grand scheme of things, the cake is pretty irrelevant. What about our first fight? Our first party? Our first hanky-panky? What if they all suck? I can't be condemned to a life of bad fights, lame parties, and sub-par sex just because the first time in the house was terrible.

So, I've been going out of my way to make sure our firsts, however trivial, are good firsts. We had our first guests and had fun. We ate our first meal and it tasted delicious. We mowed the lawn for the first time and nobody lost any appendages. So far, so good.

We're In!

Yesterday was the big day - moving day.

During the last week we packed up most of our stuff and shuttled it between the apartment and the house. When the movers came Saturday morning there was very little left to do - they picked up the big stuff and we were on our way. The whole move took less than three hours and was about as painless as it could be.

After the furniture was moved we started unpacking, and we've been doing nothing else for the last twenty four hours. Ugh. But its starting to come together - clothes are in the closet, pots and pans have homes in the cabinets. So far our biggest problem has been that we have too much space! We went from 700 sq ft to almost 1200 so filling out that extra 500 feet is no easy task. But we are making progress.

Pictures to come once its less of a mess!

Today...

I'm painting my house.

That's so awesome to say... My house.

Well Hello Again

I'm back, literally and figuratively.

I spent a glorious, glorious week in Boston and Nantucket. I had the best time. I saw some old friends, I went to the beach every single day, I read books, I ate a whole lot of ice cream and I enjoyed pretty much every second. Mostly I just spent time with my grandmother, my aunts and uncles, and my cousins. I love my family so much.

Then I came back and it was back to real life. And it wasn't that bad.

Work is work. I'm getting a new job soon which makes me happy because I won't have to deal with a lot of the same crap I've been dealing with, but makes me sad because I love my coworkers. But the new job will be closer to home and I will be thrilled to spend less time in my car.

We close on our new house tomorrow. Its scary and exciting and unbelievable all at the same time. I'm so excited to paint and move in and make it a home.

I start school later this month. I find it so funny that while in college, all I wanted to do was graduate. As soon as I graduated, all I wanted to do was go back to school. Now that I'm starting again, I wonder how long it will be until I can't wait to graduate again?

Amazing