Hey all. I can't believe it's only been just a regular-length weekend since I was last at work! It's been a l-o-n-g couple days!
I had that relay race out in Pennsylvania this weekend. So Saturday, I jumped behind the wheel of a car for the first time in almost 2 years. Ugh. It all went pretty smoothly, but suffice to say I won't mind
at all if it's not another two years till I have to drive again! I just don't enjoy it at all.
So yeah, I got out to my brother's in-law's house around 6p.m. We "watched" the Notre Dame game ... in quotations marks because the volume was off for most of the game and they turned the TV off entirely during dinner. (I come from a family that
never ate dinner with the TV on ... the one and only exception being Notre Dame football!!!) And then everybody goes to bed. It's 10p.m. at this point. I don't go to bed at 10p.m. So I went upstairs and read my book for 2.5 hours. Then I tried to sleep, but I pretty much spent the entire evening tossing an turning. Finally got out of bed at 5:15a.m. for this race, a little food and coffee, and we're on our way.
Long story short ... not the greatest run of my life. I was extremely tired from not getting any sleep, I'm not in the greatest shape ever, and I had massive cramps (TMI alert: not the running kind). Also, I'm loathe to be too critical of races because I realize that I'm fortunate that all but maybe two of the races I run each year are organized by the New York Road Runners Club, which has a sizable, full-time,
paid staff, so they're pretty impeccably organized and supported. But at the same time, this race cost $150 per team, and I feel like there's a certain level of professionalism that races that charge that much need to meet. There weren't enough aid stations, the mile markers were wrong, they'd changed the length of some of the legs at the 11th hour (unbeknownst to me, my 6.1 mile leg had become a 6.5 mile leg, which led to a little panic when I passed the 6 mile marker and could neither hear nor see the finish), and there was absolutely zero support at the end of each leg. Fortunately the person who picked me up had brought a bottle of water for me.
At any rate though, my team ended up finishing 38th overall out of 130 teams and 8th in our division (Men's Open -- I guess you had to have at least two women to make it into the Mixed, and we had only me). So not bad at the end of the day, but not a satisfying race experience by any means.
Moving along though, I hopped in the car after my leg and headed back to the city. Got back in under 2 hours, dropped off the car at the rental place, charged home to change my clothes, and was able to relax on my couch for an entire 10 minutes before Paul picked me up to go to his Irish football championship game. Unfortunately, his team lost, and it was a very frustrating game. Tons of fouls, and some dirty playing, too, away from the ball. (There's only one referee in Irish football, so it's easy to get away with stuff.) But yeah, Paul's team looked like the better team for the entire first half, but just couldn't put points on the board, and then they gradually fell apart in the second half. So that was disappointing.
After the game, Paul and I stuck around Gaelic Park to watch some of the other games that were going on that afternoon, have a couple drinks, and just enjoy the nice day outside. Which was really fun. Irish football is seriously one of the best live sports I've ever seen, and it's especially fun to watch it with Paul, because he can fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge about the sport. (He also says "whoooooops" whenever something goes wrong on the field, which makes sense when someone bobbles a ball or something, but is hilariously inappropriate when he's whoopsing some guy getting brutally slammed into the ground or something. I just think it's very cute!
)
The final game of the day ended around 6p.m., and we jumped into the car and headed over to pick up a friend whom Paul had offered to drive to the airport -- which unfortunately was Newark airport out in New Jersey rather than JFK where we we both live in Queens. So since we were in Jersey, we decided to stop by a bar that Paul's friend owns out there. Then we went around the corner to grab a slice of pizza at this place ...
... which Sopranos fans might recognize from the opening credits. So that was kind of entertaining!
We started heading back to the city, and on the way, Paul got a call from one of his teammates, demanding his presence at a bar. We get there, and it appears that his entire football team has been there since the game ended around 3p.m., judging by how massively intoxicated a good number of them were! We got talking to some guys and got a little sucked into the Giants game, so we ended up having a couple beers, but good lord. Right about when we were leaving, some song came on the jukebox that is apparently the Piano Man of the Irish in New York, because these quite impressively intoxicated boys start climbing up on barstools and singing this thing at the tops of their lungs. One guy actually fell off his barstool (he landed on another guy, so nobody was particularly injured) which got everybody else back down on the ground, and now they've got their arms around either other, drunkenly swaying across the bar, crashing into things and knocking things over. But whatever. They're the Irish in New York, and they're singing what's apparently their anthem, so I thought it was kind of nice, and this was a big football bar, so I imagine they're used to this sort of thing happening ... But I guess all this touchy brotherhood got these boys feeling somewhat drunkenly mushy about each other, because then Gwen Stefani comes on the jukebox with that annoying song she's got out right now, and they're still all arms around each other, singing the song, and swaying along with the music. I just thought it was completely hilarious. All these big football guys, dancing with each other and singing Gwen Stefani. Not a woman in sight. Too funny.
But yeah. Paul and I were both about a case of beer away from the intoxication level that these boys had achieved, so it was time for us to go. I think we got back to my place a little after midnight ... Just a very long, very fun day, but neither of us was particularly thrilled when morning rolled 'round, lemme tell ya!
mh1982: I've got all the sports you mentioned watching this weekend DVR'd, so they're what I'll be watching every night this week, probably!
julie: Oooof. Good luck with that diet. I don't think I'd last two hours on it, let alone the whole month!
proto: Definitely post those pics if you can! I'd love to see them!
jrpol: I'm so sorry about your dog!
It's been a long time since I've lost a pet, but it is just sad and weird getting used to them not being around. Blah.
I'm glad that you're at least getting to head back to IL though -- I'm sure it will be nice to spend some time with your family and friends!
Okay! I literally started writing this at 11a.m., and it's been interruptions ever since, so I'm going to post this while I can!
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Sha-Bon-Bon
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and then raced home to watch Roger Federer be, well, Roger Federer. No surprises there. BTW, any other tennis fans here? I'm wondering if it's a Serbian thing, because Djokovic & Jankovic are both about the best sports I've seen in the game of tennis - both laughing and joking with the audience, being extremely gracious when they lose ... it was nice to see that for a change.
in retrospect I probably looked like a lunatic, and a 2 year old's haircut is a dumb thing to cry over but I couldn't help myself. So yeah...I'm blaming hormones and laughing about it now.
