Saturday I completed my first 5K in, like, 100 years.  I loved it, except the part where we were made to freeze outside for 45 minutes.  There were a lot of half-hearted jumping jacks and full-fledged bitching.  We finally figured out the Food Court was open and attempted to warm up there.  I peed about 23 times because I was so nervous. 

I wouldn’t say the race was easy, but it was definitely not difficult.  Laura ended up running it with the Run Like A Mother posse; I have two regular running buddies in the group.  We all finished in under 35 minutes, a personal best for me.  I wasn’t sore and I wasn’t tired.  I was pretty damn proud of myself. Toward the end, I heard the music from Chariots of Fire and sprinted the last 300 yards.  I was almost screaming, “I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME ROAR!”  Then I nearly puked walking to my car.

After a reapplication of deodorant, I headed up to Maryland to see Julie.  The drive through NoVa was its usual cluster - 4 1/2 hours later, I had made it the 160 miles to Sykesville.  Her friend Christine hosted a baby shower for her soon-to-be adopted Ethiopian daughter.  It was great to see her, even though she kept calling it a “Smash and Grab” visit.  She got a lot of good stuff and had, I’m sure, a ton of fun trying to cram it all into a duffel bag for the flight back to Colorado.  Whenever I see her, it’s like no time has passed (cliche much?) and Christine was an amazing host.  My one bone to pick:  Christine kept telling me to drink a wine cooler, and I did.  Um, it wasn’t a wine cooler.  It was a Smirnoff Ice something or other.  After running and not eating much, I was a staggering disaster after about 20 minutes.  No more Smirnoff Ice for me, ever - but it was pretty tasty! 

The trip back was much better and took less than 3 hours.  Wahoo! 

In about 10 hours, I will be running the first 5k race I’ve run since 2001.  The last race I did was the Komen 5k, back in the days before babies, cellulite and sleep deprivation.  Julie ran it with me.  It was hard, because I didn’t train properly. 

This 5k race replaces our regular team training run; the race atmosphere should make it more fun and make me more spastic.  I’m excited for it because two of the women on my training team have promised to stay with me as we limp toward the finish line. 

In all seriousness, I’ve been training very well and as of yet, have not missed a single training run or cardio workout.  I should be able to do this.  I CAN do it.  I’m ready! 

(call 911 if you see me face down in front of the food court at Short Pump Town Center tomorrow)

My family makes fun of me because my iPhone is literally an extension of my arms these days.  And I make fun of myself about it too.  However, I thought I’d talk a bit about WHY it’s an extension of me and WHY I love it just so much.  I was a Blackberry user, but I’m firmly converted. I could never go back to the ol’ Crackberry.  For me, the iPhone fits me much better. 

My entire business life runs online. If I don’t have access to it, I am not able to work.  Yes, I receive phone calls on the iPhone - that’s important.  I get texts about work, occasionally, but more often than not it’s from a friend wanting to poke fun at me about something or to respond to something we’ve talked about previously.  The phone is really the least important part of it to me, but it is necessary.  If you hadn’t guessed, I would much rather write - or text something - than talk on the phone.  The iPhone allows me to sneak around talking as much as possible.

Since training for the 10k began, I use the stopwatch feature on the phone constantly.  We’re doing a run/walk training for the first few weeks, and that’s been indispensable.  I can listen to music while timing myself.  If I run on the track at the Y, I can use the lap feature to count how many (or how few) laps I’ve completed.  Best of all, I’ve downloaded an app called “iMapMyRun” which can be used to map out a location (including things like calculating distance when you run around a cul-de-sac or the block), gives verbal directions, tells you what your pace is, and can berate you if you’re not meeting a goal or a pace you’ve set beforehand.  It uses GPS to map exactly where you are and you can see graphically how fast you were running during specific parts of your run. 

I constantly use Weight Watchers’ app as well.  I can track my points directly from the phone, yes, but I can easily search foods by restaurants or style and get the points value before I even order off the menu.  This enables me to go to a new place, scan the menu, do a few minutes of research and have a fairly accurate idea of what I’m eating and how much it’s gonna cost me (points-wise - money is a different story entirely). 

I’m a movie freak, so I use the Fandango app.  You can view showtimes and movie theaters, read reviews and rate your own experience, but best of all you can buy tickets with 2 touches of a fingertip.  For a $1 convenience fee, I’ll gladly bypass the ridiculous lines at my nearby theater, blow into the theater and swipe my card to retrieve my pre-reserved tickets.  Now if only they would let you pre-order Twizzlers and water . . .

QuickTip, for the mathmatically challenged, is fabulous.  Since I usually give 20% in restaurants, I can figure out the tip by adding 10% plus 10% and generally not make too big of a mistake.  It’s the pesky ADDING of the tip to the total that gets me every time (math major I am not).  QuickTip has a slider that allows you to move the tip percentage around.  You enter the amount of the check, slide to figure out what percentage you’re going to give, and voila - it adds that percentage to the total and tells you to the penny what you owe.  It turns a #mathfail into a #mathwin.

CheapGas uses GPS to determine where I am, and gives me a list of all stations within a preset radius of my locations (I usually set it around 5 miles).  I get a list of gas stations and their current prices for different octanes of gasoline, and lists the cheaper ones first. 

It took awhile for the value of FourSquare to sink in.  It’s merely a bigger and better version of BrightKite - basically a stalker’s tool to find out where your friends are and what they’re doing.  FourSquare is private - meaning only people you allow can see your location - but it’s better than a simple GPS system.  Those in Richmond can post their locations to their friends and add tips and suggestions that pop up when you check in at that same place, or near it.  For example, I was at Short Pump Town Center yesterday and checked in on FourSquare.  A couple of tips popped up, telling me to visit the Apple store for awesome customer service from a specific person. Another one suggested a menu item at a restaurant nearby.  Yet another alerted me to a discount at a nearby sporting goods store.  For the voyeur in me, I enjoy seeing where my friends are - I’ve been introduced to a few new places I’d never heard of.

The Flickr app lets me consolidate any pictures I take with my camera phone or on the fly into my main Flickr account.  It also updates my Facebook photos and Twitter, if I want it to. 

Tweetdeck is my choice for Twitter apps - I like being able to separate with columns the different things I watch for, like people tweeting from RVA or those using a the hashtag for #writeclubrva. 

The Facebook app is much better than it used to be, but I still find it clunky and a bit buggy.  Still, I check in with Facebook more through the iPhone than I do with my laptop. 

Shazam is the most fun app because it puts an end to the annoying “What the heck is this song playing???” question.  Hold it up to the source of the song and voila, it tells you artist, name of song, album, and links you to a place where you can download immediately. 

Trapster is another new favorite of mine.  Using GPS, you can quickly add a live police checkpoint, a traffic camera, or an accident.  It blasts the information out immediately through text messaging to other users of Trapster with a specific location of the incident.  Ironically, a friend of mine who is also a police officer told me about it.  Now that more users are on Trapster, the results are much more accurate and reliable. 

A friend turned me on to Beejive - I can’t tell if I hate it or love it.  It pulls all of the IM programs from Facebook, GChat, Yahoo, AIM, et cetera ad nauseum into a single space on your iPhone.  This means that at all times of day or night, anyone who sees you online can start a chat - directly to your cell phone.  I’m not sure how I feel about it, but I know I’ll enjoy bothering random people while in waiting rooms. 

Boxcar uses push notifications to let you know if you’ve been @ replied through Twitter or mentioned on Facebook and a variety of other programs. I find it highly annoying, but since I’ve been taking a break from Twitter, I’m getting notifications of @ replies a lot less frequently.  You can turn off the random beeping and clanging sounds but I always leave them on so the rest of my family can be as annoyed by it as I am.

Now if I could just find an app that makes my kids quiet and well-behaved, I would hermetically seal the iPhone to my forehead for all eternity. 

If you’re an iPhone convert, what kind of things do you like about it?  Favorite apps?

Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.  Blah, Blah, Blah.  I despise gender generalizations, but like any generalization, there is usually some truth behind it. 

Take, for example, “compartmentalizing”.  I’ve known so many men over the years who are experts at packing their feelings into small boxes and shoving them deep down into their man caves.  I’ve known a few women who could do it, but not many.  I am not one of them.  In terms of compartmentalizing feelings, I am a proud failure.  Can’t do it; don’t want to. 

My husband’s an expert at it.  But this blog post is not about him. 

I seem to spend a lot of time with people who excel in repressing things, or asking me to do the same.  Even the men I’ve known who were good communicators could shut off unpleasant parts of their lives and continue on.  Sometimes those boxes would blow up - a little gunpowder in the mailbox, so to speak.  Usually, they didn’t.  This is how a few men I’ve known well have been able to date multiple women at the same time, all the while feeling love for each of them in their own way.  I’m sure some women can do that, but back in the day, those women were called sluts. 

I’ve been looking hard at myself.  I’m extremely (unhealthily) critical of myself.  I realize this.  Sometimes it is hard to pull yourself up from the bad feelings and force focus on the better things within yourself.  Most of the time, I can’t do it.  It’s a work in progress.  Occasionally I find something about myself that is perceived as a weakness or something worse; I am shocked to find that as I think about it, I am proud of the so-called failing. 

I am proud of my inability to not separate myself into small pieces.  If you are around me, you get the good, the bad, and a lot of the ugly.  I am an excellent friend and always have been.  I will put myself out there for the people I love and do just about anything I can; lately, though, it hasn’t been returned.  In some notable cases, I have been asked to ignore or forget some part of who I am in order for the greater good to survive.  Our marriage counselor actually told me life’s goal is to transcend the ego.  I’m not sure I want to transcend the ego. If that makes me a bad person, so be it.  While I like Mother Theresa, I’ve never wanted to be exactly like her.  Like most humans, I am flawed and inherently selfish.  I also am terrible - absolutely horrific - at hiding my feelings or pretending something is different than the way it is.

I wonder how much energy it takes people to wrap those pretty packages.  I wonder what the motivation to do so is.  I am frustrated with the shiny veneer of some of my friends.  Why bother?  Why even attempt to be good friends with someone if you are only going to show them the image you think they may want to see?  It’s exhausting to me to be around it; it has to be tiring to be the one doing it. 

I recently tweeted this question:  “Have any of you thought of closing your account?  If so, why?”  Funny that many people had thought of it.  A few had even done it, then come back under a different name so they could be full-on open without fear of discovery.  My reasons for considering closing mine are fairly simple.

I have met a ton of amazing people through Twitter.  I’ve been able to build business, form solid “real” relationships, and entertain myself on days when nothing could hold my interest.  There are also a lot of packaged and processed people there, like anywhere.  For me, I have a better crap detector when I meet someone face to face or see them interacting.  There is a lot of interaction on Twitter, if it’s done right - but very often people’s Twitter persona is so completely different.  It’s like playing dress-up on the interact. 

The same could be said about me, I suppose.  I’m probably much more likable behind 140 characters with a snarky sense of humor.  However, I have never been told I’m different than I appear online.  This is because I have no compartments, no barriers, and no walls.  This means I get hurt, and frequently.  Still, I keep on chugging.  I like this part of me.  In a body where many parts are disliked, even despised, I’ll take the parts I can live with any day. 

I’ll be honest:  the fashions this year drives me a little crazy.  The tight, camel-toe inducing high-waisted acid-wash jeans.  The double or triple belt look originally made famous by Madonna.  The giant, bug-eyed sunglasses.  The big flannel t-shirts and your boyfriend’s sweaters.  All of them immediately make me smell our rancid cafeteria and remember the sweaty boys trying to grope us during high school dances.  All of them make me slightly nauseous.  One thing that never has made me nauseous is the music from the 80’s - and truthfully, the music was worse than the fashion. 

Last night, I stopped by #hashbrownnetworking to say hi to a few people and to beg for free Wordpress help from @jasonkenney and @trevordickerson.  They’re working on the Write Club RVA site so it will eventually be usable.  I didn’t stay long, but I did stay long enough to stick Jason with the bill for my iced tea (thanks, J!).  After I met up with one of my new favorite people from the Twitterverse.  She’s also kind of anonymous - writes a pretty snarky food blog, so I’m not planning to use her name.  Instead I’ll refer to her as SFB.  (note:  she’s now the second “anonymous” friend I have - gets kind of tiring remember to refer to them publicly by their twitter or blog names. In fact, if I refer to The Checkout Girl by her real name, none of my family members know who I’m talking about, so she’s just called TCG).  We met at Nations, a gay bar down near the Science Museum (I can already hear my mom groaning as she reads this).  On Thursdays, they host the Drag Race - a bunch of Drag Queens lip-syncing their way around the stage.  Some of them are a little scary, evidenced by this tweet:

Come on, pretty baby, kiss me deadly . . .

Anyway, Snarky Food Blogger introduced me to her many gay friends, all of whom were exceptionally nice, funny, and bending over backward to make me feel welcome.  The commentary from our table on all things spandex and tucked was quite interesting.  I think SFB and I were one of 4 women in there (plus the queens, of course).  The one straight guy in the bar (although why a straight guy would come alone to a gay bar is sort of beyond my comprehension) kept trying to hit on SFB, but she rebuffed him like a pro.  I had new boots and some funky tights, so the boys kept examining the textures of the tights and commenting on my overall ensemble.  At first I thought they were making fun of me - it’s been a long time since I hung out with a group of gay men - then realized they were 100% serious.  DO NOT ask a gay man if you look “fat in these pants” because sugarbuns, they will tell you.  And you may not like what you hear. 

We stayed at Nations for most of the drag race while I practiced memorizing names:  Vito, guy with good glasses.  Peanut, beautiful black man with good hat.  William, stepped out from Glee with a voice to match.  Sam, some sort of doctor, good pants.  Everyone smelled good.  There was a lot of hugging and laughing, which reminded me of my old friend Ed, who used to play with my hair and help with my outfits when I was still in high school.  He was the best date for a movie because he was gorgeous, would hold my hand, and safely deliver me to my doorstep every night with no pawing or drooling.  Excellent. 

Next we headed to Cous Cous to listen to a friend of SFB spin.  I’d never been to Cous Cous but it’s beautiful inside, especially with the weird Federico Fellini-esque movie playing over our heads. That dude had some wacky visions.  I was put off when the pierced and gauged waiter told me that even though he’d handed me a menu, the kitchen. was. CLOSED.  Apparently he wanted me to check out the menu to get hungry so that I could be denied. 

And all I wanted was a little saganaki.  Pfffttt.

Although the music was good, Vito was itching to go dancing, and I was falling asleep in my water. I can’t sit still around midnight - that’s nighty-night time for the middle-aged.  SFB’s man showed up for a while and we compared iPhone apps before boring the rest of the table to tears.  He left soon after, and the three of us headed to Mars Bar.  Apparently, said SFB, their 80’s dance night was a must.  I was wearing high heels and feeling uncomfortable, but determined to have fun, so I went along for the ride.  I’m really glad I did.

The high point was a slightly overweight guy, at least as old as me, wearing a black t-shirt, tight jeans, a sparkly glove, and the infamous MJ red leather jacket complete with all the zippers.  Depending on how goofy you felt this guy was, you could say that unfortunately Billie Jean was blasting and he was completely rockin’ out.  “Rockin’ out” included crotch grabs, leg kicks, and a lot of break dancing hand gestures and robotic movements.  The dancefloor was packed, and SFB was actually hit on the back of her head from MJ Lite.  I nearly was kicked in the face later as he jammed to “Take On Me”.  Other than that, being surrounded by a bunch of happy gay men who can really shake their moneymakers was a lot of fun.  I haven’t danced that much since 1996.  Even though most of the youngsters could sing all the lyrics to Toni Basil, no one but me (and possibly SFB) knew the proper refrain shouted during the quiet sections of Billy Idol’s “Mony Mony”.  I realized this unfortunate fact after I shook my fist in the air and screamed, “Get Drunk, Get High, Get L…” oops.  I was the only one yelling it.  Maybe it was just a Michigan thing. 

We danced for about an hour, then SFB dragged me by the hand onto a frigid street in Shockoe Bottom.  We went across the street to another bar, where of course she knew the bartender.  One of the straight boys from Mars Bar “ended up” there and starting chatting with us.  SFB is most possibly the friendliest person I’ve ever met - she will talk to anyone, anywhere, and they started playing a word game on the bar’s computer.  I was fairly certain he was trying to get up the nerve to get SFB’s digits, but we blew out of there before he’d finished the second set of word games.  Not sure what it is about SFB but she makes those boys go crazy.

SFB and I were starving, and what else do you do when you’re hungry and it’s the middle of the night?

(I still managed to lose a little weight this week despite the delicious cheesy bread stuffs I inhaled last night)

I headed home soon after.  It’s amazing how fast you can make it out of the city in the middle of the night.  It’s not something I will do often, but it was a lot of fun, and the first time in nearly 3 months I actually stopped thinking about all the other crap for an extended period of time. I used to love dancing - and although I don’t love all the smoke and the college kids groping each other, it was definitely good for me. I can’t drink while on this new medication I’m taking, so it’s easy to stay awake and focused and not worry about driving.  I’m a barfly’s dream partner:  a permanent designated driver for the foreseeable future.  I’ve gone out a lot since all this stuff happened, but normally I swing drastically between blissful “unawareness” and sudden drops into a reality I wish wasn’t mine.  For whatever reason - whether it is the medication’s effects or just a stroke of good luck - I was able to go out, conversate (I love that made up word), laugh, have fun, and be safe and healthy at the same time.  It was way worth the exhaustion I’ve had today from staying up far too late.