Falling Back

Figure I: THE New York Marathon
Figure II: "They look like rats with wings"
Figure III: Baby it's cold inside

It’s finally starting to look like a place we can call home around here.

Friday night we enjoyed a post-work (post-interview for me) nap while waiting for AV to arrive home from her office. It took her an hour and a half to get home on the bus. You’d think we would have learned our lesson with that mode of transportation by now.

We met up with some friends from our Community Group at church at the Hudson Hotel that night for a going-away party. One of the girls that leads our group is moving to London and her sister and roommate planned a fun night out for her before she leaves town. We knew the area, but walked a few blocks past the hotel initially because it was unmarked outside- no address and no name = posh in New York. You “just have to know” it’s there. I feel sorry for the Postal Service workers.

So we finally found where we needed to be, and took the escalator up to the second floor which had about four different (yet still unmarked) bars on the same floor. We located the Library, and met up with the girls from church to wait for the surprise. It was a little anti-climatic, considering we spotted the guest of honor and friends across the bar half past 10. It was a fun evening, considering we have been spending recent nights grocery shopping and buying curtains.

KR made us some waffles on Saturday morning- since her mother, the professional suitcase packer that she is, somehow managed to fit in a sandwich griller as well as a waffle iron into her bag of tricks. She also mailed us a bag of mini Snickers, which may have been intended for trick-or-treaters, but actually only made it as far as our glass kitchen jars.

We cleaned around our apartment yesterday after yet another trip to Bed Bath & Beyond, where we annoyed our fellow shoppers by testing out all of the hand-held vacuum cleaners on each other. Our place finally looks more put-together, though. We try to touch the coffee table as little as possible, considering it was assembled with a screw driver and the heel of a shoe, and might crumple the second we so much as look at it the wrong way.

I had made plans to meet up with our old friend MD, who got married in January and moved to NYC in February, and so we went to the Irish Rogue Pub to watch the Texas A&M/OU football game with the other Aggies in the city. Having limited cable and Internet access the past month, I almost did not realize how much I’ve missed watching college football. I love college football, but with all of the moving and weddings and being overruled by girls, I usually only catch up with the latest through ESPN.com and Sportscenter. If someone could find a way to market sports to make them a little more female-friendly to watch, they could make a lot of money… just a thought. Maybe it will be me, even though I don’t need much convincing.

We got to watch the 26-mile marker of the New York Marathon this morning, which was truly an inspiration. The day was beautiful and we got to see all of the leaders in the different divisions as they were coming up on the finish. We saw a woman who had to be around the age of 65 finishing in a little over two hours. 26.2 miles. Two-ish hours. She could be my grandmother, almost. You do the math.

Every five minutes or so I would convince myself it would be a good idea to train for one, only to mentally smack my imagination back into place five minutes later. It’s a good thing too, because I have marathon-running friends who would surely harass me about it if they heard.

Heaven forbid I challenge myself physically. And who can think about running when there’s a Snickers waiting for you in the kitchen?

In other news, an e-mail just popped up on my phone telling me that KR, who is currently sitting four feet away, just tagged me in new pictures on Facebook, which I obviously need to peace out to view.

It is also now confirmed that in the wake of Halloween, both my brother and KR’s are now bald. LH had sported a mullet for the big night; TR had bleached his hair to look like Zack Morris, respectively. Sometimes these things happen.

In the words of a pillow I once saw in KR’s mother’s kitchen:

“I’d give up chocolate, but I’m no quitter.”