My First 8K

While many of you were still in your warm beds on Sunday morning, I was preparing to take on the most challenging athletic feat of my life. 

You see, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday in preparation for the 8K I was running in Midlothian! As expected the temperature was somewhere in the low 20s with a windchill factor of oh about, 9 degrees. No big deal. 

I was already a little anxious but knowing that I would have to be running in such cold temperatures was the icing on the cake! I've only run one race in my life and that was my 5K back in October 2010.

However, the race didn't go as bad as I thought it would. Even though, it turns out that I picked one of the hilliest races that I could have picked. The first hill of the race was a monster! I wish I had a photo to show you. 


Click here for a map.

Anyway, I ran the entire race. I don't know how I did it. My official time was 53:44, which was right about what I thought it would be. 

On Sunday night, there was a pretty awesome award show going on. No, I'm not talking about the Grammy's. I'm talking about The Elby's. Wait, you've never heard of The Elby's? Do you live under a rock?

No worries because I hadn't heard of them until I was invited by a friend to attend them. And this was the inaugural year of The Elby's so there was a good reason I hadn't heard of them. The Elby's are a culinary awards show for restaurants and chefs located in Richmond, Va. 

So yes, after running an 8K in the morning, I got all dolled up and put on heels to attend The Elby's. I had an amazing time! I learned that apparently there are a ton of restaurants I need to try out.

After the awards show and the after party, we went to Can Can, a super classy restaurant in Carytown. The menu was French to me and while I couldn't bring myself to be as adventurous in my food choices as the others I was with, I had an amazing cheeseburger. I did share a pretty adventurous dessert; it was goat cheese something or other. I really should have brought my camera because it looked too pretty to eat!

All in all, it was a perfect day with my athletic accomplishment and the opportunity to attend such a classy event that same night!

Nights Out and Days Off

I was sitting at work yesterday and the day was dragging on and on. Now don't get me wrong, I was enjoying my job for the day as school receptionist. Being school receptionist meant I wasn't in a class room for 4 and half hours with 25+ students at a time. But very little was going on for most of the day, so time was moving slowly. I couldn't wait until the day was over; I was looking forward to a nap. 

At about lunchtime, while I was sneaking looks at my phone, I got an invitation to attend a VCU basketball for that night.  Now while that nap was tempting, I value my social life, which has been lagging lately so I took Jim up on the offer!

Luckily since I am still without car, my sister attends VCU and has class every night. Tip off was scheduled for 7 p.m., which worked out perfectly since Dani has class at 7. She was nice enough to take her favorite big sister to Richmond with her. 

Now I've been to very few basketball games in my life. But it's a little weird when you're at a university's sporting event and you don't go to that university. Now we both wore black and gold to fit in but we knew none of the cheers. Especially the "you suck balls" cheer that the students do every time a player on the visitor team is introduced. Next time, we're making up on our own cheers!

But the VCU fans and the pep band are pretty hardcore. It was a good game; basketball is less squeaky in real life than it is on television. VCU played the Hofstra Pride and VCU won by 12 points. Next time I'm going to have to bet money on the game and learn some more about basketball so I can be a little more into the game.

Needless to say, I got home pretty late. I had been trying to suppress the cold I could feel coming on all day. On Tuesday morning I got a lovely surprise! Other than my cold that is. I got a day off! I was planning on telling the substitute caller that I was taking the day off if she called, but she didn't! I got to sleep in until 10:30. (Don't call me lazy, keep in mind I'm a little sick!)

When I went to take the dog out this morning, I wasn't expecting the spring-like weather! It worked out well for some self photography using my camera remote!

This is how I felt about my day off and today's weather! I'm a regular cheerleader...now all I need is a big purple hair bow! =]

I'm coming home, I'm coming home...tell the world that I'm coming home

So due to my poorness, I was planning on doing an extremely unbearable thing a couple of weekends ago.  I was going to miss JMU Homecoming for the first time since my freshman year of college. Anyonewho knows me (and some that don't) know that I love JMU and JMU Football almost more than anything in the world.


So Monday, the 26 (of September), my uncle offered to buy me a JMU Homecoming ticket. So we get online on JMUsports.com and low and behold they are all sold out. I saw a couple of overpriced ones on Stubhub and Craig's List, but not being crazy about sitting by myself, I decided that I would simply live JMU Homecoming vicariously through all of my friends.


Fast forward to Wednesday. I'm eating pizza at Giuseppe's after the cross country meet when I get a text from Jim, who asks me if I'll be attending homecoming. I tell him about how I tried to buy a ticket but to no avail. However, Jim had found some homecoming tix and needed some to sit with! I quickly agreed and that was it; I was going to homecoming!


Except I decided to keep it on the down low because I wanted to surprise everyone (a decision that would later come back to kinda bite me in the butt). So Friday after I get off work, I start my trip to Harrisonburg. I talked to Matt Rummel on the way up there and he talked about how sad he was that I wasn't going to be able to make it up to homecoming. In my head, I'm thinking, "Yesssss this is going to work out so well!" 


I get to JMU say about 7:30 and I start texting one of my baby Dukes, Erica, while I am still texting Matt, trying to stealthily figure out where I can park on campus. As I am texting both of them, my phone cuts off. I walk from the baseball lot all the way to Showker, where I plug in my phone that I've been trying to restart for the entire walk over and nothing is working.


Here I am, very close to my baby Dukes' dorm (in the treehouses) and I have no way to get in touch with her.  What am I to do? I turn around and walk back to my car and head to the Verizon store. Which they moved! It totally was not where it was, the last time I went to it. And strange enough, as soon as I walk into Verizon, I run into people from Dinwiddie. They were up there because their son goes to Bridgewater. 


I wait for awhile in Verizon while I am silently freaking out on the inside. You see, no one knows I'm coming to Harrisonburg except Beau and Josh because I was planning on staying at their place. The problem is, I don't have either of their numbers and I don't know what time Beau gets off work. 


Finally a lady comes and asks me what's going on with my phone. She looks at me, frowns, and says, "This is the third time I've seen this problem with this phone in the last two days." Umm yeah, that's exactly what I want to hear.  She takes it into the back to see if she can get it to power on. 


Guess what...it doesn't turn back on. And I'm telling her that I am 3 hours from home, going to a football game the next day and I don't have my ticket or the number of the guy who has my ticket. So she's like, let me set you up with a sales associate if you want to get a new phone tonight. And I am trying not to cry. 


So the sales guy comes over and I start explaining to him how I need a phone ASAP. He gives me two options: I can use the upgrade on our account (which is my dad's) and pay $130 for the phone I already have (with a $50 mail-in rebate) or pay $99 and file an insurance claim on my phone and get a replacement mailed to where I am staying in Harrisonburg by 11 AM the next day.


Obviously the smarter decision of the two is to file the insurance claim, so after talking to my mom, my dad, and Jeremy (he was the only person in Harrisonburg whose number I had memorized), I called the insurance people. The first time I called (yes, I said first time), the person would not let me continue because I didn't know the billing address on our account  (um, my dad lives in a different state than I do so no, I do not have his address memorized). 


So I had to call back with my dad's address and then the insurance lady informed me that A) my phone was still under warranty because it had been less than a year since I got it and B) that there was no way that they could have mailed me a phone by the next day (the Verizon guy said she was lying).


Here I am, stuck again. The Verizon guy (his name was Mike by the way) goes into the back and comes back out with a phone. He tells me that it is his backup phone and tells me to use it this weekend and then ship it back to him. He tells me to come in the next day to file an extended warranty thing to get a new phone the next week. 


He programs my number into his phone. Then I finally leave the Verizon (btw it was technically already closed when I left). Luckily, when I turned this phone on, Josh had texted me so I had his number. Jeremy texted me Beau's number so I was semi-connected again.


Then by pure coincidence I had an address book in my car that I bought for Stephanie because she is always losing her phone and losing all her numbers (is this not ironic or what?). Well since Jim is her brother, I had his number. So I called him and filled him in on the situation. I told him that he had jinxed me because I had made fun of him hours earlier about not having a smart phone and here I was in the same boat. 


I finally get dinner, get to Beau's, and then Jessica, Josh, Beau, and I head downtown to meet Jeremy for a little while. The next morning, I get up and get all JMU-ed out and head to the store to do some last minute Homecoming shopping. All the while I am texting Patti (her number was in Steph's address book as well - it's convenient when all your friends are related), telling her that I am going to have to live vicariously through you. She was sad because Aunt Patti had mentioned that she thought I was coming to Homecoming. 


Then I stalked out P-Lot waiting for Patti and her family to arrive, which I thought they were never going to! But then they finally did and I kinda jumped out and surprised them. Kinda. Patti will tell you that she thought something was up. 

Patti and I
Photo credit: Ben

And then began the task of trying to see everyone (which is difficult when you have no one's phone numbers). I was really happy though because Natasha, Tony, and Matt Rummel were truly surprised to see me and that made my day!! 
 

                                               

                                                               Tony and I




Matt and I



Matt, me, and Natasha



3/4 of 13 I-know-you-want-to-be-us

 After a couple of hours of tailgating, we headed to the stadium, which was very exciting since neither Jim nor I had been to a game in the new stadium! Our seats were way up there but they were awesome. We could see the entire field and the scoreboard. It was like having that view you get to see when you watch NFL on tv! 

Jim and I ready to watch JMU beat the Richmond Spiders!

The game was awesome! JMU won, of course! It started raining about halfway through the 3rd quarter so Jim and I snuck a couple of rows up so we could be under the awning and stay mostly dry. We stayed for the post game show and went down to the field with the MRDs afterwards to watch the trumpets do their thing.

Our view of the game.

View of where Jim and I sat from the student section.
 MRDs taking the field for postgame show.

The Jumbo Jumbotron!

Then we headed back to the car, in the rain. Needless to say, we were pretty cold and wet at this point. We grabbed dinner at Sheetz and headed to Matt Rummel's to hang out with him, Natasha, and Tony for a bit. Then we headed to SouthView.

Sunday, I got up and headed to campus where I saw 3 of my baby Dukes (Erica, Josh, and Tricia). I had D-Hall breakfast! Yum! Then I went to Jeremy's where I watched some football and had some taco salad...which was always the highlight of my football seasons in Harrisonburg. 

Then I went to Richmond to watch some football with Jim. We ended up going to Buffalo Wild Wings (yes, I was really well fed on this particular Sunday), where we couldn't decided what flavors of wings we wanted to try (there were two new flavors) so we got 24 wings between the two of us! Then we hang out for a bit before I finally headed back to Dinwiddie. 

I love a good road trip that ends in Cake...

This past weekend, I traveled north on 95 (from one end of the area code 804 to the other) to spend some time with one of my favorite roommates, Patti (or Cake as I call her), her boyfriend, Ben, and her wonderful family that I adore (because they treat me like I'm one of their own; let's be honest, I am!).

The plan was for me to go to Stephanie's graduation party, which was on Saturday; but since I hadn't seen Patti since October (WHAT?!), we decided to make a weekend of it.

It hadn't really felt like I hadn't seen Cake in so long because I talk to her all the time! But I'm not used to not seeing her!

Long story short, we lived in the same suite sophomore year; she lived in the apartment across from me junior year; and senior year we lived in the same apartment (though Patti graduated a semester before me).

When I got to her house after Dylan's graduation, I had every intention of going to bed immediately. Instead, I was up for another two hours catching up with Ben and Patti and looking up random stuff on UrbanDictionary, a very dangerous thing to do.

Saturday, we woke up and all got ready. Then we watched movies, looked through pictures, and played arts and crafts! Then halfway through the day, we headed off to Aunt Hilary and Uncle Jim's for Steph's party.

When I met Patti sophomore year, I had the pleasure of meeting Patti's family! And I absolutely love them! They are always so nice to me; it's always a great time seeing them! I hadn't seen a lot of them for awhile so it was good to catch up. And I got to meet Aunt Hilary, Uncle Jim, Meghan, Jake, and Aidan for the first time.

We ate, played games, and spent time together celebrating Stephanie's high school graduation and her acceptance to Appalachian State (which was very hard for me...but the JMU vs App State thing is definitely another story)!



Stephanie, our new high school graduate and her brother, Jim!



Jim & I



(Patti's dad has the good picture of Stephanie and I).


On Sunday, we woke up and ate breakfast, got ready, and took pictures on Patti's dock! Then Patti took Ben and I out on the boat for awhile. And then I sadly said goodbye and raced home for my little sister's baccalaureate ceremony.

Patti & I!

Patti, Ben and I on Lake Caroline.