Friday: Started the day at a conference on weather and technology. A few interesting talks, including one on how you could use Twitter for weather observations to emphasize the qualitative aspects of weather (e.g., "nice") over the quantitative aspects ("75 F, 58% humidity, mostly sunny). As an experiment, here were the Twitter obs for yesterday's City of Oaks half-marathon which will be described later in this post.
(Folks, that is called building suspense ... a lot of bloggers would not have tried that after one month off ... but I did ... and Imma not gonna lie to you ... I felt a twinge in my neck... but I'm going to proceed ... more carefully from here on)
- @tantina: "terrible"
- @llorenzin: "nasty"
- @ edgemultisport: "rough"
The quantitative description was steady rain, 49 F, 15 mph NE wind. Having spent a solid two hours in the aforementioned weather, Dolberry feels qualified to declare both sets of descriptions as accurate, but can see where some would get value out of the former.
Left the weather/technology conference in time for my favorite part of the whole year ... parent-teacher conferences. One of these years I expect some rogue teacher will surprise us w/ the judgment that APD is someone other than an amazing young man. But this year was not that year.
Saturday: Super nice day down here in NC on Saturday. Dawned dreary and foggy, but the warm southerly winds scoured out the clouds and the chill and yielded a supremely beautiful, Indian summer, Halloween. Got a lot of quality yard work done, then decided around 5:00p it was time to go get a pumpkin. Whoa. Not a great selection of pumpkins two hours before trick-or-treaters arrive. Ended up getting two "pie pumpkins" at Krogers. While pie pumpkins share the same color and basic look as a regular pumpkin, they are actually more similar to bowling balls in all other respects. Here's a list of the tools, I used to carve the alleged "pumpkins".
- Ripsaw
- Hammer
- Phillips-head screwdriver
- Two penny nails
They came out looking good, though spartan. Carving a jack o' lantern is not supposed to be a cardio workout, last I checked. The usual 11 trick-or-treaters came by which was nice.
Sunday: Thankfully it was "turn back your clocks an hour night" because we had to get up at 5:30a to head tbKMD off to the starting line for the City of Oaks half-marathon. APD and Dolberry were proudly on road crew duty. A sharp cold front had gone through only hours before which ushered in the nasterrible conditions. We got to cheer tbKMD just before the 1 mile marker where we picked up her wind breaker she'd kept on waiting for the race to start and the 7 mile marker. She was looking great. After she passed, we waited in the same spot to see her at the 10 mile mark (they turned around and came back the other way on Hillsborough St.). APD asked if he could go sit in the car w/ the heat on to warm up and get out of the cold squally downpour. We were parked at an Applebee's where you could easily see the race from the lot. I obliged but stayed outside to cheer on the other runners (one guy from my softball team was about to come by). A few minutes later, APD came out to say he was warm now but that I'd need to get the keys out of the ignition because he didn't know how. Of course, I couldn't do that because the keys were now locked in the running car. (He was worried about the car's safety so locked it on his way out.) This led to what I would guess was one of the most unusual exhortations in 1/2 marathon history when tbKMD came by a few minutes later.
"Hey Babe. Looking great! Um, try to stay warm at the finish line because we're locked out of the car. Keep it up!"
I had visions of us being stuck there for hours while tbKMD shivered miserably three miles away at the finish line, without warm clothes, a cell phone, or any way of knowing where her ride home was. But we were able to walk to a nearby gas station, call the cops, have them Slim Jim it open, and get to the finish line only about 15 minutes after she finished. And while she was shivering in her tanktop and shorts, she wasn't yet hypothermic, so that was good. (BTW: she finished in under 1:50 which is awesome. 13th out of 200 or so in her age group.) The great thing about being a goofball is that tbKMD always thinks Dolberry is joking when he screws something up royally ... so luckily she didn't spend her last 3 miles worrying about her predicament ... figuring I was just joshing. Both the BP operator and the Raleigh police officer were super nice, so the whole event was just a reassertion at how great people can be.
Hope everyone else's weekend was as equally fantabulous.
3 comments:
Welcome back to the Land of Blog! I was so happy to see you give us another shot at your humor. I like your observation about your humor sometimes backfireing on you but in this case it was a good thing. I commend Alex for his responsible action of locking the car. Kudos to the APD.Ciao
Great to read your updates and see your shamrocks. Looking good!
Great showing by the tbKMD! Congrats on the finish.
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