Smug Marrieds: Blairism

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Earlier this evening: We're sitting in a booth across from each other, eating Chinese food. There is a large red scratch on the side of my nose.

Blair: What happened to your nose?

Dena (self-consciously touching the red mark): I accidentally scratched myself.

Blair: Sugah, you gotta be careful when you're picking your nose. You could hurt yourself. 

Oh. My. God. I spit out a fortune cooking, laughing.

Cheers,

Dena

The Accomplishment List

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Back when I worked as a librarian at Lorillard Tobacco, my supervisor (Hi Larry!) had each of us on his team submit our list of accomplishments at month's end. It wasn't a "big brother is watching" tactic but more of a way for him to keep up-to-date on what we were doing. 

I fell in love with this practice. Hello, it's a list, right? I kept a sheet of paper on my desk and just jotted a quick bullet point every time I completed a task. A lot of them were minor things that never made it into my report to Larry but there was still a huge satisfaction in looking over the list and thinking, "Hell yeah, I got all that done." 

I recently decided to readopt this practice. I think it was Blair coming home one day and innocently asking, "What did you do today?" I knew I'd done something, I just couldn't put my finger on what, exactly.

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Looking For A Few Good Halloween Ideas

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My nephew's revenge for the vegetarian meal I made to counteract all the sugarYikes! The spooky season is upon us and Blair and I have yet to decide what our theme will be this year. We take great pride in being "that house" that always has the cheesy Halloween theme going on. In years past we've done everything from hauling in tons of sand to make a beach for a pirate theme to creating a Frankenstein monster operated by pulleys that sat up when kids approached, scaring them to death. (God, I love this holiday! Only time I can be intentionally mean to kids and no one calls me on it.) Headless horseman. Probably my favorite costume we've ever done.

Given our shared love of the The Walking Dead tv series, I'm leaning toward a zombie theme. But I'm open to suggestion. The only thing we won't do is political (scary as that may be). We like to keep it traditional with monsters and blood, eyeballs and gore. 

Thoughts?

Cheers,

Some years we keep it sweet...Dena

Running, Recovery, and Choosing A Race

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Facebook friends are aware of some recent race waffling on my part. I've been signed up to run the Richmond marathon, Saturday November 10th, since the early part of the year. All training this summer has been centered around prepping for the race. Although recent training has been sporadic with Italy and the Hinson Lake 24-hour run, I think I'm still on course to run a decent marathon. I may not PR, but I still have a good shot at coming in with a Boston Qualifying time. 

The waffling comes from discovering that many friends have signed up to run the Crooked Road 24-hour race. This is the 24-hour run I did last year, my first ultra. The run is the weekend AFTER the Richmond Marathon. I surprised myself with how much I wanted to run this race. I just love the whole feel/friendship of a 24-hour run. It's a completely different experience from a marathon and, in all honesty, I'm a bit burnt out running marathons. 

I briefly considered running both but reconsidered after reading the thinly veiled "What new breed of moron are you?" comments posted by loving and--one hopes--concerned friends. So it comes down to having to chose one race over another. 

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