I must remember that I don’t like fish or seafood cakes of any kind. I got codcakes last night at a restaurant.  I managed to choke down most of it, but was pretty disgusted.  They were too heavy and greasy and nasty.  I hate eating food that I don’t like because there is so much food that I DO like that it seems like a big waste. But I can’t throw food away–it isn’t right.  As a result, I had a bellyache hours and hours later.  Simple food is so much better in every way–tonight tofu!  Or burgers!  Or Tofu and burgers!

I have been obsessively checking the NY T1mes website to see if HRC has pulled out of the race.  She hasn’t. I told my boss and she laughed at me.  I can’t help myself–hope springs eternal. 

It’s drizzling now and I hope that it lasts until this evening so I can run in the rain. I like that. I had a dream that my 10 mile race inclused some obstacle course events.  I was distrought.  Who would do that to a perfectly good 10 mile race? 

After this most discombobulated entry, I leave to do work.  Bye.

Yesterday did turn out to be a fine day after my crazy nightmare of the night before. And I had a decent night of sleep last night, which leaves me feeling more like a human and less like a headache machine.

My mind is turning to the Mother’s Day 10 mile race on Sunday.  I don’t think that I can get a 10 mile PR in this race and I feel OK about that–I did very well last year.  I am very excited that I’m not running today–I ran the race on Saturday, did a “recovery run” of four miles on Sunday, went out for a run/walk with H on Monday and did my usual Tuesday run yesterday.  I am excited to have a badly needed day of rest.

I have taken to riding the same subway train at the same time most days. I like one conductor.  He’s the guy who, last week had a passenger knock on the door to his space to let him know that a big roach was terrorizing her and her friends.  He smiled and said, “I can’t help you with that…for that you need to call the cops.” Love it.

And for you photographers out there…is it ethical to take candids on the subway or on the city streets without getting permission from/informing your subjects?  My friend witnessed an argument between a photographer and an onlooker about this.  I just hope that people with cameras who take candids know how to run.

Here are my few words before I head off into my annual physical and then to work.

Yesterday was a lovely day off, featuring pedicures, brunch, sandals and seitan.  We went to Angel!ca with H’s sister to eat vegan. I truly love seitan.  As often happens after a long race, my weight is way up.  Like up the highest it’s been in 4 years.  I have to hope that it goes back down, but I’m not putting any money on that.   That  vegan food is fattening!

I’m a little thrown off this morning, since a couple of hours ago I woke up from a dream in which my mother had just died and I was having to plan her funeral. It was a weird dream in that the custom for my family/religious group in that situation would be to have it happen as soon as possible.  But in the dream it was a big debate.  Of course, I ended up screaming in the dream.  Great–nice way to start a day.

I enjoyed my race yesterday (see previous post) and I had a good recovery run today.  I am also happy to be taking tomorrow off from work to spent with my friend H, who will arrive in a few hours.

Next weekend I am doing a 10 mile race in Central Park. Last year I did this race in a fairly fast time, and I don’t think I can improve upon it yet.  I don’t do many 10 miles races and I want to keep my expectations realistic.  Something that made me happy yesterday was that while I was happy to be finished with the 13.1 miles, I could have done another couple of miles if necessary.  In the past 2 years I’ve done 15 races of 13 miles or more so the distances are not usually the problem.  I would like to do more speed training, but I don’t “qualify” for our local group’s class because they have a prerequisite that you can run a 5K in under 30 minutes–that’s a 9:40/mile pace.  I’m sad to be excluded, but I understand that there’s more glory and money in training the fasties to be faster than in encouraging non-beginners who are slow.  It is expected that you’ll grow out of being very slow and I haven’t.

But I will keep running and trying to improve, especially in the longer distances.  It’s a lot of fun and sometimes the endorphins emerge.  Mine finally made themselves known yesterday and it was fantastic!

Tomorrow is the Br00klyn half.  It should be fun and it won’t be hot, which is a big relief.  I don’t feel ready for 13.1 miles, but it should be fine as long as I take it slow and don’t get competitive with myself.

A co-worker of mine just got engaged.  This prompted my boss to say, “A friend of mine asked me after I got married whether that meant I wasn’t unhappy anymore at all.  I had to tell her it doesn’t work that way at all.”

I said, “Yeah, you said ‘nope I’m still unhappy’ “

She wasn’t amused.  But at least *I* think I’m funny.

I have a three-day weekend coming up, since H will be here on Sunday evening and Monday.  It’ll be great to see her–I haven’t seen her since the summer.  The cat is likely to be freaked out, but She’ll have to manage.  She’s been coddled all week by my neighbor, who’s painting my apartment.  That cat thinks she’s cute…but she isn’t.

Happy Friday.

Oy vey.  Oy vey.  My date was long. 

We met on time, went to a *bucks, and sat down, thanks to a lovely Italian tourist couple who gave up their table for us.  The woman was friendly and beautiful and had a lovely accent and I was stuck with Mr. Blah.  Words came out of him. They flowed and flowed.  I tried to be polite.  After 75 long minutes I tried to excuse myself, but he wasn’t ready to stop talking.  At 90 minutes I said, “It’s time for us to go,” and he followed me to the train, still talking.  At 110 minutes, he said, “This is my subway stop, but I’m going to keep going with you until you switch so “we” can keep talking.”  At 120 minutes, I saw the express train across the platform and ran to catch it, as he followed me off the train letting me know that he wasn’t going to keep going with me…he’d go back uptown.  I did do a little talking, but it was mostly him.  3/4?  5/6?  Important to quantify–maybe with the next date, 100 years from now, I will bring a timer.

At some point I was trying to figure out what he’d do if he tried to follow me home, but decided that I could almost certainly take him in a fight.  After all, he is 5′5″ or 5′6″ and I’m 5′9″.  My co-worker who is 5′2″ came to stand next to me as I was leaving yesterday and said, “Cranky…if he turns out to be my size…you need to slouch.”

I’m so tired and so over it right now.  The sad part is that this guy is almost certainly a more decent guy than “The p0rn guy” from the gossip rag, but I liked the p guy better.  All this earnest talking and “imparting” as last night’s short guy called it.  I want to hurl.  Really.  For the first time in a while I woke up with my fingernails dug so far into my palms that the pain actually woke me up.  That’s how good I felt about the date.  Yahoo!

I am meeting Mr. Wrong tonight. Yesterday a friend from college e-mailed me and said that internet dating in NYC must be like finding a key at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.  I had to laugh.  Why I chose to meet on the east side is beyond me, but I can only hope that I’ll be home at a decent hour.  I have been responding very tersely to his messages and did not contact him at his home # as he suggested.  I believe that one should meet, one should decide, and one should not waste one’s time talking or writing excessively to the people.  If I wanted to write excessively, I would comment on someone’s blog. Maybe I can get a little essay on NPR’s cheesy “in this I believe” segment. 

We did last night’s 3.35 mile run in a 11:40ish pace.  It did not feel easy, especially going uphill at the end, and it made me think that Saturday’s race will be loonng.  I know that I should be happy just crossing the finish line, but I’d like something a little more special.  Like a PR–that would be special. 

While my computer room gets painted, I have no internet access in the evening.  Last night was the first night and I found it difficult.  But I managed.

I am also trying to manage to get used to my new shoes (above).  I have never worn a backless clog before and the advice I received was to hold onto banisters and not to run.  I violated both those rules this morning.  I had to run from one subway car to another as the doors were closing to avoid the homeless woman picking bugs off her sweater.  I couldn’t watch that.  Butr even prior to that, I had been carrying my laundry to the drop-off and couldn’t hold onto any railings in my apartment building.  So right now I am feeling pretty accomplished.  It doesn’t take much!

Our network server at work is corrupted and our internet access is sporadic. It is a productive day in the neighborhood. Ha ha.

No one is happy today. The Hispanic guy at the diner went off on some little immigrant, who didn’t know how to order his food. The little Mexican guy seemed to have suggested that he was trying to order in English, which he doesn’t speak, because he thought maybe the worker didn’t really speak Spanish. The suggestion that his Spanish might not be up to par prompted the worker to go into a diatribe in Spanish that went something like this,  “If you want to order in Spanish you come in and order in Spanish. I can’t guess by looking at you whether you speak English. Nothing annoys me more than having to guess. And I speak Spanish 100%. Go ahead…place your order in Spanish.  What do you want?  [silence]  I’m waiting for you, go ahead tell me your order in Spanish and I’ll put it in for you…what are you…Puerto Rican, Mexican…go ahead tell me what you want.”  There were lots of silent “mother-fuckers” in the tantrum.  Meanwhile, because I’m a bad person, I was working hard not to laugh. I had to turn my back to avoid it.  The object of the tantrum didn’t fight back–he must be VERY new to NY.  Personally, I thought the appropriate response for the object of the tantrum would have been to walk out of the diner.  But he took it.

Meanwhile, I seem to be compensating for this iliacus injury still.  Nothing hurts, but I had a tough time climbing the stairs of the subway until I consciously lifted my left knee higher than was comfortable.  I have a race in five days and I should revise my goal to just crossing the finish line. But I don’t WANT to just cross the finish line.  What’s the point of that. Oh right…I don’t want to re-injure myself.  I’ll try to keep that in mind.