What Victory Feels Like

I really appreciate Dilbert, but I super-appreciate Scott Adams when he comes up with stuff like this:

Race Report - Village Runner 4th of July 5K

This is the second year I ran Village Runner's 4th of July 5K, and I had a blast this year!

I arrived super early (6:30 AM) to get a parking spot. Last year I think I arrived around 7:00 or 7:30 and had to drive a mile or so away for parking. Not bad, but not ideal either.

The pre-race festivities didn't seem as big as last year's, but that's OK.

I had a lot of trouble breaking away from the pack. I decided I was going to try my best and see if I could break my PR that I set in April (33:30). When I started off races walking, I tried to get into the back of the pack! Why were all these walkers starting up front? Arg!

The sole hill is a mean one. It tricks you into thinking that you're doing good, but you're only halfway up.

I hope I ran consistent or negative splits this time, so yay for me! My first mile was something like 12 or so minutes, and my time at the 2nd mile was 22-something. The guy before the finish line yelled 32:40 before I ran past him, and I just pushed it because I really wanted to beat my time. Because it took me a couple minutes to get across the line, I think I got a 31:00 or 32:00. If I got a 30-something that would just be pure icing for me.

They always have great post-race recovery treats at this race. I grabbed an apple and a banana with peanut butter. Yummy breakfast!

I hope next year they start doing corrals, because it's just frustrating trying to move past all the walkers at the beginning.

Update: My time was 31:25.

Dudes. . . .

Here's a head's up for you. If you want to take a girl out, do not do these things (especially in combination):

1 - Ask a girl out the night-of. She's busy. She has plans. She's executing those plans. Even if she's not, she should be. So don't fuck it up with your head-game of "I'd like to take you out tonight and my time-management skills suck so badly I can't plan this three days in advance."

2 - Don't give her a hard time for not calling you. That's your job. Remember? She's out living Life.

3 - Don't tell her that because you couldn't get a hold of her that you:

• are going out to do something she's said to you multiple times that she'd like to do (in my case, club dancing)
• reject her when she asks if she can come along
• then tell her you made plans with other people

To do any one of these things, but especially all of these things in this order, surely puts you into the realm of douchbaggery. Most especially if you flaked on a doing something with her earlier in the week.

Yes, I'm pissed. But I'm more pissed I can't find my visor for my 5K in the morning. :)

Fun With Speed Dating

I decided to jump back into dating with trying out speed dating. The premise is that you pay a company some money (I've seen some as expensive as $50, but the one I went to was $36) and you go to a restaurant or club. Everyone is given a card and a number. Typically the girls will sit at the tables or booths and the guys will rotate around every 5 or so minutes. At the end of the event you write down the names of people you would like to see again, and if they want to see you then the organizer of the event will e-mail you later with their contact info.

I've been to a couple of these events and they're really fun. I don't believe I'll actually meet someone there - the point for me is to meet some people, learn a little bit about human behavior, have ridiculous amounts of fun, and go home without having to worry about if any of those dudes will call later.

The second event I went to was a lot more successful for me than the first. I think this was primarily because it was a combined event of older and younger people, and I just happened to be the youngest woman. Dirty old men! ;)

Anyway, I think I already have one date for next week lined up and several more tentatively planned within the next two weeks, so I don't think I'll need to go speed dating for a while. I'm trying to exercise this theory of dating two or three men at the same time to avoid getting to attached to any one particular dude. So hopefully my theory works in practice. I can't even claim that this theory is my own! I think I've read about it from several different authors. (OK, I've definitely heard of this theory from more than just one author, but Diana Kirschner is the only one who comes to mind right now)

Some of the people I've met at these seem all right, some of them I can tell right off that they are not right for me, and some of them are pretty interesting! (At least for those first five minutes)

If you're in L.A., single, and want to try something fun, I recommend SpeedLA Dating. It's a British import, the owner and hostesses I've met all seem very nice, ladies get a free makeup application, and they serve treats! They have events all over Los Angeles (the two I went to were in Hollywood, but they occasionally have events in Manhattan Beach).

Michael Jackson is Dead

LA Times Article

I think this comes as a shock to everyone.

I'm not a fan of Michael Jackson, but I think Los Angeles has always had a love affair for the star. When I moved here three years ago, you could still listen to his 20-year-old songs on the radio next to the top-ten of the week. Even now I'll hear "Billie Jean" or "Beat It" on the radio every now and then.

I Am Woman! Hear Me Roar!

I kill big spiders on my own. This is a major accomplishment. I am the queen of my domain.

Movie Review - Star Trek (revised)

Star Trek in IMAX with a couple drinks is so much better.

There. I said it.

The Happiest Girl To Ever Be Dumped

I highly recommend not moving twice in less than six weeks. It wrecks havoc on your stress levels. I also highly recommend not having another major life stressor happen in between moves that are six weeks apart. But I've done both of those things, and the Superwoman high I've been feeling throughout the last two weeks has skyrocketed. I can conquer anything Life throws at me. Life, dish it out!

I found a place close to work that is economically priced and I think I will be happy living there. I have returned to South Bay, and I think my quality of life will improve dramatically. One of my dear friends from before I left California came over and helped me unpack some of my things on Thursday.

"I've never seen a girl so happy to be dumped," she told me after dinner.

Is that so? Maybe. I personally theorize that I've reached my limit of stressful activities for the year, and just don't care anymore. If anyone or anything wants to weigh me down, I just don't need that person or thing in my life right now.

I only have vague ideas of where certain items are, and for someone who tries to be fairly organized, this bothers me greatly. Ditto for having a truly chaotic house.

But I am free. I don't have to check with anyone on plans I make for myself, I don't have to compromise on what time would be good to go to sleep or wake up, I can eat whatever I want without having to consult with someone else. . . .

My list extends to at least the other side of the Pacific.

I've never been happier to be single. Usually I feel like I need to be in a relationship, and that idea just doesn't feel palatable to me anymore. Dates are nice, but who needs a suffocating relationship when you can be free, and easily find attention from members of the opposite sex?

Movie Review - Moon

I've been craving some real, hard-core science fiction for a long time. It seems these days sci-fi skews closer to what I would consider fantasy, or is obscured by some action-packed, computer-graphics driven flick with a bad-to-really-bad plot and characters.

I had a lot of hope for Moon, the Duncan Jones-directed Sam Rockwell vehicle. The trailer makes it look a bit like 2001, with an isolated protagonist who keeps company with a supercomputer.

While there are aspects of Moon that I really enjoyed, I was also disappointed with several aspects of the film. The film doesn't confront the consequences of a major corporation being ethically corrupt, and the film doesn't give the audience much context on what might be considered acceptable in this futuristic society. What could have been a very interesting discussion of corporate ethics was left unexplored.

I felt the best parts of the film were when both the "past" Sam and the "present" Sam could be contrasted with each other, and I wished that the film explored this more. The reveal of how these multiple instances of characters come-to-be was a bit disappointing - I expected something truly fantastic like a time travel paradox or something like that.

The film does tell an interesting story and it is enjoyable overall. Sam Rockwell is compelling but not quite charismatic enough to pull off the role. By the end of the film you feel it doesn't matter if you care about all the Sam characters or not.

Kevin Spacey's voice fills in the role of Gerty, the HAL 9000 counterpart in this film. The emoticons are charming and provide comedic release.

If you are craving "real" science fiction, I would say to give this film a viewing, but don't expect to come away from the film having learned anything.

Lavender

When I was a child and my family lived in California, my bedroom was a bright yellow color. I don't know how old I was, but once my parents wanted to repaint my bedroom and let me pick out the color. It was a soft shade of lavender, the hue barely discernable. I remember this because the people who bought the house from my parents commented on it. They had to repaint the room because they had a son and I guess he didn't care for lavender too much.

After I learned my family was going to move to Utah, I was very excited. I had this fantasy that Utah was like the old westerns in the movies, and that people were generally nice and say things like "Howdy." Let's say this was not the first fantasy I had that disappointed me.

We lived far enough away from my elementary school that I needed to ride a bus. The bus would pick up a bunch of kids from Kanarraville, then me, then a bunch of other kids, and then finally take us all to school. That particular route served two elementary schools, and the kids from my school would get dropped off before the kids from the other school. In the afternoon it was reversed, and the kids from my school were picked up before the kids from the other school, and all the kids were dropped off in reverse order along the route. The afternoon bus driver was considered cranky by all the other kids, but I got along with him and at the end of the year he gave me a pin with a school bus on it that had flashing red LED lights. He said he gave it to me because I was the best kid on the route.

I was really excited to ride a school bus. When I lived in California my family's home was close enough I could walk to school. When you are young you read stories like "The Magic School Bus" and your imagination really runs wild. In California school buses were for field trips and other fun adventures, not for the daily trek to school and back.

My dad was nervous about dropping me off at the bus stop, because it was close to the interstate on-ramp and he didn't want some stranger to kidnap me. I know Dad tried to petition to have the stop moved but I guess our family didn't have enough influence in the area. So he would take me to the bus stop and I would wait in the car until the bus came. Then he would go to work. We would make up games to pass the time like how many ground squirrels we could spot, and listen to talk radio.

I'm not sure when exactly it started, and I'm not even sure of what was said anymore. There was a girl who wore a lavender jacket and lived in Kanarraville. She had long, stringy brown hair and was the leader of the pack of girls she hung out with. I put so much energy into erasing this part of my life that I don't remember her name anymore.

She started to tease me. Not because of anything I said or did, but because my eyes were almond-shaped. I got flak for something I could not change about myself. Not that I ever would; I think my eyes are one of my best physical attributes. I had never been teased so mercilessly for something as inane as that. I could understand not fitting in because of the clothes I wore or the food I ate, but those were things that are easily changed. Who we are, the essence that makes us, can never be altered. We can cover it up with makeup or surgery, or hide it with false personas, but it cannot be revised.

I don't remember if I stood up for myself, or if I just watched her and fumed. I know she had a lot of fun, because she would tease me every day. I hated taking the bus to school and would dread the ride if she was on the bus that day. I remember going home and crying to my dad about it. Dad suggested I sit in the seat behind the bus driver, so if she was teasing me the bus driver could see and maybe do something about it. If he ever said anything to her, I never knew.

Nobody wanted to sit in the seat behind the bus driver, because it was reserved for bad kids. Also probably because they couldn't get away with whatever kids get away with on the bus. I didn't really want to sit there because I would get even more ostracized than I was. But for the most part it was a successful strategy, unless someone had already ticked off the bus driver and the first few seats behind him were taken up by unruly children. Once he asked me to move so that he could watch someone less civil than myself. In those cases I was left to fend for myself again.

One winter day I brought gloves with me on the way to school, but after I stepped off the bus I remembered I left them in my seat. So I got back on the bus, but couldn't find them where I left them. The girl in the lavender jacket was sitting a couple seats behind, and I knew she had taken my gloves. I asked her to return them, but she smiled and said that she didn't have them. Exasperated, I turned to get back off the bus again, and after I turned she tossed the gloves into the seat where I had sat in.

I remember picking up the gloves, and in my accumulated frustration and rage ran back to her and punched her in the shoulder. The bus driver didn't like that too much but it's not like I pummelled her face in or anything. I remember he got out of his seat and said something but when I stopped he let it go. I wonder now how much he knew.

For the longest time I detested any shade of purple. Much later I learned that some shades of purple complement olive skin tones and hazel eyes.

I've been slowly learning to like lavender again.