Ok, let me clear one thing up. The picture below is of Viggo when he was alive. He’s not dead in that picture. Do you people seriously think I would post a picture of a dead fish? Sick!
So the weekend was nice. Friday night was dinner and Laser Tag for Gavin’s birthday. Gavin was the best at the game, but I was second. Woo! It was really hot in there though, and after only two games, I felt like I’d really had a workout for the night. Saturday morning, Gavin, Jason, Debbie and I headed over to Sugarland for the Bayou Bash relay race. Four team members each run 2.81 miles. It was a pretty frustrating morning; it was raining and the race coordinators were very unaccommodating. Turns out that we were supposed to have picked up our packets on Friday, but we didn’t know that. We had tried to find out by checking the race webpage (which said no race day registration, but didn’t say no race day packet pickup) and by calling the phone number listed there (but no one answered the phone). Since the packet pickup location was almost an hour’s drive away, we decided that it would be ok to wait until Saturday morning before the race.
Mistake! People from the running club that organized the race repeatedly berated me for not having picked up our packets and numbers on Friday. The first woman gave me a blank look. The second woman said she didn’t know where our numbers were. The third woman told me I was supposed to have picked them up yesterday (ok, fine, but that doesn’t help me NOW does it?). Finally I found a helpful man who had seen our numbers and knew right where they were–in a box in the back of the SUV where the second woman had been standing when she told me she didn’t know where they were! Ugh. At this point we had our numbers at least, so we could run. We figured we’d ask about our t-shirts afterward.
The race went really well, despite the rain. Jason ran well without any foot problems in about 22 minutes, I ran well (right at about 26 minutes) even though I apparently went 0.1-0.2 miles too far (the turnaround wasn’t clearly marked, at least in my opinion), Gavin ran fast as usual (under 20 minutes), and Debbie did the run in under half an hour–this with both knees yelling at her from knee braces! Go Debbie! Our team finished in 1:36:04.
Afterwards, I made two more attempts to get our t-shirts, which we wanted because we had paid for them, but also because it was going to be really nice to have a dry t-shirt to change into! One man was very rude to me, saying that “well if you didn’t pick up your packet yesterday, I’m sorry, but I think you’re SOL…” but I finally got four t-shirts. Not wanting to push our luck, we immediately left.
Now that I’ve planned my own race, I feel like I have a little leeway to complain about bad organization on the part of others. Well, not entirely, but I just don’t understand how not having picked up our packets on Friday was as enormous a problem as they made it out to be. Totally unnecessary for them to be so rude and unhelpful to me.
Anyway. That’s the end of my mini-rant. Saturday afternoon I test drove both the Jeep Liberty and the Nissan Xterra. I’d also planned on trying out the Saturn Vue, but ran out of time, so I’m gonna go check that one out tonight. I’m getting closer to a decision, though I actually liked the Liberty more than I had expected to. It was smoother than I’d thought it would be, being a Jeep and all. I don’t know if I can get over the fact that it looks squished though. I know that’s not a good reason to not buy a certain vehicle, but as Jason said, I was something I’m going to be happy driving for 5, 6, 7… years. So. I am leaning towards the Xterra. But at the same time, I’m starting to have major anxiety over buying a car. It’s such a big purchase! What if I buy one and then something breaks! Or after 4 years I start having lots of problems! As I was telling Jason yesterday, I don’t want to know how the car performs brand new…I want to know how it’s going to perform five years from now. Wondering is stressing me out.
My dad is coming down to help, though he called today to say he’s not coming until Wednesday (he had been planning to come tomorrow). I really want him to drive the Xterra and tell me his opinion. If he likes it, I think I’ll be sold.
Saturday night we drove to the other freaking side of Houston to watch Nick perform in his company’s spring ballet. It was better than advertised, and I enjoyed it a lot more than the Nutcracker that we saw at Christmas. Afterward, we all went out to dinner. His dad paid for the entire thing! His dad is very cool.
Yesterday Jason, Gavin, Jen and I made the trek up to REI to take advantage of the last day of their spring sale. I got $60 back on the tent I bought at the end of March, and turned right around to use that money to buy hiking boots. The longer I stay in REI, the more money I spend! My hiking boots are awesome though. They were comfortable the minute I put them on, and my feet hardly move at all in them. I wore them last night as I vacuumed and cleaned the bathroom. You know, to start breaking them in.
Soccer was canceled last night, so I had dinner with Debbie, Jason and Chris and then came home to watch the Braves while I cleaned my apartment. It was a good pitcher’s duel until J.D. Drew cleared the bases with a triple, and came home on an error. Bit of a weird play, actually, I don’t think I’d ever seen that before. At first I thought he had gotten an inside-the-park home run.