Yesterday turned busy — training in the morning, followed by a meeting, followed by a couple hours to finish a few things. Becca, Jen and I all left work at 3:00 to join Karen for a girls trip to the Galleria. We shopped and had Cheesecake Factory and all was right with the world. Karen even managed the unthinkable and found me nice size 11 shoes; unfortunately for her, I have decided to return them. When I put them on this morning to wear them to work and walked down the stairs, my heel kept sliding out of them. That, combined with the fact that they were a bit tight in width to begin with, has made me decide that they aren’t worth $70. Sorry Karen, but the search continues…
Anyway, on to the recap of my busy busy B-U-S-Y weekend. From the time I left work on Friday to the time I came to work yesterday morning, I think I was home for a total of about 25 hours, and that includes three nights of sleep. I felt like I was back in college; I wasn’t doing homework or stressing about classes, but the level of activity and lack of sleep was at the same impossibly high pitch. I was so glad to come to work yesterday just to recover from the constant go-go-go of the weekend. How did I ever survive my last semester of undergrad??
Friday night began with a trip to Mely’s where I had dinner with Becca, Karen and Jo while everyone else sat at a larger table. Karen was apalled at some of our topics of conversation, but when she asked “do you always talk about stuff like this, at typical Becca/Sarah volume, at restaurants” we could only reply that yes, we do. After dinner I went over to Edgar and Betsy’s for the St. Patrick’s Day party they were throwing. I’d only planned to stay for an hour or so (because I had to get up at 7 the next morning), but instead was there for three. The Georgia Tech game on TV and the Dance Dance Revolution activity was too much fun to cut short. They always kick my butt at MarioCart, but it has now been proven that I’m the group champion at DDR!
I got up early Saturday morning to join Karen Thibodeaux at the Tsunami Relief 5K at UHCL. It was my first-ever attempt at shooting running race photos, and it went really well! I learned a lot and was quickly thrust into having to take a lot of photos, and quick. My arm was actually sore the next day from holding up my camera vertically (i.e. weird arm position) for so long; I’ll have to look into getting the battery grip, which lets you shoot portrait while holding the camera normally. I used my 75-300 lens and started out shooting in the basic sports mode, which was ok but not ideal. After talking to Karen I switched to shutter-speed priority and proceeded to shoot about 25 pictures in RAW format, finally realizing my mistake when my camera basically revolted for about 3 minutes in its mad efforts to write the huge files to the flash card. I then switched to JPG, AI servo mode and shot the rest of the race without a problem. I did turn off the image-stabilization feature of my lens, because I felt like it was really slowing it down and at shutter speeds no slower than ~1/1000, I certainly didn’t need it!
From the post-race party, I went straight to my Saturday morning soccer game. We played well and that only made the 5-4 loss more disappointing. It was hot outside! Spring has definitely arrived and my body is not prepared for the heat that my brain knows is coming. Ugh. After soccer I had a lovely Meditteraneo’s lunch with Becca and Karen before coming home and showering and then pretty much immediately heading up to the rodeo, where it turned out that four very intelligent women had a very massive brain fart.
I guess Karen’s exempt because she doesn’t live here, but neither Becca, Cari or I had realized that in addition to starting early on Sundays, the rodeo also started early (4:00 instead of 7:00) on Saturdays. We got there around 5:00, wandered around the livestock show, ate corn on the cob, rode the ferris wheel, and then, at 7:00, headed into the stadium where we found Clint Black already on stage for the post-rodeo concert. What?!?
We all looked at the tickets more closely; sure enough, they said 4:00. How dumb are we?? Anyway, the nice thing was that the concert had literally just begun, according to a souvenir stand guy, so at least we didn’t miss that. And the bright side was that after the concert and dinner at Pei Wei, I was still home by 10:30 to fall into bed before my 6 a.m. wake-up time on Sunday morning.
Up bright and early, I headed over to Seabrook for the Lucky Trails Marathon, Half Marathon, and Marathon Relay. Buzz did the half, and Ron, Gavin, Jess and I did the relay. I took a few photos before my run, did my 6.55 miles in a slow but not too too bad ~1:12, and then took a lot more photos. I stayed until noon and got a bit of sunburn, before I had to leave in order to shower and get ready for the rest of my day. Oh, Buzz and I are shown prominently on Karen’s main page for the Seabrook race on Sunday. 🙂
At 2:30 I went to the local theater to see Jason, Curt, Paul and Michelle in their final performance of “Don’t Drink the Water,” a Woody Allen play. They were all excellent. Michelle was hilarious as a tempermental cook, Paul’s shining moment involved babbling about Orville and Wilbur Wright after getting conked on the head, Curt covered himself in fear with couch cushions as Jason the Communist policeman waved a gun around and later appeared in a straightjacket and boxer shorts.
From the play it was home long enough to eat, then to my regular Sunday night soccer game. We lost 4-0, but it really should have been more like 1-0. Oh well. We played well, the score just doesn’t reflect that. From soccer I raced home to get there by 9:15 for my fantasy baseball draft. After that, I collapsed into bed.
The best news of all, however, is that Karen Thibodeaux really like my race photos and wants me to shoot for her whenever I can! I’m so excited! I feel a lot like I did when I started working for the Technique at Georgia Tech, and realized I was going to get paid for something I would do anyway because I enjoyed it. It’s happening again — I’m going to get paid for doing something I enjoy! Taking pictures! The next race I’ll be doing is the Run for the Rose on April 10.
