Randomness

I can't begin to say how excited I am for this week.  It SHOULD be the first week in over a month that I haven't gotten on an airplane for some reason.  There's a slight chance I'm going to Philly this afternoon for a couple days, but we have a call this morning and I'm expecting counsel to report that the setting has been continued.

So I figured a post of randomness is in order.

In my effort to do something other than work, when I was in Baton Rouge, I toured the state capitol: 

I need to memorize this chart for Chinese class (along with the accompanying sounds):

I came across this line at work and texted it to my husband.  He said it's totally cringe-worthy.  Any man would read that term and even when preceded by "zero" would still cringe, and possible even physcially recoil a bit:

I'm thinking of trying to do a surprise party for my husband's birthday (while he hasn't read the blog in soooo long, I'm hoping this point buried in one post somehow won't surface in the next 2.5 months). Maybe just having people over for desserts, which I could probably easily make and tell him were for Chinese class or something, and then have my best friend put out while people came over and we were out to dinner.  But the timing is tough.  We'll be in India probably for his birthday, and the weekend before our trip I'll be at the marathon in Portland (and the weekend before that, my folks will be visiting).  Hmmm...

The puzzle is done.  Just so you know, each photo was at least 12 hours apart from the last one.  I got it close, but then the last 50 or so pieces were tough.  All very dark and generally indistinguishable.  And being out of town did not accellerate my progress. 

Somehow I forgot to take a picture of the finished product!

Alone in my hotel room in Philly, I played some game where you tried to guess the name of an 80s song based on the first second.  I sucked at it, but it was still fun to see the videos.  How did we not know he was gay?

I did get to enjoy some of the polar vortex I guess.  It was 65 when I went running in Philly on Friday morning.  That felt cool to me. 

 

While in Philly, I accidentally ran in the hood. Big time. As in bars on the first AND second floor windows of the houses that didn't seem to be abandoned.  Pavement cracked beyond all recognition.  Abandoned vehicles.  Weeds.  The few people I saw awake seemed to either be homeless or up to no good.  By far the scariest run I've done in the US.  And significantly scarier when I realized I hadn't really told anyone where I was going or when I'd be back.  Of course it was fine, it was just very sketchy.  For anyone who knows the area, I ran in North Camden.  I basically went across the Ben Franklin Bridge, and I wanted to go to the right, toward Rutgers, which looked nice, but there were about 6-10 lanes of traffic separating me from that (only the north pedestrian side of the bridge was open).  So instead, I turned to my left.  Up 6th Street to Pine Poynt Park (which was beautiful), and then back down 7th to the bridge.  I concluded that I'd be okay.  Defense counsel knows I run and he was meeting me at my hotel, so if I didn't show up, I decided that he'd most likely confirm I'd checked in to the hotel and then raise the alarms that I was missing eventually.  He'd call my boss, who would call my husband, who would call my cell phone, which I wouldn't answer, and then he'd track my cell phone to the hotel room, hotel staff would go in and find no running shoes but all my other stuff, and then they'd start looking.  And my husband would tell one of my running friends.  And they'd tell my other running buddies.  And then the 6 people I'd talked to about my grand plan of running across the Ben Franklin bridge and crossing a state line during a run for the first time in my life would happen -- and they'd tell the police and then they'd know where to look.  (After discussing, we concluded it was the first run where I'd cross a state line, since there's no real state line in the Marine Corps marathon, since DC isn't a state, and since we concluded that the NYC marathon starts in NY, even though it seems like it could be another state.) 

I had a pretty dessert (white chocolate cheesecake) after a successful settlement conference in Philly on Friday:

My ankle still hurts. It's so bizarre. No pain when running or walking, but when I touch the outside of it, it hurts so much -- I don't spend much time touching the outside of my ankle, but when I'm attempting to do toe stand in yoga and I attempt to place my ankle on my thigh, crazy, shooting pain.

There was a dog the size of a horse in the hotel lobby in Philadelphia:

 

And the cold front is officially gone here.  It was only in the upper 60s yesterday for my "long" run (16 miles, which I guess is borderline legit long), but it was humid.  But the forecast this week appears to be getting back to normal -- lows in the mid to upper 70s, highs around 100.  Makes me want to go home, where I saw these temps this past week on my weather app:

 

 

I am attempting yoga moderation now.  With all the travel lately, I have only been going a few days per week.  But now, with the potential of two or more straight weeks at home, I'm going to attempt Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sun and probably Tuesdays.  That would be 5 days per week, and if I wanted to skip one, it would still be pretty good.  I'm going to attempt to do 3-5 classes per week until the marathon.