A new personal best

It was an amazing adventure. I pushed fate to its limit and came up victorious. This weekend my car, Abigale, was on E. Gassing my car up is among one of those annoying things that I hate doing like cleaning my closet, sweeping my garage and getting the mail. Luckily, J will generally get out and do it if I pull up to a station and he is in the car. Love his genteel. So sometimes I will wait until he is with me to fill up. But last week it didn't happen. It had been on empty with the gas light on for like a day when we decided to go to a movie in WV. I wanted to take Abigale so I could finally gas her up but I under-estimated exactly how low I was. Lower than I had ever seen it. Ever. Even so, I was up to the challenge and couldn't resist the potential feeling of accomplishment when I set a new gas gauge record. We made it to the movie, but since we were late I may or may not have done a little bit of hot-rodding on the way over and leaving the theater we were lower than I had ever even imagined it could go. I was scared that I had flown too close to the sun. But there was a Costco station across the way, and J reassured me that if we run out of gas he could push it to the station. Well when we got over there it was closed. Crap. We realize that there wasn't a gas station, that we knew of, for about two miles. It was raining and it was cold, which upped the suck factor should we run out. I'll spare you the dramatics and my theatrical inner monologue that played in my head, which may or may not have included the line "playing a dangerous game." But we did end up making it to another station with the needle the lowest it has ever been and less than a 1/5 of a gallon to spare. I can drink a fifth of a gallon of propel in one minute. It was a new personal best and I think I even gave Kramer a run for his money. But don't worry Dad, I won't be doing that again anytime soon, unless someone one-ups me.

Round 1

When I was in the 6th grade I had a P.E. teacher tell me I was exceptionally strong and should look into joining the junior high track team. I never considered myself to have any sort of athletic prowess outside the swimming pool and maybe the little league field. Plus the idea of track and field scared me more than other sports because that meant running. It was practically built in the title. For a chubby slow kid, individual competitive sports were not something that I saw myself doing. But I figured it can't hurt to try it out once, a sentiment that for some reason I haven't been able to shake since then. I don't specifically remember my first day, rather my first years on the track team. A lot of running, side aches, trying not to throw up, maniacal drills, dreading the sound of a whistle and coming in laste EVERY time. What kept me going was, after the sometimes humiliating hours of conditioning, I would get in the shot-put or discus ring, where I got the dose of reassurance that I belonged there.

Now take that scenario and subtract the dose of reassurance and that is where I found myself this week, trading in the throwers ring for the boxing ring. No need to re-read. I did say boxing. Before you have a panic attack, mom, let me first say that it is all non-combative. I am just training, learning, and sometimes wanting to die. I am the only one that can't do at least one pull-up, one of only three girls there, I come in last in the sprint drills and my left knuckles are sore only because I can't get my left hook right. I know I don't innately belong there, and to be honest probably would not have gone back if it wasn't for intense positivity and encouragement from from trainers and other people in my class. Not that I needed the encouragement from them, I just needed to know that they weren't annoyed I was there. Thanks guys. Oh, and the pink boxing gloves were kind of a perk too.

If you are looking for why, I don't really have an answer for you. I have a cool friend that is a real boxer at another gym and that fact put the notion in my head. It pushes me to my outer limits physically, and for some reason I dig that (probably because of Jr. High). It's kick A exercise. And it's something I've never tried and know nothing about, just like rugby, SCUBA, solo international travel, and quite a few other good things in my life at one time were. So we'll see how long I can survive it. I am pretty much sore all over my body and question whether I will be able to walk down the stairs to go home tonight. But as long as they'll have me I plan to return. For a while anyway. I'll keep you posted.

Behold....

Oh how I love photoshop. Thanks DJ

The Next 25 of.......

Ok. It's definitely been a long time coming but here is the third leg of the 100 things I love marathon. My goal is to stay on it daily and finish by May.

51. Nyquil
52. Kettlecorn from the fair
53. My new iPad, yet to be named
54. That boy on the bus that gave up his seat for a girl
55. The voice of Doraleen Martha Levao. It's like warm honey butter on a fresh scone after you come in from shoveling the driveway after a blizzard.
56. A Suze Orman verbal spanking.... and I am kind of obsessed with one day getting her approval.
57. Bud Light Real Men of Genius ads. Always hilarious, they've never let me down.
58. Zupas. I fell in love with soup all over again.
59. Pomegranates - especially in my oatmeal
60. My baby bro - the funniest guy in the world
61. Junior Malili
62. My 64 inch strand of freshwater pearls I got from J
63. My Apply magic trackpad. One you go track, you'll never go back
64. Laughing Cow cheese
65. Tissues with aloe and lotion in them
66. My roommate/child/karaoke goddess 2Fresh. Her gang signs, her poses, her healing touch, her dance moves, her hashbrowns. I love it all..
67. My black, manly grenade looking iPhone cover that has saved my iphone COUNTLESS times (this morning I dropped it on concrete stairs and it still works like a charm)
68. Valentines Day. Ok I know that sounds lame because, really if you were to ask someone what the ratio of good V-day's are to their bad/annoying ones, the latter would win out. But sue me. For the first time I got surprises, flowers, chocolates and jewelry all on one day. It kicked A. So ya, I stand by number 68.
69. Crossing things off To Do lists.
70. Kourtney Kardashian. Judge me, but I think she is funny and pretty.
71. The Allstate Mayhem guy. Funny and oddly hot.
72. David Sedaris Books. HILARIOUS
73. Cheeseballs....... to my everlasting shame.
74. Receiving packages in the mail. At one time my roommate and I had a competition to see who could have the biggest package delivered. She won with her overpackaged thigh high boots.
75. Getting a full 8 hours of sleep and waking up rested and refreshed without an alarm

See here for extended list

Eh..... I've had better

We were on a streak of some fairly good movies - The Fighter, The Kings Speech, and Just Go With It. But it was bound to end and was finally declared dead about 11:55 pm tonight.

Battle: Los Angeles. The name itself sounds more like a video game than a movie. But the movie had just about as deep a plot as your average video game. More importantly the story line of BLA has been done. Multiple times. Basically if you take the movie Independence Day back in '96 and give it a heavy sedative, you'll get Battle: Los Angeles. Really the only difference is in plot and character development. ID had it. BLA didn't. At all. In ID you cared when characters were offed, BLA you barely remembered who was who when they were killed, and even if you did you were ok with it because there were really no likable characters in the lot. ID had some moments where you'd get chills and were on the edge of your seat, BLA had moments when my fiance would start snoring. Moreover BLA had moments and scenes that ended up having no relevance to the movie whatsoever, and at the end, albiet exhausted and borderline bored, I was surprised and disappointed to see the credits rolling because there were SO MANY loose ends and unanswered questions.

My guess at one point there was a conversation that went like this:
Producer 1: We have been shooting for three months, are way behind and so far only basically have the combat scenes, that are awesome and expensive.
Producer 2: Well we are already over budget so find a way to make it work with what we have.
Producer 1: Ok

Aaron Eckhart gets an A for an awesome performance, being quasi-hot, and delivering the only compelling lines the entire movie.
Special effects and things that go boom get an A as well.
Battle/Combat scenes get a B+ because they were really good but hard to tell what was going on.
Story line: D -
Character Development: D
Plot Development D-

All in all I give it a C-




This has been this week's Reviews by Jacelle by Jacelle

It's a girl!!!!!

Welcome to the blog world little one!!

Ahem....

Really weather dudes? I mean, I get that you don't always know exactly what the weather is going to be, but you can know what it is doing at the present moment. Can you at least get that right? You're killing me this week.