Are Than Ow? / Pickup Line

Good times on the home front - Beck had both of the weekend days off and a quarter marathon to run on Sunday, so we took it relatively easy on Saturday - hit up Lola's and dominated the NYT Saturday (!) puzzle over mochas and pastries. (No Saturday morning frisbee por moi because most of the Phoenix disc scene was in L.A. for Lei-Out, a beach tournament I attended last year with the Tuftsmen. I stayed home this year to cheer on Beck in the P.F. Chang's race). We ran by the Phoenix Concention Center (I think) to grab Beck's race paraphernalia and enjoyed the spectacle of the alien master skinny race that had descended on Phoenix for the weekend. I ended up circling the downtown block while Beck ran in to avoid the ridiculous "EVent Parking" charges, and I had a grand time trying to figure out the logic of the one-way streets of downtown Phoenix. Came home to watch a disaster (locally speaking, anyways) of a playoff football game b/w the Cards and the Saints. Speaking of his holiness, I'm pretty sure Warner got sainted at one point during the game:

Yowsers. Fortunately, the debacle was tempered by some ridiculously delicious and, I'm sure, healthy chipotle-velveeta-sausage dip and chips. Mmmmm ... the second game did not fare much better, with some idiocy before the half by the Ravens allowing the Colts to run away with things rather handily. In fact, this play pretty much exemplifies the kind of day the bad boy Ravens had:

Oops. I ran over to the Parlor at some point to grab some carbo-loadage for Beck and a pizza for myself. All in all a groovy day - we went to bed pretty early for the early-to-rse that needed to happen on Sunday morning.

Took Beck to the starting line in downtown Phoenix at about 7:45 AM, hitting a mass of traffic. Something like 30,000 people were participating in the marathon and half-marathon, and I'm pretty sure all of them drove themselves down there. I ran back to the house to take care of the animals, drove to the local Circle K to get Beck some post-race electrolytes, and drove to our pre-determined spot on McDowell Rd., approximately at the 10K mark. Dan & Christina nicely met me down there, though the McD's breakfasts they brought were, I think, a direct taunting of the running masses. We got to enjoy the antics of the surrounding spectators - one group just yelled out things people had on their jerseys or pointed out things about people's clothing ("Yeah! Go Penn State! Yeah person wearing pink socks!") while a dude acroiss the street was offering "Free High Fives" to the racer, complete with a homemade sign and an excessively anthusiastic voice - Dan guessed that this guy was in marketing and not engineering. As a side note, I am not sure what inspires people to watch foot races - it's one thign to cheer on someone you know, but to just stand there and yell at a morass of strangers? I mean, props for supporting them, but there are more exciting things to do with your self. Among other things, the constant motion of a crowded footrace can actually induce some "moving ground" optical illusions, further proving that Descartes was right and we cannot trust our senses. (Ftr, *if* you are going to attend a race with teh sole purpose of telling jokes along the side, please spend the previous evening writing some clever one-liners. The racers may only hear you once along a 13.1 mile course, but I heard your repeated junk for an hour and half! UGH).

It didn't take Beck and hour and a half to do the 10K - she got placed in about the 15th wave of runners and so started at 9:00 instead of 8:30 as scheduled. She ran a solid 1:05 10K, which is awesome. We congratulated her and headed back to the car I had parked around the corner. After a shower and some recovery, we spent some Lux bucks on a well-deserved late breakfast. And conquered the NYT Xwd, nasty Avatar clues notwithstanding.

Caught the end of the sixth of seven bad playoff games so far, this one involving the utter embarassment of the Cowboys. I couldn't take another crappy viewing, so I headed down to a fun game of afternoon pickup instead - got some great running and silly layouts in for the first time in a few days. It's supposed to rain a lot this week, so I'm not sure if we'll get Sprawl in; glad I got a chance to at least stay moderately in shape. Cam ehom eot some delicious Chinese food - not P.F. Chang's, but close enough.

And now I'm taking in my last day before classes kick back in tomorrow. Should be good to get back in the swing; I've got lab and Jenny's course to TA tomorrow, and plenty of my own work to do. Routine will be good. But until then, I'm going to enjoy my MLKJr. Day and the dreaded, dreaded birthday eve eve. Sprawl might be off tonight; hope not, but playing in the cold and rain can be pretty miserable anyways. We need the work, though. We'll see...