I Picked Butler To Win It All! Go Butler! Also, What I Did This Weekend

This weekend was supposed to be boring. This weekend was supposed to be planless. Lots of lazy time, obscene amounts of sleep, a workout or two and then dinner at Bill's parents.

However, not having plans apparently stresses me out. By the time I left work on Friday I realized I'd be crashing by Sunday night. First up was a beer or a few in celebration of the birth of a fellow Icehole. I am apparently old because after three beers I thought my head would fall off. Fortunately it didn't, although I wish it had by the time I woke up the next morning. A mini-hangover. What? I am 33 years old. What 33-year-old has a hangover? Let alone a hangover after three beers? I slept in a bit and made it out of bed by 10:30. Just pathetic enough to be pathetic.

Saturday was officially Philly Spring Clean-Up. Basically you sign up to clean up all the dirty diapers, condoms, false teeth, garbage bags, pizza boxes, bottles of pee,** and other random treasures that sloppy people dump all over the city. We did it renegade style and didn't actually sign up. The top of our street has a giant building abandoned by the city. It used to be a police station but now it sits vacant, collecting shit. The city doesn't clean up around it. Philly is a dirty city (although I love it so). The combination of the two means that the grass around it is filled with more displaced junk than you can shake a stick at.
It's also more displaced junk than you can shake a broom, two rakes, a snow shovel and 17 trash bags at. I'd expected our little project to take about 30 minutes. It took almost four hours. Bill stuck it out ot the end, scooping up every last tasty morsel of garbage. The whole thing was disgusting.

Getting away from the nasty and onto my bike was an upgrade to my day. I did about 17 miles of hill repeats. Semi-boring, but the newly tuned bike was fantastic. Love the new tires. Love the fact that shifting gears no longer sounds like a bucket of screws has been dumped onto the ground. I felt totally fine after the ride and headed out on foot for about 45 minutes at a slow pace. I felt fine the whole time.

I barely had time to scrub off the bike chain grease before some buds came over for a tiny bit of basketball, lots of cookies and 127 Hours. I read Aaron Ralston's book a few years ago and liked it, a lot. Can't say he's someone I would have wanted to be BFFs with before he had to chop off his own arm, but I liked the way he told his story and how he seemed to evolve as a person and an athlete when all was said and done.

The movie was fine although I was surprised that it was nominated for best picture. Aaron's thought process and how he came to realize he had to break his arm all sorts of ways and then freakin' cut it off with a bobo knife wasn't really explored. Instead he got stuck, hallucinated a bit and then hacked off his arm. The end. Eh.

Then, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. After a junky night's sleep I was up at 7 a.m. On a Sunday morning. Crazy. By 8:10 (I was a few minutes late) I'd joined up with Bill, Abby, Val and two other peeps for a morning run in Wissahickon Park. By the time I made it back to my car I'd put about 15 or 16 miles on my legs. Decent for a sunny Sunday morning. Even better is the fact that I feel totally fine today. I took a rest day today and now I feel like a slacker because I feel fine. Oh well. With less than two weeks to go until the longest race I have done in pretty much forever maybe it's better to play it safe?

I hauled down to the ball park after the run. When I say "hauled down" I mean "I sat in traffic for 105 minutes trying to get to the stadium." Gross. But, Phillies time! Bill's dad managed to score four tickets a few rows behind home plate. Bill had to work at REI so I got to go. The day was gorgeous, the Phillies won and I got to spend some quality time with the in-laws discussing the bigger questions in life like why a beer and a double bloody mary cost $23 and why people leave half-way thorough the 5th inning when the sun is shining and the Phillies are winning.

After sitting in traffic for another hour after the game and dinner at Bill's parents I was in bed by 9:30. It's been decades since I was under the covers that early. I am getting old!

That is all.

** I picked up all of these things. Actually I left the bottle of pee because that's just too gross.