Miscellaneous Memoirs

Happy Belated Thanksgiving! My friend Val in the Peace Corps has started referring to the holiday as T-Give? Anyway, I had a great T-Give week/weekend with my family and kept up pretty good with my running. Phil and Pam came to Austin Tuesday night and Wednesday we picked up C-Mose in Waco and drove the horrible I-35 drive to Arlington. We ended up taking a farm road a little outside of Waco, which worked out really well; my cousins(shout out to Brandon and Cassy for getting engaged! Congrats!) were on 35 for nearly 5 hours between Waco and DFW. It was nice to finally arrive at our Cowboy fan filled hotel near the stadium. I ran in the hotel gym when we got there! Surprisingly, I don't really mind running on a treadmill. I get to jam out on the I-pod and its really not so bad. It helps me keep a consistant pace and track of distance and time. Running outside is definitely better though. Thanksgiving was the big Cowboys game. The stadium is what everyone says it is...huge, shiny, new and awesome! It was a fun game to watch too...the Cowboys actually scored points and Miles Austin and Keith Brooking really worked the crowd. Brooking had a blurp on the big screen in the beginning of the game encouraging the 80,000 fans to do whatever it took to be loud, etc and pumped everyone up. Throughout the game the would show him on the screen pointing with; "Remember what I said" and the crowd would go crazy. It was great. Didn't get to run but I also didn't eat as much as most Thanksgivings so I will let that one slide. It was kind of weird not being with family and having the big meal but the game was a really nice treat and I'm glad we went. We spent Friday through Sunday in Bastrop at my cousin Zack's house with his family, my Uncle Ray and Aunt Kathleen and a few other friends and fam. They gave us a re-do T-Give dinner Firday night so we didn't really miss out on anything. They have a cool hill loop in their neighborhood so I ran 5 or 6 loops around that Friday and then on Saturday I went to Jazzercise (yep, Jazzercise) with Clarrissa, Zack's wife. Jazzercise was a good work out and pretty much as ridiculous as you imagined...at one point the instructor said, "Lets get into those 80s jeans, ladies!" We went and saw Joe Ely on Saturday night at the Hyatt Lost Pines resort. Joe Ely and the resort were awesome and everyone really enjoyed it. We had a great weekend and it was really hard to wake up yesterday morning and come to work. Yesterday it was really cold and seemed to get dark really early so I just went to the gym and ran on the treadmill for 50 min. Then I went and met up with my homeboys, Brian and Barrett and we watched the Saints dominate. I really like Drew Brees and I am super excited for the Saints. Romo better not slip up because although I love the Cowboys the Saints are definitely my second favorite team to watch. I had an even harder time getting up today but I will make it. Tonight is team 'Track Practice' where we do drills and run and core exercises. I like it except for its so coolddd and dark outside at the track. So that's the running news...it's almost been a month and I feel really good and committed. It keeps getting easier and it's nice to see that it is possible, even for me, to run a marathon. I sent out fundraising letters a week or so ago and hope to start getting some of those back soon. I'm kind of nervous about fundraising but I'm really proud of this so hopefully it will go well. I also sent out an e-mail to several folks today so hopefully that will get my great friends and family, and family friends, and friends of family and of my parents, and colleagues and co-workers and haha...all those great people inspired to support me and the cause too! If you're one of those great people and you're reading this, I want you to know your support means a lot to me and I am truly appreciative of you all!