Life o' the Party

Thursday, Jan. 13
Runnin' in the cold with Lola this a.m., our typical 3 mile run 'round the lake.

Spinning class in the p.m. The woman I know from agility is there again. She's still trashed from the trial last weekend as am I. I'm glad it's not just me. Lots of hill climbing in this workout which is just what I need.

Friday, Jan. 14
Only 2 miles running with Lola this a.m. I'm so tired I could have skipped it altogether but Lola needs her run or I'll be peeling Border Collie off the ceiling of my office the rest of the day.

I've signed up for a weight training class for endurance athletes that starts tonight but it turns out only 4 people signed up so they have to cancel it. At first I agree to switch to the same teacher's ski conditioning class since it sounds like it might help me with the agility. He gives us a short class that night which I have to cut even shorter since I have to be in downtown Boulder for my company's holiday dinner. Yes, they traditionally do it after the holidays since so many people leave town & have other plans before the holidays. We're a bunch of backwards engineers, what can I say. It turns out the teacher and his exercises are pretty lame anyway so I'm not too heartbroken to leave after 20 min's. I decide I'll just get my money back and try to work something else out for strength training.

The company party is at the Med in Boulder which turns out to be Yuppie Hell Central. I do sort of know this which is why I've never been there but the true horror of the place needs to be experienced firsthand to be appreciated. The place is so snobby they won't seat us until we're all there even though we have reservations. So we have to stand in the packed aisleway creating a traffic jam for the wait staff. The place is so loud & obnoxious you have to yell just to be heard by someone standing right next to you. I'm ready to leave before I even sit down. I go to the bathroom and it's all I can do to keep from busting a gut at the drunk rich women primping at the mirror and bitching about problems most of the world wished they had.

One of my coworker's wives is one of those people who just has to keep a conversation going at all times so she starts grilling everybody about various things trying to find something good to latch onto. Unfortunately she settles in on my poor husband who moved here from Scotland 14 years ago to marry me. She insists on the whole complicated story as to how he ended up here, how we met, etc. This is not an easy tale to explain since we met through writing to each other & trading music. I figure this must sound so childish & weird to most people, who has 'pen pals' in their 20's? But this was how punk rock/underground music got spread around back in the day. I probably had about 20 people throughout the U.S. & Europe I was actively swapping music with at one point. Many of them came to stay with me when they visited Chicago and I stayed with many of them in my travels. It's hard to explain this over the din of the restaurant and I'm sure it still sounds crazy anyway so I try to deflect her off the issue by mentioning that I was engaged to marry someone else at the time I met him. I figure everyone else in the office knows this story by now but I'm woefully mistaken. For some reason my coworkers find this more scandalous than Brad & Jen splitting up and I hear the story being repeated all the way down the long table and exclamations of disbelief directed my way for the next few tortuous minutes. Good thing I never got to the part about how I'd been living with my fiancee for three years when my current husband came to stay with us and how I really only knew him for about 5 weeks before we got married. Or the part about how my fiancee was drummer in a band called Impulse Manslaughter. As it was they were still giving me grief when I came into work on Monday. Geez, you'd think I was Courtney Love or something.

Saturday, Jan. 15
Rest day. I've got a race tomorrow, I'm tired and my legs are killing me after that stupid, lame 20 minute strength workout. Being old really sucks. Despite it being a rest day I still have to take the dogs out and we end up going 3 miles 'round the lake.