Bringing the Drama

On Sunday I took advantage of the final day of Gap’s Denim Exchange. It had been months since I had bought any new clothes, so this exchange thing where I could get rid of old jeans was able to draw me out. I also hit up the sale rack while I was there and bought two new pair of pants and a dress shirt. One pair of pants was $6. The other pair was a style called Cadet, and they’re khakis. I looked at the label and they were described just like a pair of jeans I had tried on that I really liked, so I bought them. I put them on this morning to wear to work and found out they were button fly. BUTTON FLY! Who wears button flies anymore? Incidentally, when discussing this at work today, I told my cubicle neighbor Kenny about the $5 shirt I tried on that had two buttoned down breast pockets (that I noticed after I tried it on). That jackass designer probably was the one that thought putting a button fly on khakis was a good idea. Anyway, after a couple of minutes this morning I decided to cut off the tags and keep the pants. I like the feel and the fit and the color. I can deal with a button fly, even though I think it’s completely stupid.

Also this afternoon, I got Lady Gaga stuck in my head. I blame the article on CNN about some new video of her’s and how music videos are changing. I don’t really listen to the radio, so I’m behind the curve when it comes to pop music, much to the chagrin of my sister. I heard Poker Face in the gym a few weeks ago, and it was the first time I had heard a LG song knowing it was her. They have video screens now sometimes showing videos, but always telling you what song is playing. Anyway, I liked it, and then later I was able to ID her as the person who sings that song “blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah blah” or whatever. Today at work those two songs kept getting stuck in my head. I can’t help but like them. I hope that doesn’t lose me any music elitist cred. (I won’t tell you how I now have a couple of Katy Perry songs on my iPod)

After Deke and Bobby went back inside to broadcast on the radio, they announced anyone wanting to enter the Best Dressed or Hairy Legs contest, please come to the right of the stage. I had to fight my way over to the right of the stage. It was still ridiculously packed. I got to the stairs and had the lady see me so she’d pick me out of this throng of guys in dresses.
Once I got on stage, everything seemed a little disorganized. There were about 20 other guys on stage with me, but they didn’t really divide us between the two contests. I pulled my socks down so people would see why I should win. They had people go to the front of the stage because I think they were judging by crowd reaction. One of the ladies in charge looked at me and my legs and told me I’d be a finalist. Guys would go to the front of the stage, then step back. Slowly but surely they were eliminated. They hadn’t asked me to go to the front yet, so I thought the hairy legs competition would be coming up. I was going to stay up there until they asked me to leave.

Finally I got motioned to go to the front to show off my wares. I did, and my friends in the crowd had summoned help from people around them to cheer for me. Unfortunately, I did not make the finals of the Best Dressed, but I was still staying up there until they told me to leave. One of the ladies came up to me and told me she had something inside for me, and to stay up there. They announced the winner of Best Dressed, and the lady came up to me again, and said “follow me inside, we’re going to put you on the radio.” I motioned out to my friends about the greatness that was happening.

The lady told me to grab her hand and stay close. It was still crazy packed. We made our way through the crowd, and since I was with the radio lady, I got past the security guard. They had me wait near the table that was being used for the broadcast. I thought they would eventually give us microphones or something, and ask us a couple of questions.

I was going to thank my dad for the hairy legs. Sadly though, I never got the chance. They took my name, and the name of the guy who won Best Dressed, and said them over the air, so that was cool. My parents heard it. When they said my name, I turned and waved to the people in the restaurant. It was all kinds of awesome. The lady gave me a bag full of stuff from one of the local Saints shops. I wanted the plaque that the other guy got, it even had Hairy Legs on it. I think they only got one plaque though, and it did say Best In Show, so he got that.

We left the restaurant and got a picture at the Andrew Jackson statue to add to my collection. Then we made our way to Fleurty Girl, where I met THE Fleurty Girl. She asked to get a picture with me, and then she tweeted it! She’s like a real celebrity with all the local and national interviews from the cease and desist selling WHO DAT shirts thing. (or so I have learned this week) My sister was able to buy a shirt she’s been wanting. Afterward we went and ate at this BBQ place called Squeal where they had the most amazing corn grits I’ve ever had.

I have told this story over and over since Sunday. I keep thinking how incredible it all was. I was expecting a lot of guys to show up and march and all, but the amount that did blew my mind. The amount of people who turned up to watch was just awesome. The crowd was so happy. Everyone was having such a great time. I’m so glad I did it. I can’t wait till Sunday. WHO DAT!

Remember when I posted last month about the Andrew Jackson statues? I got a picture with the one in NOLA today. Why am I wearing a dress and what is the story behind it? Today was the parade today where guys honored late local sportscaster Buddy D and wore dresses to celebrate the Saints in the Super Bowl. Buddy always said if the Saints ever made it, he would parade through NOLA in a dress. Today my friend Jacob and I took part. Full story and more pictures to come later this week.

Running was able to cheer me up tonight after a frustrating drive home. He is a great friend. On my run tonight I ran behind two HS kids, one on a razor scooter and one on a bike. They were going so slow that I was actually keeping pace with them. They never got farther than like half a block in front of me. I was behind them for about 3/4 of a mile before the scooter kid got tired, then I ran right past them. I was booking it tonight. It felt great. I am ready for Thursday morning and the Turkey Day run. Hopefully I’ll be able to beat last year’s time (48:16), after all, I did run a HALF MARATHON. Five miles should be easy.

I hope they give us better shirts than last year’s. I hate the design on last year’s shirt. It had both of the presidential candidates running with a turkey, but the joke was stale since it came out 3 weeks after the election. At least the running turkey looked happy. I think this year’s shirt is really bright gold with a profile of a turkey on it. At least that’s the design on the race webpage. It can’t be worse than last year’s, it just can’t.

I took this picture a while back and have used it as avatars on message boards. Now though, I can use the picture for a new purpose, because yesterday I read that Jay-Z is coming to NOLA next February. My sister has already enthusiastically said she would come with. Tickets go on sale Saturday. They are a bit expensive for my taste, but have you heard the Unplugged album? It’s one of my favorite albums EVER. Have you been enraptured with Empire State of Mind this week? I heard it for the first time on Monday and it is FANTASTIC! Do you get an extra boost when 99 Problems comes on your iPod when you’re running? I do. Jay-Z’s always kind of been in the quest realm, but I never thought I’d ever have a shot at going to see him. Now though, it’s on.

I am filing this under WATCH THIS HAPPEN. Being obsessed about my blog’s stats, I checked in yesterday afternoon. I was seeing a ton from Facebook starting yesterday at 3 and new ones were popping up every minute or two. I don’t have anything about my blog on Facebook. I clicked on one of the incoming links and found the following:

WHAT? The talking oven found me! I’m a little disappointed that so few ‘liked’ it, I thought the costume came out pretty well. (BTW, if you don’t recognize some of the stuff on that FB page, it’s because I keep mine translated in Pirate)

If the talking oven really wants to help me out, he might try to re-open the Quiznos in Slidell, LA near Target that is now closed. As far as I know, one of his mute relatives is locked inside not being used. A toasty oven is a terrible thing to waste.

On Saturday after the HALF MARATHON, it was time to go back to Chalmette for the big Halloween party. I was anxious to go again after the fantastic time last year, and then my aunt sent me an email in September about it. I was going to dress up this year, and do more than tape black circles to my shirt. I was not going to have work on a Saturday, so I had no excuses. I struggled for a costume idea though. I posted on Twitter about it, and the only response I had was from my friend Adriene whose suggestion was disappointing. I mean, I figured she’d suggest a Twilight character at least…..but she didn’t. So the week of the party, I’m thinking about not dying in the HALF MARATHON and what costume I’m going to wear. I went to Target, Walmart, and a Halloween store, and nothing. I wasn’t wanting to pay $60 to dress up like the BK King, although that would have been cool a couple of years ago. I had a fake mustache, wasn’t there something I could figure out???

Two days before the big day, I noticed I had a new follower on Twitter, and it was the Quiznos toaster oven. You may know him from the commercials where he talks to Scott, the Quiznos employee. Apparently he had started following me when I asked about costume suggestions, so clicking through his page I came upon a page full of suggestions related to Quiznos. A couple of them were dressing up as the oven himself, but I didn’t have a box big enough to pull that off. But behold, dressing as a Torpedo! BRILLIANT! It’s unique, it’s something I can make, and it’s cheap. I could even wear my fake mustache!

On Friday I went to WM and bought a white sheet for $4. FOUR DOLLARS! I’m not sure how many other people were going to be dressing as Torpedos, but I got one of the last white sheets. After running the HALF MARATHON on Saturday, the costume was put together. I had some help drawing the logos on and pinning it, but I thought it came out fine. The result is below:

And yes, that is my HALF MARATHON finishers’ medal I had EARNED earlier in the day that I was wearing no matter what.

One of the highlights was a drunk lady who tried to befriend me by showing me her Star Wars shirt and saying it was vintage because it had Jar Jar on it (she kept saying it was a jabberwocky). That doesn’t mean it’s vintage, that means it sucks. I didn’t tell her that though because she was really excited about it. She was going around by herself and told me she lost the rest of her family, but she was still collecting candy in 3 bags; two for her family, then one she said was for her dog. You know you’ve hit rock bottom when you are trick-or-treating for your dog, or worse….LYING about it.

I had signed up for the Jazz Half Marathon a couple of days before the deadline for registration. I’ve mentioned how it’s been a goal of mine since April, and even in spite of that, I was hesitant to run it. Three guys died running a half marathon in Detroit a few weeks ago, so since then I couldn’t help be worried what would happen to me. I mean, I’d been training for the race, I had run TEN MILES with no problems, surely I could run a HALF MARATHON with no issues. I thought about sending a FB message pretty much saying “if something happens to me, tell my story” (REALLY!), but didn’t. I thought about leaving a note in my garage with instructions for divvying up my stuff, but didn’t. Part of me wanted to believe everything would be fine and I would run the HALF MARATHON and come out alive.

I got dropped off before the race about 6:35 am, and the race was supposed to start at 7 am. It was still kind of dark, and a little cold, which was fine because I got to wear my long sleeve Nike compression shirt. I LOVE that shirt. Other than that I wore the same ensemble I wore for the TEN MILE race. I borrowed a pen to fill out the back of my number of my medical history. With that done, I walked over to the start area and waited. I met up with my friend Megan and we shared a fist bump before the race. We were going to do this.

The course was going to go from the Warehouse District, out to Audubon Park, then back. Starting off I wanted to keep a slow pace, and even that was too fast for some people, so I had to do some weaving and passing of people. Once we got onto Poydras, things loosened up. Not that I was trying to run faster, but it was easier to run without a lot of people around me.

Running along St Charles was interesting. They told us not to run on the median, which I remembered, but it was weird to see streetcars passing with the passengers looking out at us. It made me feel good that I was RUNNING down the street while these people were lazily taking public transportation. (BTW that’s a joke) We passed a bunch of restaurants I’ve been to, Loyola, Tulane, then came the big loop through Audubon Park. I had told my parents that I’d like them to come out to see me, and initially my mom told me “it might rain so we might just stay home”. After a couple of days, I finally told them “it would mean a lot to me if y’all would come.” So right before the race turned into the park, there were my folks on the right side of the street. My dad fished his cell phone out and approached closer to get a picture. The result is below:

The loop in the park was along the running/bike path, which was fine, up until we started seeing people out jogging who were not in the race. They didn’t even try to get over. One set of like three guys was jogging against the flow of the race and we had to avoid them. WHAT? Anyway, once we got back out to St Charles, all I had to do was get back to where the race started. There were little kids along the route who were trying to high five people as they passed, so since I was running close to the neutral ground the whole time, I was able to high five almost everyone. I even high fived a kid that was probably 3 or 4 years old, even if I did have to bend down while running.

We got back to the Warehouse district and ran past the D-Day Museum and then finally to South Peters, the final straight away. There was the finish line. I clicked on my powersong (which is The Veil by DCB) and somehow found the strength to finish strong after 13 miles. Once I started speeding up, I kept it up. I passed 4 or 5 people in the final block. It was great! I got my finishers’ medal and found the water. It was over, and for now, I was alive.

I drank water, then found the beer, pizza, jambalaya, fudge bars, smoothies, I ate it all! I realized after I was dropped off that I was going to have to figure out a way to meet up with my sister after the race. I telepathically sent her a message, hoping it would work, and it did! I was walking around in the post race area and there she was! I was still alive!

On the way home we stopped off so I could get three bags of ice so I could sit in my bathtub in my shorts in really cold water. I had gotten the tip from Megan, and had tried it after the TEN MILE run and a 7.5 mile run last weekend. I have gradually gone from one bag to two bags, to yesterday THREE bags. My legs were sore after the run, but after sitting in the ice and then a hot shower, they were fine. They were tired, but they were not sore.

I ran it faster than I thought too. I had run the TEN MILE race in 1:37, so I figured probably 2:15 would be good. Yesterday, according to the racing chip, I ran 2:04. Awesome. They had people at each mile marker with stopwatches who were supposed to be calling out times, but not all of them were. The times I did hear that I remembered, I realized I was running less than 10 minutes per mile, but I didn’t think I’d be able to keep that pace the entire time. I did though. Awesome.

A while back I had read about the Star Wars In Concert show, where they’d show clips of the movies along with a live orchestra. I eagerly bought tickets for the NOLA show, but I’m not sure if I was as excited as I eventually became. When we walked in to the Arena on Tuesday, I didn’t quite freak out but came pretty close.

One of the coolest things about the concert was that they had set up costumes and props from the movies AND they had people dressed up as characters. Of course, there were plenty of regular people dressed up, but the people I’m talking about were with the show. The disappointing thing was that they seemed to just have characters who wore masks, like Boba Fett. I would have flipped out for a picture with Han Solo. The closest I could get to that picture was a picture with Chewbacca.

There were TONS of people getting pictures with the characters. Little kids were dressed up in their Halloween costumes, or maybe they were pajamas. Adults didn’t shy away either. I saw multiple Obi Wan Kenobis and random Jedis.

The show itself was really great. My favorite part is the beginning, with the dark screen and everything just begins with the music and the scrolling text. That’s pretty much what happened Tuesday night. It was great. They pretty much went through all six movies with clips along with the music, which was incredible.

They had Anthony Daniels, the guy who played C-3PO, as the night’s MC. He would talk and advance the story so the orchestra could take breaks. When he mentioned the Imperial Empire one time, the arena was quiet and listening, and this one guy booed very loudly. It was really funny, and I might have missed the following description about whatever scene was being set up. Only in an arena full of SW fans would someone booing the Empire get that kind of reaction. It was awesome.

Saturday morning I woke up for the Middendorf’s 10 mile race in I had signed up for last week. My family used to go to Middendorf’s when I was a kid and meet up with friends they knew from Baton Rouge. I don’t remember much except the restaurant being in the middle of nowhere and they had really good seafood. I thought it’d be cool to go back to a place I hadn’t been in a while to do something I had never done. I had looked at the course (it was down and back on old US 51) and noticed it included the bridge over Pass Manchac. No problem, I’ve run over bridges before.

I got there with plenty of time and was glad it was not raining. The forecast didn’t look good all week, and on the way there I passed through rain, but once I got about 10 miles north of Manchac, things cleared up. I got my number and met up with my friend Megan. The race started a few feet from the foot of the bridge, and I looked at it and thought “on the way back, i’m going to smoke that thing.”

The race started off like most races, having to be patient and pass people. I don’t know why slow people always try to start at the front. It didn’t take long to get into a groove within the crowd though, and once we got over the bridge I wasn’t really slowed at all. They had a 5K race also, so all those people turned around at the 5K turnaround, while the rest of us kept going for the 10 mile. I felt good pretty much the whole race, but my knee was bothering me a little. No hamstring or foot issues though, which was good. It started sprinkling about mile 2 or 3, and I thought the rain would get heavier, but it never did. The leaders passed me going back when I was around mile 4, so they were going pretty fast. I noticed my iPod was off around mile 3, and said I had not reached mile 3 when I ran past the mile 3 sign. I realized this must mean I’ve been running longer than it’s been giving me credit for, which meant I ran longer than 8 last week. Maybe this 10 mile thing is going to be okay.

I hit the 5 mile mark with a pace under 10 minutes a mile. On the way back it felt like forever between miles 6 and 8, because there was no sign for 7. A few people passed me on the way back, but I kept thinking “I need to save my energy for the bridge”. That and I didn’t really have a lot of extra energy to keep ahead of someone, I just wanted to finish. Finally I made the turn to see the bridge in the distance. I still thought I was going to be able to race up and then down. I hit my iPod for my power song and started up the bridge. It was the hardest physical thing I think I’ve ever done in my life. It wasn’t hard at the beginning of the race, but after 9.75 miles it was excruciating. My thoughts went from ‘i’m going to sprint up this bridge’ to ‘this is harder than i thought’ to ‘OMG, i don’t want to do this anymore’ to finally ‘the top is right there, it’s almost over’. I hit the top of the bridge and was thankful for the downhill portion and finish line. My iPod only gave me credit for 9.5 miles instead of 10, but it didn’t matter. I ran TEN MILES and in less than 100 minutes, so less than 10 minutes per, 1:37:44. I was happy with my time and mostly happy to be finished.

Post race I noticed my shoes were SOAKED so before I ate anything, I went to my car to put on my soccer slides. I had read something during the week that when your shoes are really wet, to put newspaper in them while they dry so the newspaper soaks up the water. It took 5 full pages of newspaper between my two shoes to soak up the water. The shirt we got was kind of lame. Our numbers had crawfish and oysters on them, which was cool, but the shirt just has a running silhouette and the name of the run. I noticed with the picture, the numbers were dated for last year’s race, so I figure that’s a result of last year’s race being canceled.

They had the thin fried catfish Middendorf’s is famous for, along with the usual post race stuff like water and Gatorade. The food was AMAZING, and I might have been quoted saying “this is the best cole slaw I’ve ever had!”, and while I’m sure it was really good, it was probably made better because I had just finished a race. It was cool hanging out with Megan and Corey, eating good food, on a cloudy day in Manchac. Next race is the half marathon, which at least won’t have a bridge at the end.