doodledee

Holy balls Molly and Brad finally got married. You shoulda been there. Let's do the numbers.

• Number of times I drove to this epic farmhouse out in the country (above): 2
• Long garden walks I snuck away to take: 3
• Wishes that my garden looked a lot more like their gardens: 30
• Eye rolls over the name 'Garten Marketplatz and Gifte Haus': 4000
• Rehearsals: 1
• Minutes spent rehearsing: 6
• Jobs given to me: 1
• Number of kids I wrangled down the aisle to distribute rose petals: 11
• Huge boxes of Mike and Ike's used to make sure kids did a good job: 3
• Minutes actual ceremony lasted: 14
• Hollywood celebrities I didn't get my picture taken with at the reception because she left earlier than I expected: 1
• Pieces of cake eaten: 3
• Golf holes played after sneaking away from reception: 3
• Birdies/Pars/Bogies: 1/2/0 <-- Nice!
• Jackson5 songs requested: 1
• Jackson5 songs played (by request): 1
• People it took to assemble the pizza and wing buffet that was set-up at 10pm in the corner of the reception: 3
• Minutes I wept tears of joy after seeing they were setting up a 10pm pizza and wing buffet in the corner of the reception: ~12
• Wings eaten: ~140
• Drunk 20-somethings left at party when it ended: a lot, y'all!
• Egg bake dishes at gift opening next morning: 6
• Gifts opened: no idea, I took kids to park

All in all a pretty frickin' great weekend.

I've been training for the TC10 10-mile race thing for a couple of weeks now. So far so good. Last Sunday I ran like 7 miles. In a row. Without stopping. I almost died, sure, but I'm pretty sure I could have gone 3 more if I had to. And by "had to" I mean "if there were a plastic bag with a t-shirt and a banana and maybe some coupons in it waiting for me when I finished." Mostly for the banana. I have enough t-shirts. Anyway, there's like 50 some odd days left to get ready. I'm only slightly terrified.

I usually run after the kids go to bed. So like 8:30 or whatever. Which was fine in July and stuff, because it didn't get dark until like 11pm. But now it's like 2 weeks later and for reasons science can't fully explain, the sun has started to go down super early. It was basically pitch black by 8 tonight. So I ran in the dark.

My Thursday route is: leave the house, run to Harriet at a "warm up" pace, run around Harriet at a "blinding pain" pace, then run home at a "warm down oh god my chest hurts I think I can see France Ave" pace. It works out great.

Tonight was the first time I've done it in the dark. First time I'd really run the lake in the dark, actually. I wore a little reflective vest thing. For safety, not style. I noticed right away that there weren't that many people out. Lots of room on the trail. Nice. Sailboats. Nice. Breeze from the East, off the lake. Nice.

Bandshell. Nice.

Oh look, the show is still going. I wonder who it is tonight? Lights are kind of dim. Lots of people, though. *pantpant* *gawking in big windows on the lakeside to see who it is*

Oh look, it's Elvis. Nice.

So of course I jog around to the audience side and omg he's in full sequined jumpsuit and it's "Glory Glory Hallelujah" and all the children are up by the stage and the dude's impression is right on and the crowd is eating it up with a spoon and can we talk how the sight of an Elvis impersonator in a bandshell at sundown gave me goosebumps? Is that wrong? Because if it is, I don't want to be right, baby. Uh, thankyouverymuch.

So off I go and there are people fishing off the North dock and I get around to the South beach and there are a bunch of teenagers in the water up their necks and they're giggling and splashing and being teenagers in a lake and then down around by the Elf Tree there's a guy in a boat casting softly toward the weedline and it's maybe 9:30 now and the wind shifts and Elvis comes blowing across the water and I really hope he's singing at the 10 mile because I could have run around that lake all night.

Did I say nice? I totally did.

It was about like I expected. Sold to the walls. Half the crowd loving every note, singing along, talking about how they drove over from Wisconsin and that they have the shirts to prove they were there and that they heard of them first. The other half was scenesters. Which is fine, but maybe just a little bit weird at a downtempo show like Bon Iver. Like in front of me for a while were a couple of dudes out on the town, wearing silly fedoras and rocking an entire can of axe between them, downing Coronas and getting their game on, and then the music starts and it's slow and lonely and painful and AWKWARD! I was reminded (again) of why I don't always go to shows with other people. Unless you count that 85oz Fat Tire or whatever it was I was drinking as another person. Though I suppose it's heavier than my daughter, so maybe you'd have a point.

Show was solid, band was humble, crowd was into it. I think they're really more of a jammy band than people want to admit. Or maybe more than they're personally ready to admit. Or something like that. Either way, I'd like to see them really stretch some stuff out. They do some fun longish driving stuff, but they never really let go and see where it takes them. Maybe still a little early for that? A little young? What do I know. For sure I could see them going that way, though.

Opener was AA Bondy, who sounded fantastic, but more or less lost me with his silly lyrics and his drug obsessed between song banter. Bummer.

Also this: yet more kudos to Flora Fauna for the posterwork for this show. Lurved it.

Oh, I've got the fever bad. Olympic fever. Our povertybasic cable only gets the one Kare11 channel, but even with the limited primetime line-up I still manage to get sucked in most every night. And then on weekend mornings I fire-up the online stuff and stream things live for a while. (That site is amazingly well done, btw.) And then maybe during the workday I sneak into the breakroom and change the channel from Bloomberg to MSNBC and catch whatever happens to be on at the time. Last week we just up and moved the whole team in there for an afternoon. The collaboration (and innovation?) was arguably better, but yeah, I'm not sure we could get away with it every day. Guess there's only one way to find out.

Off the clock, I've been soaking up the gymnastics and the soccer and the rowing and some of the diving - but not that silly synchro stuff - and of course the cycling and then yesterday I got buried in like 2 and a half hours of marathon coverage and it was really really fun to watch and who knew, right? Right.

So now here's the part where I admit that the Phelps stuff didn't do much for me. I mean I most certainly watched it and I cheered and stuff, but other than the one insane hundredth of a second finish, none of the stuff was all that straight-up amazing to me. That's partly because he was supposed to win - and after like 2 days it became apparent that he was, in fact, better than everyone else ever in the history of the universe book it - and it's partly because he's all business and professional and "eat, sleep, swim" and all that. And there's this thing I figured out the other night: great champions make the stuff the do look both casual, easy and [most importantly?] stylish. Jordan, Gretzky, Ali? Exactly. Shaun White? Did I just say that? Anyway, Phelps certainly makes it look easy - and he's obviously a great champion - I'm just not sure he makes it look casual, and it's certainly not all that stylish. All that splashing and jumping and gasping for breath and you can't really see what's going on and then oh look, he's ahead by 2 body lengths. Again. Show his mom, play the anthem, same as it ever was.

Contrast that to Usain Bolt's victory the other night in the 100m. The 100 is all stare downs and head games and posturing and then the gun sounds and 10 guys run down a track faster than I can ride downhill on my bike. 30mph. Can robots even run that fast yet? I bet they can't. But Bolt can. And he dances before the race and he pulls up early and he throws out his hands and he thumps his chest and Tom Hammond yells "NEW WORLD RECORD, HOW EASY WAS THAT?!" and he's exactly right. Super easy. And so casual. And stylish. And I rewound it like 25 times. And I made the kids watch it the next morning. And Junior ran laps around the family room and insisted he was faster. He may have been right, but he has a long way to go in the style department. He gets that from his dad.

Another whole week to go. Nice.

I was gonna say 'round', but I realized I was thinking of spherical. Away we go:

1. Peaches- best food ever (when perfectly ripe, obvs)
2. Donut holes - powdered sugar
3. Meatballs - especially good ones, made with parmesan and oregano and maybe even the 'v' meat

4. Gobstoppers - kidding! hard candy so worst
5. Tapioca pearls - first choice: big as in boba; second choice: small as in pudding
6. Cantaloupe - kidding! melons are gross
7. Cherries - all time fav afternoon desk snack food

My apologies to those cheesy puff ball things that come in a can. You're fun at parties and stuff, but yeah, not something I'd want to hang out with day to day. No offense.