first: my friend gary in LA sent me the CUTEST PHOTOS EVER. here is a link to the site where you can see for yourself. finnegan the squirrel!
second: maybe i’m not going to try to run in the half marathon after all. i got back to spfld. last night and the ground is now covered in snow and i don’t want to run in the snow and plus it’s going to be cold for quite a while now.
laziness, always winning out.
my friend linda sent me a very motivating, inspiring e-mail about the need to focus in on doing something creative, and maybe, eventually, i’ll finally do that. i know it’s possible, but i’m just so lazy…
the fencing weekend was pretty good. we had sushi right in our hotel in chicago, and it was very delicious. very expensive. very, very delicious. very, very expensive. plus sake. for LUNCH. extravagant.
we walked around a bit even though it was very cold, but luckily i was wearing long underwear. kevin and the guy from the fencing club, jay, bought matching sweats and jackets. “for the fencing club,” they said, but i found it relaly funny that grown men were buying matching outfits. i haven’t done that since junior high.
jay’s wife, by the way, is very nice. i can’t quite see what she sees in her husband, but she does seem to care for him a lot. so he’s very lucky.
we went to an irish pub on saturday night and i drank an entire glass of guinness. there was a great big dog there in the bar and i don’t know exactly why he was allowed in but he sure was sweet and we fed him off the table. nobody cared.
on sunday was the fencing tournament. on sunday morning we were eating breakfast in the lobby of the hotel and all these people were milling about, most of them in new orleans saints jerseys and hats, ready for the BIG FOOTBALL GAME. none of them was wearing warm enough clothes, and i couldn’t think of anything much more miserable than sitting around at a football game freezing to death. especially for those saints fans, who got slaughtered.
i was pretty sure were the only people in the hotel who were there for the fencing.
it was held at the chicago athletic club, which looked like it used to be grand, but is kind of in disrepair now. it needs a makeover. the gym that the tournament was held in was kind of small. there were 30 foil fencers, and at first they fenced in “pools;” there were five different groups, with six people in each group. each fencer fenced against every other fencer in their pool, so each person had to fence five times. at the end of that round the scores were added up, based on how many times a person won, and also their total number of points, and then they were ranked. kevin came in 9th overall, and jay came in 11th. this was really good, i thought. i wanted kevin to win every game, but there were some really good people. a lot of them were from chicago.
after that they each then had one more bout, and if a person lost that round, they were out, so that eliminated half the people. kevin won his bout, and then he lost the next one. he said by that time he was exhausted.
when we got home we looked up the scores online, and the overall winner was a 12 year-old kid. yeah. pretty incredible. there were some very tall, very strong guys, but the kid beat them. that’s the thing about fencing; there were also a few older women, some older guys, all ages and heighths, and it didn’t matter. skill, it’s all about the skill.
i just hope that i never have to be in a competition. i’m afraid that somehow kevin will manage to coerce me into doing it without me realizing it until it’s too late and i’m standing there fencing against some 12 year-old. a 12 year-old who knows what he’s doing.
i’m going to be wary, though, and hopefully it won’t happen.
no fencing competitions for me.
the thing that concerns me is that one thing i said i would NEVER EVER DO IN A MILLION YEARS is be in a triathlon.
and yet i was in one, two summers ago.
but at least i’m not going to do any more of those.
i think i need to finally make some new year’s resolutions, all the things i hope to NEVER EVER do in the coming year.
tonight randy and i finally took back the pretty dress he got me for xmas that was too tight. i wasn’t in the mood to try on dresses, but i figured it would be good to just get it over with. first randy made me a very delicious dinner, with stuff he just had lying around. i need to have more groceries so i could just throw together a dinner. we have lots of stuff, but it’s all too random, it’s all stuff that have to be made into complicated recipes that take lots of time.
i tried on many dresses and really wanted a red one, but finally settled on one that was beige underneath and black over it and the effect is that it looks kind of bare.
so now i’m all ready to be fancy, if i ever have the motivation to go out of the house anymore.
i have to watch tv now. “studio 60 on the sunset strip,” a very poor title, in my opinion.
ok then,
grace on monday.