Races, Vacations, Cleaning, and Relaxationing

So it's been a few.

Major events that have occurred in the past week or two:

1. The Boilermaker!
2. Ocean Grove!

Starting in the proposed ordering, which also happens to be chronological: the Boilermaker was a success.

My results:

Totals (11539 Finishers 6418 M / 5121 F)

Div: M25-29
ChipTime: 1:26:12
Overall: 4060
SexPl: 3059
DivPl: 461
AgeGrade: 50% (pretty average)

Splits:

First 5k: 28:57
Second 5k: 27:10
10k: 56:07
Third 5k: 26:08
15k: 1:22:14

This, to me, must mean that "ChipTime" above is including the time between when the race started and I crossed the start line.

We had a pleasant evening at the World Famous (not really) Palatine Motel perhaps half an hour from the race in Palatine, NY.  I'd stay there again, given the necessity and the lack of closer options.

After our time in Utica for the race, we drove out to Ithaca to spend Sunday night at Julia's friend Angie's place.  Nice town - lovely gorges.  Delicious bagels.  Steep roads.  Cool school.  Lots of smart kids around.  Angie has a pleasant apartment.  Good times.  We hung out with a bunch of her friends for the evening, and went to a delightful place called the Glenwood Pines Restaurant, or some such, which served rather delicious burgers and fried sides (Corn bites, broccoli bites, fries, jalapeno poppers, etc.).

Monday morning, we roused ourselves fairly early, as I recall, grabbed a bagel sandwich at Collegetown Bagels down a tad south of Cornell, and then set out for New Jersey.  We got there sometime in the afternoon.

The beach was fairly rainy and overcast for most of our time there, unfortunately.  But, we still got in the water, still built some sand castles, still went out for ice cream almost every night, and still hung out on the Henry Richard Inn's porch every day.  It was, as always, well worth the trip, and I'm feeling nicely relaxed as a result.  It was great having Julia there.  You may be reading this.  I'm delighted you came!

On our way back up the coast on Thursday, we stopped at the Storm King Art Center nearish Storm King State (National?) Park in New York.  Very cool.

Yesterday, Friday the 17th of July, involved two things of a separate nature to those described above:

1.  A Dentist Appointment
2. A Guitar Lesson
3. Dinner at Takemura with Julia

The dentist appointment went well.  I was told I have excellent oral hygiene.  Woohoo.

The guitar lesson also went well, though I was not told I have excellent aural hygiene, unfortunately.  I'll just have to infer that on my own.  We talked about what I need to do in the next month or two to get ready for being in an ensemble next school year.

Yikes.

Dinner at Takemura was especially delightful (my especially delightful company being responsible for the added "especially" qualifier).  I had a Veggie Tofu Dol Sot Bi Bim Bap, which is fun to say.  We also each had ourselves a little glass of sake.  It rained on us on the way over and back, but not too much.

Today has consisted of several activities.  Ready?  Cause here they come in list form:

1. A brunch at Cabot's Ice Cream & Restaurant down in Newton.  Tasty.  Didn't get ice cream.
2. Cleaning up my room(s).  I have a lot of paper to be dealt with.
3. Futuretoday: Going to see Inception at 7:00 PM in Framingham with roommate Eric.

Seems like a good deal.

Illustrator.

Tonight Jason taught me how to use Illustrator.  This, really, I think is the most important, wonderful thing that's happened to me this year.  And it's only February.  I don't think anything in the next ten months will be able to top this.

I'm currently converting my crappy bitmap maps over to be wonderful, infinite resolution vectors.

Oh, it's on.

In other news, I was finally able to make it over to NEC to pay for this year's classes.  That, and get a new sticker on my ID.  Fiiiinally.  I feel like a real student again, with a right to be there!  Woo!  I took a few hours out of the middle of my day (1:30 PM to 3:30 PM) and got a few things done.  First, I took the Red and Green lines over to Copley to The Only TDBank Branch In Boston to deposit some checks.  Then, I attempted to get back on the T to head out to Symphony, only to realize I was trying to get on the T going the wrong direction (Inbound).  I'm so used to getting on the T on the Library side that I didn't even think about it.  After crossing the street twice, I made my way out to Symphony to pay for my classes and lessons, as mentioned.  The gentleman at the office was friendly about it (even though I'm like 6 months late).  Thanks, dude!  You're excellent.

The #1 bus got me from Symphony back to Harvard Sq., where I picked up some Veggie Planet (Vegan Peanut Curry) for a late, late lunch.  It was delicious, though a bit cold by the time I got it back to the office.  The rest of the day proceeded without too many incidents, though I've decided I hate Flex stylesheets.  Either that or I hate the component I was trying to apply a style to, because I couldn't get it to take no matter what I did.  I even employed our super special style-applying class/magic wand, and it didn't work.  Geeze.

Ultimately, dinner was salad (from the salad bar at Shaws!) and a bit of sour dough, swiss, and classic, classic hummus.  Delicious.

I've spent the last hour and a half drawing shapes in Illustrator.  This is so, so cool.  I'm super excited.  My hand hurts from mousing so much.  They'll be wonderful!  Wonderful!  Oh, yes.

Oh, lets see.  I was at work until around 7:30 or so.  Once I left, I took the T over to Harvard Sq. and sat in Dado for 30 minutes drinking some Dragon Well, listening to Kind of Blue.  It was pleasant.  After my half hour (around 8:30 PM), I walked home up Mass. Ave., stopping at Gourmet Express for some cereal, trail mix, and bread.  (Watch out, now.)  It wasn't a bad walk.  Upon arriving home, I gave my parents a call.  Sounds like Dad's job is going well - he seems to be enjoying it.  He's working at Thomson Reuters - they're apparently writing software for looking up patents and stuff.  I only got some of the details.  It sounds like a good group, though, in some old factory buildings in New Haven.  He says he likes the commute and the people are nice.

The annual Ocean Grove trip is starting to be scheduled.  I can't believe it's already time to think about that again - it's only February!  Looks like we're all likely to descend on OG in mid July.  ... Now that I think about it, I can't wait.  I love going there with everybody - it's always so pleasant.  Sitting on the beach, boarding in the waves, running along the water, eating ice cream, relaxing in the cool, pleasant evenings.  It's such an idyllic place.  It'll be spectacular.

Currently listening to Massive Attack.  Naun tells me they have a new album.  Perhaps I should do something about that.