"Rising up to the challenge of our rivals..."

I would like to say that I trained well for my race on Saturday. I would like to say that I ran at all during the two weeks leading up to the race. I sure would like to say that. 

But in spite of my foolishness in training, I survived and it was a great day to race. It would have been foolish of me not to run as fast as I could, given that it was 33 degrees and I was wearing shorts. 

We were thrilled to wake up at 5AM to get to the race. See?

We had some trouble finding the race start line (and the town the race happened to be in- who would have thought that West Virginia would nullify all of our GPS devices?) but got there and got our race numbers with half an hour to spare.

Kelsey used this time to get a coffee. Alex was making silly gestures of some sort.

The night before the race, I made a playlist, removed all the titles from the songs, and e-mailed it to Kelly, Alex, and Kels to load onto their ipods. At exactly 3 minutes before the race started, everyone pressed play. In this way, we would all be listening to the same music together no matter where we were on the course. The playlist was filled with epic songs that had to do something with either running or fitness. You know: Eye of the Tiger, Chariots of Fire, Born to Run... that kind of stuff. I even threw on Neverending Story near the end, just in case someone had to take more than an hour to finish the 10k. 

The course itself started in West Virginia and then went over a bridge into Maryland, up and down the C&O Canal. I was feeling really good about things until I started seeing markers in places. At the top of the marker it would say "10k" and underneath that it would say "3" or "4." Since I was running and cold, I did not really have time to process this other than figuring that the "3" meant 3 kilometers. This was extremely disheartening, as I passed marker "4" at 30 minutes and I had really wanted to run the 10k in under an hour. Later, I would find that these numbers were actually mile indicators and I was much closer than I thought.

The final challenge of the course was running back up a hill and across the bridge in order to get to the stadium in the center of the town. The hill was not pleasant and I slowed down considerably. Still, I pushed on and managed to not walk the entire race. As I ran into the stadium they announced my name (I was in a pack of one) and I crossed the finish line almost 48 minutes after I started.

Personal record! (of course, no matter what my time was I was going to get a personal record, since this was my first race.)

Alex beat me by about a minute, and Kelly and Kels showed up a few minutes later. Then the race organizers gave us free pizza and beer, because what we really wanted at 10AM after running 6.2 miles was a beer.

Kelsey got a Bud Light. She says it was because she prefers Bud Light. The rest of us feel it is because there was no one getting Bud Light and the Bud Light man looked sad.

The post-race party was at a very swanky Bavarian-themed hotel.

Upon getting back to DC, we were hungry again so we went to get more pizza.

We chose to make our own at H and Pizza. It was a solid choice.

Layer Upon Layer Upon Layer Upon Goat

Once upon a time I directed a play and my actors made a pretty good joke about how all of my directions essentially added layers of characterization upon other, conflicting layers of characterization.

Example (that Josh might give):
"I want to see love but also hate, and there's some malaise there about your place in the universe and you also think this might be a dream. But underneath that you've got a mischievous nature and you are also worried about the safety of your pet rat."

Anyway, I would expand on this metaphor if I had time (which I do not), but I am starting to feel like this semester is just layer upon layer upon layer upon goat. What is the goat resting on? Perhaps another goat. It's goats all the way down.

That said, the negotiation seminar is the best class I have taken since high school. Even if it did ruin my entire schedule.

In other news, an application (that will go unexplained for superstitious reasons) I have been working on for a long while (since August) is finally complete and submitted. This one is something that I actually want and, regardless of whether or not this particular application process works out, I have made some excellent contacts and have everything together to keep on submitting the application until they take me.

Thanks, Cold Readings

If my time acting and doing cold readings of scripts has given me anything, it has given me the ability to read things very quickly and then say them as though I was not just reading something. I was on call today in Evidence, which means that I was responsible for one out of four cases that we were going over. So I read two cases very well (okay, well I read ONE very well) and skimmed over the rest, because that seemed like the efficient thing to do. When it came time for one of the people on call to volunteer, I was the first to raise my hand and gave the synopsis of my case. I got it over with, I relaxed, I went on with my class.

Then it was time for the second case. The judges who teach the class asked for another volunteer from those on call. No one raised a hand. Then they pulled out the list. They always have a list of people that they have told to be prepared, and they just run through that list when someone doesn't volunteer. They called the first name on the list:

"Is ____ here?"

Silence

"Is _____ here?"

Silence

"Alright... is ______ here?"

Silence. They look back at me. "Would anyone like to save Mr. Johnson?" Classroom of a hundred people. No one raises a hand. (To be fair, the judges were running a class behind so everyone "safely" assumed that they would not get to this reading.)

I am auto-assigned every other case instantly. I spit out what I know of the second case and then try to read the small details of the third case while they talk. It was fun. I only said something that was directly contradicted by the case once, but I recovered quickly. By the time we got to the fourth case a very kind classmate had read ahead and took the bullet for me. Well, at least the judges know my name now.

Running = Free Stuff

Once again Kels and I took to the streets of DC over the weekend for a run and came back with some furniture. For those keeping score, this is now four weekends in a row. This time we found a lovely kitchen countertop-thing on wheels that can serve as an island in Kels's apartment. Even if there were not intrinsic rewards in running, I think it might be worth keeping up just for the extrinsic rewards.

Then again, there is also a 10k that I have to run in under 2 weeks. Uh-oh.

It is now the first week in October, which means that first assignments for everything are now coming due- Street Law monthly report, Journal mass proof, reading for negotiations seminar, model teaching assignment, etc.... so once again, the buzz saw is spinning up. Hooray!

Modern Major General

Just a normal week in terms of classwork. Still like my professors a lot. Example: "so how does this procedure work? Well, when I was defending John Edwards last year, here's what we did...." In Evidence, we are currently discussing hearsay. As a general rule, it seems that everything is hearsay and yet 99% of that hearsay can be admitted due to an exception or reframing of the issue... so that's useful.

In odder news, I had an interview for a summer internship that began with the question: "are you the very model of a modern major general?" I had no choice but to patter through the first stanza. I think it went well.

That's all for right now. Have to go write a test!

FoodTrucktoberFest

As of 10:49AM today, it was Fall. Many things have happened during the transition from Summer to Fall, and one of those things was that Kelsey became a DC expert. She fears no DC driver, follows the blogs of all the neighborhoods, and tweets to every single foodtruck. For all intents and purposes, she belongs in DC much more than I do.

And this is how she knew about FoodTrucktoberFest, a first-day-of-Fall gathering of over 40 food trucks into one location. Alex M and I met Kelsey and her sister Kim there around 3 today, and we were not disappointed. (All photos credited to Alex, for I took none.)

It was very well attended.

We started off at the BBQ Bus, where the secret is in the sauces. If I can't have NC BBQ, then this is a very acceptable substitute. 

Then we got a handmade chicken chorizo sausage with bacon and pineapple. 

Well, that should be pretty self-explanatory. 

For dessert, where else could we go but Captain Cookie and the Milkman? This is my friend Kirk's foodtruck, and, fittingly, he had the longest line out of them all. Ginger-molasses with black cherry ice cream and peanut-butter with chocolate ice cream. You can't really top that.

For an after-meal drink, how about an apple cider float? 

They should do food truck festivals more often. But not that often. Alex and I walked over 2 miles back to our respective places and somehow did not feel any less full at the end of the walk. 

Well, back to lesson planning, or reading for class, or reading for work, or job applications, or journal, or something along those lines. Or maybe I'll just do none of that.

No Escape

So as it turns out I am in another show this semester. The Mystery of Edwin Drood. I had been unsure about whether I should do it, given my workload, but I went in to audition. Then I promptly withdrew myself from the audition process. Then it just so happened that the only role I would have accepted was left conveniently vacant. Then I accepted the role on the condition that I only had to come in one night a week (or two nights, if right after Tuesday/Thursday Evidence classes). I get to come on, be in one scene, sing one song, and be basically done with it (unless the audience votes me to sing more, since this is like a choose-your-own-ending musical). I will post the show dates once I know them. The show stars our dear Emily Goo as the titular Edwin Drood, Noah as Drood's evil-ish uncle, and Jeff as the master of ceremonies (who once again gets to stay on stage the entire time- HA!) This also represents the first time since 2006 that Josh and I have shared the stage together. Who would have thought that would happen?

In other news, I gave my students their first test. They are very bright but really need to work on their critical thinking skills. I suppose that's what my entire class is supposed to be about.


 In other other news, some of you were distraught that I was sitting on a filing cabinet in front of my desk. Well, while I was out running with Kelsey and Alex and Kelly the other day I literally ran into a chair that was on the sidewalk (people in DC often put furniture outside for people to just take- it's a normal thing) so I just grabbed it and kept on running.

So now I have an office chair. I cleaned it and tightened up its bolts so it works as good as new. I'm even sitting on it right now! 

The next day I went running, I came across a box full of classical music CDs. I took some of them. Running in DC in the fall is sort of like a free prize giveaway. 

In other other other news, I installed a new nightlight. It has been met with near universal derision, but I really like it.

It's all part of my technology beta-testing in preparation for Defcon Fun.