back to the nest

The Ad Council can be a great thing…when they hit their mark. Most of the time though, they miss it completely, as illustrated by this disaster of a PSA apparently aiming to prevent high school kids from driving too fast. It’s awesomely bad and unintentionally hilarious. Cheers to Rob Riggle, but you should know you need to be a bit more clever than that around here to get anywhere, Ad Council.

Here’s the ad that initially left me confused and dumbfounded for a whole minute solid after seeing it:

Happy Friday!  I can say this, because I’m taking tomorrow off for a trip to my old stomping ground, State College, PA for the weekend.  So, it feels like a Friday.  Don’t worry, I won’t forget about you.

Keeping up with my theme of loving cracked-out house plants, I found this:

Plants wearing pants!  How can you go wrong?  They look like astronauts, and I think I’m in love.

My favorite!

Domsai Terrariums found on The Green Head, home to the weirdest stuff you can buy online.  It’s more than just kind of addicting.

And just an update on race training; it was a lovely day for running.  30 degrees and downright tropical for this time of year.  My boss even used the word “balmy” to describe today, it was that warm.  I may have to run a little further than the suggested 3 miles, but not much.  Shhhhhh.

Today was the day that I stopped being lame about running outside and started training for real.  I clearly picked the best day of the week weather-wise to decide to do this:

And it was a whole lot colder at 8am.  Trust me.

I know that the thing for running bloggers to do is mention what they’re eating. Before my run, I had some oatmeal.  The flavor on the box was supposed to be “Hazelnut Latte.”  The actual flavor of said oatmeal?  Popcorn.  Quaker Hazelnut Latte Oatmeal tastes like popcorn.  Stay far away if you can.

So who the heck is Hal Higdon?  No idea, but I sort of like his training method.  And Hal is really hot too.

This plan is for a novice.  I hardly consider myself a a novice when it comes to running (I’ve been a distance runner since high school), but I’m following a novice plan because I didn’t train the right way the first time, and figured I should take it slow, at least at first.

I did start the schedule up on Wednesday since I’ve been running indoors fairly regularly since the holidays.  I was planning on cheating and doing 3+ miles instead of the recommended 2, but being cold and a baby made sure that I just about hit the two-mile mark.  But all in all, it was a good run and I really have missed being outside.

Oh yeah, here’s Hal:

And speaking of old people, I’ve been saving this gem by the folks (specifically, the mamadukes) from when I first moved home in August for the perfect time, and I think today is it:

“Be careful running outside with headphones, because we read in the paper about a lady who was running with headphones and a tree fell on her and she died!  Just be careful!”

There may be a 1 in 17 billion (over/under) chance of that actually happening to me, but fine.  I’ll be careful and watch out for falling trees.

This is a complete throwaway post.  Seriously, stop reading now unless you feel the need to be bored to tears.  I’m tired almost beyond words tonight, and I have nothing great to say.  It wasn’t necessarily a bad day, but I just need sleep like a hooker needs penicillin.  Trust.

I shouldn’t even have bothered, but I can’t detach myself from the idea that I would be missing a whole day’s worth of posting in the NaBloPoMo challenge.  Too far to quit now!

Today I got two paper cuts, so I took a break from work in the afternoon and went to Starbucks because I felt I deserved it, and ended up leaving with one sparkly baby donut.  It’s actually a sparkly “mini” donut, but I like baby better.

You can’t really see the sparkly part, but it’s there.

Now that I’m home, I was about to ramble on forever about the awesomeness of this baby donut and how it’s literally the best thing Starbucks ever came up with.  Then I realized you can get a whole thing of baby donuts at Wawa, or anywhere else really.  How does Starbucks manage to get a person to fall for their nutjob gimmicks?  Every.  Single.  Time.  It’s red velvet cupcakes all the way from now on.  WTF, mate?

I love Phoenix.*  I have to honestly say that I didn’t exactly love Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix way back in May, at least not right away.  It took a while to grow on me.  Their previous effort, It’s Never Been Like That was genius, and I think my hopes were a little too high.  I took a break from listening to the album, but recently picked back up on it again.  My issue is that most of the songs sound a little too similar to each other-tough one.  However, “Fences” is wonderful and the best song on the album, in my opinion.  great for a mellow Monday like today.

*At some point soon, I’m going to have to stop opening Heavy Rotation with “I love [insert amazing band here].  Due to time constraints, today is not that day.  But I’ll work on it.

Another solid find from The Oatmeal.  I was taking pictures of my cat, Jules, today and thought he was pretty cute.  Then I found this, and now I’m not so sure:

click me! (I fixed the link!!)

This might be the face of a killer.  I’ll be sleeping with one eye open from now on.

On New Year’s Eve, my camera died.  Or maybe it was already dead by then.  I went to turn it on, and it just…wouldn’t.  This is most likely due to the fact that it got wet the day before.  I know the person who gave it to me is going to be really disappointed by that.  I’m really sorry.

But not having a camera for a week made me crazy.  So last night, I made the official decision to drive my lame ass to Walmart (sorry sis, but they have the best prices for that sort of thing) and shell out the cash for a new one.  I already knew exactly which one I was getting.

All of the Walmarts in my area are not very close to where I live.  The one I generally go to is like 20 minutes away, so I plugged in the GPS and tried to find a closer one…which I did.  4.1 miles away?  Yes!!  I hopped in the Rav and followed the directions…to what turned out to be Kmart.

Eck.  There’s no way I’m buying a camera from Kmart.  But GPS says there’s another Walmart about a mile away.  Ok, let’s go.

The Walmart building was there, but it had apparently gone out of business.  Really??  Really?!?!

So the journey continues.  Almost super pissed off (but actually, not even really) at that point, I end up at Target.  Their camera selection was surprisingly shoddy, but by then I’m resigned to the fact that I’m not leaving the building unless it’s with a camera in my hands.

The one I want is a Sony, and closest to my old camera (RIP).  It’s $179.99.  There’s a Canon that’s $149.99, and pretty close to what I’m looking for, but not as good.  I could easily drop a few hundred and get a reeeally sick camera, because I have yet to dip into my fantasy football money.  But then I realize I shouldn’t be so mean to my bank account, because its been really nice to me these days.  So I decide to go with the Canon, as much as it pains me.

Then I find out that they have the exact same camera for $129.99.  In pink.  Pink electronics are against my religion.  How can I expect anyone to take me seriously when I whip out a pink camera?  Give me purple any day of the week.  Even a badass red would work.  No offense to anyone who has an affinity for pink cameras, but it would be so bad for my street cred.  BUT, the upside is I save another $20…

At this point, I’m a few seconds away from getting knocked upside the head by the rather large man-kid helping me, so I panic and go for the pink.  Tough one.

I realize this was a big mistake as I exit Target.  Yet I keep going.  I end up at the gym, on my favorite treadmill next to the plate glass window that separates the gym from the basketball court.  My camera purchase frustration allows me to churn out a decent 4.5-miler, even when halfway through, two 7-year-olds in matching Westbrook jerseys decide to take a break from missing every shot they try to make in lei of alternating between blowing me kisses, flipping me off, and making blow job motions as I look on in horror, whilst running.  WTF, you just stopped wearing diapers like last year.  How could you possibly know what that even means??

But you know what, I’m keeping the camera.  I thought about it, and there’s no reason to complain this much about it.  Life could be a whole lot worse.  Plus, I wouldn’t have had this story to tell you, now would I?