sometimes Always

Eddie and I can’t resist buying shit for ourselves on Black Friday. He usually picks up some of his store’s crazy deals on DVDs, and I sometimes will grab some sort of gadget or DVDs for myself. Last November I was looking at some of the deals available online and picked up a couple of new running skirts for a steal.

The biggest deal that I bought was the Skirtchaser Racing Skirt from Running Skirts. I think that I snagged it at around $10, and to prove that I can wear running gear that isn’t just black, I picked it up in bright red. And it really is a very bright red. Attached to the skirt are some gray shorties. The store describes it as silver, but they’re definitely gray and not shiny, and they’re made of a sort of mesh. You have to wear something under them, because they’re meshy and you don’t want to be showing off your lady-garden. It also features a pair of pearly snaps in the front, designed to stylishly hold your race number without the use of pins; alas, they neglect to think about the lower corners of your bib, which I imagine will blow up and flip the whole thing over.

You see that big note on the product description that says “This skirt runs larger than our GymGirl and MarathonGirl Styles, please size down one full size for optimal performance“? They’re not kidding. I figured that since the skirts are made of a stretchy material, to keep it from being quite so butt-hugging I ordered it in what would be my regular size. I’d say that the skirt borders on being almost two sizes too big for me. I can wear it, but Eddie has to safety pin it to my shirt to keep it in place. I’m not entirely certain how much this sizing has to do with the two things that I don’t like about the skirt, namely the fact that the shorts are really loose and the skirt is very “swishy”. My other two skirts don’t blow around nearly as much as my red one does. I’ll probably buy one in the proper size at some point to see if that changes my opinions, because it’s not a bad skirt.

I also bought myself their Marathon Girl skirt, which I found that I like a lot more. It fits me without being super snug sausage casing, and the skirt part isn’t at all swishy. Unlike the SkirtChaser, this skirt has a pair of full-coverage spankies built into it, which I didn’t expect to like as much as I do. While it’s a way too cold to wear it without my running tights under it, it’s nice that I’m not constantly pulling shorts out of my crotch. It has a decently sized pocket situated like a tramp stamp in the back. It’s also a bit shorter than the SkirtChaser.

The only complaint that I have about either skirt is the velcro that holds the pockets closed. All three of my skirts have velcro closures on the pockets, and I hate them with a passion. The black skirt’s pocket is in the back, making it difficult to get the damned thing open in the first place. I either can’t run and separate the two bits of velcro at the same time, or, in the case of one skirt (not by this company), the velcro is so badly sewn on that it’s still on the skirt only because of the grace of God and the fact that I can’t put anything in there unless I want to rip the closure off to get it out. I’m aware that newer models of this company’s skirts feature zippers instead, but those weren’t such a fabulous deal on Black Friday.

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And as the afternoon passes into the evening, our vacation draws to a close. It’s been good, and I still will always and forever wish that it was longer or that I was just fabulously rich and didn’t need to work another day in my life.

We spent a couple of days just sitting at home. We had an early birthday lunch for me at Ted’s Montana Grill, where I ate a bison burger topped with mushrooms, Swiss cheese, and sour cream. It was like heaven exploded in my mouth.

That giant snowstorm we were supposed to get never happened, so I went out for a run on Wednesday morning while it was snowing out. I ran a mile from the house along the bike path, and then came back out onto the main road and then picked up a side street and ran through the back roads a bit before coming back out to the main road and then back to our street. When all was said and done and I was back at home, I’d been out for nearly an hour and covered almost 4 miles. Unfortunately I’d also made Eddie very worried because I told him I was only going to try and get in 5k (3.1 miles), so he met me in the drive way, all dressed and debating about going to look for me.

We spent Friday at the Boston Museum of Science, where we wandered around and played with shit, and took pictures of dioramas, and ate lunch with a well-behaved family of four. We checked out the Omni Theater, where I was thrilled beyond words to discover that the opening demonstration of the theater’s sound system still uses Leonard Nimoy asking “Who put the ‘bomp’ in the ‘bomp she-bomp she-bomp’?” just like it did the last time I was there with my Girl Scout troop over 20 years ago.

Since it was my birthday on Friday, and in our family you get to pick out whatever you want for dinner on your birthday, we feasted on my mother’s fantastic lasagna. Danielle came over, bringing with her a gift of a 4-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade in a flavor I hadn’t had yet: crantini. It was pretty damned good. She also gave me a new game for the Wii, the Wii Sports Resort game, which so far seems pretty fun.

Mom was devious this year, having bought my birthday gift over a week ago but continuing to ask me what I wanted. When I told her that I needed new running shoes, she told me that she couldn’t afford to buy me some, which made it all the more surprising when I unwrapped a Garmin Forerunner 305. Eventually I did manage to get the Garmin to talk to my computer, and now I no longer need to pay attention to where I’ve run; I only need to know whereabouts I need to get to.

Continuing with 2010 being the “Year of the Fitness Stuff”, Eddie took me out yesterday and bought me a new pair of kicks, a pair of gray and bright orange Nike Lunarglides, which I’ll probably review after I do a few more runs in them. This is in addition to actually registering for the Rock & Roll Las Vegas Half-Marathon, and buying our flight tickets out there and reserving our hotel room.

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A few years ago, I signed up for Ancestry.com’s free membership and plugged in the basics of my family tree – just me, my parents, and my grandparents. Since then, I’d received monthly updates on the site’s latest offerings and services, as well as periodic info it would dig up on the 7 people that I’d put on the tree.

Out of boredom a week or so ago, I signed up for the basic account. At around $20 per month, it promised me access to anything and everything that I could possibly imagine to find on my dead relatives, so long as the information was based in the United States. Using Ancestry’s little “hints” I was able to find information on my paternal grandfather’s side of the family – the side no one has any information on because we’d never written down any family tree-type stuff. I knew his parents’ names, and that was enough to bring up several censuses worth of data on where the family had lived throughout the years, but I’m getting shit for information about them before they came over from Ireland.

My Nana, my maternal great-grandmother, had made not one but two of those “our family history” books. One of them we can’t seem to find, and the other is barely filled in. I used some of that information to trace back on her side of the family, which was much easier because half of them came over from England in the 1500’s and could be considered VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE back in the day, and the other half came over in the 1800’s.

One of the fun things that I’ve discovered about tracing the tree back as far as I can go (which I haven’t yet, I’m still picking up other branches back to 1400’s England) is the “One World Tree”. Trace a family tree back far enough, and combine it with the thousands of other people’s family trees, and eventually there’s some overlap. This is what the One World Tree is. And one of the beta features of this is the ability to find famous family members on your own tree. For instance, I’ve discovered that I’m distantly related to Queen Elizabeth. Langston Hughes, and Mary Todd Lincoln, and less-distantly related to George Bush.

What I haven’t found? I’ve found absolutely nothing on the fabled Indian in our family tree. I’ve figured out where in the tree this person should be, but since I don’t have a maiden name for one of my great-great-great-grandmothers, I’m at a dead end. I’ll have to dig through some marriage records.

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1. Go to the “Random Article” link on Wikipedia. Write down the title of the article. This is the name of your band.

2. Go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3. Go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days”. The third picture will be your album cover.

(my apologies if the image doesn’t show up in the feed, rest assured it is visible on the home page)

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