Did I really just watch a four minute segment on the weather? At seven o'clock, during the lead minutes of the lead hour of a national news show? And I thought the local news lead (about the death of a Chicago fire fighter whose death -- though untimely -- had absolutely nothing to do with fire fighting) had been a bit thin.
I'd call in to offer up some real news, but I bet the phones are all tied up with people weighing in on the weather. Does a cold morning in October debunk everything we have heard about global warming? Is it inconsistent with the change of seasons? Is forty degrees before the sun comes up about a week earlier than the usual first forty degree morning really all that newsworthy? Anyway, just as I began to reevaluate my boredom with weather related plots, things started to pick up. A presumably well paid reporter was talking (with feeling) about a big brawl that broke out in a Philadelphia hotel between not one wedding party but two. I was a little puzzled about how the brawl would have broken out between one party, but the video was so priceless -- what I thought was a bulging and misshapen oversized wedding cake being flipped over was actually a bride -- I forgot about the linguistic issues and became transfixed. Say Yes to the Dress meets Jersey Shore meets Survivor meets The Biggest Loser. Now that's reality, that's news.
Yesterday, I watched the morning news for more than an hour as the show provided non-stop coverage of the Chicago Marathon. It may seem to some that watching thousands of scantily clad white people chase a handful of Africans down the street (seriously, had it not been for the clothing I would have thought it was about the suburban police chasing, ahem, presumed non-residents out of town) is dull, but for me, on DAY 2 (not to be confused with day ii) of my race training schedule, I found the coverage scintillating.
Speaking of scintillating news, let me fill you in on my training for the 15K that is now less than a month away. My left hip, the one that made me stop running in the first place, is in such pain I practically needed a fork lift to help me shift positions in bed the other night so I could drain my other nostril. (TMI?) My right knee, which never bothered me before, is swollen and achy, no doubt from my overcompensation when I chose to keep running on my incapacitated left hip. I tried to bend forward this morning and touch my toes. I was still so far away when I completed the stretch I needed a magnifying glass to see the floor. This from a self-proclaimed yogi, no less.
So a relatively intelligent person would say to herself, Self, you are too old and decrepit to run this race. Take the pretty fleece you paid a $75.00 registration fee for and run -- well, hobble -- to the finish line on the non-business side of the ropes where you can cheer your daughters on and act your age. Yes, a relatively intelligent person would definitely say that.
I am taking a few days off. Not because I have chosen to, but because I haven't yet been able to figure out how to walk again. I am going to run that friggin race if it kills me. News to anyone who knows me? Of course not. But puzzling -- and therefore riveting, at least to me -- all the same.
I wonder what the weather will be like in early November.
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