Ow (and other miscellanious ramblings)

Went swimming last night. I did about 2000 metres. Adding that (swimming to Rivendell?), and my most recent two runs to my walk to Rivendell I've gone 15K, or 9.3 miles, I have passed Last View of Hobbiton and I have 448.7 miles to reach Rivendell. Phew. At this rate it's gonna take a while.

Speaking of swimming. I love it. LOVE IT. It's still taking me a while. My front crawl, while really really good, is really really bad. My technique is wonderful (or so I'm told) and it feels really good to do. Very nice and glidy through the water, but my endurance on the front crawl is still pathetic. Speed for short distances is great. But ask me to do more than two lenghts of the front crawl and I will probably drown halfway into the third length. S'all in the breathing. Actually, I'm not as bad as that. I used to be unable to do two full lengths and now I could probably squeeze out four without stopping if I tried really really hard. But it's frustrating. Because I *know* I can do it. I can back stroke until next Tuesday without barely raising my heart rate. I can technically do the front crawl so well... but I get sooooooooo out of breath.

It'll come. I just gotta keep telling myself. It'll come.

But this morning I'm so sore. My lower back feels like it's broken and my right shoulder feels the same. It's not from swimming. Just from being old, I think. And I didn't sleep a wink last night. Between the water in my nose stuffing me up and the aches and pains, I tossed and turned all night. Wah wah wah.

Hurricane Wilma turned out to be just one big fart's worth of wind and a bunch of rain. Bummer. I wasn't looking for mass devastation, but a little power outage would have been nice. A little hunkerin' down with a blankie and listening to the storm beat on your windows would have been just swell. Oh well, there'll be others, I'm sure.

I got a few more vials of Black Phoenix smellies yesterday. Dragons Blood, Dragons Eye, Blood Kiss, Sominus and Nanshe. I'm wearing Dragons Blood right now and it's ok. Nothing to write home about. Sominus and Nanshe are supposed to promote nice peaceful sleeping. I put Nanshe on before I went to bed and the only thing it did was nearly cause Dick to suffocate. (Well JEEZE, don't put your face so near my pulse points!) But despite the lack of sleep, it smelled nice. Blood Kiss, however. Oh. My. God. OH MY GOD! It's incredible. IN-CRED-I-BLE! The description:

Lush, creamy vanilla and the honey of the sweetest kiss smeared with the vital throb of husky clove, swollen red cherries, but darkened with the vampiric sensuality of vetiver, soporific poppy and blood red wine, and a skin-light pulse of feral musk.

You think it sounds sexy? Well, it doesn't sound half as sexy as it smells.

Did I mention Oh. My. God?

Ok, It's after 11. I should really pretend to do some work.

Did I mention today how much I LOVE the spell check option on Google's toolbar? No? I love the spell check option on Google's toolbar. Just so you know.

Thinking caps on, please

I've got a birthday party coming up for a nine year old next month.

We've hit on a fun (and incredibly cheap!) idea - A mall scavenger hunt. The plan is for The Kid to invite a bunch of her friends, we'll hit the mall and break up into two teams, each headed by an adult (Me and niffer8) with a camera. The players in each team will take turns finding or doing the task that they've chosen out of a hat. The adult chaperon will take a picture confirming that task has been done. The tasks we've come up with so far include...

- Go to the fountain in the center court and pretend you’ve lost a contact lens

- Go find a bra and put it on over your shirt.

- Find a redhead and ask them if you can have your picture taken with him or her

- Go to the food court and ask for a cup of water

- Find a frog and hug it

- Shake the hand of a mannequin

- Find a watch or clock with the right time on it.

I want some more tasks. Anybody have any ideas? We want fun. We want a little tiny bit daring. We don't want to be too disruptive or obnoxious or annoying.

C'mon. There are some smart people out there. Give me a hand here.