You Might Be a Redneck...

Last night, I asked my friend Mary to give me a haircut.

But not just any haircut.

I wanted a mullet.

She was kind enough to oblige.

So what do you think?

It's more of a Euro-mullet than straight-up redneck style,

but that might just be splitting hairs at this point

(oh how I love puns).

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10-Miler on No Training? No Problem

Usually it's a good idea to train for running races.

I've had some injuries for the last while, and a big case of lazybug to go with it.

So I hadn't really trained before the GW Parkway Classic 10-Miler.

Oh well.

My friend Athena was also running, so I picked her up and we headed to Old Town Alexandria to catch our bus to the start line at Mount Vernon.

When we got there, we ran into our friend Jaysen, who was there with his girl and her family.

Ready to run!

I went with a classic American theme, and Athena went fluorescent.

The weather was really nice, as it was kinda overcast and that kept temperatures down. I went out nice and slow, and tried to stay consistent over the distance.

While I faded a bit between miles 6-9, I busted my butt in the final mile (ran sub-7 min, yikes!) and finished with a very respectable 1:20:38. That's just about 8 min miles, which I'm very happy to be able to do, especially without proper training.

Encouraging for the summer, if I can just stay healthy and get my butt in gear and off the couch!

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The Birdman and Me

I've wanted to get out to San Francisco to visit friends for a while, and my friend Kristin said I should go before she moved away from that area, so I buckled down and went for it.

One very entertaining thing we did, and which I hadn't anticipated to be so great, was seeing Beach Blanket Babylon. It's basically a celebrity-parodying song and dance review. They do a lot of songs you know the tune to, and the celebrity material is updated frequently with current events.

For example, they'd already included Charlie Sheen jokes like his having tiger blood and such. Also, they're well-known for their costumes and especially for huge hats. Here's a 10 min clip so you can see what I mean:

I was glad to get to see Brad Packer while I was in town, since I haven't seen him in way too long. Unfortunately, he's still in public auditing, so he was working on the weekend and we could only do lunch and then he had to get back to the office. When will you escape, Brad? Monica and that new baby of yours are gonna want to see you more often.

Of course, when you're visiting a city, you have to do some touristy stuff. Little did I know how many great spots there are to see in San Francisco, so I was lucky Kristin could show me around.

Here we are at Lombard Street, famous for being (arguably) the crookedest street in the world.

And here I am in front of a famous landmark that brings my childhood memories of Friday nights roaring back: the Painted Ladies at Alamo Square, aka the houses from the Full House opening montage.

Our big excursion of the weekend was seeing Alcatraz. We took the ferry over (as everyone does) and took the audio tour (like most people do), pausing periodically to take a good look at things or discuss interesting tidbits of information we'd learned or observed.

At one point, we got in trouble for stabbing some people with toothbrushes we'd sharpened into shivs (is it really so bad to get into the experience a little?), so they threw us in jail for a while until we'd cooled off.

Though I'd had lots of tasty meals during the trip, I was very excited to get some In-n-Out after we got back to the mainland. Mmm, how I've missed those delicious animal-style burgers.

Really, that's one of my only gripes about living in Washington DC.

No In-n-Outs.

Is just one too much to ask?

Great trip all around and I look forward to seeing you guys again soon!

Maybe next time come to my 'hood and I'll show you around.

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