Bright side

In other news ...

I'd like to recommend glamscience. There was shipping mix-up with my order, and the artist was gracious and accommodating. And her stuff is very cute, particularly this shirt that the universe deemed needed to be possessed by Jessie's daughter. Check it out.

As for the non-race parts of the weekend ... on Friday night, I had dinner with three girlfriends. We had a pretty good time if you don't count my very pregnant friend's increasing discomfort and my inability to stop staring inappropriately at my other friend's once small boobs.

I left early the next morning for the big city, where I was treated with homemade Maryland-style crab soup and homemade bread and salad (all delicious) along with a surprise stack of early birthday gifts! So that was really great.

Then ... I can't remember what we did. Oh! We went to see the Anne Frank exhibit, which was disappointing. I cannot recommend it because it was basically pages from a history book enlarged and hung on big banners and that was it. I guess I was spoiled by the exhibit at the Imperial War Museum on the Holocaust, otherwise known as possibly one of the best exhibits ever created on planet Earth, but this one was boring and not even worth going to. It saddens me to say that, but there it is.

Then we went to Bourbon Street to see my brother playing a long daytime gig with some of his friends in a band. As always, he was great, and the energy was fantastic even though the crowd was full of cheesy tourists dancing their hearts out to "Small Town" by John Cougar Mellencamp like it's the most happiness-inducing song known to man.

After that, we basically rested. We tried to have Italian pasta for dinner but had no luck so we ended up having Chinese pasta, which was pretty good if possibly not the most ideal thing to eat before a race. We started All the King's Men, which is just not good at all. "This movie does not do justice to a beautiful book!" I proclaimed. "It is shameful." So we turned it off and went to bed early because we had to get up at the crack of dawn for the race the next morning.

After the race, we ate a lot of leftovers and started a game of Scrabble and listened to The Darkness because it seemed like triumphant music and we were feeling pretty triumphant. I basically started passing out at the table once the feeling shifted from triumph to I Must Be Lying Down Right Now, so we retired for a nap. I burrowed under the fleece sheets for an undetermined period of time like a zombie, and then we finished our game and I went home, where I couldn't even stay up for half of the Oscars. (Luckily Kymm stayed awake to recap them for me.)

I might not have liked All the King's Men, but I did like Shut Up and Sing. What a great documentary. I've always liked the Dixie Chicks but haven't been a diehard fan or anything. It was great to see them win those Grammys recently (even though I felt their acceptance speeches were lacking), and the viewing of this movie could not be more timely after that awards night because it makes their sweeping victory seem so much more meaningful because you see what came before that album and all that went into writing those songs and how their future was totally uncertain and their careers and lives were re-written. It is a really great behind-the-scenes look at the music industry, the publicity industry, and how they were professionally and personally affected by the aftermath of Natalie Maines' comment that they are ashamed that that the president is from Texas. Plus, you can't help but be reminded when watching it that they are talented beyond belief. I highly recommend this one.

Meanwhile, I thought my birthday gift to myself was running the race, but I guess in actuality it's a new plumbing line. Oh, joy. The leak detection company came over this morning and found my leak by shooting air into the line, which I think made it worse, for what was once an invisible leak is now erupting in my front yard like a small geyser and flowing down the sidewalk to the end of the street. I got two plumbing estimates this morning and settled on one that seems reasonable for replacing my line between the water meter and my house, jackhammering the driveway, and re-paving the driveway once it's blown to smithereens. [That would be 1,100 big, beautiful dollars that I was hoping to spend on (a) car repairs or (b) airfare to some place pretty and far, far away on a yet-to-be-planned vacation.]

This picture does not even begin to capture the bubbly ferociousness of this leak. Oh, well. At least it's in the yard and not underneath my actual house. Bright side!