Why I need to give up running...

So in my attempt to stick with my trainer(an ex academy football player)'s plan of getting me in shape, I have been going to the gym 5 days a week for the past few weeks now.  Let me state again how much I really hate running.  I thought I would run outside today though, because 1. it's safer for me apparently and 2. it was warm and sunny and I know the wrath of New England winter is about to come crashing down on my life.  

In order to get to the outdoor track you have to walk by the bowling alley which has no less than 5 men outside smoking at any time.  I'm pretty sure that having your gym patrons be subjected to cancer before they go run their lungs out is a pretty bad idea, but apparently the AF doesn't care.  

Well Ms Asthma was already congested by the time I got to the track because somehow every time I am subjected to the cancer sticks my lungs go on strike and work so sluggishly I'm pretty sure my brain gets high from lack of oxygen.  The downside of that is that I cough more than an emphysema patient.  

So I started running and my shorts started to ride up.  Now ladies, back me up on this...why does Nike, Addidas and every other sport short manufacturer have to make ladies shorts so short?  Why can't they just be long like men's shorts?  Anyways, my shorts were starting to ride up, so I started hiking them down like the teenage kid that wants to show off his boxers.  My t-shirt was totally long enough so that wasn't really an issue...at first.  Somewhere around the mile marker I got totally sick of hiking the shorts down every 10 steps, so I tugged really hard at the hem and they fell longer.  Then I reached around to my back to see if my t-shirt was still long enough (mind you I'm doing all of this at a run)...and it wasn't.  Now side note, thank goodness I have enough common sense to not being wearing anything skimpy to the office and thank goodness I remember that advice that our mother gave all of us about car accidents and underwear.  But still here I am running around a track with my bloomers hanging out.  I was a decent distance away from all the AF guys doing PT in the middle of the field, so I was pretty sure they didn't see anything...but then I looked behind me and I saw a very attractive male running a few yards behind me.  I quickly righted the shorts wrong and didn't make eye contact with him the entire rest of the time I was running...oh yeah and my face turned 5 shades of red.  

So I finished my mile and a half and walked off the track to stretch.  As I'm stretching my calves near the parking lot and black SUV pulls up.  In it is the very good looking man that was running behind me.  He rolls down the window and says, "Thank you.  I was pacing off you the whole way.  You were a great pacer."  I was absolutely mortified so I did the only thing I could think to do in that situation (since I'm not a great flirt), I just introduced myself, said I would pace anytime and walked away.  Quickly, with my shorts definitely pulled up.   

I am never again buying picture frames that don't already have the brackets installed...

One of the challenges of being a single girl living on your own is everyday household tasks.  Most of the time I can wield a screwdriver or a hammer quite successfully (stop laughing parents), but being alone in Utah for 3 years can do that to a woman.  

Upon moving to the Boston area I decided to start decorating my apartment, which was something I had never successfully done in Utah, as it never quite felt like home.  I purchased a ton of picture frames from AC Moore (where's my discount Katie?) and was on a nesting binge.  

The problem I soon discovered was that these picture frames did not have the brackets already installed on the back.  You had to nail them in yourself.  I wasn't sure what kind of hammer that required, but since I already had a standard hammer, that's what I used.  The other issue is that I am trying to grow my nails out for a wedding I am going to be in, because I am getting them manicured.  So there I was with a huge standard hammer, tiny tiny metals nails and my obnoxiously longer than I would normally wear them fingernails.  Products for disaster.

And it was frustrating...every second of it.  I couldn't get the nail to stand up unless I was practically hammering on my thumbnail.  It was obnoxious, somewhat painful and bad for the nailpolish I had put on the night before.  

I had finally finished 3 out of 4 frames and decided to call it a night.  Now it was just the task of seeing if the pictures would actually hang on the wall.  As I was placing them on my demo nail I heard a knock at my door.  I normally would have pretended I wasn't home, but since I had been hammering and the TV was on, I figured that wasn't possible.  I also figured that it was the people downstairs ready to yell at me for the noise.  

I carefully opened the door to find my neighbor looking worried.  He asked if I was alright and I apologized profusely for the banging and told him I was done for the night.  He said he wasn't there to complain at all, but rather to see if I was in trouble.  He said that the banging was so furious he was afraid that I might have been bound up and trying to bang for help.  When I told him I was just trying to put some picture brackets on a picture frame, he looked at me like I had 3 heads.  Clearly he has not tried to wield a hammer against a little nail with fingernails before.  I apologized again, assured him I was ok and thanked him for being so concerned.  

When I closed the door I realized I should have introduced myself better and thanked him more profusely for being concerned.  But I was so shocked that he wasn't there to yell at me I was taken aback.  Which lead me to question what kind of society do we live in where people worry about other people being bound up?  

Not to mention I was pretty angry at those nails...oh yeah and at job stress...I think I was taking both out on that picture frame.  Maybe I should hammer quieter next time. 

And that's when George Stephanopoulos made me bite it on the treadmill....

So the gym at Hanscom has treadmills that face a wall lined with tvs.  I hate running with the fire of a thousand suns, but I know its a necessary evil, so I do it.  Today I was running on the treadmill watching some ESPN, because something about watching football players run into the endzone makes me feel more inspired to keep running, when out of the corner of my eye I happen to see Georgie on the next TV over.  I thought to myself, hm I wonder what George has to say today and then I broke the cardinal rule of treadmill running (ok I don't really know if its the cardinal rule, but I just made it that), I turned my head 45 degrees to see that tv.  No joke, it was 45 degrees.  And being the person full of grace that I am, I lost my balance and almost totally went down.  I used to laugh at that stop button, thinking that only idiots fall off treadmills but today my hand hit it by accident as I was starting to bite the rubber.  And the treadmill came to a dead stop immediately so I couldn't even pretend that I almost didn't fall.  Mortified I tried to start the treadmill back up, but it made me wait until it reset.  It finally started back up and I continued running with gusto and trying to make my face look like it was red from running.

That story right there pretty much sums up my first 6 weeks in Boston.