A dog named Boat Beer

My Sissy had an "epic status" on Facebook yesterday.  The "epicness" came from how one of her friends and I completely hijacked all the comments, and even got a few others to play along.  As it turns out though, one of my comments was about shiner minnows.  And in discussing this status with her after the fact I told her how her doggy nephew "Shiner" is named after these minnows.

Both of our dogs have fishing and drinking themes to their names.  Rascal Jack is named after a fishing boat in Hawaii named "The Rascal", and Jack Daniels.  Shiner Bock is named after the aforementioned minnow, and a delcious beer brewed in Texas.  I told my sister that we will forever have to name our dogs after fishing and drinking.  We eventually started laughing about where these names would lead and decided that sooner or later Hot Hubby and I'd run out of ideas and we'd end with a dog named "Boat Beer".

Then, because my sissy and I are quite funny, our giggles turned into us concocting a story about Brian and I being on our deathbed and rewriting our will so that my niece (my sissy's stepdaughter, The Artist) would end up with Boat Beer.  And we'd will her a lifetime supply of milk bones to keep Boat Beer happy.  And she'd have to love Boat Beer even though he will be slobbery.  And her friends would extend their sympathies for our passing, but she'd be a wee bit fussy that we left her with a slobbery, snuggly, huge dog named Boat Beer.

Oh, how my sissy can make me laugh!  A laugh that I think she definitely needed.  And I'm thankful for our laughter together.

Boa Retirement

One of the best parts of wearing a boa is the molting!  You leave behind a small part of the fun with each feather that falls.  Sometimes I'd find boa feathers in my car WEEKS after the last time I wore a boa.

Boa feather on the field at Kinnick Stadium 

GO HAWKS!

The unfortunate part of leaving a bit of the fun behind is that eventually the boa is less full, and will eventually need to be retired.  I am planing on retiring my very first Iowa Hawkeye boa on January 28th.  After running the Securian 10k in St. Paul, I am heading to White Bear Lake to participate in the Polar Bear Plunge.   I will be wearing my boa as I jump into the lake!

It will be a bittersweet (and chilly) moment!  This boa has been along for some seriously fun times...

KINNICK

Camp Randall - During a Hawkeye win over the Badgers 20-10

GO HAWKS!

Tailgating with the Luther boys

With friends that feel more like family 

On the wedding day of two amazing people!

Tomorrow when I jump into White Bear Lake, the boa is jumping with me.  It will be the last time I'll wear this one.  What a fun, fabulous, fantastic event to retire it at!

I run, you cheer. Pretty clear, right?

This post is a request that anyone I know get up early on a Sunday morning, drive to Minneapolis, and cheer for me while I run 10 miles with thousands of other women! Sounds fun, right?!

In less than 2 weeks I will run my first 10 mile race at the Women Run The Cities (WRTC - http://www.womenrunthecities.com/) event. The race begins at 8:00am Sunday, September 25th. The Start Line, and more importantly the Finish Line, is at Minnehaha Falls Park just off of Hiawatha Ave (Hwy 55) in Minneapolis.

I have been running at least one 5k each month this year, and my goal is to complete one a month for the whole year. It is truly with the support of my friends and family that I've kept on pace (pun totally intended!) to accomplish this goal. In addition to pushing myself at these monthly races I've registered for additional runs as well. This 10 mile race is by far the longest race I've ever accomplished. Even my running in Ragnar was not quite like running this 10 mile race.

It is because this will be such a challenge for me that I am asking people I love to get up early and come cheer me on! The people in my life have been so supportive of me all year long and I'd love to see familiar and smiling faces along the way, and at the Finish Line!

If you're like me, then you'd be interested in cheering at a couple places throughout the race route. To help you figure out approximately where I'll be I've put a pace map at the bottom of this post. My goal is to run 11:00 miles, with an overall finish time of under 2 hours. These mile markers (the numbers circled) and the times at the bottom right are just an opportunistic estimate of where/when I'll be.

Who: You and me
What: Cheering and running (respectively)
Where: Minnehaha Falls Park and on the West and East River Pkwys http://www.womenrunthecities.com/WRTC-CourseMap2009.pdf
When: Sunday, September 25th at 8:00am
Why: Because you love me and I'm a wee bit crazy!
How: With all my might!
My plan is to have Hot Hubby take me out for bacon and eggs after the race and the more the merrier!!!

What If...

I'm very curious by nature, and I love to know the answers to "Why" and "How". One of my favorite questions is "What if". I used to play this game called "What if..." It's not necessarily a game in that there's a winner or a loser. But it was something I did for fun to pass the time. I would come up with so many different "What if's..."

There were the questions that are absolutely absurd:

What if...

• there were no sidewalks anywhere?
• babies were born as 2 year olds?
• there were no dogs?
• the automobile was never invented?
• the sky was red all the time?

Then, there were the questions that seemed absurd at the time, but became reality:

What if...

• the planes fell from the sky?
• the bridge collapsed while we were driving over it?
• the roof caved in?

Unfortunately, 99% of these questions were directed at my sister. She tried to answer them honestly for years and years. But finally one day, she looked at me and quite seriously said, "We'd all be dead." I was so startled at her answer. I couldn't believe that everyone would really be dead if we only ate beef and never tried chicken. We certainly wouldn't all be dead if we didn't know how to use a computer. And we definitely wouldn't all be dead if every car in the world was orange!

See, she sort of got frustrated with all my questioning. It was non stop, over and over, my imagination would come up with so many questions. She got so tired of coming up with answers.

But now that I'm an adult, she is one of the first people I run my "What if's..." by. I reach out to her when I have big decisions to make. We run through scenarios of what could happen. But she never tells me "We'd all be dead." She knows that my questioning is helpful, and a good thing. She embraces my curiosity. She even encourages her own kids to question things.

I still, very much, enjoy questioning things. I love knowing why a process is done one way or another. I enjoy learning how things are completed from beginning to end. I just simply love learning.

Thankfully, the answer to my questions is very, very rarely "We'd all be dead."

Christmaspolooza

It's coming, it's coming, it's coming! Christmaspolooza will be here in 9 days! I'm so freaking excited for this "lock-in" type family celebration! Brian and I head down to my sister's house on Wednesday evening, and we won't be home again until Christmas morning-ish. We stock up on everyone's favorite foods and drinks. We play board games, card games, Wii games! We laugh, we cry, we eat, we drink. We run around like we're crazy people (and maybe we are, but I LOVE it)!

Christmaspolooza is the best way for a wanna-be Jewish girl to celebrate this wonderful, loving, blessed time of the year.