Events

A new friend asked me last week if I wanted to visit Brighton Beach with her this past weekend... the answer was of course a "yes", but I was on weather standby and therefore could not go outside of 1 hour from the base (Brighton Beach is south of London, about 2.5 hours away). My first thought was "how about next weekend?" But then I remembered we would be in the middle of an exercise on base and effectively on call again. The weekend after that, I am on weather standby again, and then Lisa arrives on Sunday. The last weekend in July, Lisa and I are going to Paris for her 21st birthday. The first weekend in August is the half marathon in Nottingham. Eek! How did my next month get planned already?

Yes, the last two of those weekends are fun things vs. un-fun things, but for some reason having weekends planned out (whether I like the plans or not) just makes it seem like they will come and go faster than if I didn't have plans yet. Does that make any sense at all? I don't know... maybe I'm just being grumpy about being tied to the base for 3 weekends in a row. I really shouldn't complain, the AF is the reason I get to live here in the first place.

Have I talked about the August half marathon yet? Possibly not, since I was so bad about blogging in June. I had originally decided that the Berlin rollerblade marathon on Sep 26 would be my fall event to train for after I recovered from the May marathon. But after Martin didn't get the time he wanted in his Memorial Day half marathon, he decided to pick an August half and train hard for it (since he hadn't trained at all for the May race), and try to break 1:30. (For those of you trying to do the math in your head, that is a 6:52 mile pace for 13.1 miles... craziness.) Well, I have been saying since my first half marathon over 2 years ago that I wanted to break 2:00 (a much more reasonable 9:09 pace), and the idea of reaching a goal like that proved to be too hard to resist... I signed up for the August half.

The race is in Newark, a smaller town just outside of Nottingham (yes, of Robin Hood fame). I'm looking forward to exploring another part of England I haven't visited yet... races are such great excuses to travel! The training is actually going pretty well so far. I haven't done long enough distances yet to gauge whether I can go fast enough for long enough to hit my goal, but my pace has been getting steadily faster on shorter 3-4 mile runs. It's exciting to think about having a great race and getting a time I want, after the disappointment in Edinburgh. And just in case you were wondering, I am definitely still going to Berlin for the rollerblade marathon in Sep. :)

Another fall event that I failed to mention in June (when I bought tickets) is... Lifehouse is coming to London in October!!!!!!!!!!!! (Deserving of more exclamation points, but I think you get the point.) I found out through a post from the band's Facebook account, and I literally half-screamed/half-squealed when I saw it. You can ask my dad, who was sitting across the room from me when it happened... I think I scared him. Besides the fact that Lifehouse is my favorite band EVER, that I've seen them in concert 5 times and met them twice, and that I have a major celebrity-crush on Jason Wade (lead singer)... I haven't been to a concert in forever!!! I'm not even going to try and figure out what the last one was because it will depress me, but I definitely have not been to one since coming to England. So excited!

I need to get to some house cleaning (more specifically, Mini-title-finding...), so I'll leave you with a Good List:

Good List
1. Cooler temperatures. It has been in the low 80s, which constitutes a heat wave for England... and with no AC, not so much fun to sleep in... tonight it is in the 60s and I have my windows open :)
2. Lazy Sunday afternoons reading a book in the sun in my backyard.
3. New blog posts from one of my favorite bloggers. :)
4. Pictures. Facebook and otherwise, they keep me updated on the lives of both old and new friends.
5. Fast customer service. Thank you SanDisk!
6. Naps.
7. Plans falling into place at the last minute. In the case of my next round of AFROTC cadets visiting this week, I really hope this continues...
8. Challenges.
9. Laughing so hard you can't breathe. :)
10. Buffalo Chicken sandwiches. Thank you Charley's!