And I did. Exceeded it actually.

I told Eddie last night why I’ve stuck with the running so long. “I stuck with it because none of y’all thought that I would or could do it,” is what I told him. So I stuck with it. And then I found that I liked it. I liked it a LOT. I like it so much that I told Eddie I was sad that he didn’t enjoy it, because I miss having a hobby we can share, and I don’t really have more than a couple of online friends who are guaranteed to cheer for me when I say my pace has gone from an 18 minute mile to a 17 (even if that pace will never win me any races).

But, like I said, no one else shares this hobby, so I’ll move on to other things. Supertech is back at work again. Work’s been a bit slow lately because it’s been so rainy, and we old know that old people dissolve in the rain so they don’t leave the house if it’s in the forecast. Rain doesn’t stop the morons, losers, and junkies though. This can be demonstrated by the fact that we’ve had plenty of people trying to get their controlled substances early, such as the guy who left in a huff when BossRph told him she wouldn’t let him pay cash for his #450 Klonopin tablets that were nearly 2 weeks early and he accused her of insinuating that he was abusing it, leaving the pharmacy bitching about how he can read between the lines of what she was saying and was going to go to the CVS that he usually goes to. BossRPh wasn’t saying anything between the lines, she was politely calling him a loser. We figure that he came to our store because he knew that CVS wasn’t going to let him just pay cash either, and he figured he could get away with it at our place.

And I’m pretty sure that my bio-dad’s brother was in the store yesterday. Mom asked if I’d asked him if he was related to [bio-dad's name], and I told her that was a situation I didn’t particularly want to get into. Really, there’s no way that you can say “oh, my mom knew him” without piquing curiosity and prompting the question of how Mom knew him, and the the correct/honest answer to that would be “oh, by ‘knew him’ I really mean ‘was married to’, and by the way, I’m your niece.”

So that’s this week thus far. I live an exciting life, n’est-ce pas?

This is a just-for-fun meme. What you do is, set your iPod/iTunes/iWhatever to shuffle, then scribble down the first line of the first 20 songs. Then post the results and see how many people can correctly guess the song title and artist. (Trust me, it’s harder than it sounds!) The point is that you get to find out a bit about the musical tastes of your friends and test your own musical knowledge.

*of course you could cheat and simply Google the lyrics - but where’s the fun in that?!

And I have nothing to do tonight, so I’m doing it. If you can figure them out, more power to you, you’re not getting a prize though.

1. Her name is Noelle, I have a dream about her
2. Welcome, Monsieur, sit yourself down
3. Alright so this is a song about anyone, it could be anyone.
4. All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces
5. Your cost stereo is state of the art, my getto-blaster is fallin’ apart
6. Highway run into the midnight sun
7. Break me down, you got a lovely face
8. Oh how I suffer from having all the right love in all the wrong places
9. You say, I only hear what I want to
10. And if she asks you why, you can tell her that I told you
11. I was five and he was six, we rode on horses made of sticks
12. I remember when it all first began, we were tight right from the start
13. I’m picking up the phone and putting down this pen
14. I remember summers, you and me lasting forever
15. I used to buy my faith in worship
16. I saw you sliding out the bar, I saw you slipping out the back door, baby
17. My friend assures me its all or nothing
18. Come out Virginia, don’t let me wait
19. Now I chill real ill when I start to chill
20. What’s with these homies dissin’ my girl?

Current Mood:  tired

For instance, On Monday or Tuesday, BossRPh declared that in an effort to increase our script counts and get croporate off our backs, Thursday was to be “Tossed Salad Thursday” and that Friday was going to be “Fellatio Friday.” This was amusing to me. It got even more amusing when the fill-in tech, a young guy who really can’t stop his mouth from saying things it probably shouldn’t sometimes, told StressedRPh that today was Tossed Salad Thursday. She briefly looked happy to hear that, probably thinking we meant to order lunch from the pizza place up the road that makes great salads. I think she got the idea that it was a dirty thing only when Techboy explained that tomorrow is Fellatio Friday.

Yesterday, one of our Viagra junkies got a new script for Cialis. He called up today to tell me that it wasn’t working at all, let alone the 36 hours that it’s advertised to supposed to… er… have an effect, and we needed to call his MD to get him more refills on the Viagra.

One of our really annoying guys, the weird one who likes to cover his hands with a tissue when he uses the pen at the counter (but has no problem touching the money that nasty women put in their bras), called up on Monday to ask if he could have one of his friends bring in his scripts because he’d just gotten out of surgery. We told him that’d be fine and to send them down. He didn’t show up until yesterday, 15 minutes before the store closed, and naturally had some sort of issue that kept the pharmacy open an extra 5 minutes for some stupid-ass reason that I can’t remember.

One of the front store supervisors got asked out today by a rather creepy guy. He’s creepy as hell, admits to being a crackhead, and his arms can only be classified as REALLY FUCKED UP. Like, one is missing, and the other has a single finger growing out of the other shoulder.

We’re supposed to ask customers picking up prescriptions if they have any questions on the medications. We usually manage to do it to about 95% of the people, ignoring the ones who are picking up Viagra or people who have been getting the same thing every month since Carter was in office. This afternoon, Techboy came up with an ingenious way of fulfilling this requirement by asking a patient “So how’s that working out for you?” This wouldn’t have been nearly as amusing if it wasn’t for the fact that the guy was picking up the meds for his schizophrenia.

Tomorrow is Friday, which means that it’s the last day of the week. I’m going to attempt to get a morning run in outside if the rain holds off, do another 30 Day Shred, go to work, and with any luck we’ll be going to the drive-in on Saturday.

No, stop laughing and hear me out.

Anyone who knew me in school could tell you that I did nothing athletic. I rode horses for a couple of years, but not competitively and only for an hour a week. In gym class, while playing softball, I was the one in the outfield who was either being chased by a bee or trying to catch butterflies, but making no effort to catch a ball. The most active I got was the time we all chased the woodchuck that lived near the field, or when we played badminton. When we played ping-pong, Liv and I were content to play a couple of games to make it look like we were actually doing something before doing stupid shit like making the pay phone ring and shooting the ping-pong balls out of our mouths at the girls we didn’t particularly like. I would beg Mom to write me notes to excuse me from doing the mile run we were forced to do every year. Sometimes I’d just not change into gym clothes, instead sitting on the bleachers.

Hell, anyone who has known me for even a short period of time could tell you that I’m more content to sit on the couch and read or at my computer surfing the web or playing WoW. I’m the very definition of sedentary. I’ll circle around a parking lot to find a spot close to the door. When I started the C25K (Couch to 5k), week 1 involves running for 1 minute at a time. That’s a mere 60 seconds, and I couldn’t even do that. By the time I’d get to 30 seconds I’d be watching the clock and forcing myself to finish it, usually with my finger hovering over the button to decrease my speed to a walking pace as soon as I possibly could.

Not to mention the fact that I’ve never been one for eating healthy. I did the Atkins diet for a while specifically because I didn’t have to eat healthy. I ate deli meats and cheese and bacon. I made chicken strips with a batter of crushed pork rinds. In high school, my breakfast was sometimes a can of Jolt and a pack of the “lite” Hostess cupcakes, and lunch usually consisted of a can of Coke and an order of fries.

Which is why I think that at some point this winter I was abducted by aliens. I’ve never run for any reason at all, and yet here I sit annoyed about how I can’t go out and run this morning because my knee was giving me some shit last night and I don’t want to push my luck adding a 4th day of running to my week. It’s the only plausible reason that I can come up with for why I decided that I was going to get up this morning and do pushups. I’ve switched from eating a Wendy’s combo #6 (spicy chicken sandwich, no lettuce or tomato, extra mayo thank you very much) and Papa Gino’s steak and cheese grinders and sodium-laden prepackaged sandwich kits (they’re like Lunchables for grown-ups!) for lunch to a yogurt cup. My afternoon snack of a bag of Chex Mix or Cheese-Its or a handful of Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies has been replaced with a Fiber One snack bar or maybe 2 Fig Newtons. I eat a salad at dinner a couple of times a week. I eat a bowl of cereal as dessert instead of a half-pint of ice cream. I’ve almost entirely given up soda, with the exception of on the weekends if Eddie and I go out to Taco Bell or something, and I drink about 2 liters of water a day. And sure as shit, alien abduction is the only reason I just got myself a copy of the 30 Day Shred video that people keep telling me is going to kick my ass.

Supertech, I’ll make you a copy, we’ll see who dies first doing it.

On the left, we have me when we went to Salem, MA in 2007. I probably weighed around 235-240lbs. When I started the C25K in February I was around 225-230lbs, and not much different than that picture. On the right is me as seen this morning around 195lbs, 30lbs lighter, able to run for 20 minutes straight on the treadmill, and completely ready and willing to break a sweat.

Current Mood:  energetic

• Sunday was Danielle’s birthday. She needs to come over here for her presents, otherwise Eddie and I are going to enjoy them.
• I didn’t run on Monday. However, I did run yesterday and today, with today’s run being outside and in the sunshine. It was beautiful, even if I was intimidated by the 6 Army guys out for their own morning run.
• I got to check off my first item off my 43 Things list, since I’ve achieved my goal of losing 30lbs. While I don’t have a set goal weight to reach, I’d like to lose another 20lbs, or get to the point where I can say that I’m both happy and healthy.
• Eddie says he’d like to open up my head and try to figure out what makes me such an oddball, but he’s afraid he’ll find nothing but 5 hamsters on exercise wheels getting distracted by shiny things. I told him that not only do I have hamsters in there, there’s also a unicorn. This discussion came about partly because I was asking questions like “Why do the Brits call elevators ‘lifts’? Why don’t they call them ‘lowers’?”
• Supertech told us all a story today about how her son’s snake popped a mouse yesterday. She told us this because it grossed her out, thus we all needed to be grossed out along with her. And now I’m passing the gross-out on to all 6 of the people who read this
• Not only did I go to work in sparkley silver shoes today (accessorized with some orange, pink and blue-striped toe socks), but I picked up 2 pairs of sparkley flip-flops on the way out of the store, mainly because, like my brain hamsters, I’m totally enamored by shiny shit.

Yesterday, however, was beautiful and we were able to enjoy a couple of hours at the Scottish festival at the South County fairgrounds. I got myself a new claddagh ring, because the other day I damned near lost my 3 favorite rings. I’d been wearing a size 7 1/2’s and 8’s for a while now, and thy were just really, really loose on me, so I’d taken them off last week and stuffed them into the pocket of my jeans. This resulted in a slight freakout after my run yesterday, when I got home to find Eddie just about ready to move the bedroom couch because he couldn’t find 2 of them (which I’d already found and put on a shelf before I’d left). So anyway, I got a new smaller ring - size 6 - which is holding the other 2 safely on my finger. I tried on a size 5, and while I could get it on, it was a bit of a bitch to get off, and they didn’t have any 5 1/2 ones there. We also saw some sheep, a whole mess of people from the SCA, a slightly creepy man with a bunch of animal skins, Pendragon, ate a bite of the meat pie that Eddie bought, and drank about half of his Irn Bru. And the bagpipes. Oh, how I love me some bagpipes. If I had the lung power, I’d try to get myself some lessons. Some might also say that in addition to the lung power to inflate the bag, I’d also need to acquire some musical talent.

Tomorrow we go back to work. I think we can all agree that no one is happy to be going to work, regardless of how happy we are to actually have jobs.

Current Mood:  blah

Eddie is happily snoring away in the bedroom. He had a sleep study last night and learned after the first one that he’s useless the next day, so he’s not working today. He told me last night that he’s going to skateboard to the weiner joint up the road. What I wouldn’t give to no have to work and just sleep in the bed with him for the rest of the day, snores and all.

I decided yesterday that we need a new rule at work: if you don’t speak English - absolutely no English and we’re reduced to using hand signals - and you bring someone to translate for you, please bring someone who actually speaks your language as the translator. We had 2 guys in the store yesterday who spoke no English at all. Nothing. Most of our non-English speakers at least know enough to figure out what we’re asking them when we ask for their address or telephone number, but these dudes may as well have been deaf and mute for all the communication that was going on between us. The English speaker that brought them in spoke no Spanish, with the exception of whatever numbers he may have learned on Sesame Street and even that he wasn’t great at. Worst translater EVER.

Then, while we were filling the scripts, one of the Spanish guys came back to the pharmacy holding 2 pairs of shorts from the racks of cheap shit we sell in the seasonal aisle, and after a short game of charades I figured out that he wanted a changing room so he could try them on. Um, no. Honey, it’s a pharmacy. Not a clothing store. There are no changing rooms.

I’ve reached the point where I’m torn between running outside, where it’s more interesting and smells so nice in the woods around the bike path and I feel like I’ve actually done some work, and running inside where I generally don’t feel like my legs are going to fall off, sit beside the path, and say “Oh no, Crystal, you go on ahead, we’ll catch up,” but can run for a decent amount of time before I get winded.

So I think that this week I might try alternating days on the treadmill with days outside and see how that goes. Last week I did 3 days in a row outside (2 cut short and one full run), plus a day of walking and wasn’t feeling too bad, and since usually my outside runs leave me sore more than the inside ones, I’ll try a few days of in and out runs to see how I feel. Plus, later this month (after we pay my mother our rent and pay for my truck) I’m getting new tires for my bike and buying Eddie the bike that I promised him for his birthday, so I can add that to our weekend routine.

Tomorrow we’re going to Chili’s with Robin, her Manly Man, Gemini, and Avitable, because he’ll be up in Mass for a family thing. This leads to strange bedtime conversations, such as:

Ed: I want to get a pic with Avitable with his pants around his ankles.
Me: That will only work if you both have your pants down, otherwise it’s just creepy.
Ed: Nah, I don’t want to put him to shame.

I guess I should charge the camera. I mean really, who wouldn’t want to see two guys drop trou in the middle of the Chili’s parking lot?

And now, because I have nothing else of interest to post, I give you a Friday 5 related to bugs.

1. What bugs truly freak you out? Ladybugs give me the heeby-jeebies, spiders are bloody awful, and I don’t think anything freaks me out more than crickets.
2. Which Bugs Bunny cartoon do you remember most fondly? I always got a kick out of one where they use the word “jackass” when I was little.
3. What bugs you most about your life online? The usual stuff. Trolls, flame wars, pretentious assholes.
4. Which of your favorite websites seems often to be especially buggy? None lately. Livejournal’s been stable for about 5 years now, Facebook seems ok, and Myspace is just perpetually ugly.
5. When were you last too sick to get out of bed? Not for a while. Probably around a year or so when I had that weird stomach thing that kept me on the couch and in the bathroom for 3 days.

We’re still picking up the pieces of our machines from what will heretofore be known as “The Great Ubuntu Switch.” We’re both trying to get WoW running properly because 75% of the time it crashes when installing the patches, and I’m attempting to find a substitute for Lightroom, since it doesn’t seem to like working with Wine and I don’t find anything fantastic about Raw Therapee, which is the one I’m sort of playing with in the meantime.

We’ve got 3 more days off. Tomorrow I might try to run again, or at least walk while Eddie plays with his new longboard.