we went to target tonight to buy some sprinkles for my october cake and some golf balls. (candle sale! $4.28 impulse buy!) since we only had three items, we decided to use the express lane. we got in line behind three high school aged guys. i always look at what other people are buying, i just do, i can’t help it. just today in fact, we stood behind a guy in kroger who was pretty much exactly my dad in about 15 years. he was probably 80 and bought nothing but 2% milk and bread. i think my dad could live on that. but i digress…

back to target. if i may stereo type for a moment, these weren’t your typical honor students. they just sort of looked like they were trouble. granted, i’m not saying they’re actually bad kids, they just looked like they would be. as we get closer, i noted what they were buying.

1 package of trident gum. gotta have fresh breath for the ladies, right?

1 dvd. i couldn’t see what it was, and probably wouldn’t have recognized it anyway, but this seems like a normal friday night purchase. slow night, buy a cheap dvd. great.

3 - 12 packs of soda. 2 jones soda packs in some sort of berry flavor and a pack of squirt or some other c-brand of soda.

2 bottles of cough syrup.

now, even if these kids had looked like honor students, i’d have raised an eyebrow. TWO bottles of cough syrup? i’ve had the same bottle of nyquil in my cabinet for 4 years, and its still 2/3 full.

now for the educational portion of my evening. the cashier also raised an eyebrow at the very obvious underage jack and coke these kids were planning on going home to create. so she scans the nyquil and - get this - you have to be 18 to buy it! who knew?! these guys didn’t. so they’re fumbling around for IDs, but they’re all 17, so they can’t buy the nyquil and have to leave with just their gum, dvd and 36 cans of pop. at this point i’m doing all i can not to start laughing, but i did stare them down the entire time and the one kid who looked like he maybe didn’t actually want to be there looked right at me and he definitely knew i was wise to their plan because he looked rather embarrassed about the whole situation.

i guess my question is…did these kids not even think about what this would look like to a normal person? hmm..i’m really sick, that’s why i need not one, but two bottles of cough syrup. and since i’m so sick, i’m going to call up my two buddies to go to the store with me, and pick up some drinks and a movie. seriously? i mean, at least act sick, go by yourself, try tissues instead of dvds and just go with one bottle so that instead of laughing at you, we at least feel bad for you not being able to get any cough syrup. kids these days just want everything handed to them.

i guess we know what i’m doing for the next couple of weeks…

philip ran the indianapolis marathon this morning, and was allowed to finish, had plenty of fluids available along the race course and didn’t walk once. pretty awesome. we decided to call it day early on friday and head up there to watch. it was a great race for spectators, we got to see him pass by 5-6 times along the course and had time for coffee and lunch in between sightings. brian and i are also beet red as a result of our lack of sunscreen. seriously - worst sunburn i’ve had in a few years. ouch! but certainly not as painful as how philip probably feels right now. way to go!

finally, finally reached my goal of running a 5k in under 30 minutes. did it in 29:14 in fact, which is 1:45 faster than my next fastest race. i owe all credit to my playlist

what i can’t stop listening to right now:

we are here to save your life
the fool, the drunk, the child and his wife.
we won’t let the sun go down
we’re gonna chase the demons out of town.
sing it when you feel alone,
backwards through the megaphone.
sing it to the ones you love,
and the ones you’d like to be rid of.

we are here to take the blame,
to take the taunts, and live the shame.
we are here to make you feel
it terrifies you, but it’s real.
it will keep you up all night
and in a flood, the morning light
spilling out across your room
you say the words will get there soon.
-stars, soft revolution

ok, so i only hope this is the best running playlist of all time, and will carry me to a sub 30 minute 5k on saturday. yeah, i know that’s slow. i never claimed to be any good at running. yet i continue doing it. this is perplexing.

stars: soft revolution
at the drive-in: one-armed scissor
jimmy eat world: bleed american
mutemath: chaos
jimmy eat world: a praise chorus
muse: the fine print
jimmy eat world: lucky denver mint
the postal service: such great heights
thrice: the artist in the ambulance
bloc party: banquet
john mark mcmillan: make you move
bloc party: helicopter
finch: perfection through silence
minus the bear: drilling
minus the bear: hooray
stars: ageless beauty
stars: what i’m trying to say

yep, lots of music from the same bands. i don’t listen to a lot of peppy music, and i’ve found that i can’t run to the music by most of my favorite bands, so i’ve had to branch out. anyway, i’ve been getting lots of google search traffic from people looking for running music, and i’m all about giving the people what they want. so there you have it.

speaking of running, i’ve decided to do a half marathon. that’s 13.1 miles. going to start working on it sunday, and should be ready by the first of the year. i have no idea why i am doing this. if you feel there needs to be a running intervention, any night but mondays works for me.

my friend philip had cancer, beat it and ran the chicago marathon for the leukemia/lymphoma society this weekend to commemorate his two years of being cancer-free. we made the trip up to chicago and, being the rebellious rule breaker that i am (riiiiight), i decided to jump in for a few miles to keep him company. a ballsy move, but not as ballsy as this which we passed around mile 6 and had a good laugh over.

pretty much, i got to run through the streets of downtown chicago yelling at thousands of random people on the side of the road to cheer for philip because he didn’t have cancer anymore. and much to my delight, people actually do what you say when you are running in a marathon yelling things like that. it was really kind of a surreal, but great experience, despite some pretty awful planning mistakes.

we didn’t run fast, but it was definitely the fastest 4 miles i’ve ever run, if that makes any sense. it felt like 5 minutes (but i’d estimate was closer to 40 minutes), nothing hurt, i wasn’t out of breath, philip and i chatted about life and plans and goals, and it was over entirely too soon. i guess the excitement of over a million spectators, 35,000 other runners and being blessed enough to do a run with 1 awesome friend was enough to make me not even realize i was running at all.

But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.
-Thomas Jefferson