Campus

Tonight I was reminded of how good I am at manipulating myself into being lazy. I had a final paper/presentation due tonight, so I've gotten maybe four hours of sleep in two days. All day I kept telling myself no matter how excited I am to be done, I need to go running after class. After class I was even giddy (probably a combination of being done with that horrid class and being exhausted) about going running. I got home, sat down on the couch, and talked on the phone until it was dark outside. Even though I live in the ghetto, I normally wouldn't be that worried about running in my neighborhood after dark, but I'm still a little spooked from last week's break in (nothing too serious - just a couple of kids looking for a place to hang out at 3am and do what hoodlums do at 3am - once they realized I was home they slid back out the window and took off running). Really, running outside tonight was just not going to work. I secretly congratulated myself for coming up with an irrefutable excuse (can't beat the risk of bodily harm) and decided to reward my cunning ways by ordering a pizza. And then it hit me like a sack of potatoes. I live within spitting distance of the safest place on Earth. Well, maybe not spitting distance (Jenn is from West Virginia - perhaps her vernacular is contagious), but less than 2 miles from the University of Notre Dame. There, they spend billions of dollars a week maintaining the illusion of safety and perfection. Actually, I've been really disappointed in my alma mater lately to hear that they've been so complicit in keeping victims of sexual assualt on campus silent, but that's a topic for another blog. Generally, it really is the safest place on Earth. Nothing scares me less than 19-22 year olds in khakis and North Face fleeces with their Boston Red Sox hats cocked thoughtfully to the side. Our "Couch to 5K" training program has us running in 5 minute intervals this week. I maybe make it to minute two before I slow to a crawl and wonder what in the world I was thinking when I thought I could ever train for a 5K. Jenn convinced me that music would help me keep my mind off things, so I brought my MP3 player. The first song that came on when I started my run was Don't Stop Believing by Journey. ND peeps, you know what a Moment with a capital 'M' that was. Then came a moment I'm not so proud of. Two skinny girls ran past me toward the end of my warm-up walk. So I started running and before I knew it I was running very close behind them making noises that sounded somewhere between a grunt and a growl. They were terrified. They sped up, which I'm sure caused them to ruin their perfectly applied mascara. Normally, I wouldn't just go around terrorizing skinny people. But these are skinny, rich people, you see. I was totally lying earlier when I said that was a moment I'm not so proud of. It was hilarious. Aside from that inspired little sprint, the rest of the course was pretty uneventful. It turns out there are only two songs on that MP3 player, even though I spent several hours earlier in the week loading music on there. Guess that's what you get when you buy a gadget out of a vending machine. Well, not an actual vending machine - Jenn's husband won it for me out of The Claw that's tucked into the corner of our favorite bar. Two songs on repeat. In addition to Don't Stop Believing, I got to listen to Brick in the Wall - the version with the really long intro. At the end there is some dialogue about pudding. The perfect song for a fat girl to run to. I didn't end up ordering the pizza. Instead I ate some chicken and grapes and finished off a bag of baby carrots. I wasn't even "being good", I just didn't want to have to wait for the pizza to get here to eat.