Pretty much the saddest thing I've ever heard...

I was driving home for lunch today and heard a news report on NPR about the funeral mass held for the Italian earthquake victims today. I didn't realize that it's incredibly unusual for the Pope to allow a mass to be held on Good Friday, but Italy has declared a national day of mourning and they held the mass outside because the churches had been so badly damaged in the earthquake. I started thinking about some of the small towns I had visited in Italy and realized that 200+ deaths in most towns is a significant loss, to where everyone knew a great many of the victims. I hadn't thought much about the earthquake until today (I don't have cable and I've been working non-stop since before it happened) but I heard this on the radio and I wanted to about bawl my eyes out:

The coffins of four young sisters from the Germinelli family lay side by side, bearing their names and dates of birth: Rosa 1992, Michaela 1995, Chiara 1998, Giuseppina 2002. Each had a large bunch of white lilies wrapped in cellophane with a ribbon reading “From Papa.”

Hug the kiddos today, y'all.

A new section of the interweb, just for Molly.

I've started a blog for my training for the marathon...it's called...
The Mollython. Well, actually, 26.2 Miles of Molly, but you can find it at www.mollython.blogspot.com.

Come watch me complain about the fact that I actually paid money to put myself through this torture. I will post on here too, but I figured I'd take Carrie's lead and separate some things.

I already mentioned it on the other blog, but I missed my first day of training this past Sunday. For the record, there was no way I could have run 3 miles - I wanted to go to the Art Museum with Dan, and I had to leave to fly back to Charlotte at 5, getting home around midnight after a layover in Atlanta. I had no access to a shower after noon, so I skipped it. Lesson learned? It's MUCH easier to just plan ahead and do it rather than fight all week to make it up. I have a rest day tomorrow, which I'm using to make up that three miles. Sucks, but I'm glad the weather will be nice for once!

Picture is from my camera, but Dan took it at the race. It's of a Marine who's about 100 years old who carries the flag through the 10k. At the end, when there were stragglers struggling in, he would run up to the top, meet them, give them the flag and have them finish the race carrying the flag. I thought it was cute, and every single person that he gave the flag to ended up running at a full sprint to the finish line. No, I didn't get the flag, but I wasn't that far down from the stragglers myself!

6.2

I finished the 10k on Saturday. Finished, but I'm not going to even tell you what my time is, it was so bad. I finished about 2/3 of the way down the list of finishers, which I'm okay with.
Lessons learned:

1. Go to the bathroom before you run a race. I thought I could hold it. But no. I had to stop about halfway through and hit the porta-potties.

2. No one can run through mud when it gets to a certain level. I'm not kidding, there was about 6 inches of slippery, wet mud that was simply unavoidable for about 2 miles of the race. I literally did not see one person who was able to run through it. When I finished, Dan told me that the first and second-place finishers had mud up to their thighs, just covered. Everyone else was just filthy, like me. I would bet that fewer than 1% of the finishers ran the whole course. I finished, though, and I got my registration. $88 later, I'm now officially signed up to run the Marine Corps Marathon on October 25.

Otherwise, we had a great time in DC. After the race, we took a long NAP, then got some brunch and went to the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. I really liked it, and I'm surprised that I've never been before. We saw the official portraits from the U.S. Presidents, which I really enjoyed. I learned some interesting things, like that Eisenhower became a painter himself when he sat for his portrait, and that Lyndon Johnson was kind of even bigger of a jackass than I thought. When Peter Hurd presented the portrait to him, he said "that's the ugliest thing I ever saw, get it out of here" and Johnson was slightly famous for using his size to intimidate people and stand over them. Kind of funny.

We later went bowling with Dan's running friends, and I proved my ability...I bowled three games, and my combined score was about 140. Seriously, I'm a HORRIBLE bowler. Dan and I then went to visit a friend of his at the bar where he works, and I...well, lets just say I was hating life on Sunday. I broke every rule of drinking - I drank cheap tap beer at the bowling alley, then drank the fullest-body red wine I've ever had...all on an empty stomach. I nearly lost it at brunch on Sunday.

Obviously, I was exhausted, and despite a two-hour nap after lunch, I was super-tired driving home. I had to stop halfway and pick up Colonel Mustard at my mom's house, but I HAD to be at work on time today, so my stay in Lynchburg was only about half an hour. I finally got on the road to Charlotte at 9 pm and was so sleepy, I had to stop somewhere about 80 miles away from Charlotte and take a power nap. I've NEVER had to do that, but I would have wrecked the car had I kept going. Luckily, though, Dan talked to me the rest of the way home so I wouldn't fall asleep. Needless to say, my workday today was TOUGH.

And it's now 6:36 and I'm wondering when I can go to bed.

Bank of America, eff you.

This is why I hate banks right now. They're being bailed out and now they're all saying "we can help the little guy overcome this economy"...yeah, thanks to the hundreds of billions of dollars they were given to bail them out of the fact that they lent money to deadbeats. Case in point? Today's Gchat conversation between me and my boyfriend. Backstory: when I got my raise, my file was shifted from one temp agency to a sister temp-to-hire agency because the account had outgrown a temp status. Because the new one didn't recognize me, they kicked back my time sheet and sat on it for two days. As a result, I got paid today instead of Tuesday for my last paycheck. As a result of the fact that I had to pay bills the same week, I overdrafted my account EVER so slightly for less than 12 hours. Yes, I should have had the money, but seriously - money's tight. Especially when AirTran charges me more to fly my suitcase to Texas than they charged to fly ME to Texas. More on that one later, but here it is: what's wrong with consumer lending and banking, in a 2-page summary.

11:34 AM
me: I overdrafted by TEN DOLLARS TOTAL and BofA wants to charge me 3 fees of $35 each for it
Daniel: damn
me: for less than 24 hours

12:29 PM
me: ahhhh...I went to BofA in the rain and waited to talk to a "personal banker", whatever that means...they refunded part of it but I still have to pay $48 for overdrafting by $11 for less than 24 hours. I wanted to yell and grab all the lollipops on my way out.
me: if I borrowed $11 from you today, and when I took it back to you the next day I was told to pay $48 in interest charges, you'd be arrested for loan sharking. I fail to see how this is any different.
Sent at 12:49 PM on Friday
Daniel: hahhaha
i'm sorry pants
Sent at 12:51 PM on Friday
me: grrr
me: it's okay I'm just sick of chasing my tail if you know what I mean
me: the guy was like "well we can help you set up some savings so you don't get into this in the future" and I was like "well, since I don't have a JOB thanks to your lovely firm, after June, I will HAVE NO SAVINGS."
me: I love how when you go in with a very human and real concern, they a) say "I can only do what the computer lets me" and b) belittle you like you have no financial responsibility and then suggest a line of CREDIT.
Daniel: hahaha
Daniel: I called (edited: his credit union) when my car broke down yesterday to double check that I don't have towing coverage (I don't), and then she said, "would you like to add it in case of breakdowns in the future?" I said no, that I might just get rid of the car. Then she said I was preapproved for a car loan and would i like to..." and I basically said, "Hey lady, I'm on the side of f**king 95, why don't we discuss a whole range of products now. Can I refinance my f**king boat and get an adjustable rate jumbo loan right now as well?"
Sent at 12:59 PM on Friday

An old cowboy, ready to run a race, and a bit of a pickle.

The picture is from our trip to Texas, I had zero time to adjust the settings on my camera, but I liked the way it turned out anyway. Some old cowboy at the gas station in the middle of nowhere.

I'm running the 10k on Saturday in Quantico, and I'm driving up to Washington DC tomorrow. I ran my last 2 miles to train for it today, and if all goes according to my calculations, I'm going to run it in about 65 minutes. I ran 5.5 in Texas in scorching heat on Sunday, and I only slowed to a walk three times, twice to get water along the trail, once because I felt myself overheating.

Other than that, I've been getting back to work in the office. I worked about 30 hours the week I was gone, but the work still came piling in as it seemed to sense my absence. I am meeting with my boss to discuss this tomorrow, but I'm curious to hear what others outside my company would say. I'm basically one person that picks up projects ranging from filing and data entry all the way to writing legal contract language, albeit without a law degree. It's nice to have a variety of work, but I typically get projects from people when they realize that they can't get it done in time themselves. As a result, almost everything comes to me as near-urgent. I learned well in previous positions to ask people for timelines when I get assignments, so I ask 90% of the time, with the remaining 10% of the work being things that have a built-in understanding of a timeline. The problem is that I can't do everything all at once to get everything to everyone right away. In my previous experience, I was lucky enough to have secretaries or interns, but my company is structured so that each unit is small and I AM the bottom rung.

So, when push comes to shove, how do any of you react in this situation? When everything is urgent, nothing becomes urgent, correct?

Elvis Perkins in Dearland

More pictures later, but this is from one of the shows we went to on Thursday - Elvis Perkins in Dearland. I discovered him when I heard a song of his on NPR and almost wrecked my car trying to get the name of the artist. I haven't heard a bad song of his ever since, and was really excited to see him in the lineup. They played a free show at the North Shore Auditorium yesterday and we decided to catch it right before we went running in the same park. I'm sure we looked pretty silly in workout clothes at a rock concert, but I loved it nonetheless. We were able to get extremely close (a welcome change from the likes of the Music Midtown experiences I remember) and while most of the crowd was there for a band called Cold War Kids that was immediately following EPID, I really liked the show. They closed with this song, and I'm hoping to buy their new CD pretty soon.

South by Mollypants: Night one.

We went to the first night of the SXSW music festival last night. This really is an awesome place to go see a band live - we were in a bar smaller than the average Athens bar, but it was such an awesome place to watch music. Last night we saw the Lubbock, Texas showcase - four different bands, most with some sort of twang in their music. They must have a hard time classifying a lot of this music - I think this show was listed as a mix of "alt country", "americana" and just plain old "rock".

We saw the Thriftstore Cowboys first, which was one of my favorites.


Then the Texas Belairs, who kind of had more cajun in them...Dan liked them best:


We finished up the night seeing Colin Gilmore. He was kind of old-fashioned, for lack of a better word. Covered Buddy Holly better than I've ever seen before.



Highlights of the night:
1. Great Venue. Seriously, you could sit on the steps of the deck and watch the band from there under the stars. They allow DOGS in there, for crying out loud. I made good friends with the dog that belongs to the lead singer of the Texas Belairs.
2. Amanda Shires of the Thrift Store Cowboys complimented me on my dress in the bathroom.
3. $10 cover plus 3 beers apiece: $50 for the entire night. Couldn't beat that price in Lynchburg.
4. I wore boots and a dress - awful nice to have your feet not throb the next morning from high heels.
5. Late-night breakfast at Kerbey Lane...biscuits and gravy. YUM.
6. I threw my name on an email list for the last act (I was actually trying to buy a CD from the first, but they had packed up - I didn't want to look like a jerk, so I put my name/email on the list)...I told him I live in Charlotte and sure enough, I got an email from him within 24 hours thanking me for attending and noting that he'd let me know when they come to NC. In a business so full of people who are so high on themselves, it's really nice to see bands actually appreciate people coming to see them.