Sorry, Monday– I discounted you from the start this morning.  After a night of poor sleep thanks to weird dreams (starring Gisele, Tom Brady, and a former high school lust) I woke up demanding caffeine and cursing my scheduled eight hours of desk work.  Somewhere along the way, Monday quietly surprised me with an uncannily productive work ethic AND energy to go for a run a little after 5:00.  –Note to self, the sun is still far from setting at this time.  Humidity is still rocking well about 50%, recent thunderstorms make gravel more like sand to run on, and you will end up getting rocks into your shoe only a mile in.  While I commend you on lacing up them sneaks and getting out there, next time perhaps some pre-planning will go into it.  Baby steps.

A note on my job: IT IS AWESOME.  Some of the events involved in my internship are, wait for it… weddings. !!!!  I get to help plan weddings, attend weddings, research weddings, market our weddings, le sigh.  Before you get your panties in a wad, let me be perfectly clear that I under no circumstance, perfect proposal, threat, insanity, or death bed-side wish am anywhere near getting married AT ALL.  Gross.  Barf.  Throat tightening at the mere thought of lifetime commitment.  I’m still quite a young’in and I have quite a prepared speech about how STUPID it is to get married before you have established your own life.  But that’s for another time.  Luckily NPH realizes that my wedding-centered brain is part of my job, an outlet to entertain my inner girly-girl while my practical side knows that many years from now I’ll be celebrating my nuptials at the Hofbrauhaus in Vegas (honeymoon in Munich to follow.) Speaking of my fabulous place of employment, I have this Saturday off and GUESS who’s coming to town?  The nowhere-near-fiance-so-please-stop-asking-even-if-it-is-a-joke boyfriend.  While I’m sure we’d have an uproariously entertaining time just hanging out with the folks, we’re going someplace even better: ADVENTURELAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And Famous Dave’s at some point, but I’m not sure you can handle all of this exciting news in one post. The weekend after that is the Fourth of July (whaaaaat?!) and I hope upon hope my schedule will allow a trip to Chicago/ Milwaukee for Summerfest because apparently people wanna meet me.  NPH’s people.  I’m such a gem, I suppose I really can’t blame them.

As my time in Europe winds down and I prepare to say good-bye to my primary blogging focus for the past four months, I figured I’d restart things here with a bang in the form of a semi-major life announcement.  (For a second there I was going to make this next sentence have something to do with pregnancy, but then realized absolutely no one in my life would find that funny.)  About a month ago, a friend and I registered to run a half marathon in October!  Perhaps some of you just fell off your chairs in disbelief, others laughed out loud, and yet the majority of you who are Facebook friends with Emilee and I knew this was coming (and have been entertained by our “I’ll start my training to become a distance runner just as soon as I polish off this last case of beer” wall posts.)

In gym class, I DREADED running the timed half mile because what I was lacked in self-esteem, I made up for in body fat.  We always had to run in soccer, and around junior year my friend Savannah and I got the brilliant idea to join the cross-country team.  She made it through the season, I only went to the first informational meeting.  In sophomore year of college, I’d get into running for a week or two, but hangovers always trumped any fleeting motivation to jack up the ol’ heart rate.  So what makes you think you can run a half-marathon then, kid? Simply put, I really do like running.  Like, love running.  I’ve made it enough of a habit in the past weeks that it’s something I automatically fit into my day.  I’ve actually called it a night early a few times, knowing that I wanted to get up before class and run.  Mentally, it puts me in a very healthy place, not to mention there’s near-instant gratification from week to week in terms of noticeable improvement (distance, speed, etc.)  I’d thought about running a race for a while, NEVER a marathon, but kept going back to 13.1 miles as a challenging but do-able distance.  Impulsive ol’ me didn’t sign up automatically, but actually put some thought into this decision and read up on training plans before submitting my official registration (and checked to make sure the Hawkeyes are playing an away game that weekend.)

So, in addition to whatever riveting fodder I post in the coming months, get ready for some pre-race thoughts (that, let’s just be honest, might be better categorized as outright bitching.)  I’ve already had two dreams about it, and welcome any and all persons to get motivated, by what you might now feel is my complete loss of sanity, to sign up with me!