Ouch. That is all that can describe how I feel right now, and it’s only perhaps twenty minutes post-workout. Let me back up here a bit…
Yesterday while surfing around on the university’s CRWC site, I saw that at 5:30 tonight there would be a Zumba class which I immediately decided I need to be a part of. Roomie Lauren had to work, but Rachael and I arrived at the rec today at about 5:20, super eager to get our Zumba on (or basically get our heart rates up in any fashion besides the damn Dreadmill.) The facility was PACKED– unless you have no other time to go in the day, avoid the rec center like the plague anytime after 5 pm. Every machine was full… and so was our Zumba class. And Winter Break isn’t even over yet! Feeling quite pissed, but not defeated, we went up to the fitness track to pound out a mile before deciding there was probably something streaming on Netflix that could give us a nice workout in the comfort of our own apartment. By this time, Lauren was home and graciously offered up her new Jillian Michaels’ Yoga Meltdown DVD.

Sweet. I’ve never done yoga before but have always wanted to try, so we fired up that beast.
I HAVE NO STRENGTH ANYWHERE, AT ALL, IN MY BODY. This DVD was asking muscles to be moved and stretched in ways I could never have imagined while Jillian’s telling me to “melt your heart to the sky” and “focus on your breathing.” I’m sorry, I can’t really focus on much besides my severe lower back pain due to my inability to do any of these moves correctly. Needless to say, it was intense. It felt really good afterward, of course, but we are all already walking pretty slowly, and I’m not at all looking forward to what waking up tomorrow morning will feel like. Caitlin tells me a beer helps soreness, but that would require getting off the couch, something that’s not in the cards for a while. So what have we learned today? The rec center is insane and will only get more so in the weeks leading up to spring break; sign up for classes early; people who can do yoga are amazing. I will persevere and one day be one of them (or break my back trying.)

…and of course I can’t blog today without mentioning what I’m thankful for (but seriously, every time I go to do it, the first thing that pops in my mind is a food item. Today it would have been the bomb-tastic muffins Roomie Lauren made over the weekend. I had one this morning, not really sure if I was supposed to, but I’m pretty glad I did. Way to go, Fiber One Apple Cinnamon mix.) Instead, today I am officially thankful for running. I suppose I could also say my legs. Or the random urge I got to run today. You get the idea. It’s been a while (ahemtwomonthswhaaaat?!) since I’ve gone on a run, and today’s was glorious and strong and reminded me that I can just go out and do it and not get all mentally tweaked on adding mileage every single day and calories in vs. calories out and 13.1! 13.1! 13.1! I’m sure I’ll register for another half marathon in the spring, though I’ll need to keep my head in check while training for it. With the semester I’m looking at, it’ll be a miracle if I’ll have time to breathe (exaggeration? You wish) but perhaps that’s just the sort of thing with which running can better help me deal.

Today’s friendly reminder: the Class of 2011 graduates six months from next week.

Only THREE MORE HOURS til our plane takes off from Miami.  Have I mentioned how much I loathe all things associated with flying?  I like travel, just not the getting there.  The cruise was great, quite warm.  Perhaps I’ll post pics later.  I’m currently watching a boy of about four or five pelt his younger brother with stuffed animals whilst wrestling about in front of a Pizza Hut in the Miami International Airport.

For the next 48 hours I’ve pretty much accepted that I will be in meltdown mode, remembering forgotten things I should pack for my semester abroad, being extremely short with family members, trying to enjoy watching the Hawkeyes win the Orange Bowl but being jealous of my friends who road-tripped down to see it in person.  Once I’m on the plane I should be fine (oh, who am I kidding– two hours into it my legs will have severely cramped and I’ll be debating whether or I can hold it or should I ask the person next to me to move AGAIN so I can go to the bathroom.)

My horoscope today told me to exercise.  Boy howdy I wish it were acceptable for me to start doing laps through the H concourse.  After two weeks of constant eating and very little activity, my body is screaming for elevated heartrate brought on by something other than OH SWEET JESUS WHERE DOES ONE BUY A WATCH BATTERY IN THE GREATER DES MOINES AREA SO I CAN TELL THE TIME WHILE 30,000 FEET ABOVE THE ATLANTIC?!  Yes, people– these are my thoughts.

I must go find a Starbucks now or just stretch my feet or probably let little brother have time on my laptop (thanks Google for the free wireless.)

Things I don’t like: sunsets.  They make me sad.  Not like boo-hoo cry sad, but you know, sad.  Sunrises and I are a-ok, but their nighttime counterpart and I have some beef.  Methinks this is because when I was a little kid, I had a freakishly early bedtime during the summer.  It would often still be light out (the damn sun was starting it’s horrid setting) and I’d sit at my window and hear other kids playing and thinkof all the stuff I was missing out on and be really upset.  I’m one of those people who has zero problem with it getting dark out at like 5 pm now that it’s not Daylight Savings Time.  The sun sets in like two seconds– HA!  Take that, dusk. 

Man am I gonna be sore tomorrow.  From the GYM, get your mind outta the gutter.  My aunt is a personal trainer (or as one could call her, a freak anomaly in the sea of ”not-exactly-what-you’d-call-active/ could-I-just-get-a-trough-instead-of-a-plate”-ers who hail from the same gene pool.)  She honored us with the privilege of getting up at a single-digit hour in the morning to sweat out yesterday’s shameful show of How Many More Ribs will Brittney Eat Before she Actually Passes Out?  Which I’m glad she did because the answer to that question is a much higher number than even I was expecting.  So, an hour on the elliptical followed with some fun ab/arm/leg contortions will leave me feeling absolutely peachy tomorrow.  Don’t worry– I know you’re all probably quite concerned– I’m eating jerky as we speak.  (Oh, PS Mom, I found some jerky in the fridge.  Hope you weren’t saving it for anyone else.)

We have returned from the land of the south, and after about two minutes in the house I realized I was going to be here for a week.  A WEEK.  Do you know the last time I spent a week at home?  Uhhh maybe Christmas Break freshman year?  Oy vey.  When grumbling about this aloud to the one they call T-Bone, she told me I could separate the laundry for her.  HA.  What is this “laundry” you speak of?  And I certainly can’t figure out why anyone would “separate it”– isn’t it just a dump in magic machine, pour three cups of pretty blue soap on, hit a button & pray for the best activity?  Uh-oh, the jerky’s gone.  That doesn’t bode well for the rest of the week.

Today I’m thankful for… airplanes.  I hatey-hate-HATE flying, but damn it’d be a long walk to Germany.  (For those of you counting at home, t-minus 45 days until departure.)  Oh wow, so this is what hyperventilation feels like.

As many of you know (partly in thanks to an after-bar post that you can read here) a classmate of mine passed away ONE YEAR AGO today.  So I went up to hang out with him in the cemetary today, seeing as I have a WEEK here and all.  It wasn’t really sad, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You” was on the radio and really that song’s so awesome it could bring war-torn nations apart, so I was in no Debbie Downer mood.  Someone had brought flowers up there today, but there was also a new pack of Swisher Sweets (the kid smoked em like they were going out of style, long story).  This was in addition to the OLD pack of Swisher Sweets someone had put there.  On top of the MULTIPLE DOLLARS IN QUARTERS that are just chillin there.  Am I missing something?  Is this some sick joke and Boner’s gonna come back, need a bunch of smokes, and have a shit ton of dirty clothes to clean at a Landromat?  He’s dead.  First of all, if you’re making wishes with coins (which I always thought there needed to be a fountain involved, but whatever) wouldn’t pennies be more of a recession-savvy coin to use?  Also, anything tobacco-related ain’t cheap anymore, go ahead and save yourself the couple dollars on the smokes for the dead guy because I guranTEE some high school hooligan from ADMHS will lift those babies within a week.  Those were just my thoughts. 

Methinks tomorrow I will accompany my mother to “tea” with her friends.  I have not been invited, but feel it would be kosher pickles if I showed up anyway.  Those crazy pre-menopausal vino-freak ladies are the shit.  I baby-sat for most all of their kids who were younger than me, and I illegally drank in barns, cornfields, and parent-less houses with the ones who were my age or older.  Ahh, the unbreakable bonds of the Tea Kids.  Perhaps we’ll get a cheaper rate on group therapy.

I should absolutely not be blogging right now.  I STILL have not nailed down a topic for my term paper due Thursday which I have to get done before then because the MIDTERM for that class is the same day.  Imagine Wednesday night for me just being spectacularly fun.  Perhaps if I start writing nonsense on the blogosphere, my creative juices for Legal Issues in Mass Communication will also start flowing. HA.

Last night Bestie and I discovered the movie The Ten with Paul Rudd in it.  That’s correct– Paul Rudd has starred in a film that we DID NOT KNOW even existed.  We were really upset with ourselves over this fact, but mostly just really excited because the movie is all sorts of fucked up AND he does a musical number at the end.  There is a poster of Paul Rudd in 713’s living room, a shrine, if you will.  When I asked Bestie to articulate exactly why they’re all so gung-ho over Mr. Rudd, he replied simply, “Because he is hot.”   I concur.  He reached his hotness peak in Wet Hot American Summer, but like a fine wine, he really only gets better with time.  I mostly like him because his awkwardness level in I Love You Man almost rivals mine in real life.

In other GIANT LIFE-ALTERING NEWS: Slash will be on the George Lopez show on TBS tonight!!!!!  Giggity goodness, people.  SLASH will be on the TELEVISION and I will be WATCHING HIM.  My suicide over this week’s workload so just got postponed until tomorrow.  Charlie Sheen will also be on, and anyone with half a brain or who has read the should-be-award-winning autobiography Slash (I have an autographed copy, because I know you were wondering) knows that those two are way good buds.  They go way back. Kind of like me and Slash… in my fantasy world where I spend most of my day. 

Perhaps I will go make myself a ham sandwich.  Or eat some soup out of a can.  Or run into oncoming traffic– really anything to keep me from this effin’ research paper.  If there’s one thing I hate in this world more than people who invite themselves to me (because really, isn’t that everyone’s number one pet peeve?) it’s RESEARCH.  People who do it for a living are in a whole other realm of crazy to me.  Who CARES?!  If the information is already written down, why do I have to find it and re-word it and stretch it out into a bunch of pages and spit it back to you?  I’m quite certain my professor is much more well-versed on Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights than I am, so perhaps he should be writing a paper for me on it.  I’d probably at least skim it.  (<– Ok, that was a dirty, dirty lie.  I would throw it away recycle it.)

Oh, and since we’re rockin’ a little over a week until Thanksgiving, today I am thankful for… the hospital workers who were putting up Christmas decorations today.  Because you know what that means: they’re going to replace the normal muzak in the halls to CHRISTMAS MUSIC pretty soon and then I will have total permission to walk with a spring in my step when pushing my God-forsaken cart of charts all over the blank-blankin’ hospital (did you know that beast is 1/4 of a mile from one end to the other?  And you wonder why I’ve suddenly developed the athletic prowess of an indigenous African…)

In closing, Roomie has concoted what smells like macaroni & cheese if Jesus himself were to make it.  I shall go investigate.

Our trip to Des Moines was a rousing success, minus not doing so well with all the one way streets, not realizing there’s a difference between 6th and East 6th, and parking near where we believed KCCI was located, but having to actually run up a hill in heels because we were nowhere close.  Running a 5K in jeans and now footraces in formalwear?  Hold your applause until the end, please

Last night’s continuation of “I don’t even know who turns 21 this weekend but I’m following a large group of people downtown under the promise of lots of pitcher” involved me getting to wear a cardboard crown from Burger King in public.  I was the Burger Queen.  The Burger Queen was pretty proud of herself that the crown made it unharmed the entire night and was still on the couch this morning.  At some point I also acquired a medium-sized stick which I used to conduct a roomful of people in a melodious rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” 

A friend and I decided this morning that toast is perhaps the most underrated food in the history of the world, so we set out in search of some.  Did we grab some bread from the kitchen and put it in the toaster?  OF COURSE NOT.  We went to a diner neither of us have ever been to and got omelettes because they came with toast (and hashbrowns!  And fruit!)  It generally did not bother me that every single other patron, mostly middle-agers or nice families, was openly staring at me.  APPARENTLY my scarecrow-esque hair and raccooned slept-in eye make-up and bright green t-shirt that’s supposed to look like doctor’s scrubs (complete with stethescope and fake blood)  provided some early morning entertainment for my fellow patrons.  That or they were just really afraid that Homeless Meth Addict Girl was going to steal their food.   I should have worn my crown.

The toast though…. wtf.  You know exactly what kind of toast I was expecting– the perfectly buttered, crunchy piece cut into triangles.  This toast was CHEWY.  Like, not crunchy.  Ch-EW-y.  There was a choice between white, wheat, rye or an English muffin.  I ordered the white– I never order the white.  Perhaps THIS TOAST is the very reason I never order white.  So disappointing.  I even tried to put some jelly on it, but to no avail.  The toast and I had to part ways.  You probably don’t need two guesses as to what I’ll be fixing myself tomorrow morning.

Continuing my thankful ’til Thanksgiving challenge, today I am thankful for… my mama because she’s currently working on the (approximately) ten loads of laundry I brought home with me.  I will be working as some sort of indentured servant tomorrow to prepare for Family Thanksgiving #1 though, so really, it all evens out.

We saw 2012 today and holy blecccchhhh.  I was hand-to-mouthing kettle corn the entire time, though, so the three hours we  spent in the theater were not in vain.  It was cliched from beginning to end– the phrase “whenever we’re together, that’s where home is” was even used.  You can tell it wanted to be Armageddon but NOTHING CAN BE so don’t even try John Cusack… don’t you even try.

I get to go make a french silk pie now.  BE JEALOUS.

A spur-of-the moment trip to UNI to visit primary bestie was in order yesterday afternoon– I took her to a very belated birthday dinner (…at Applebee’s) and we saw Couple’s Retreat.  I thought it was cute and funny and I really wanted to be married afterward (my movie companion said this was quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever uttered which is saying something) and my other friend told me that you don’t need to be married to visit a resort.  WHATEVER.  It wasn’t like drop-what-you’re-doing-and-go-see-this-movie-good, it could definitely be a rental, especially if you get irritated at Vince Vaughn playing quick-talking wise guy character in all of his movies.

Upon my return, I picked up a copy of the Daily Iowan and was briefed on:

1. Dr. Ponseti died (sad– he’s the one who’s foundation we did the 5K for on Friday)

2. If you did not know by now that the Hawkeyes are 7-0 you are just the DUMBEST person on the planet because IS YOUR TEAM RANKED #6 IN THE BCS POLL!?!?  Facebook has become equally unbearable.  Maybe it’s because I was raised quite anti-Hawkeye, but I have yet to jump on the undefeatable bandwagon.  Don’t get me wrong– it’s amazing when we win & I hope we go to infinity and beyond, but the inner-pessimist in me is saying Stop being like this, entire rest of campus– when we lose, your Stanzi is the Manzi face tattoo will seem a bit ridiculous.

3. After a few weeks of relative quiet, some jackasses decided we needed some real fist-to-mouth, trips-to-the-hospital assaults.  Nothing like a girl walking home from downtown and getting jacked in the face by a guy to remind her she’s in Hawkeye country.  You can read about the two downtown assaults here: http://www.dailyiowan.com/2009/10/19/Metro/13733.html

4. The east-side dorms were also not a peach of a place to find yourself if you had to pee at 3 a.m.: http://www.dailyiowan.com/2009/10/19/Metro/13727.html .  Now, I AM NOT CONDONING THE ACTIONS OF THE MALES IN THIS SITUATION, but as a college female who lived in the dorms, I read this and had kind of a “Umm, duh?” moment.  This girl was probably staying with her boyfriend and didn’t want to have to go to a girls’ floor to use the bathroom.  She may have also been from a different school altogether & didn’t have a key to a girl’s bathroom– whatever, lots of possible scenarios.  I can see both sides of this– at 3 a.m. she’s thinking– what guy is going to be in there?  I’ll go fast, even though it’s against the rules, no one will notice.  Note: there are unlocked bathrooms for both sexes on the first floor of all dorms.  It had to be truly terrifying for the lights to go out and all of that to go down, but all I’m saying is: think.  I know the thought of this ever happening never crossed her mind, as it probably wouldn’t mine either, but Iowa City is not the safest place to be.  Regardless if you’re “safe” in a dorm or school building, you can’t control the actions of your (most likely inebriated) peers. 

In closing, I just ran about three miles and am feeling fantastico.  Perhaps I’ll work on some homework… in advance?..so I can enjoy bestie apple brats on Wednesday & family time this weekend?  What a strange concept– we’ll see how it goes…

Roomie & I are watching the game– I’m feeling oddly optimistic about it, so we’ll probably lose.

Yesterday I ran my first 5K.  To clarify, when I went to said race, I had no idea I’d be running it.  That would explain why I was wearing jeans.  A group of friends had decided we were going to walk it, supporting kids with club foot and our campus PR firm who did the advertising for it.  Once we started though (we all started jogging as to not get trampled by the hardcore racers) I just kept going, not wanting to walk in the cold for almost an hour.  The jeans became kind of uncomfy at about the halfway point, and I did walk up a hill for maybe 1/4 of a mile. 

I finished in 34 minutes which I’m pretty happy with, all things considered.  I was definitely the only person who had my cell phone in my pocket, so towards the end, I called up Bestie while running, and was all “Guess what I’m doing?!  Running a 5K in jeans!”  He was quite bewildered.  The most intense physical activity he’s ever seen me do is go up the stairs when someone is using the downstairs bathroom.  Ohh that’s not true– one time I chased one of his roommates around the perimeter of his house barefoot and tried to tackle him.

My back of all things is the most sore– I figured my knees would kill– I had deplorable form.  While running, I was thinking about how I could never, never, never run a marathon.  KUDOS to the people who do, but I have no desire to run for 26.2 miles.  WHY would you?!  It’s all about the mental thing, and to be honest, I’m not that mentally tough.  A girl from my high school just completed the Chicago Marathon and qualified for Boston.  She has now said she is “addicted to marathons.”  I would rather be addicted to meth.  (<– that was kind of a joke.  Kind of.)

You know how Cheez-Its have holes in the middle?  Perfect to put a string through.  Screw candy necklaces– I will now be making millions off of my Cheez-It necklace idea.