Skidoosh.

I've seen Kung Fu Panda twice now. It's good.

Whew! It has been a busy few days. On Thursday night, htd and I went to the Death Cab for Cutie concert. SUCH a good show. Very chill (besides the 100+ degree heat, of course) and they are great live. By 8:30 the sun had gone down, which really helped with the heat factor. It ended up being a warm night with the stars shining overhead, sitting on the grass in the Amphitheater listening to Death Cab play their awesome songs. And they closed the show with Transatlanticism. I mean really.

Friday night I had dinner with friends. Hanging out with this group pretty much guarantees that I'll spend most of the night laughing. Always a plus.

Saturday night there was a cookout at another friend's house. He has Rock Band, a pool table and a pool, so it would have been pretty hard not to have a good time. I sang and drummed and guitared a little in Rock Band, played some pool badly, and had good cookout food. My pool playing may have been slightly better if I had been wearing a different shirt. While it was a very modest, square-necked shirt whilst standing up straight, it was not very conducive to bending over and lining up a shot, if you know what I mean. ("Joey, we always know what you mean.")

And, on top of all this, the running continues. Saturday morning I was up at 4:30 in order to make it to South Mountain in time for our 5:30am long run training session. This was the same distance as last Saturday (8 miles), but with hills thrown into the mix. The entire out-and-back course was an intense mix of uphills and down. I couldn't even enjoy the periodic downhills in the first four miles because I knew I would just have to go back up them eventually. And South Mountain is classic Sonoran desert, so there were lots of cacti and scrubby bushes, but absolutely no trees casting any shade. It was brutal doing that in the full-on desert sun. It's already well into the 90s by 6:00am.

After the run, though, Team in Training hosted an Honored Patients Picnic where we got to meet and hear the stories of five different people who are either in remission or currently in their treatment cycle for all different types of blood cancers. They ranged from a 13 year old girl to a 45 year old guy and all of their stories were just so inspiring. It was a great refresher as to why I chose to do this - I need to remember that when my alarm goes off at 4:30 on Saturday mornings... :)