Weekender

I find Monday's the best time to recount the weekend, since it's best to do so on company time, versus on home time. Not that there's terribly much to recount. Going backwards in time, let's see...

Sent out some rezzies, as ever. We'll see what happens. We took the boys outside to watch the marathon (where we live, we can catch them at Mile 5 and then can walk up the street to catch Mile 11). That was fun -- I'm a good cheerer, cheered those sorry running bastards on. We managed to hotfoot it to the Mile 11 spot (intersection of Armitage and Sedgewick) and see the elite marathoners shoot by, and waited there awhile (maybe 45 minutes) and watched some of the folks we cheered at Mile 5 make their way sweatily past us. Some of them were looking pretty worn out by then, ready to drop. The humidity took its toll, for sure. Then we went back to our apartment and watched the great finishes for the elite runners. I felt bad for Adriana Prieta, the Romanian who was coasting to a first-time marathon victory, only to have it snatched from her in the last minute by a sprinting Ethiopian champ. That was pretty amazing -- Prieta made a classic blunder: ending the race before crossing the finish line. Live and learn, I guess? She had an amazingly light stride for somebody running so damned far.

Spousette's definitely wanting to run a marathon at some point, but I told her no way am I doing it; I'd happily cheer her from the sidelines, but I only run when chased. The boys and I would cheer her on, but that's her particular mountain to climb, not mine!

We also went out and wore the boys out with some soccer and walking around the neighborhood; the boys enjoyed playing in the fountains in the kiddie part of the Zoo, which was cute. Although B2 was drawn to try to pick up cobbles and throw'em. He loves grabbing rocks and chucking'em. What else? Oh, speaking of soccer, B1's team won again, so they're 3 and 2, which is nice. Once again, B1 is hopeless at soccer, compared to three of his teammates (he's about equivalent to the remaining teammate). But he's young, is still learning.

Athletically, he's certainly capable of playing, but he's not aggressive or competitive enough to get much play time, and kind of loses his focus during play, although he seems to enjoy himself, and that's good. I thought he'd enjoy soccer for all of the running, but he just kind of goes off into his own world, although, as I said, he seems to have fun. The season is an amazingly long 18 games, so there's still a lot of time to learn and develop his skills.

One amusing thing -- as we finished, he said "did my team win?" and I told him they did, and he was happy, wanted to go to the playground nearby (which was all wet from the rain). I didn't really want to, wanted to get the boys back home, but we went over there, and I saw an honest-to-goodness (or badness) clown on a bicycle, riding around in there, like for some kid's birthday party, or something. I said "Hey, there's a clown in there." and B1's like "What?" and he looks, and says "Oooh, I don't want to go to the playground, now." And I said "Are you sure?" and he's like "Yeah. Let's get out of here!" so we went home, after all. For once, I was almost glad to see a goddamned clown.

We Peapodded our groceries on Friday, which left a lot of the weekend, open, thankfully. Spousette's labs started Saturday, so I drove her up there and played Soccer Dad for the game. I'll actually have to do that for the remainder of the fall season, and probably for spring, too. I just put B2 in our baby backpack, carry him the way, keep him out of trouble -- I let him run around and wear himself out while B1's practicing, and then backpack him for the game, so I can watch B1 play.

One thing we got from Peapod is this great full-fat mozzarella cheese. It's soooo good! First time we had it, we didn't realize it was full-fat, and were like "Damn, this cheese is great!" and then we saw it was full-fat. Yummers.

I was disappointed to hear the Cubs blow it on AM radio. They totally imploded.