Techmology. What is that all about? Is it good or is it wack?

Yours truly is finally connected to the outside world at home. Those who know me have known that until now I had no computer or internet access in my apartment. I recently got my super hot BlackBerry phone with internet access, but it still lacks the ability to do everything I want (ie. order a pizza from Papa Johns). Work internet access is, understandably, very limited so that left me in a bit of a bind. Thanks to my kind mother's generous donation of her old laptop and an AT&T wireless card (delivered in just 2 days for no extra charge if you can believe it!), I'm now on "the web". We'll see if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I found when I lost my cell phone for a couple of months last year that I had an interesting peace I haven't experienced in years. No constantly checking if I missed a call, only those very close to me contacted me, people were forced to make plans with me in advance, and I memorized phone numbers again. While decidedly inconvenient, it was like being a responsibility-free kid again. Now that I'm completely in the loop, I'll have to remember to "forget" my phone from time to time. A couple of hours at the park in the sunshine shouldn't be interrupted by communication. :)

This last weekend was extremely eventful. As you read from my last entry, I volunteered for the marathon again this year. Here's the rundown of events and a couple of pictures. I didn't get nearly as many pictures as I wanted since my phone died and I was actually busy doing real work. Lame, I know.

1. Tuesday 4/14-Volunteer training: Training is an interesting beast if you ask me. Since I've been volunteering at the end of the race, most of the group announcements don't apply to me. So I end up spacing out for awhile until we break up in to our own little groups. Tunde is a genius so of course everything was well thought out and explained beautifully. After training came the mandatory cocktail hour at the Red Door. A must for ironing out the rest of the little details, like who's going to the post marathon party.

2. Friday 4/17-Finish Line Festival Setup: This is where we set up the booths, tables, garbage cans, etc. for the finish Line Festival and where we get our sexy volunteer shirts. Setting up might be my favorite part oddly enough. Since most of the volunteers in our group are friends or friends of friends, we have a great time and drink lots of coffee. It's long, hard work that goes late into the night so that's a guarantee of some weirdness from me. I mean you can only be so serious when you are staring at a pile of wood and metal poles that's rumored to be a bike rack when assembled by someone who knows how, but that person is nowhere to be found. (I would like to take this opportunity to crown myself the zip tie queen, btw.)

Jim helping set up the bike valet

Melissa & me doing white trash impressions.

3. Saturday 4/18-Race Day: Ok so this part is pretty fun too. The only negative is that we show up at 6 in the morning and people get mad when tell them where to go and how to get there. I suppose getting up that early every now and then won't kill me. Maim, but not kill. I haven't yet been bludgeoned by any disgruntled runners or their families so I'm good to go there too. We show up at the Finish Line Festival and finish getting everything ready. All of the last minute touches come together and the vendors get their booths going. Then we direct the traffic of runners and family, keep the area as tidy as possible, and answer questions. At around 1 or 2, we're done, it's all over, just like that, and my nose looks like Rudolph. Melissa was the smart one to put on sunscreen although, from the picture below, you can tell she had some proportion issues.

The path between the finish line and refreshment line

This year one of my favorite booths was for teamgive (pictured below). They are an incredible group of people. I found out that they started as a neighborhood cycling group. One of the cyclists' daughter developed a rare neruological disease and the group banded together to raise money for her treatment. They expanded on that effort and began raising money for a wide variety of charities, including the Huntsman Cancer Institute in this year's marathon. These are every day friends and neighbors who took some action and now have an amazing organization. I highly recommend checking them out at teamgive.org. Plus, if you donate a few bucks you'll not only help a great cause, but you could also win a number of prizes!

Another highlight of the race was the afterparty. The night of the race there was a little shindig for racers and volunteers at Club Elevate downtown. Of course, not a whole ton of people showed up since they'd just run like 26 miles, but the people there were lots of fun. I saw an old friend who I worked with at Leatherby's years ago. I also met a fascinating guy named Dane Rauschenberg. A shortlist of just a couple his acheivements includes running something like 92 marathons (52 of them were run in 52 consecutive weeks), participating in programs where you start in last place and each person you pass earns money for a charity, becoming a professional motivational speaker, and writing a book! (See Dane Run available for purchase) Talk about accomplished! Makes me want to get on my game asap. Dane has a great blog at danerunsalot.blogspot.com so check it out for more about him.

Speaking of getting on my game, one last update. (I told you this was a busy weekend) Some of you may know that I was singing with a fun rockabilly band awhile ago called The Salt Town Greasers. Unfortunately, the band has um..disbanded (I couldn't resist, sorry). In the meantime I've started vocal classes and I've already become a much stronger singer! This couldn't have happened at a better time because lately I've been itching to sing with a band again. I had the chance to informally audition to sing a couple of songs with another rock group called Tough Tittie. They are a phenominally talented local group who's been together for quite awhile and they put on an awesome show. Their drummer was the drummer in STG and right now the bassist is the same too. So I played around with the song they gave me, gave it a little of my own style (which I never could have done without the vocal classes) and voila! I was a hit! So yay, I'm in a band again. The cherry on the top is that the lead guitarist is thinking that I could be a part of another group he and a friend have been working on putting together. I'm crossing my fingers that works out because some of my biggest goals for this year have involved doing more with my music. Good things seem to be happening so I'll keep y'all posted.