Books 20, 21, 22, 23, 24

Okay, I've been very lazy about blogging. If I don't get it over with now, I'll forget what I did this summer and spiral down into desperation, filled with regret for wasting my life.

Which is only half-true, so let's start with the books.

Book 20: The Princess Bride, by William Goldman

Well, this was excellent, OBVIOUSLY. The introduction was a bit boring, but perhaps necessary. Anyway, our copy has a cover picture of Buttercup (in a white dress and wreath of flowers) and Westley (in sexy pirate-clothes) with their arms around each other and gazing bravely off into the horizon. I was reading this as the semester ended to help me not go mental, and everybody just had to remark on the cover. They said it looked like some sort of swash-buckling, corset-ripping romance novel. I tried to explain it was a comedy, but I could see in their eyes (and great, big smirk) that nobody really believed me. Gah.

Book 21: Airborn, by Kenneth Oppel

I re-read this because the third book in the series was delivered a few weeks ago, and I wanted to refresh my memory before digging in. I remembered basically nothing from Airborn except that I really, really liked it when I first read it.

See, the thing is I guess I was 14 or so when I read it the first time, which fits into the target audience for the book. I'm 18 now and the story was cool, but the narration wasn't stellar and the main characters annoyed me because they were immature (which is to be expected, seeing as they're 15). The redeeming bit is that it has PIRATES! in it, but I don't think I'll finish the series for now.

Book 22: The Opposite of Invisible, by Liz Gallagher

It's one of those girl-enters-adolescence novels (that sounds gross, sorry. It's not). It was predictable, and the characters were typical, and overall it was pretty similar to the other books of this genre. This was on the better end of the spectrum, though.

Book 23: Peeps, by Scott Westerfeld

This was really, really, REALLY good! It's well-written, well-researched, has vampires and has parasites! It talks about the biology of several parasites and now I want to be a parasitologist (predictably).

Book 24: Good In Bed, by Jennifer Weiner

This started out as a nice, normal chick-lit book and progressed rather in the usual fashion until the end, at which point it got weird. Very weird. But it was still good.

I got a medal, anyway

When I was in my first year of high school a few years ago (SHUT UP that makes me sound so old!), I had a Math teacher who doled out extra points to help his students pass the subject. He'd give you +1 if you built a kite and entered a contest. +1 if you participated in the class ofrenda. +1 on your birthday. +1 if you ran in a certain race.

I ended up with a grade of 11 out of 10 that year.

That's not the point of my story, though. I entered the race, a 10K run, with my fitness-nut sister. We started out jogging together at an easy pace, which my sister kept for the rest of the race**. I, however, wheezed out after two minutes that she should go ahead, and then I walked the rest of the race. I might add that at one point, a bastard man on the street called out sarcastically after me "Oh, yeah, you're running justgreat."

So that was my entire experience with races. But at the end of last year I started jogging/running and really, really liked it. Also it wasn't very hard anymore because I've been doing exercise regularly for about three years now. And since I liked it so much, I'd been meaning to enter a race, except that involves actually going somewhere and handing over money and doing stuff. Lazy people like me don't like to do stuff. No, I'm kidding, I did look up a few races but they were expensive or not at a good time or place for me (yeah, I'm not really hardcore about this). And THEN! The Science Faculty's yearly 7K race rolled around and I registered as soon as I found the sports office (which took me three days because it's tucked away at the bottom of some steps, next to the taco stands behind the parking lot).

On Friday I remembered that it was the last day I could pick up my race number. I also remembered I'd forgotten my proof of payment, but that was okay because they didn't make me beg for it or anything at the sports office, they just SIGHED at me. Phew! Only then today I woke up late (actually my dad woke me up with a charming "Are you going or not?!?". I hate it when he does that. He could just say, "Hey, it's a bit late" instead). Never fear, though, I got there on time anyway.

What is it with people that run races? They were all wearing baggy shorts and drab t-shirts. I almost felt out of place in my bright pink shirt and little purple shorts. But that was actually a good thing, because during the race I just picked out the people ahead of me that were wearing the same colour as me and concentrated on passing them. And I only passed three pink shirts, so that should tell you how slow I am how few people were not wearing boring clothes.

Oh, oh, and there was this one guy in a green shirt and black leggings (yes, I know) whom I passed around the second kilometer, only he was one of those people who don't like it when you pass them, so he sped up and passed me. Only then I passed him again, and the cycle repeated a few times until I was a few meters behind him about 1 kilometer from the end... at which point I ran past him very quietly while he looked the other way. He saw me– I felt the indignation aimed at me– but he didn't try to catch up. I beat him by... I don't know, a minute or so. We did smile at each other when he crossed the finish line, though, so it as all friendly and sportsmanship-like.

I'm not gloating, I'm just telling you about a specific thing. 'Cause if I just say, "I ran a 7K!! There were lots of hills! Lots of hills!!! LOTS of HIIILLS!!!", well, that's not fun to read.

Something like this, the guy's leggings. Now imagine them with a baggy green shirt and a human inside, and there you go! That's the guy I'm talking about. (Photo from www.sportsshoes.com)

And now I have a baggy race T-shirt and a medal (the kind that they give everyone at the end. I didn't win, obviously). As for my time, I'm not sure, but I asked a girl what time it was after I'd been hanging around the finish line for a little while, and she said it was 9:42, so I'm guessing I did about 40 minutes. The absolute winner finished in 24 min., 40-something seconds OHMYGODCRAZY.

**Little anecdote about my sister here; she thought it was a 5K race and concluded that she wasn't as fit as she had previously thought, because it was taking her longer than anticipated. Then she crossed the finish line, and was all "Oooooh..." DUH. These people are all muscle and no brain! (Just kidding, Reenie. I love you, smartie).