13.1 miles

First things first: A thousand apologies to Bette for failing to stick around at the finish line for that photo op I promised. I heard something about the kids’ marathon starting and had to book it over there to get a picture of my young friends Jaiden and Corbin (above), who were participating in that race. D’oh!

Doesn’t Corbin look sharp with his finisher’s medal? His dad reports that he had trouble keeping up with the 9-minute pace Corbin set. His mama couldn’t be at the finish line, because she was busy running the full marathon.

Terriann, you RAWK, and I am proud to eat your dust. 🙂

Meanwhile, here I am puttering across the Route 66 Half-Marathon finish line in full drag-queen-does-Janis-Joplin regalia. (Well, not quite full regalia. I had a sparkly gold crocheted scarf thingy keeping my neck warm at the start line, but I stuffed it in my pocket once I got warmed up.) The outfit wasn’t my original plan, but I realized last night that it was going to be too cold for all my regular running gear, so I had to settle for whatever disposable layers I could find in my rag bag.

The outfit actually turned out to be a good decision, for two reasons:

1. It was actually more comfortable than my usual running clothes.
2. It helped fellow blogger Bette Hall pick me out of the crowd. We wound up running the last 11 miles or so together, which was good, because without her, I probably would have gotten bored and quit or wandered off to get a bagel at Panera long before I reached the finish line.

I am sorry to report that the marvelous toy I bought last night bit the dust somewhere around mile 7 (the shutter button simply stopped working), and when I tried replacing the battery to see if that would fix it (which it didn’t), I forgot that the memory depended on the battery, so I lost the horrible little photos I’d already shot. I intend to take it back to Walgreens and exchange it for a new one today, assuming I can find my receipt.

Now … I think I’ll go take a desperately needed shower, rustle up something for lunch (I skipped breakfast, so my tank is pretty much on empty this afternoon) and curl up on the papasan with my magazines and a cup of decaf Irish breakfast.

Hope you’re having a good Sunday.

Emily

Almost a Holga

It’s not quite a Holga, but I bought a camera tonight that’s about as dreadful as anything I’ve owned. Which means, of course, that I love it. If I had Photoshop on my laptop, I would love it even more, as its potential for digital creativity strikes me as enormous. It’s a Vivitar keychain camera. It will take 20 “high-res” images (example posted above), 81 “low-res” images, or 243 “compressed” images. It’s also capable of taking a few seconds of remarkably decent video.

I bought it for two reasons: It’s the size of a Tic-Tac box, and it cost $10.

I’m a sucker for tiny things. I like to be prepared for any eventuality, so my purse currently contains all of the following: a tiny sewing kit in a metal box smaller than my thumb; an LED flashlight half the size of a cigarette; pocket-sized copies of the Bible and Science and Health given to me by my first Sunday School teacher, a WWII vet who carried them in his pocket many years before I was born; a Swiss Army card, which is like what you’d get if Q from the James Bond movies crossed a Swiss Army knife with a credit card; a miniature box cutter on a keychain; and a 10-foot tape measure.

I think this tiny digital Holga wannabe is the perfect addition to my collection of tiny random objects. 🙂

Emily