Everyone who expressed interest in coming to watch the marathon (and a bunch of people who didn't) should have received an email from me about it. If not, go here.

Well, I finally have internet at home again, and now I have some sort of adware or something slowing down my computer. Hmph. I have two different virus protection programs running and updated daily. I have really high security controls on my browser. But something still got through. I blame Service Pack 2. I need a Mac. And yet at work, they're switching me to PC. Yep, that's smart. Oh well-- gave me something other than running to think about :)

Last night I was so excited about the marathon that I couldn't sleep :) I still woke up at 5am to run, so maybe I should try to actually sleep tonight. Tomorrow I run 3 miles and Saturday 2 miles. I realize I'll be running a lot on Sunday, but this whole no running thing is just making me more anxious, and I'm already pretty anxious! Logistics and coordination for this weekend are already getting complicated. I think I need to hire a cruise director.

Good news-- Mom, Dad, and I are going to family day at Dyche Stadium, er Ryan Field, on Saturday. I'm sure it won't live up to last week, and we're sitting on the visitor side, but I'm still very happy. I'm going to try my best to get to all the home games this year. I've been to two, and they've won both times. I think it's a sign.

Ok, back to work, really. I keep saying that this morning...

I reached my goal!

Details about the course coming very, very soon. For those interested, I'll even give you my parents' cell phone numbers so you can figure out where I am and when.

Still totally freaked out, but in a good way, I think.

I love Russian. More later. Now I need to be in bed.

Post number 200! I think I can be syndicated now or something.

The internet has returned. Thus, NU will win tonight. And I will be there to see it.

There's a defensive end for Georgia with the same name as my uncle [last name spelled differently, but it sounds the same]. The announcers have said his name approximately every five seconds so far in the Georgia-LSU game. Every single time I've looked up. I think I need something else on as background noise.

I just got a raise! A whole $0.23 an hour! Ok, actually I got the raise a while ago, but it took a long time for it to actually show up on my paychecks. Which is really nice because today, in addition to my larger paycheck, I also get backpay for 812.5 hours as $0.23 an hour. Even though I knew it was coming, that still feel like a fortune to me.

And the gods of public transportation did not listen to my plea. Yesterday on the way home from work, I again heard the operator-is-stepping-off-the-train-to-fix-it message during a five-minute delay. But, even worse, on the way to work yesterday I heard the following: "The train is stopped due to a medical emergency. Officials have been notified. We hope to be moving again shortly." Not only did we have to sit there for 10 minutes, but we also never got any more details. I wanted to know who had the emergency and what kind it was and why the sick/injured individual couldn't wait in the station for the paramedics instead of on the train. The whole thing seemed kind of shady/scary to me, but no one else seemed to mind.

Tonight I masquerade as a grad student. The grad students in my department want me to go drinking with them, and they have a student reception first, so I'm joining them at that. I think I *might* be able to act convincingly like a grad student. Just maybe. I don't really want to drink tonight, and I definitely want to be home very early, but I'm so flattered that they like me enough to ask me out that I wanted to at least hang out for a bit. And the way this week has been I could sure use a beer.

Tomorrow internet shall return. And NU shall beat OSU.