life is short but sweet for certain: Reindeer Fail

I keep reminding myself it was for a good cause... for the Children's Hospital of Macon.

But that does NOT erase my time that will forever be on the back of the tile I created today.

Some people like to call it the 2009 Reindeer Run & Santa Stroll. After today, I like to call it my "Reindeer Fail". When Jill, Mark and I drove through Mercer's campus last night and caught a brief glimpse of part of the course I knew I was in trouble. T-R-O-U-B-L-E. I saw hills. And I dislike hills (unless I am in a car or another MOTORIZED vehicle). Oh and last night as we were walking around, it was a cool 50 degrees and we were freezing our butts off with layers on! The forecast for this morning was predicting 43 degrees with a chance of rain.

Awe-ome.

But we did sign up for the race so we would complete it, although I have to admit there was some talk of backing out of the race... I mean we had still made a donation, who cares if we didn't run? But we did. So last night during dinner in downtown Macon, we realized we had some work to do to uphold the idea that we created back in September... the Triple T Tradition. (you like that, Jill?).

So tie-dye... we didn't have ANYTHING tie-dye that would keep us remotely warm and after a trip to Academy that ended probably 20 minutes later... we forgot about the tie-dye tradition... maybe next time.

After heading to Kroger to pick up some things for this a.m., we came back to my house with plans to watch Run Fat Boy Run again. FAIL. I crawled into bed feeling like I had taken a dose of Nyquil (maybe from the "carb-loading" we had done at Luigi's?) and Jill, well she will have to tell you how she felt. But it wasn't good! Luckily, RFBR was not one of the traditions so we were just 0-1 and not 0-2 for. Whew.

Then came our song... or "Tong" as we like to say. Well, at about 8:10 when we arrived for the race, this of course after crawling out of bed 25 minutes after our alarm clock did NOT go off, hurrying to get to the race on time, stepping out into the FREEZING wind, we decided our song, or excuse me, t-onggg, would be CRAZY by Gnarls Barkley. While Mark said it was a terrible running song, we did not care. The title perfectly summed up the emotions Jill and I felt about running at the moment.

So after waiting around for the race to start, seeing some awesome and awesome costumes (see below) and contemplating pouring the vat of hot coffee all over my freezing legs, the man called our attention and began the race... and we're off.

Uphill.

The 1/4 mile was UPHILL. What the heck.

And the hills did not end. While they were not major hills, they were consistent on the course. And I hate to admit - I walked some of the race. I am embarrassed. Normally my goal is just to at least jog REALLLLLLY SLOWWWLLLY, but I couldn't even do that. So I power walked like a soccer mom. And at that point, I think my walk was faster than my "run" could have been anyways. hahaa... that's pitiful.

Towards the end, I realized where I was and about how much further I had to go and luckily it was DOWNhill. Praise the Lord. I got close enough to the clock and it said 33:40. And I was going to force myself to get to the mat before that minute rolled over. I ended up with 33:57 (GAG).

So with my loser red-faced head hanging high, we grabbed some drinks, ran to the one stall bathroom and then headed to Panera for a bagel and Starbucks for a coffee. After walking into Starbucks, two women saw my and Jill's 5k shirts, and one said, "We just did it too - our first 5k!" She was so excited, which made me start to think about how excited I would be if I challenged myself with say a 10k and completed it? Crazy talk right now, but I'll do it.

We finished up breakfast and called the pottery place where we complete the tiles. Little did we know today was going to be ALOT different then our last calming visit.

We walked in to see about 6 or 7 people in the store. Not bad for a Saturday morning.

But then we found out that there was going to be a birthday party. Of five year olds. 18 to be exact. And with each 18 - 5 year old, there accompanied 2 parents. That makes for alot of people, paint and pandemonium (I was going to say noise but I like the 3 P's better.)

So here we are, two girls who like their tiles to be just right, so we get a gameplan and then go snag every color we are going to need for the next two hours because we know if we don't get it now, it will be gone FOR-EEEE-VVVVERRRR.

And we got to work. About an hour into it, another family came in and sat at the table next to us. Apparently this was their first time because the dad that talked like he was from Souuuuuth Jorrrrrrjjjahhh (complete with his camoflouge collared shirt) was giving instructions (LOUDLY) to the little angels (sarcasm) on how to paint.

Although there were some bumps and distractions on the road of our tile painting, we finished and after many failed attempts at taking pictures of our self with the tiles, we asked the lady at the counter to help us out.