Wow, so I suck at being a blogger...
The last week...well, lets see. I had three 12 hour ambulance shifts. That was fun. Especially since I ceased to be a 'white cloud.' I made the mistake of mentioning it to one of the crews, which naturally jinxed me, and we rolled 8 times that shift. Fun. But not really. Actually, that's not true, it really wasn't bad, I don't mind being that busy on a shift, since if you're not running a call, you're either sleeping or watching the television (cause honestly, who catches up on reading or paperwork when they're sitting around an ambulance station with nothing to do? Oh, responsible people? Shit, guess that's not me...). Its just that we didn't have any interesting calls. No car wrecks, or shootings, or cardiac arrests...the irony of course being that those are all terrible things to have happen to other people. But they happen to be the most interesting calls you can have on an ambulance...and we didn't have any on my shifts. Oh well.
Oh, yeah, my birthday happened. Stick in the mud and terrible prior-planning type that I am, I didn't do anything for it. Actually, my roommate offered to take me out to dinner, and even that hasn't happened yet. But honestly it feels odd to agitate for things on my birthday, ask for presents, etc...I only asked for things from my mom because she asked me what I wanted. Which was weird, considering she had already gotten me an early birthday present.
Fortunately I was saved from being a complete loser when a good friend here in town called me up, said I had to do something, and took me out for steak. Lemme tell ya, I hadn't had steak yet since being back in Texas, and its was marvelous. A really nice night too; one of my best friends who lives in Canada gave me a call, which meant a lot to me, and after steak we went for dessert to top off the night. Really saved the day and made my night. Its possible I'll still throw something together in the next week or so for a belated party. But really, in some ways I feel like I'm getting old enough that its not a big deal any more. (What? Are you crazy? You're in your twenties! This is the time to live it up, to throw a huge bash, go out on the town, get drunk, get girls, make a night of it, live large and live wild! Maybe so...but honestly, its just not that big a deal to me.)
On Wednesday, I got the good news that I had been hired by REI, which friggin rocks. Even my dad was happy, for even though I don't think either of my parents are enthusiastic about this being a career (I don't plan on it being one), Dad was nevertheless glad that I had gotten a job that he was pretty sure I'd enjoy (and he's right, I will). The only catch of course being the stuff you have to slog through to get to the fun stuff; job training started last night, and its a lot more...corporate than I guess I thought it would be. 'These are our policies, and here are some examples of situations where they might apply, and David, what do you think of Greg's conduct in this example? Is it consistent with our Code of Conduct?' Yuck. The ice breakers weren't much better. But REI is a big business, so I guess its to be expected. And I never really like ice breakers, no matter what the context is. So I don't really hold any of that against the job. Just not exactly what I expected is all.
And finally, before I bore you all to tears with the rest of my life, a little bit on the point of this blog to begin with: I ran my first post-collegiate race on Saturday, representing RunSport to a second place finish behind my roommate in the Texas Heart Institute and Houston Zoo Great Pumpkin Fun Run 5k. Adam and I started out together, and quickly strung the field out at about 4:50 pace or so. Half way through or so he gapped me by about 20 yards. I held him there until maybe three quarters of a mile to go, at which point we took a hard turn and he broke away, eventually putting about 23 seconds on me, as he finished in 14:57 and I finished in 15:19. Not the greatest time ever, and I had hoped to stick with Adam and go under 15 minutes, but I had a terrible week of sleep (the ambulance shifts started at 6 or 7am, and were between 20 and 45 minutes away, so I was waking up EARLY...and was somehow unable to get to bed any earlier than normal), and it was my first race in a long long time. So I'm not too worried about it. Plus, while Adam won two Continental plane tickets, whereever whenever, I won a $200 gift certificate to Tony's, a really really nice restaurant here in Houston. So I'm not complaining. Pictures should be available soon on raceshots.net. My bib number was 1336. Check it out to see me racing in orange for the first time.
Oh, and then there was NOD, Rice's Night of Decadence that night. I was going to go, but I was still on the fence about it at around 5 that afternoon, and they were short staffed for EMS, so I ended up working it instead. The whole thing was pretty subdued for NOD, only 14 EMS calls (about twice that number last year), and nothing really crazy that I heard about. So no crazy partying for me, and no crazy EMSing either. Hopefully I get to party soon...though honestly, I might have outgrown it. (No, never...)

Oct 23-Oct 29th Summary:
Monday-1hr easy, ~9 miles. At night...
Tuesday- Workout. Sorta. Run to Rice and run a loop (~3 mi), then run another loop getting progressively faster. I topped out around 5:26 pace. ~6 miles
Wednesday- 49 min easy. ~8 miles. At night...
Thursday- Workout: Warmup to Hermann. 5 min hills, 5 min rest, then 4 mi of 30 sec fast/30 sec jog, 5 min rest, 5 min hills. Cooldown back to apartment. Solid workout, but by myself. ~9 miles
Friday- 25 min easy warmup ~3 miles
Saturday- RACE 5k 15:19 2nd place With warmup and cooldown ~7 miles
Sunday-1:30 easy. ~14 miles
Total: ~56 miles. A little lighter week than planned because of the race which I registered for the day of.

Oh, and I lost my sunglasses on the way to the race. Fuckin A...those were spendy sunglasses. If you happen to see a pair of Oakley A Wires anywhere on Rice campus, let me know...cause I lost mine. Fuckin A...

And vote for Kinky.