The Commoner and a Brand New Season

Not football.  Football is already over.  The Niners suck, the Giants suck, I'm left with the Jets.  I've moved on-

You guys know that my first and ever love is TV.  It goes back to the days of The Monkeys, The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family.  



September is a great month.  The new TV season.  Even though now there are many many starts and stops to a season the fall season is still the big one.  I have to wonder when my taste switched from funny comedies to deep dark dramas.

All of them give me night mares.  All of them are disturbing.  Here's what I've been watching.

CAUTION MAY CONTAIN SOME SPOILER ALERTS!!!!!!!

Breaking Bad-
 
Oh Walt what have you done?
I will miss you though.

Sons of Anarchy
 
What is going on with that creepy, deeply disturbing Marshall.  If he sets up Jimmy Smitts?  That's it. I'm done

and tonight I watched SVU Law and Order my summer obsession


 It made me sick.

I haven't even gotten to American Horror Story or Homeland yet.  

Real Housewives where have you gone?

The Commoner Goes To Boot Camp

That's right friends.  I was in Chicago for the first of two monthly visits.  This visit was to see Danny graduate from boot camp.

I don't have much experience with the military. By much let's say none.  But every body who did said we HAD to go to graduation so we did.

Chicago's a great city.  We were able to get Dunkin Donuts in the airport on the way to baggage check.  We got our car and made our way to Gurnee where our Holiday Inn was.  We'll be back next month but next month we'll be running that town.

It all went smoothly.  They allow 4 guests per graduate and there were 886 graduates all inside a fake ship.  Entertain yourself with that thought.  Here are some observations from someone with no knowledge of these things.

There are a lot of people who go to bootcamp every week and come out sailors.  There were 886 sailors at Dan's graduation and they do that every single Friday.

 They did a cool parade of flags.  But not like in the Olympics.  A state's parade.  The states were presented in order of state hood. Let me tell you in a sea of flags of Blue and Gold (really all those states like blue and gold?  They were either in the navy or University of Michigan)  California stood out with the beautiful flag.  White with a big old Bear.

There were also cool drums.  I love drums.

There were fancy rifle guys.  That was really cool.

There was a band who made me feel very patriotic.

There were the divisions marching in.  Since Danny was so tall he was in the back.  We never saw him until the end.

There was the Secretary of the Navy-He was neither a Secretary or in the Navy but whatever.

There were other highlights.  Like the sailor in Danny's Division who fainted from standing at attention for over an hour.  But the real highlight was getting to see Danny.

 They aren't aloud to smile on base.
We had a lot of fun for a few hours before he had to take off to San Antonio for more training.  We went out to eat, and we had donuts at DUNKIN DONUTS.

Next month we go back for THE MARATHON.  Chicago.  You can say we have adopted you.

The Commoner LOVES Marathon Training!

That's right people I did it!  I nailed the longest of the long runs-the big 20 miler and I didn't even hate it!  I haven't hated running for about a month now-in fact I loved the long run.  So I am going to try and do 20 observations from my long run, but that would take forever so I'll try for 10.

1.  Santa Clara County is the best county anywhere.  I'm not even kidding.  My beautiful trail in Morgan Hill goes on forever non-stop.  I hear it just keeps hooking up with other trails and it's fantastic.  I don't know of anywhere else in the country-no the world-no the universe who has a system of bike trails like this one.  I love you Santa Clara County future home of the 49ers.

2.  I don't have to interview fake celebrities any more.  I've pretty much mastered running in the mile.  But I know I could not run that far if it weren't for JayZ.  There's something about his bad ass music that makes me feel like I can be bad ass  too.

 

3.  People think I don't like nature but I really do.  I love the nature on the trail.  The spooky trees the lakes but mostly it's  a treat when I see the deer.  I always try to talk to them but they run away -(I'm desperate to talk to anyone on the run) They have beautiful running  form by the way.

4.  Dragonflies.  When I was a little girl I was so afraid of them.  Heck up until a month ago I was afraid of them.  But one of my observations about a month ago was that they hover at mile 4 and when I get there they escort me -like police.  Just for a very little while.  I always love seeing them now.

7l

5.  Nike App.  There's nothing better than Nike App.  She keeps my pace, she cheers me on.  I've become friends with Sonya Richards Ross and Kara Gaucher.  I've bought a Garmin.  I don't love it.  It's very fussy.  I know I can't take Nike App on the marathon because it won't last (It only lasted 19.4)  But she's taken me all the way and that's what counts.

6.  Those energy chews?  They are fantastic.  I eat one every 2 miles and I swear they keep me going.  Ever since I started using them my Long Runs have been great.

7.  There's no Place Like Home.  For a long time I thought I needed to find a better place to run.  Some place new, some place different, yet some place safe where I would not run out of road.  Then it dawned on us.  Our trail was all of those.  Because every time we went further we discovered somewhere new where we had never been.  Yet we had all the old familiars to help us through our run.  It turned out we never needed any place to go. there was so much here already Dorothy.

8.  Runners and Especially Cyclist you see along the way.  They always smiled at me, I knew they would ID me if I went missing, and mostly they were always careful not to run over me, especially when I threw caution to the wind and ran down the middle of the road.

9.  My Warrior Princess Look.  That's right.  Over the past few weeks as the run mileage piled up I adopted the look of a warrior.  Sports Bra only (the long kind don't worry), fuel belt, rock tape, head band rocking warrior woman. 

10.  Finally my feet.  Which carried me all these miles!  20 Friggin Miles without hardly complaining.  Okay I did have a cramp which made my toes freeze in a weird shape, some blisters, and a bunion.  But come on!  20 Miles?

 

Training isn't over.  There's a month to go.  But the big runs, the runs I've never thought possible before?  They are done.  All that's left in 26.2 miles through the city of Chicago.

  Pardon my Language!

The Commoner's Schedule

One thing that I learned from Marathon training is that running is on my schedule.  That means that weather it's before work or after 3 meetings -if it's a day to run then I have to run.

And I discovered on those 6 O'Clock runs after a 10 hour day-they are often the best and I always feel better  after than I did before.

So no matter how tired you are-make an appt. somewhere in your day with yourself and work it out!

The Commoner's Creed

I don't want you to think that because we are back at work the commoners have forgotten to hang out together.

Oh no work can't hold us back.

 (I LOVE this song!)

This is not an easy fate and here's why;  Rosa has a huge family that keeps her busy

Kristen has a million other friends and is president of our union

Beth has a rockstar son who plays all over the place AND the famous baseball player son who she pitches to

I have classes, marathon training, and meetings with a million people a day.

But we went to our favorite place 19th Hole.  (I don't know if it's our favorite but it sounds good) 

We learned a lot of things on Friday night and laughed as hard as we possibly could.

My favorite story is the little stripper dance Rosa's teacup Chihuahua does every time he passes Rosa's blind (what's with the blind in our group) poodle.  The thought of it makes me laugh until I cry.

  We learned you should never judge anyone by what they did in their youth.  Let's leave it at that.

And finally we learned a creed.  It said Creed of the West and it was really cool.  Google however failed to produce the entire thing.  Our creed goes like this

If it's not yours - don't take it
If it's not the truth-don't say it
If it's not right?  Do it anyway so we can laugh about it.

Have a great week commoners