Last week the two of us left our suddenly-chilly new hometown and drove the twelve hours to our sunny old hometown of Albuquerque for Thanksgiving. Due to my fairly flexible academic schedule, we were able to leave on Monday afternoon. All day Sunday and Monday morning I was feverishly checking various sources of weather information, as we'd been told Flash Floods were expected in northwest Arkansas on Monday night. My plan was to get the hell out of here ASAP to miss the weather.
Well, we got out of here in good time, but sadly hit much weather on the drive between Oklahoma City and Amarillo. We also stopped in Tulsa briefly so I could do some quick dress shopping. We spent the night at a cheap national brand chain hotel in Amarillo that pissed me off for several reasons. First, when we walked in together to check in, the desk clerk said "Nice jacket" but actually meant Doug and not me. Both of us were very confused, as people rarely compliment his clothing over mine. We were then promptly informed that "Corduroy is the new suede," which would have been hilarious had it not been followed by "Oh and you only booked this room for 1 person but as there are two of you I will have to charge you an additional $10. Is that OK?" No, that's not OK. When he said "all hotels do this," I had to bite my tongue from saying "Nice ones don't." I suppose I know from now on to just leave Doug in the car when I check into crap hotels in Amarillo.
Suffice it to say we made it to Albuquerque in one piece, and spent several days seeing friends, eating at places we'd missed, attending Geeks Who Drink on Tuesday night and spending time with Doug's family. I even swung by the VA for a few hours to see some of my old supervisors and got all caught up on VA life.
On Thursday morning we ran the Albuquerque Turkey Trek, an annual 5K race in the Old Town neighborhood of Albuquerque. It was pretty darn cold that morning, and leaving the house at 8am on vacation seemed mighty stupid, but we both finished the race and thus felt justified in stuffing our faces with turkey and other delicious Thanksgiving foods. Like pie. Anyway, it was officially my second-best 5K ever; I came in at 27:56, which felt pretty great considering I haven't been running that much and considering the change in altitude.
On Sunday, we made our first pass at driving the entire way back on one day. Armed with an Ipod stuffed full of tunes and many entertaining podcasts, the day still felt crazy long. In part because I felt the beginnings of a cold and was trying to drink as many fluids as I could...and my tiny bladder prompted us to make several stops. But we made it. We made it until after Thanksgiving to turn the heat on in our apartment, we made it safely to Albuquerque and back, and I am making it through this cold.
Sorry there aren't any pictures....but the only picture I have of the whole week is one from the race website with me running to the finish line, and it's one of the worst photos of me ever taken. If you really really care, you can look up the website yourself and I'll tell you that I'm photo number 1336.
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