1/2 + 1/2 = ?

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Yesterday, I completed my second half-marathon, this time in Boston. Megan also ran it—her first half-marathon—and did awesome!

Here we are at the finish.

This course was hilly and difficult, much harder than the Princess race—the hardest part of that one was getting up at 3 AM. But I’m really happy to say I finished with a respectable time, although it wasn’t as fast as I wanted it to be due to the heat. I really do not do well exercising in heat—that’s one reason I did swimming for so long, I think! But yesterday was unseasonably hot out—80 degrees in Boston in October! WTF? I want my nice fall weather! So while I made really good time for the first eight miles, I hit a wall when we had to run uphill over a bridge where there was no shade, and around Mile 11 I threw up. I think I may have had a bit of heat exhaustion—it wasn’t until after I finished and got some Gatorade that I started to feel better. As much of a pain as training in the winter for the Princess race was, it was MUCH easier than running in the heat. But I’m really happy that after that unfortunate detour I was still able to finish!

I have to say, though, it will be awhile before I attempt another half-marathon—I’m thinking next fall I might do one in Newton, but my next athletic attempt will probably be an open-water swim. While I was training for this race, I ended up neglecting other forms of exercise I love—swimming, yoga, Zumba, classes at the gym like Pilates and abs workouts. While I enjoy running, I don’t live and breathe it like a lot of serious runners do. I’ve heard people talk about getting a “runner’s high,” and I have no idea what that is. Actually, when I run I get more angry than anything else—my mind tends to wander and I imagine scenarios, and by the end of the run I’m mad at someone for something that never happened.

This is the thing, though: never in a million years did I think that I’d be someone who completed two half-marathons in less than eight months. If you check my bucket list, I talk about the open-water swim and eventually a triathlon (although I have some serious catching up to do with cycling before I can do one of those), but nothing about running. I did JV track for three years in high school, but I never thought of myself as A Runner. As a kid, I knew adults who were serious runners—so serious that they wouldn’t do a popular two-mile race in my hometown because “it’s only two miles,” and I used to roll my eyes at that. Now, I can actually relate to that mentality.

I wish someone would tell this to high school and college students. When it comes to sports, it’s so easy to feel like whatever you are as a teenager is what you’ll be for the rest of your life—in my case, mediocre swimmer and girl-who-only-does-JV-track-so-she’s-doing-something-during-the-offseason. But none of that really matters after you graduate—after that, you don’t do anything for scholarships or to get colleges’ attention, but just because you want to. Look at me—I always thought of myself as a terrible athlete as I was growing up, and I still don’t consider myself a good one, but here I am doing two half-marathons in a year, thinking about doing another one, and hoping to do at least a couple of shorter road races by the end of the year.

If you didn’t know me, you might think that perhaps I actually am A Runner. I certainly don’t think of myself that way, but the point is that if I wanted to be A Runner, I could be.

Song of the Moment: “Rain”

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No deep meaning behind this one…it’s just raining tonight. There is something very satisfying about big downpours of rain—it’s very cathartic. Plus, I love the excuse it gives me to hang around inside and watch a movie, take a bath, etc.

Not much deep meaning in this song, either—it’s Madonna, after all. When I was a kid, I took dance for about seven years, and I remember we used to warm up to this song, stretching out on the floor. This seems like the kind of memory I might have made up, but I feel like I remember doing those stretches one evening when it actually was raining out.

I have an entire playlist devoted to songs about rain, and this isn’t the best song on it, but somehow it’s always the one I want to listen to first when it’s raining out.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SFVeBUPo94]

Runner-up: “The Beauty of the Rain” by Dar Williams

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRoOqKf7uds]

How I Ended Up in NYC on the Eve of Hurricane Irene

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Okay, I need to follow up that last post, which was very serious, with something lighter. So here’s a story about me being an idiot to lighten the mood.

How much of an idiot? I went to New York City the day before Irene hit.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the dumber I think I am, so I’ve only told a handful of people about it. But what is blogging for if not for celebrating your own idiocy? (Hell, I’m even doing karaoke on my blog now.)

So, remember when I made a list of things I wanted to do over the summer? I actually managed to cross quite a few, but not all of them off of the list. I went to the beach, the Boston Harbor Islands, the Arboretum, the zoo, Castle Island, and Portland. The rest I’ll have to accomplish some other time.

But I was really, really determined to get to New York this summer. I wanted to enjoy the pleasure of my own company and do all the touristy things that actual New Yorkers roll their eyes at. I had it all planned out:

o I would depart in the early afternoon on a summer Friday, when I only work half a day.

o I would take the Bolt Bus from South Station.

o I would go directly to the Times Square TKTS booth to buy tickets for a musical that night, preferably Mary Poppins or Avenue Q.

o I would check in at Hotel 17, which Rebekah had recommended to me as a nice budget hotel in Manhattan.

o I would get dressed up and go to the theater.

o Saturday morning, I would wake up and utilize my tickets to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

o Then I would take the subway to Coney Island, where I would ride the Cyclone, etc. and then head to a bagel shop to get some Real Brooklyn Bagels.

o Sunday morning, I would head to Central Park, where I would go to the zoo, take a lot of pictures, and relax somewhere comfortable while reading whatever book of The Hunger Games trilogy I was on.

o For lunch, I would grab a big slice or two of New York-style pizza.

o Then I would head to a museum near Central Park, perhaps the American Museum of Natural History.

o And then I’d get back on the Bolt Bus and be home in time to shower and get a good night’s sleep.

Decent plan, right? DAMN YOU, IRENE.

So at the beginning of the week, rumblings about Hurricane Irene began. Gradually, people started mentioning that it could hit New York City as a hurricane and FLOOD MANHATTAN OMG THE WORLD WOULD COME TO AN END.

Around Thursday it started to occur to me that this hurricane might mess up my plans for this trip. Should I reschedule? But…but…I already have tickets to the Statue of Liberty! And my hotel is booked and I can’t cancel it now! And I bought my bus tickets! Can’t let all that money go to waste, right?….Okay, maybe I should cut the trip a little bit short, as it looks like it will be raining all day on Sunday. Central Park is probably not a good idea, as I’d probably get soaked. Coney Island probably isn’t, either. Damn. That’s a few items on my travel goals list I won’t get to check off. Oh, well. At least I can still go to a show and see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I’ll just head home Saturday night, I guess…

So I changed my bus ticket to Saturday night. Bolt Bus had actually cancelled all their bus trips on Sunday, but the weather report was showing that the rain wasn’t supposed to start until Saturday. And Friday was supposed to be the classic calm-before-the-storm day—eighties and pleasant, not a cloud in the sky, all that.

Then I checked the Statue Cruises website and discovered that the tours of Liberty and Ellis Island had been cancelled for both Saturday and Sunday. You’d think that would be the moment where I decided that the trip was not a good idea, right? Yeah, you would think that.

So, work got out on Friday. One of my coworkers was leaving the company and it was her last day, so a group of us took her out for lunch. During lunch, I mentioned that when I left the restaurant, I was heading to South Station to take the bus to NYC. My much-smarter-than-me coworkers pointed out that there was a hurricane about to hit NYC, to which I replied, “Yeah, but I’ll be out before it gets there…I think…”

It was beginning to dawn on me that this was probably a mistake. But my list, guys! And my other list! And my hotel reservation! And this was really the last weekend I’d be able to do it for awhile! If I didn’t do it that weekend, it would be a long time before I’d be able to!

So I hopped on the Bolt Bus, read Catching Fire, put in earplugs to drown out a loud conversation in some European language that I didn’t recognize, made a mental note to buy Mockingjay at a bookstore in NYC. Just as we got to NYC, I got a text message from Bolt Bus saying to check my email for some important information. My phone has basic Internet—I can check email and do some basic Web browsing, but I wouldn’t trust it for normal Internet function like a smartphone has. So I logged into gmail from my phone and looked at my latest email.

“Dear Valued Customer, Due to the approach of Hurricane Irene to our service area, we are cancelling your schedule for Saturday, August 27, 2011 with Boltbus,” said the email.

Oh, crap! said I.

When I checked the Bolt Bus website on my phone (while I could check on my phone, buying tickets via the web on my phone wouldn’t be a good idea), I saw that all the buses for earlier in the day on Saturday were sold out.

So there went my one remaining plan still in place—the Broadway show—as my priority now was getting to the hotel, getting online, and buying tickets via another company. So I got to the hotel, waited for some anxious foreign tourists to stop talking to the desk clerk about the impending hurricane, got my room key, tried to figure out how to open the door to the old-fashioned elevator (if I’d been in a better mood I probably would have thought the elevator was cool), got to my room, and frantically tried to get online and search for bus tickets. Oh, my God, I have to be at work on Monday for my performance review, I thought. How on Earth am I going to explain this? “Oh, sorry, I got stuck in New York because I decided to go there as a hurricane was coming?”

Luckily, there was space on the 9:00 AM Fung Wah bus. I tend to avoid those buses if I can because sometimes they blow up, but I figured I had a better chance of getting stranded in a city four hours away from home than of blowing up on a bus. I had to beg the front desk to let me print out the tickets right away (thankfully, Hotel 17 was very nice and only charged me for one night when I’d reserved the room for two).

So…what to do? I couldn’t see a play, go to Central Park (too dark at that point), or go to the Statue of Liberty or any museums (closed for the night). That left…pizza and bagels.

So Friday night, I did get some very good pizza, then went to Barnes & Noble to buy Mockingjay, then used a New York guide I found in B&N to find a good bar in the neighborhood, where I ordered a drink. People on the street kept talking about how everything was shutting down—the subway would shut down the next day, and Broadway was going dark. The next morning, I got myself a bagel from a place recommended online as one of the best in New York, then headed to Chinatown to catch the bus. I ended up getting on an earlier bus and was back in Boston by 11:30.

I’d been in New York for a grand total of 15 hours, about seven of which were spent sleeping. My waking time in NYC was equivalent to the total amount of time spent on buses.

And then Irene happened, a tropical storm by the time she reached us, and not much happened. I didn’t leave the house all day and watched Six Feet Under on DVD. (Side note: I’m ten years too late on this, but wow, Six Feet Under is a really good show! I’m catching up on DVD right now and have finished the first two seasons.)

Sadly, many other people up and down the East Coast can’t say the same. Some people died; others experienced extensive property damage. So I hope this post isn’t seen as making light of a serious natural disaster—I just wanted to tell my own awkward story. I’m lucky that the only real danger I faced was the embarrassing possibility of having to explain why I was stuck in New York, and I never even had to do that.

I do wonder, though, what this Weather Channel guy would think of me.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ewb_N5NNU_s]

Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month

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My Irish great-grandmother apparently used to pick up the paper and say, “Let’s see who’s dead now.” Going to wakes was part of her social life—that’s why the obituaries are called “the Irish society column.”

True to my Irish roots, I read the obituaries, too. When I do, I’m not looking for people I know, but for people who lived particularly interesting lives.

I have this weird compulsion, though, to find out more about the people who died young. I’ll Google them, read the comments on their obituary on Legacy.com, look them up on Facebook, look their friends up on Facebook. It’s always sad when someone dies young, but when I do this, I’m always hoping to find out how the person died, and hoping that it’s any way but the saddest way to die.

Suicide.

I don’t even like saying that word. But September is Suicide Prevention and Awareness Month, and I wanted to share my thoughts on the subject.

This is an issue I feel very strongly about. No one I know well has committed suicide, but I have friends who have been suicidal, which was terrifying. I’ve been through blue periods, but I’ve never seriously considered killing myself.

Bad stuff is always going to happen. People will die unexpectedly, get terrible diseases, suffer from physical pain, have hearts broken, lose jobs, lose friends, be treated cruelly, make terrible mistakes. But the slogan that people used in response to suicides and bullying in the LGBT community is true for everyone—“It gets better.”

Easy for someone who’s not suicidal to say, I know. Especially since people who commit suicide very often suffer from a mental illness like depression or bipolar disorder. I’ve gone through my own mental issues with my anxiety and I’ve had times where I felt like I’d never be happy again. But then I would wake up the next morning with at least a little bit of hope. Mental illness can rob a person of that feeling, which is about the saddest thing I can think of.

It’s easy to boil this down to something like “Get help,” or “Raise awareness of mental illness,” or “Get therapy and/or psychiatric medicine,” or “Hang in there for your family and friends.” But it’s not so easy to know those things when you’re in the middle of any one of the bad things that happen to people every day. Some people have more to deal with in life than others and some people take things harder than others do. But I’ve always believed that what’s good about life outweighs what’s bad, and it breaks my heart that so many people can’t see that.

Occasionally, people will talk in conversation about what the best and worst ways to die are. Death by chocolate gets mentioned in the “best” category, along with dying in your sleep of old age, and as for worst, getting tortured or eaten, or being killed by an exploding toilet tend to be mentioned. But none of those worst things, as far as I’m concerned, come anywhere close to suicide. I’d rather die in any other way than in the absolute fucking misery that suicidal people must feel.

So…I don’t know what else to say except what I’ve already said. Don’t kill yourself. Get help if you’re thinking about it. Try to get anyone you know who’s thinking about it to get the help they need. And for the love of God, be nice to people. There’s enough negativity in the world as it is—no need to make it any worse by being mean. As I’m sure many of the friends and family of the young people I read about in those obituaries will tell you, you really never know what’s going through someone’s mind.

Karaoke Ring of Death: September

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I’ve recently gotten involved in 20-something Bloggers and discovered a lot of awesome blogs through it. (More on that in an upcoming post!) I also recently discovered the Karaoke Ring of Death, which some fellow 20sb members started last year. Basically, you record yourself singing karaoke to a song that fits the theme of the month. Someone else in KROD will post your video; you’ll post a different person’s.

This month, the theme is “Songs From Soundtracks,” and I have the privilege of hosting Erin of The Post-Modern Talko, a super-cool American living in Paris. Doing the Fresh Prince of Bel Air rap! Not only that, but there’s a bonus appearance by recent expat Sweeney, whose blog Sweeney Says was already one of my 20sb favorites. And another friend of Erin’s whose name I don’t know, but apparently she’s Canadian.

Here’s Erin’s intro:

Yeah Boston! What up, it’s yer girl, Erin fromThe Post Modern Talko and I’m reporting to you live from France where I’ve been living for a little less than a year.

I was so excited to end up on Strug’s blog because I used to live by Davis Square myself back when I was a catholic school girl at North Cambridge Catholic and have very fond memories of the Bean.

But I’m out in Paris now, partying and carrying on. If that’s your bag than my blog is the right new read for you.

Normally I fly solo on my KROD missions but Sweeney fromSweeney Says has just moved to Paris too and we’ve been getting together to party now and then. Anyway, someone told me once that you’re not a real American unless you know the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song and nothing will make you more defensive of your country then leaving it. Trust and believe.

Ok so enjoy the show and check out the other participants. Don’t forget to Show Jes fromJes Gettin Started some love over on my page. The Master list will be up soon. OH and in case you were curious drague is french slag equivalent of hitting on someone. Hope to see more of you. Hope you like what you see.

Cheers.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiRb3NGIO6M]

As for me, well, this is my first time participating in KROD, and I have nowhere to go but up. My video is super-awkward. I’m nervous, I sound awful, I forget some of the words and come in at the wrong places, and I am also STONE COLD SOBER. What happened was that on Sunday I realized that if I wanted to get my twelve-mile run (longest run on the half-marathon training schedule) in and also watch the Emmys that night, I had to get the video done right away. And sadly, you can’t really drink when you’re about to run twelve miles. Well, you can, but the ensuing run would not be fun. Anyway, my video is up on another very cool blog, Kandace’s One Red Wall.

Oh, and Kandace, Alexandra of The Tsaritsa Sez, and Jes of Jes Getting Started organized this month. Thanks, guys!

A Moving Story

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On Labor Day, I was sitting on Boston Common reading, and I was getting a little claustrophobic. There were people everywhere. Whenever I got up, I felt like I was going to trip over people.

Labor Day is a mystifyingly popular weekend for tourists to visit Boston. Personally, I can’t think of a worse time to visit our fair city. There are something like fifty colleges in or right around Boston, and over Labor Day weekend, the students at all of them are moving their shower caddies and extra-long twin sheet sets into their dorm rooms. Not to mention all the twenty- and thirty-somethings who are just switching to new apartments with 9/1 move-in dates.

I challenge you to find one twenty-something who has lived in one place for the duration of his or her twenties. I’m certainly no exception. I turned twenty just before my junior year of college, when I lived on campus in a four-person apartment. Over the summer I moved home, and senior year I lived in a different, six-person apartment. The following summer, I worked an on-campus job and lived in a different dorm room. Then I moved home for a month, after which I moved into my first apartment. After two years there, I moved to Davis Square. And at the end of July, I moved again, still in the Davis area.

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to blog about this. Maybe because even after nearly two months, I’m not completely settled in yet. I still need a bookshelf, a dining room table, to get a few small boxes into my room, to give away some of the books I didn’t want, and to get rid of the boxspring that’s sitting in the dining room. Oh, yeah, did I mention? My new bedroom is up a flight of stairs, and I should have realized beforehand that my boxspring wouldn’t fit up those stairs. So I ended up having to sleep on just my mattress for a month, then figure out a time when Ikea could deliver a platform bed, then figure out a time when my dad could help me put it together.

Here’s the thing: even though I’ve moved twelve times, including in and out of dorm rooms, since I turned eighteen, I absolutely suck at moving. I can never figure out the most efficient way to pack. I always end up with random objects that don’t fit anywhere. I underestimate the amount of packing space I need, largely due to the hundreds of books I own (and my refusal to buy an e-Reader). If I’m using a moving van, I never get everything packed in time. If I’m using a car, it ends up so full that things fall out when I open the doors.

Is this a skill you can get better at? I like my new apartment, but I’m definitely not going to live here for the rest of my life. Am I always going to be moving-deficient, or is it possible that things could go better next time? (Actually, it would be hard for things not to go better—when I moved, due to sheer bad luck, it was literally the hottest day of the year.)

In the meantime, I love my new apartment. I’ve got a nice, quiet bedroom, Comcast cable with a DVR, a nice porch out back for reading the Globe on weekends, a very cool new roommate, and this lovely lady greeting me every day when I come home:

Yep, my new roommate has a dog! Juno is a three-year-old black furball (probably with a lot of flat-coated retriever in her) who loves everybody in the world almost as much as she loves attention. I love to pet cute dogs. She’s a cute dog who loves to be petted. It works out great.

September 11, 2001: Never Forget

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I want to write something about September 11th on today, the tenth anniversary, but I’m coming up blank. I feel like everything meaningful you can say about it has already been said. Five years ago, I wrote about my own experience that day- if you’re curious, you can read about it here.

Today, my thoughts are with the friends and families of the victims of both the September 11th attacks and all of the subsequent violence. This is probably too much to ask for, but I hope someday we can look back on that day and know, with complete certainty, that nothing like it could ever happen again.

Caroline’s Birthday

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Twenty-five years ago today, I met someone. Whenever people had asked two-year-old me what I wanted to name the baby, I said something very quickly that sounded like “Dickynup.” But I seemed to be fine with the name my parents had picked out for my new sister, Caroline Elizabeth, whom I called “baby Caroyine.”

I wish I had a scanner so I could upload a picture of us as kids. She was adorable, and still is. Here’s a picture of us during the Princess Half-Marathon earlier this year.

She’s the blonde one on the right who looks nothing like me and is insanely proud of being a couple of inches taller than me.

Like most siblings, we had a lot of fights growing up. But we also had a lot of fun. When I went to preschool, she cried hysterically about how she wanted her “Kaykie.” We used to play with our gigantic collection of stuffed animals in my room on Saturday mornings. We’d play out in the backyard, inventing all kinds of crazy games (one of which involved pretending to be vultures). We share a kind of weirdness in our personalities that only siblings can understand.

As we got older, we got to be a different kind of friends. We talked about boys, vented about people at school, complained about teenage issues. We hung out by going to the movies or watching The X-Files together instead of playing in the backyard. We made fun of the characters on Law & Order: SVU. Eventually, she decided to go to BC, where she was a freshman when I was a senior, and I loved having her on the same campus as me. She was in the honors program and on the swim team, met a great boyfriend, and continued being her awesome self.

Today she turns twenty-five. I still call her by the embarrassing family nicknames she’d kill me for revealing here. She’s in her second year at Villanova Law School, where she’s involved with student government. She’s still with the same boyfriend. She trips over everything in her path, but always gets right back up and laughs at herself. She loves puns, Martha Stewart’s recipes, and Popsicles. She’s still adorable and hilarious, and I miss having her in the same city as me.

Happy birthday to the best little sister ever. I love you.

5 Years of SST-S: A Trip Down Memory Lane

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(By the way, thanks for bearing with me in my last post. I try not to get too angry or ranty on this blog, but secondhand smoke gets my blood boiling like nothing else, and venting about it was a long time coming. Now for a more pleasant post.)

Today is the five-year anniversary of SST-S. (Also my cousin’s birthday—happy birthday, Lauren!) Wow. What was I doing five years ago? And what have I done since then?

Five years ago I had just moved into my first apartment in Chestnut Hill with Christina and Chris. It was a fantastic apartment, and since it was about 500 feet away from my alma mater, I could kind of lull myself into believing that I was still in college. I was working at my first full-time job and making new friends. I had never been on a date. I was toying with the idea of eventually going to grad school for creative writing or journalism. Erin, Lindsey, and Jackie lived down the road in a tiny basement apartment. Julie had just moved to Inman Square. I was just starting to make friends at my new job. The Red Sox were at the end of a craptacular season, and Jon Lester had just been diagnosed with lymphoma.

The year that followed turned out to be a very, very hard one, for personal reasons that I still can’t write about on a public blog. Lots of ups and downs, and Christina was a saint for putting up with me through it all. During that year, I became obsessed with the final season of The O.C. The Boston Globe excerpted me a few times in their now-defunct “Readers’ Blogs” section. I went on Accutane and eventually stopped when I realized that it’s probably easier to get a handgun permit than it is to get a prescription for Accutane (you have to get a new one every month) when you’re a woman of childbearing age. I re-wrote my novel that was my senior thesis and started looking for an agent. I wrote for Not For Tourists and had an ill-advised biography that included the phrase “spews generational angst.” While researching one of my Not For Tourists pieces, I got lost in a park in the dark in East Boston and spent a terrifying half hour trying to find my way out. I tried to figure out which bars I could go to without running into too many college students. I went to a Christmas party where we spent the whole time talking about how tired we were and reminiscing about college. I went on a date with a guy I met at a bar. He creeped me out. I survived The Great Cartoon Bombing of Boston. I watched the 2007 Superbowl with a bunch of loud, drunk, slightly crass Greek Orthodox seminarians (aka my roommate Chris’s friends). Erin, Lindsey, and Jackie had to move out of their apartment after a sewage leak. I pigged out with Christina for the last episode of Gilmore Girls. I celebrated my twenty-third birthday by going to Potterpalooza in Brookline and getting the last Harry Potter book. I was happy. I was sad. I was scared. I cried, I had anxiety attacks, I had psychosomatic illness, I had hypochondria. Christina and Erin graduated from grad school and found jobs. Christina moved to Fall River just as I got a new job.

The next year started with a new roommate, Stephanie, moving into the room that Christina had vacated. I started my new job and hit it off right away with my new boss. Within four months, I got promoted, which I’m still insanely proud of. I made new friends at work. The Red Sox won the World Series again. I joined Match.com and went on some awful dates. I had a huge crush on a coworker. I reviewed books for TeensReadToo. I went on my first business trip to San Francisco and had the time of my life. I went on another business trip to Philadelphia and sat next to a hilarious woman on the way back. A lot of my old coworkers ended up working with me again due to a merger and the incestuous world of college publishing. I tried sushi for the first time and got completely addicted to it. I drooled over Michael Phelps. I got bitten by a dog. I got so sick of riding the Green Line to work all the time (Ginny just posted about how annoying all the college students on the B Line are) that I decided to move to Davis Square.

Year 3 started off in Davis Square, which I absolutely love. My commute to work was cut in half. I traveled to Savannah on business. Julie and I joined a chorus, which was a lot of fun. I voted for Obama and watched his inauguration with my coworkers. I got hooked on Damages and reruns of The Golden Girls. I went on a business trip to Georgia where, for the first time in my life, I got pulled over due to a broken taillight on my rental car. I also went to Chicago on business. I joined my office softball team. Unfortunately, I also started experiencing anxiety again that year, and I began therapy, which helped me a lot.

In Year 4, I went on more dates than any other year. I dated one guy for two months, then decided I didn’t want to keep seeing him, but the experience gave me hope. I took a great Grub Street class that helped my writing out a lot. I watched all ten Best Picture nominees. I went on Celexa for my anxiety, which massively improved. I got a new roommate, who told me within a week of moving in that my alarm clock was too loud and causing her to lose so much sleep she might get fired. (Seriously.) There was some drama this year—I didn’t get a job that I really wanted and thought that I would get. I was so upset—it felt like a bad breakup. There was some family conflict as well, and to this day I’m hurt by it. But plenty of good things happened, too. My sister ran the Boston Marathon. I traveled with my family to Aruba. And the year ended with me getting another promotion and traveling to Washington, DC on a business trip.

Year 5 was pretty awesome. I saw Wicked. I ran the Princess Half-Marathon and went to Disney World and The Wizarding World of Harry Potter with my sister. I went to my five-year college reunion. I went to Las Vegas for Jon and Steph’s wedding and went to a Celine Dion concert. I went to Aruba again and went parasailing. I went to my cousin Ryan’s beautiful wedding. I had a kick-ass birthday party. I started training for my second half-marathon, and I moved to a new apartment, still near Davis Square. (More on that in an upcoming post.)

I’m still single and still struggling. But would I ever go back to five years ago? Hell, no. Life has gotten so much better in so many ways.

I’ve now been on about twenty first dates. I’ve decided not to go to grad school, although never say never. Erin, Lindsey, and Jackie finally all moved out of their apartment. I’ve moved up within my industry and am hoping to move up even more. I’ve made a lot of new friends, particularly through work. Oh, and the Sox are currently battling it out with the Yankees for the division title and will probably make it to the playoffs this year. And Jon Lester recovered completely and went on to pitch a no-hitter and win the final game of the 2007 World Series.

Smoking Rant

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Sometimes I think that if I could press a button that would wipe every smoker off the face of the earth, I’d do it.* Sure, there are a few of them I’d miss, but it would be worth it to be able to walk down the street and not have to smell and/or breathe in other people’s cigarette smoke.

I need to get across here the depth of my hatred of cigarettes. I have ranted here before about texting, obnoxious people on the T, and Arrested Development. But I would willingly travel the length of the T surrounded by obnoxious people, text until my fingers cramped, and watch the entire series of Arrested Development in one sitting if it meant that I’d never have to endure another person smoking ever again.

This is not because I don’t want people who smoke to die. It’s purely for selfish reasons. The smell of cigarettes makes me physically sick. I get headaches and stomachaches from secondhand smoke. If someone who just smoked a cigarette sits next to me, even that smell can make me sick.

But here’s the thing: even though smoking in restaurants, bars, and just about any place of business is illegal in Massachusetts, secondhand smoke is really fucking hard for me to avoid. Since I don’t have a car, I spend a lot of time walking around, and so many people walk down the sidewalks smoking and sending waves of smoke backwards. Or pause on the sidewalk next to a building to smoke. I am training for another half-marathon right now, and I cannot tell you how many times cigarette smoke has interrupted my runs.

Why on Earth is this considered okay? Yes, I know, it’s an addiction, it’s hard to quit, there are worse things that people could be doing, blah blah blah fishcakes. You know what? I DON’T CARE. Cigarette smoking is the only addiction that other people are forced to smell while minding their own business in public places. At least people who do hard drugs have the courtesy to indulge their habits in private.

And that’s not the only way that smokers ruin other people’s lives. I know three separate people, living in three separate houses, who lost their homes due to fires caused by other people’s cigarettes. I’m angry just writing about it.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot have any sympathy at all for anyone who forces other people to breathe in their cigarette smoke. If you smoke, you do it where no one who doesn’t want to smell it has to. Period. I don’t care if those places are hard to find. They should be. The alternative is quitting, not smoking where other people have to smell it.

Also, I just don’t understand it. Aside from the smoke, the physical act of smoking grosses me out, too. You are inhaling smoke into your lungs. I know that once you start you can get addicted, but…why would you ever want to try it to begin with? Just what is the appeal of inhaling smoke?

I’m also kind of amazed at how many people around here smoke. This is Boston, a city full of well-educated people who shop at farmer’s markets and do yoga and are obsessed with awareness of all kinds of issues. How are so many of them dumb enough to smoke?

And the only thing worse than a smoker is a self-righteous smoker. Googling “smokers’ rights” turns up more than 14 million hits. Um, I’m sorry, smokers’ rights? SMOKERS’ RIGHTS? Newsflash, assholes: YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS AND YOU SHOULDN’T. There is nothing written in the Constitution or the law of common sense that says that you should be able to smoke wherever you want. The rest of us, though? We most definitely have the right to be able to breathe the air in our own communities.

Oh, what’s that? Have I pissed some of you smokers off with this post? GOOD. You’ve pissed me off. But until I’ve forced you to breathe in chemicals that make you physically ill, all because you had the audacity to walk down your own street, I can’t say we’re even.

*I thought I’d made this clear, but of course I don’t ACTUALLY want to wipe smokers off the face of the earth. I was being facetious. But I do want smokers to stop making me sick when I walk down the street, and I do genuinely mean every other word of this post.