The playdate veered off into Barbie-(and Disney princess and Aladdin and Ken and Violet from The Incredibles)-storytelling-land, with most of the lines each girl spoke prompted by the other (Okay, pretend he says... Now pretend she says...):

There were two sisters who liked the same boy, but he only liked one sister and wanted to go to prom with her. The other sister confronted him, demanding that he tell her the truth: "I'll be all right. It'll just hurt me." So he told her he didn't like her, and went over to her sister.

Then she put on a different dress and he said, "Okay. Mind. CHANGED." Then he pushed her over and took off all his clothes, except he kept his underwear on ["Don't really take off his pants! They're too hard to put back on!" "I won't, I won't"].

At this turn of events, she said, "Slap out of it!" Then the sisters' mother showed up and told the sister with the imaginarily-pantsless boy that she was too young to have a boyfriend, but that the other sister was too old not to have a boyfriend and needed to get one before they went out on their mission. And the older sister rolled her eyes and sighed, "But why do I HAVE to? Why can't we just go on the mission?"

"I've never seen you in your mission clothes before."

"Do you like them? Do they make me look ugly?"

"No, they make you look scary."

"OH! I can't believe it!" And then Violet stormed away. Then Ken started shaking her sister's hand and they said, "Hello, how do you do, how do you do?" And then Violet returned and wailed, "Oh, how dare you! I'm going to beat you up!"

And then she picked him up so she could bring him to his house. And then he fell really, really in love with another girl. He fell in love mostly, most of all, with Clawdeen from Monster High.

"I'm sorry," she told him, "but I don't like you the way you like me. ["Pretend she already has a boyfriend."] I already have a boyfriend. ["Pretend he starts to dance with someone else."] All right! All right! I'll dance with you!"

["Pretend she fainted. Now pretend he doesn't really like her shoes."] "I don't really like the shoes. But I do like this dress."

And then they danced, but he made her pass out because her foot was very injured. "M'leg's broken, m'leg's broh-ken," she cried out in a weirdly decadent-wealthy-lady-in-a-Regency-romance drawl.

Then Violet became a nurse, and wore Rapunzel's dress as her nurse uniform for purposes of leg-mending.

Then they abandoned everyone in a heap on the couch and ran back to the bedroom to draw in Matilda's scrapbook and laugh themselves into helpless screams of glee.

Yeah, day off for "some appointments" is plenty. I actually try not to give my every detail regularly, so when I take off for interviews, it's not as obvious.

In high school we had chairs with the desk top attached on one side in pretty much every class but science labs.

Ugh! That reminds me -- on the way to yoga yesterday, I walked by an adorable bright red wooden chair-with-desk with a free sign on it, and of course it was gone by the time I was on my way home from yoga. Stupid yoga! (Not that I have any place to put a new piece of furniture, but I waaaaanted it.)

I remember those chairs. From school cafeteria, I think.

I cannot believe how often I have to reboot my cable box

Like once a week my cable box forgets who it is and can't load my channel lineup or my favorites. Luckily it hasn't ever lost my DVR'd shows. Rebooting is simple enough, though; unplug, replug, wait 7 minutes. Not like the complicated launching sequence required to reboot my modem and router.

I wish I could figure out what broke. Cause this is LAME.

Have you tried fartleks or interval training?

fartleks

I am 12.

fartleks

Now that would be a lek worth witnessing.

Have you tried fartleks or interval training?

They make me mad. Seriously, a good portion of what I get from this is uninterrupted laps. It's just when I get to the end, and UHG. When I have to stop, be it for goggle fail or obstacles, I get pissy.

But I think I need to try it. My internal metronome is off or something.

You gotta go fast to get fast!

heh heh

Sara - I hate to be the one who says it, but maybe you are thinking too much about it. Could you NOT time yourself for a couple of nights and just try to zen swim?

- says the woman who is already trying to break down what to do to get my mile time down before my next 5K.

So, okay, sticking with plan 1.2, which is taking my day off, dealing with my shit, and no one needs to know. (1.1 was crafting another lie about needing the morning off, I was gonna go with waiting on the plumber to fix my water heater).

Incidentally, I was leaving 7-11 today and the cop parked next to me as I was backing out was the dude who pulled me over. Awk-ward! Hullo, witness to my embarassment! (I have to say, he was very nice about it all, staying completely impersonal and not casting any judgment and just sticking to the rulebook).