Thanks, Wendi!

Here's a great post from our friend, The Happy Booker, starring Dallas Hudgens and our beloved Scott Berg. Yes, beloved.

This topic has come up often in conversation this week. And I've told folks this, too: I'm proud to be a writer from George Mason University and have been since the day I started school there in 2003.

P.S. Wendi-- I still care! [giggle giggle]

This Weekend is going to be Crazy.

Here's a wonderful article by Liam Callanan for NPR. An graduate alumnus and professor, Callanan helps 'outsiders' understand what Mason is. Only qualm: Although George Mason University is classified as a communter school, we have over 4,500 students living on campus.

Go Mason!

"Can George Mason keep it going, beat Joakim Noah and Florida Saturday and then beat the LSU-UCLA winner for the NCAA championship? Of course not. No chance. Just as the Patriots had no chance to go on a four-game Tournament winning streak over Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State and Connecticut." King Kaufman

We're off to the Final Four! Go Patriots!

Bike Season

I went on my first twenty-miler of the season today. I took the W&OD from my house out to Reston and back.

Highlights:

• two tandems in a row (still need to try one out)
• someone left a stuffed animal on one of the benches and every one thought it was a real hedgehog
• keeping up with the guy in the orange jersey (who was hauling ass) for three miles
• being outside
• seeing a dog being towed in one of those bike trailer thingies for kids
• sweating
  
• seeing a kid I had seen before riding with his dad taking a nap in his dad's lap at one of the rest-stations
• dogs and dogs and dogs and dogs
• kids and kids and kids and kids
• hearing all the frogs and creepy things in the swampy area between Vienna and Reston
  
• calling Aaron and telling him I was doing a twenty-miler
• not getting hit by a car
• using the orange lenses in my sunglasses since it was overcast--wow, helps a lot.
  
• not falling off my bike and/or forgetting I'm snapped in (still getting used to being clipless)
• feeling like I had a great workout
  

This evening I watched The Graduate. Excellent.

Hooray!

My best friend from Oklahoma is coming to see me next week!

Adriana and I met when I was 14 (she was 13) and we've been best pals ever since. I haven't seen her since February 2002. Man, it's been a long time.

News.

Are our country's morals making its ethics obsolete?

Washington Post
New York Times
BBC.com
CNN.com
Christian Science Monitor
NPR



and
FOXNews

To-do list.

-Drive to McLean and get new badge
-Lunch with Theresa
-Back to work
-Figure out why I decided to wear a skirt today since it's so nice and FREEZING!
-Ironing
-Watch High Noon. I'll take Gary Cooper any day.

Oh, and....
More reasons why Wal Mart is awesome (or not). via nytimes
More reasons why James Frey is awesome (or not). via kottke

This too...
"Picking Up the Lyric but Missing the Beat"

Sushi

I had sushi for the first time when I was 18. My friend Courtney told me I had to try it and explained to me that New Orleans was closer to the ocean than Oklahoma, so the fish would be fresher. I thought, OK, why not. It's one of my favorite foods.

Theresa hopped on over after her Yoga class and we had dinner at this Sushi place in McLean that she likes (and I do, too). I love good sushi for cheap. Afterwards we came back here and munched on some cookies from Trader Joe's and watched Nine Lives. The movie was excellent. I liked it a lot better than Crash. I hated Crash. I think that's the only recent movie to which I can compare it. My apologies to the Academy.

Huh. Weird.

But not really. Work's been quite busy this week, which I guess is pretty weird.

Last night I started reading Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I've tried to finish Lolita, and I am still reading it (as my 'at work' read), but I need something a little faster. I picked it off my bookshelf last night and in fifteen minutes was twenty pages into it.

I saw Spider-man 2 for the first time this week with Curtis and Carl. Not as good as the first, I have to say. I had more fun during the first Spider-man movie (two guy-friends dragged me to the 10am showing the day it opened). This time, it was more, "OK, we know you're awesome, but lose the 'woe is me' attitude, mister." Highlight: Melissa's hair dryer blew a fuse at the most climactic moment in the movie. My spidey-senses didn't see that one coming.

Going out with Theresa tonight for Sushi, I think.

And just for fun: Aaron had told me about this when Blue Collar Mountain Biking first posted it. I couldn't quite believe it until I saw the pictures. If you're a cyclist, it's a little painful as the guy's front fork broke, but still kind of rad.