Divers

A couple of quick tidbits from my life:

1. First of all, I'm really enjoying the Olympics. Last night I was watching the men's nordic combined event (ski jumping, then xc skiing). Two Americans were leading the pack for a long time. I Skyped my parents and told them to turn on the television. Sure enough, it was also being broadcasted live in the US. The Americans held the lead for a while, then one of them got tangled up with another skier and dropped back to sixth or seventh. With one lap to go everybody started shuffling around and trying to make moves. The American who had gotten tripped had spent a lot of energy to move back into third place. A Japanese guy got out front, then couldn't hold it. The Norwegians who had been in the front with the lead American both faded out. Then he dropped back too. The other American kept surging on the hills and slowly moved into the lead! With a quarter mile to go he had a small lead- but could he hold it? The downhills played against him, and he had spent so much energy to regain the lead that the whole pack was gaining on him as they charged down the final straightaway. With just a few meters to go the American was passed by a Frenchman (which my French announcers thought was the greatest thing since the invention of Camembert cheese) and ended up getting second. The other American landed in fourth. Oh, what a race! I'm glad I got to hypothesize, agonize, and cheer along with my parents. It also reminded me a lot of my running days. Which brings me to #2

2. The Xrcise blog is now being updated again. I might not update it every day, but at least once I week I will be posting mileage. I am planning to run a charity 5k in Paris on May 15th. The winning times from the past 3 years have varied between low 16s and mid 17s, with second and third being sometimes half a minute slower or more. In other words, if I can get in shape I have half a chance of getting a medal written in French. I happen to think that would be nifty. I have a LONG way to go. Today I found a track and did just two laps. The first one was easy, the pace I would imagine myself running a 10k. *ahem* 1:40. Yuck. So I sped up to about the speed I could imagine running a mile. 1:24. ew. That's a 17:21, and I was winded after 400 meters. So yeah, training started last Thursday...

3. Some day I hope to be able to give you examples of how to live a perfect Christian life. Until then, please learn from my stories of how not to do it. Today I finally made a trip to the grocery store. I had been putting it off for 2 weeks, as always, both because shopping takes a long time and also because I save more money if I don't buy food. Less selection in the cupboard that way, but I usually hit all of the food groups... Anyway, I was standing in front of the oranges (because they were the cheapest, so of course I was going to buy them rather than apples) and praying that God would help me pick the best ones. I picked some, and put them in my shopping bag. As I was about to move on to the next aisle, one of my classmates suddenly appeared out of nowhere and said "the oranges aren't any good right now." This was the point at which I should have put the oranges back. Looking back on it, God was answering my prayer. The problem was, I hadn't asked Him whether or not to buy oranges, I had asked which ones to get- and they were already in my bag. So when she said that, I considered putting them back and then decided to keep them, since I have often had bags of oranges that contained both good and bad. Just because she had bad oranges last time she went shopping didn't mean these ones would be bad. So I reasoned, and so I reasoned incorrectly. Tonight I choked down the majority of the most arid orange I have ever encountered, hoping it still had some vitamin C in it to justify the effort it took me to peel the useless thing. I really hope the rest aren't that bad. If they are, I can't say I wasn't warned.

4. We had our midterm test today! This is exciting because it means that while everybody else in the school is frantically cramming for their midterm, our class can relax. We have regular homework, of course, but less pressure. However, I decided to make more work for myself and three of my classmates by proposing a weekly conjugation contest. Last Friday we all crammed for the first one, then sat down together and each had to conjugate 9 nasty (irregular) verbs, using all of the verb tenses we have learned so far. The one who makes the most mistakes each week has to make cookies for the four of us. Thank you to my dear friend D for the cookies she will be making for us tomorrow as a result of last week's contest!
um... no... we're not competitive at all :-D
All four of us were all grateful for the extra practice today during our exam. Several of the oddball verbs from our competition were on the test, including the more obscure conjugations.