I noticed one of the most annoying, obnoxious things to say while in a conversation with a stranger, “my boyfriend…” I suppose this happens more often as you get older because more people have had a chance to be together longer but even with randos and the bar I hear it. I’m sure this could also be attributed to my less than Casanova-like deliverance. Example, I went up to this girl and introduced a conversation and her reply was I feel miserable, to which I responded why, and she said something like my ex-boyfriend yada yada. After that I really had no more interest in talking to her. It could be one of the biggest turn offs hearing about someone who you don’t knows boyfriend. I believe that this is probably just a defense mechanism for their insecurity but it’s still wildly annoying. Next time anyone brings up their significant other in the first 1 minute of meeting them I’m just turning my back and walking away.

So for the first time in my adult life I played a designated driver for a night. Amazing I know but I suppose this day had to come sometime. We were heading out to Conshohocken and I decided that I would drive which proved to be fine. Watching a weekend night from the sober side is vastly different and has its perks. I will say though that after this experience in Conshy I am happy to never venture there again. It is filled with complete rejects and just isn’t that exciting. At one point we were standing on the street using lines like “you’re too good for conshy” or “you fit in perfectly”. Everyone thought we were being extremely rude no matter what sentence came out. I just didn’t think it was very fun but I enjoyed waking up this morning feeling good.

We got our first round in this afternoon which was fun. I was joined by the Wevs, the Wads, and CK4 and we all enjoyed the afternoon. Only because I feel obligated to do so, Ck4 carded a 17 with 5 shots in the drink off the tee. The Wevs was able to set a all time career low round and the Shee was the victor of the day with consistent play. I finished with a 99 with a few good shots thrown in but no feel for a short game. It was an encouraging start to the season though.

I came back and ran 7 miles which is something I hardly ever do on a Sunday. I’ve started working hard again for a few different runs I have coming up. After the Frostbite I pretty much took a break from serious training. Meaning that I still ran but it was only 3 times a week and usually just shorter runs to stay fit. On Thursday though I went on a 13 mile run and have run the last 4 days. I’m going to put in work until Broad St comes where once again my unattainable goal of breaking 60 will be set.

So I finally got some news that’s blog worthy, my sister is getting married! A big congratulations to Laura and Brookes. Brookes, the title of this blog is dedicated to you with the trending brother reference. I’m still using the Hey Brother on a regular basis and it becomes even funnier when you use it to someone in the family. Even though you aren’t technically my brother, we become family which makes the hey brother the universal greeting.

Laura called me today and greeted me with “get your tux ready…” My first instinct when I hear this is “Shit, I hate wearing a Tux.” Then she said “I’m getting married” and I was sort of caught off guard. I don’t know why else I would need a tux but for some reason I didn’t put two and two together and while I was processing this information I think I mumbled something like “oh that’s great.” I think her response was “wow, you seem really excited…” which was appropriate for the enthusiasm in my voice. In no way whatsoever am I disappointed in this wonderful news but I’m not one to go jumping around the room in excitement like I’m sure other people would who place marriage at the top of pyramid in news priority. It’s great to see two people who have been together and know that they want to spend the rest of their lives together tie the knot. I wish Brookes and my sister the very best and you can refer to this blog post when I say “I will be happy to do anything I can in any way to help the wedding go as swimmingly as possible. You have my full support.”

Just a few selfish thoughts to take away from the real people who the spotlight should be on. I dread weddings because you have to find a date and without one our society thinks your weird. As a single person a wedding isn’t something I look forward to. Married people and couples who have been together for a long time probably love weddings because they get to get all dressed up and spend time on a joyous occasion. This is why when Laura says get a tux ready that my mind immediately goes to uh oh. I’d almost go as far as hiring an escort than showing up alone. Maybe it’s more in my own head but I honestly don’t think so. People are fickle. I also think the fact that a younger sibling getting married before an older sibling has people start asking “when are you going to get married?” These are all things that our society has developed. These aren’t normal thoughts from rational people. These are ideas that come from group think. The fact that I live my life how I please shouldn’t concern you and your idea of what is normal. This is why from my personal standpoint, I don’t like weddings. So if any females read this and want to go to this wedding to take the pressure off of my life, that would great. We can even set up a wedding before Laura and Brookes so I can make sure I get married before her to keep everyone happy.

I’ve had times in my blog life where I threatened to quit the blog for various reasons. This however is not one of those times. I am just in a spot where I’m unable to come up with original, entertaining posts. When I put myself in the reader’s shoes I ask myself what do I like to read about? Something thoughtful, topical, and interesting. Perhaps new information that I was never aware of. I’d even go as far as something that makes a person who blogs unique. Then I think about all the different things in my life and I just know that I’ve wrote about them hundreds of times before. I am struggling to keep this interesting and that’s partly because I’ve been spending a lot of time at work and haven’t had the chance to focus on rnningfool.com. I do ask that you stick with it because I will pull myself out of miserable entry after entry and start coming through with some better entry’s. I think it might have something to do with culture shock and how I feel like a gerbil in his wheel.

As Jeff so deftly pointed out, I haven’t been posting much. The less readers you get, the less you tend to post. As my traffic has been decreasing you would think that I’d be posting more to try to increase traffic. We can chalk this up to laziness and lack of ideas. It’s difficult because this seems to be one of those tasks that doesn’t really accomplish much. I can’t look at this website and at the end of the day feel that I’m getting great return on my time. Sure for the reader you can spend 3 minutes and exit the browser without a second thought but I’ve been sitting here for 15 minutes just typing these last 4 sentences. I feel like I haven’t really been doing much of interest as well. Or perhaps I’ve been doing things of interest but just don’t feel like sharing with my blogging universe.

To be perfectly honest I felt a sense of sadness when I left New Zealand last week. There was something about knowing that I won’t be back there and that Jeff and Nicole are there on their own that struck a chord. I also think that my 7 days of vacation being over attributed to that emotion. I’m usually not one to get emotional and it really only lasted for about 1 hour but I still felt something which was good. Now that I’m back in the States everything is just back to the way it is. Everything is exactly the way I left it. I pick up work right where it left off and here we go again. I still can’t tell if it’s good or bad but it’s definitely not the way time was meant to be spent. Those 7 days of my life were ones I can look back on and say “I was living life.”