I May or May Not be a Quitter...

The last 24 hours have been very strange indeed. Last night, I had small group at my house as usual on Sunday nights. It was wonderful, as usual. Afterwards, I went to an Oscars party with some friends of mine and ate way too much junk. I've been eating pretty healthy lately, so I did not actually enjoy the junk because it made me feel greasy. Anyway, that's not the point. Apparently, when I left, I dropped my cell phone in my friend Mandy's car. This seems like no big deal. Unless you know me...I do NOT do things like drop my cell phone. Well, after reading the rest of this post, you will think that I DO do things like that, but I promise you that I DO NOT do things like that. I am borderline OCD and everything is always in its place and I don't lose things. If I do, I totally freak out. So, anyway, I left the phone in Mandy's car, which I couldn't confirm because I don't have a home phone and I don't know Mandy's phone number (it's in my phone), so the only way to see if she had my phone was to email her late last night and wait to hear back from her today. Which also would have been OK, except I wasn't going to work today. I was in a training class downtown, so I couldn't check work or home email.

So, I had to just hope for the best and try not to freak out all day today. Which, again, was OK because I always have my handy two-way pager for work to communicate in an emergency. So, I go on my merry way today. My training class is a full week and it's actually a really good class so far. A good friend of mine is in there and everyone in the class has a pretty good attitude. It really can bring a class down if some folks have bad attitudes about being there, but this one seems attitude-free, which is great since I am really interested in the material. Since I'm going to be downtown everyday this week, I have made various plans to do stuff or meet up with friends most nights of the week. Tonight, I had adventure racing practice on the agenda. Adventure racing starts at 6:30 and my class got out at 4:30. So, I headed on to Memorial Park (where we meet) and changed into running clothes. It was only 5:15, so I decided to take a walk around the Loop until time to meet up with the training group. So, I go on a nice walk. It was absolutely beautiful outside and I didn't have my iPod or anything, so I was just enjoying the scenery and thinking how great it is to live in Houston, where there is a place like Memorial Park to walk around and how it must be really great to live in places like Denver where there is lots of green space and how much cooler it is in Denver than Houston...this is how my thoughts go...tangent after tangent after tangent.

So anyway, since AR starts at 6:30, I didn't want to be too slow about my walking, so I took my pager with me so I could pay attention to what time it was. I even used it to email a few folks while I was walking. I checked all the news and sports and stock market quotes from today (they come across my pager all day long). I stopped at the restroom about halfway through my walk and dropped my pager in the toilet...it is now dead. So, here I am in Memorial Park (which I previously thought was beautiful, but now am thinking is ridiculously full of people and I am feeling very far from my car), not knowing what time it is, thinking about what a complete moron I am. I mean, in less than 24 hours, I lost my cell phone and broke my pager. What kind of idiot does that? Especially someone who DOES NOT do things like that? Apparently, I DO do things like that. I am absent-minded! I think I have to come to grips with that. Sigh...so it gets better.

I finally get back to my car and I have no clue what time it is. Recently a friend of mine told me that they have a good sense of what time it is (I don't remember who told me that...anyone want to claim it?), but I do not have that ability. I never know how long it's been since something else happened (10 minutes? 2 hours? I don't know?) and I never have a good sense of what time it is without a watch. This is why I always have a watch. OK, there I go on a tangent again. So, I get back to my car and there are clearly no AR people there. I'm thinking, surely I'm not that early? Or that late? Again, no clue what time it was. No, I was right on time. It was 6:28. AR starts at 6:30. NO ONE was there. I should point at now that I have not been to AR in over 2 weeks. The last time I went was the kayaking fiasco (see previous post) and since then, I've run lots of miles and traveled places and generally not felt like carrying lots of equipment downtown only to end up in mud! So, I haven't been in a while. AND I realized that I forgot to check our discussion forum to confirm that we were meeting there. So, no AR for me tonight. I just grabbed another water bottle and ran around the Memorial Loop this time. It took me 55 minutes to walk it and 32 minutes to run it...yay me! Don't worry, that's not the end of the saga.

I get home after a while and my roommate kindly lets me use her phone. I call my parents, who don't answer, then check my voice mail on my cell phone. There are two messages, both from my parents. My dad had to have emergency surgery today. Seriously, of all the days to lose my phone, the day my dad has to have emergency surgery! Are you kidding me? Is there some kind of conspiracy to drive me insane??? I finally got a hold of my mom. Everything is going to be fine. My dad didn't go into surgery until after 8:30 tonight, but the doctor said he really needed to have the surgery today, I guess? I don't really understand. My sister is about to be a nurse, and she was there. She said that I should be glad I wasn't because I would have freaked out. I don't like medical stuff...I get that from my dad! After I talked to my mom, I felt better and less like a slacker daughter who can't even call her dad before he goes into surgery. Because you never know what could happen in surgery...don't you watch Grey's Anatomy?

After that, I called my friend Mandy (fortunately her number is in my roommate's phone) and she had my phone, which she gave to my other roommate to bring back to me. I changed all my out of office messages at work to tell people to call me instead of page me. My dad came out of surgery just fine just a few minutes ago. So, back to normal. Now, if I could just stop being mad at myself for being so absent-minded, I might just be sane again (or sane for the first time...it's questionable!).

And, to explain my title, I may have quit Adventure Racing and not realized it! I finally checked the discussion forum and we met somewhere else tonight. I can't go back for another entire two weeks, so I may not be doing so good on the training. Oh well! Sorry, Jill, maybe no more funny adventures at AR. But, apparently I don't need adventure racing to have random ridiculous stories! Just my normal life will do fine for that!