Five for Rambling Friday

1)      My human-alarm-clock-life-partner XFE is out of town for the next couple of days. On top of that, my running buddy Amy had the day off from work today and chose not to get up at 5:30 to come meet me for a run (rude), BUT I got up all by my little self (ok, Petunia may have head-butted me into consciousness) and ran all alone with my music. I know, poor me. I really am quite brave and self-reliant.

2)      Speaking of running, somebody please, please, please run this race.

I really want to but I’ll be in Puerto Rico. And I swear, that was not meant to sound as smarmy as it came off. But there’s chocolate and a running jacket. Oh, here’s a fun fact: I only run races for the swag. I do not run for the community spirit or to try to better previous race times. I enjoy all that, but that’s not why I run. And I will not run for a cotton t-shirts. If there’s no tech shirt involved, I’m not coughing up the $65 entry fee. And yes, I know it would be cheaper if I just bought my own tech shirts. But where’s the bragging potential in that? And I would so loooooove a running jacket! I’ve never been in a race that gave away a jacket before. Plus there’s chocolate. Double win.

3)      I’ve been following this story in amazement this week. In case you’re too lazy to click and read, I’ll summarize: a woman in Oak Park, MI was potentially looking at jail time for planting a veggie garden in her front yard. Thanks to public outcry, the charges were dropped. Which is a big relief, because currently, our front “yard” (ok, it’s really just a glorified flower bed — actually, I take that back. It’s really nice) looks like this:

What can I say? We like our caprese salads. So we’ve got tomatoes, jalepenos (you can see that plant just on the lower left), bell peppers, basil, mint and rosemary growing in various places. We were going for a homemade pico de gallo garden, but the stupid cilantro died. Lame.

4)      American tabloids should hang their heads in shame. The UK’s Daily Mail is making them look like total chumps. It’s embarrassing. The Daily Mail covers useless and mundane U.S. celebrity doings way better than their American counterparts. It was the Daily Mail that told me that Tiger’s ex is now dating a bazillionaire. It was the Daily Mail that showed me Miley Cyrus eating a hot dog at a food truck (Stars! They’re Just Like Us!) And Alicia Keyes in “unflattering denim hotpants.”

What news did Us Weekly break this week? Oh, that’s right, Duchess Kate brought 40 outfits on her 11 day tour of North America. No kidding! She’s a PRINCESS. She changed like 4 times a day! And she probably had all those not-hot commoners’ germs on her. Geeze, Us Weekly. You better step it up and represent.

5)      As mentioned XFE is out of town. He’s back in Chicago for the second week in a row, and currently leading the pack for the Best Son of the Year award. I miss him dearly but I was excited for this trip for one reason: I finally got some pictures of Yertle the desert tortoise.

Yertle, who lives at the XFE homestead in Chicago, is actually one of XFE’s childhood pets. Weird, right? XFE doesn’t think so and has to patiently answer a litany of questions whenever the subject of Yertle comes up. And Yertle comes up fairly often because I make it a point to bring him up in casual conversations with friends and acquaintances as much as possible, thereby eliciting a whole bunch of questions and a whole bunch of exasperated sighs from XFE, who is the only one that can answer them.

Anyway, I’m going to do XFE a favor and allow Yertle to answer any and all questions himself on the blog next week. So send in your questions! Ask anything. Yertle the wise ol’tortoise will answer them all.