A shot of self esteem, but no vodka.

Last night reminded me that I do, on rare occasion, like to go out with friends. Lindsay, the best friend of 15 years, visited the new place tonight and we decided to go to karaoke night with Don, Will, and a few other bike team guys. As always, Don and Will were amazing, and Lindsay was suitably impressed by my friends and their karaoke skills. And, for the first time in close to two years, I got to dance! (Well, to the extent that you could in a very crowded bar.)

It was fantastic. We had a blast, and for the first time in months, I was out after 1 am. This is pretty lame, I realize, but I'm usually too beat from training to go out. My self esteem rose substantially as the night progressed, and I actually was feeling pretty good about myself. I also somehow got goaded into signing up to do karaoke with this guy (I believe his name was Jay) to Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf. Unfortunately, there were too many people ahead of us and I had to leave by 1:30 since I had work in the morning. I did promise to go back and sing with him next week, so we'll see. It was just great hanging out with a bunch of friends, and with Lindsay there, I felt like it was high school again- I kept waiting for the call from my mom telling me to get home because it was a school night.

Yesterday was a good training day too- I started doing single leg drills on the bike the past couple days, and have done a couple of really solid interval sessions. Wednesday Don and I rode the Watermelon crit course where I'll be racing this weekend, and it almost looks like fun. The new bike just wants to corner! Let's just hope my nerves don't get the best of me. Also went to Princeton to run with a friend, and did a really good swim set- normally I just swim for endurance, but I'm trying to focus on adding some speedwork to my sessions. I wish I had someone to swim with though! So overall, I'm feeling good. Focusing on speedwork is definitely where it's at right now!

On the apartment front: 1 room down, 3.5 to go, but we can't paint this weekend as our bathroom is getting pretty much totally redone. This is great because our shower was sort of gross, annoying because I want to get painting done already! Yeesh. We thought we'd be moved in completely in a week, but we were very very very wrong. Still, at least our room is almost done, so I'm happy about that. And it was cheaper than expected (so far...)

One annoyance that needs addressing: living in a house composed of three apartments is great because Robbie and I have our own place, and it's a really nice one. However, we don't know the other people we live with. This is a huge problem when a car blocks in the whole driveway making it impossible for me to get out to go to work at 7 am. I mean, come on- there's a ton of street parking (the spot in front of our house was open) and a non-permit street not even 150 feet away. Totally unnecessary to park in the driveway. It also left me with the dilemma of: do I knock on both apartments, potentially waking up innocent non-parkers, or do I grin and bear it and take the train?

I opted for the train (unhappily) so as to not make people hate me before I've even introduced myself, but wrote a sternly worded letter to be taped on our door.

And to the owner of said offensively parked car: dick move.