Meteor Shower

Last night I saw my first ever meteor shower. After searching the internet for what seemed like hours for the latest Gossip Girl show, Fi and I got our GG on, although he nearly fell asleep during it. Once it was over, Fi briefly looked on the internet and discovered there was a meteor shower happening at that moment! So he set to task making a comfortable place to watch outside while I made a pot of hot coffee.

And thought some Irish Cream might be a nice, warm touch. Then we sat in the dark bundled in our winter warmest in our folding chairs in the driveway. Fi pulled out a warm blanket and we waited. A while passed, but eventually, we saw an amazingly bright flash. I thought I'd seen shooting stars in my past, but was never really sure like I was last night. For the most part, I usually ended up thinking that I had overthought myself into believing I'd seen a shooting star when, really, I was only imagining it because I wanted to see one so badly. Everyone else always looks up at the sky and seems to see them instantaneously. Sort of like those weird jumbled images that were super popular when I was in high school. Supposedly, they had images in them and if you stared long enough, you could see them. Do you remember these? The ones with all the strange squiggly, colorful lines and shapes. They were always being sold at kiosks in the mall, strangely enough, and people would stop and look at them for a minute before announcing that they saw the cat, dog, train...whatever. I never did, though. I have to admit. I looked and stared for what seemed like hours and never saw a thing. That's what shooting stars have always kind of been like...until last night. Seconds after I joined Fi in the driveway, I looked up and there it was. Bright and beautiful, shooting across the sky! It's a good thing I looked when I did because we didn't see another for the rest of the time we sat out there, but we did enjoy our coffee and Irish Cream.

In other news, my leg is still hurting, but now I have neck pain to add to it. This is nothing new. I've hurt my neck before, it's just been a while. I pulled something so I have limited moving ability in my neck...which means I can't turn my head to the left at all. Not for a few days, anyhow. In the past when this would happen, my sister made so much fun of me for cocking my head at this super weird angle just to look leftward. Nowadays, Fi laughs about it. Needless to say, sleeping and moving around on the bum leg and achy neck has been rather difficult. More than that, I can't run or anything yet...and my next 5k is in a little over a week. I'm hoping I'll be healed up before the Great Wedding Gown Search and before the Turkey Trot which I so desperately want to run.

This Thanksgiving is filled with firsts, which is why running the Trot is so important to me. My grandma passed away two months ago and every Thanksgiving of my life has been spent in NY with her and the rest of my family. Mom is keeping busy, but misses grandma a lot and I don't blame her at all. She would stay with her all day every day for years so it has to be incredibly difficult to re-invent her life now that grandma is gone. Since Mom thought it'd be too hard to spend Thanksgiving in NY this year without grandma, we are spending our very first holiday in Hilton Head (where my parents have been slowly retiring to for about eleven years :). With that in mind, I thought it was a good time to start up some new traditions and found a Turkey Trot 5k that morning on the island. Immediately, I checked with my Connie (that's my mom) to see if she was ok with me doing it on the morning of the holiday and to ask if they would all come out and watch-they've never seen me run a race or anything like that before since I only picked it up about a year ago. She was thrilled and said they'd happily come out-with my niece Genevieve and nephew/godson Jacob, my dad and brother Kiran, my sister-in-law and my oldest brother Amit. When Amit heard the news, he asked how long a 5k was and decided he might like to run it with me! How cool, right? To have my brother run alongside me on Thanksgiving? Hence: a new tradition is born.

Now I just need to recover from this last race before we can pursue the next one.

After that is the Jingle Bell Run on December 6th here in town. These are pretty popular around the country, from what I hear. D ran it last year while I was in India and drew this super cool pic of his sneakers with jingle bells tied into the laces-this is what they give the runners, along with some snazzy white gloves he wore to school today. Then the semester is OVER! Whew!

I like measuring out my semester in runs. I should do it more often.

Anyhow, more to come, I'm sure. Lexi is coming by for coffee this afternoon and to sit on our "comfy couch." And tonight we are celebrating our friend Shelly's birthday. We haven't seen her in a looooooooong time so hopefully all is well. Will certainly have more to report on later.

xoxo

N