Hills

The start of my 5K today was a huge hill! I was tired as soon as we started. That's where training on the treadmill has hurt me. Then it went downhill. Then we had to turn around and run up a smaller hill. That was at about the 2 mile mark. I was crawling by then. I kept my feet moving as if I was running but I was probably going as fast as a slow walk. Then the race finished with a nice downhill stretch. That was the downhill road that was the hill we started on. I finished strong and got a time of 25:10. I finished 16th out of about 175. I got 2nd in my age group, which was 19-29. It's typically 25-29, so that was good. One of the top 3 overall male finishers was in my age group, so technically I got 3rd in my age group, but I'll take it. It was also a hot morning. I was drenched by the time the race was over. I'm probably going to sign up for a July 4th 4 mile run. That will be the longest race I have ever run. I better start training for that!

Training for a 5K

I will be doing my 3rd 5K run tomorrow since I've moved to North Carolina. I have no idea how I should be training for these events. I know for a fact that the way I "train" for them is not conventional. Before last race, I ate at a Japanese restaurant and got home at like 11 that night unbelievably full. Somehow I still ran the race with my best time. Tonight, I'm either having pizza or burgers at like 10 o'clock for dinner. That's not exactly the best meal right before a race. I know that you should have pasta two nights before you run. I had pasta last night. In terms of training with running, I only run on the treadmill to train. I only run between 3-5 miles each week, which isn't much. I am far from your typically runner. Somehow I managed to get 1st in my age group in the last two races. We will see how tomorrow goes.

Mailing Members

Well I either just got scammed or I have the opportunity to make some decent money. I grabbed one of those free magazines that my county puts out. I was looking at the classifieds and found a small ad for something called Mailing Members. I checked their website and they advertise that I can make up to $1,000 a week by mailing brochures. I read the entire website and supposedly they are going to send me all of the materials and directions on how to send the brochures and I'll get paid $4 per brochure before I even send it. I had to pay $23 so that they knew I was serious and so that they could mail me the materials. I looked at a handful of reviews for the website and every person said that they have made money off of the website so far. I should get my first kit in 7 business days. It sounds too good to be true and way too easy. I'm guessing that it will take a lot of time to prepare each brochure. If this turns out to be legit, then I have found my summer job that I can do from home on my own time. If not, then I wasted $23 and fell for a scam and I will look like an idiot for posting this publicly. We will see what happens...

Animals in the Road

I know I've written about road kill before. Now it's gone to a new extreme. Two days in a row, I've seen house animals dead in the middle of the road. That's right, yesterday I saw a dog and today I saw a cat. I am not a fan of cats, but seeing one dead in the road is depressing. On the road that leads to my school, there's always a small dog running out in the road. I make sure I stop so I don't run it over. I've heard other people say that they would just keep driving and if they hit it, oh well. I take that view for squirrels, but not for house animals! That's awful! I guess there are a lot of animals that roam the streets in this area. Very sad.

Donating Plasma

My friend told me today that she was going to this place after work to donate plasma. Basically they take blood out of you and take the plasma out of the blood. It helps save peoples lives. More importantly, you can get paid $200 a month if you donate enough times. Since I drove her to work today, I said I'd come along and donate too. Who doesn't want money for doing nothing? We drove through the ghetto part of Fayetteville to get there. The parking lot was packed. We go inside and there had to have been over 60 or so people in there waiting. We go to the front and ask the guy about getting an appointment. He basically laughed at us and said that people wait outside the building and camp out over an hour before the doors open to get an appointment for that day. It's an entire day experience. Needless to say, we didn't donate plasma today. He said there was another location that doesn't get as many people. That location is actually slightly closer to home. On our way home, we got horribly lost because a road was closed and our GPS obviously didn't know that. We drove through the even scarier parts of Fayetteville with our doors locked and windows up. It took us almost an hour to get home when it should have taken us about 25 minutes or less. Today, it was not worth the money to give blood. We will see how it goes when I try to go to the other location.

Dinner Schedule

Typically on Sundays, I look at what meat I have in my freezer and come up with a schedule of what I'm going to make for dinner for the week. I would always do that for my family at home too. It makes it a lot easier for me so that when I wake up in the morning to go to work, I know what meat to take out to defrost. I didn't make a schedule for the last two weeks because I've been going out to eat way too often. I finally made a schedule again yesterday and I plan to stick to it this week. We will see how that goes.

Consistency

One thing I absolutely have to do better on next school year is being consistent. I need to follow through on anything I say. I cannot tell the kids I'm going to punish them a certain way and then not do it. I also can't say I'm going to punish them with a ridiculous punishment that the kids even know I can't do. I believe that being consistent and following through will happen over time and experience. The fact that I'll be starting at the beginning of the school year will be a huge help to me. Even though I'm greatly looking forward to having 2 months off, I'm also very excited to start the next school year.