Phew! Well, I’m exhausted. We had a busy holiday weekend, which has left me feeling punchy and ready for a nap. It started on Saturday with a shindig at our friends’ Mary and Gerry’s house. We were celebrating a recent racing victory by Mary and some of her fast (as in not us) running buddies. They won their division (women masters) and the prize was a magnum of red wine. As it happens, a magnum is a big ass bottle of wine, so a bunch of us went over and helped drink it (a tough job, but somebody had to do it). It was a lot of fun, and the biggest entertainment of the night was trying on Bev’s stiletto heels. Bev qualifies as the clotheshorse of the bunch, I’d say – though with our crowd that’s not saying much. She has dress-up clothes and lots and lots of shoes. I think she really brought the heels over for Jack to try on, but then Mary (who wears heels as often as I do) tried them on, so I did too. Mary and I are the polar poopsites of Bev – our specialty is dressing down, and our idea of a heel is a trail running shoe. The only way I could walk in them was to do a bad imitation of John Wayne (John Wayne in stilettos – the mind reels!!) as I am a full size larger than Bev and felt completely unstable in them. We couldn’t convince Chuck to even try, as he wears a 4E and was afraid the shoes would explode if he tried to jam them on. Jack did a much better job with the shoes than either of us as he and Bev are the same size. Anyway, we managed to polish off the magnum plus some other wine, stayed up way too late then were up bright and early Sunday to clean up the yard and wash cars. Then it was off to Palos Verdes for another party where we got an early dose of fireworks (mostly very loud firecrackers that traumatized all of the dogs at the party) and again stayed up too late.

Monday started even earlier as we were running in a 10K race in Pacific Pailsades. It was whacky crazy up there, as they were running the 5K/10K, a one mile little kid fun run, a kids’ triathlon and a biathlon, all at the same time. The 10K race was Chuck’s longest run in probably 18 months, and he did a great job (though he ended up running 7.5 miles as he came to the aid of a lost little kid – his good guy task of the day). I did pretty well too, so we are now gearing up for a half marathon in August and a full marathon next June. We got back home about noon, then had to get ready to head up to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl fireworks. We watched them at our friend Barbara’s house, and had a great time and took a bunch of pictures. On the drive home we saw even more firework shows – in people’s backyards, as far as we could tell. The best I ever scored as a kid were sparklers and snakes, so where people get the huge stuff we saw beats me! We dragged our sorry butts in the house about 11pm. Then it was up at 5:30am to get ready for work.

Fireworks photos here. Stiletto shots coming soon.