Get ready for the longest post ever - a.k.a. Blame it on the cin-ci-ci-ci-cin-cinnamon....

I am going to try to keep this short, but I kind of had the best. weekend. ever. and want to share it this way in case you don't really care and only want to glance at pictures.

Friday: Family wedding in Cleveland - lots of fun. Also, rented Billy Collins' Sailing Around the Room and The Best American Non-required Reading of 2006 which has some good short stories, Onion headlines, a military blog, and more. I may have officially dropped any desire I previously had to be a barista. On the plus side - nothing like a good laugh, right? We also developed a game where you say a mood (the more obscure, the better) and immediately take a picture. None were on my camera - perhaps Adventures in Waco or facebook will eventually pop up with pantomimed hunger, indignance, and bad-Christmas-present.

Sunday: If you want to see pictures of me running 26.2 miles (don't worry, it's not a 4:33.12-long video), go to marathonfoto.com. My bib number was 4525, and yes, we are doing the Single Ladies dance at the beginning pictures. By the end, Kristi and I are dancing to Miley (we knew two lines) or Taylor Swift (who is quite hard to sing when you're out of breath, turns out.)

Summary of the Columbus marathon - I loved it! I am sore, but not as much as I thought I'd be, and running with the gang was so much fun. I didn't walk at all - but I did not have the stomach to eat Buckeyes at mile 26. Sorry, Mr. Thomas. Great idea, sort of. And if you want a good laugh, ask my friends what it was like to watch me on the subway stairs. And if you too just ran a marathon, and you've heard that walking backwards feels better- it does, but I caution you: walking backwards UP the stairs is not as helpful. You might fall down, back to square zero. (It's worse than square one.)

I had this cake waiting for me, courtesy of my roommate, who cheered me on in a couple of places.

Then, I darted off to a last-minute trip to NYC. Do you all know how much I miss the city? Long story short - I got randomly invited (as an interested observer) to a "convening" / critical conversations meeting on pregnant and mothering teens. People whose research I have been reading for the past few years were in attendance, in addition to educators, NYC lawyers, and community organizers. It was really interesting, and I'm really glad I went. Hopefully, I'll be able to stay in touch with them and possibly have a vested inference in helping the orhan-widow-exile-case of the pregnant and mothering teens. If this interests you, I can tell you more later. Or in future blog posts, you may not have a choice.

The meeting was at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus, so afterward, I walked through Central Park. (I didn't even walk backward for any of this walk!) I stayed with some friends and had a lot of fun. We also briefly played the moods-camera game, but I am not attaching any of those photos. Most with me in them end up looking like the suggested mood was "laughing really hard!" and who wants to put up pictures that they're not in?

We went out to eat Monday night at Dok Suni, a Korean restaurant, and then to Max Brenner's, a chocolate bar. While we may not have had the best experience - entertaining, at least - I had a s'mores sundae that was so rich and tasty I didn't know what to do with myself. Below, you can see the marshmallows - and that's not a spoon-out-of-the-jar-marshmallow creme. It's the real stuff.

Today, I flew back to Columbus. One thinig that I learned on my trip is that my approachable-ness breaches even New Yorkers' codes of conduct. I like hearing random stories, and when randoms say hello to me as I'm searching for cocoa sprinkles in Starbucks.

Long story short - er, long story long - running = awesome. friends = awesome. new york = awesome. convening = awesome. cake + s'mores ice cream + naps = delectable.