I say 'mara' you say 'thon'

the little cheerleader in me just escaped for a brief moment with that one.

with my dissertation submitted, the next big task, aside from attempting some sort of (re)settling/adjusting with living in chicago and such, is the marathon, t minus 23 days and 13 some hours. I was reminded of this today when I received my race number from the chicago marathon people...woo! having this bit of a reminder makes me even more pumped to get back into the swing of things running wise and working out wise. perhaps that will help me into settling.

on another somewhat-marathon related note, I received an email yesterday from this guy who was a potential 'maybe have dinner with person,' attempting to dissuade me from raising money for the AIDS foundation as he claims that hiv/aids do not actually exist. not only did he offer such an opinion, but he went on and on about it, saying that he'd like to 'educate' me on the topic. now, you can imagine how I took this. aside from definitely not buying this line, I am very likely the worst person to be told that I need to be more 'educated' on something, especially from somewhat of a stranger. granted, I can take it a bit better when it's from one of my people (people that I hold near and dear, people that I respect, people that know me know me), but still there is always that twinge of defensiveness when I feel that I am told that I don't know enough about something. a big sister thing? a 'I think that I'm a fairly intelligent person' thing? a human nature thing? whatever the case, I'm not buying the phd student's hype. (sidenote: I really, really, really hope that whatever dating that I may do in chicago does not involve any more people like this. eee gads.)

before I sign off, the reason that I'm posting is to spread my race number about so that you all who aren't in this great city can track me while I run. (isn't running technology just great?) on the morning of (or the afternoon for those of you en europe), go to chicagomarathon.com and find the 'track runner' link. my race number is 13883. there are five different spots on the course that will register my running chip; now granted, the tracking isn't instantenous, as audrey and I learned in 2003, but it is fairly current.

now, with that, must get home to run, run, run. hope that this finds you all well! I'll write more individually very soon now that the diss is out of my everyday orbit of thought.