The Adventures of Kate

I have had quite an eventful weekend. I mean seriously, for me, this has been a whirlwind weekend of adventures and stepping "outside the box". On Friday, I went on a boat trip out to "Shark Tooth Island" which I realize now was just named by my friend because that's where he goes to collect shark teeth. I found some really cool ones and made my friend jealous (and that's always good because he is super competitive!) On the way back to the boat (which we had anchored out a little way from shore) we both got stung by jelly fish, which caused me to panic beyond belief and almost drown in 5 feet of water. The jelly sting really hurt, but contrary to popular belief you do not need to pee on someone. You could if you wanted to, neither of us was willing, so we just tried our best not to scratch ourselves. On the way back we saw a sailboat for sale, and now I sort of have the "I should buy a boat" mentality. There is a lot of work that would have to go into this particular boat, but I think that might be kind of fun. It would be a lot of money too, and its not that I don't have a lot of money (I don't) its that even if I did have it I am so damned cheap you can hardly squeeze a penny out of me (unless it is for frivolous running apparel).

Saturday was pretty good. I decided that I wanted to go crabbing, so my friend Ed and I went to Wal-Mart and got the crabbing essentials (which are chicken necks, crab nets and a weird little line) and ventured out to the dock near my house. The first thing Ed did was drop his basket into the water, not attached to anything, so he got the first catch of the day...his own crab basket. I actually got the first crab catch of the day, and we wrangled that guy in. We'd made a bet at the beginning of the day... he guessed we'd catch 3 total, I guessed that we'd get 2, each caught by him. Well, we got about 15! We stopped simply because we figured we'd leave some for other people. We had to throw a couple back and Ed made me lose a couple (I try not to be bitter) with some crazy basket skills, but all in all we had a very successful day. We only used like 3 chicken necks the whole day, so my freezer has some icky packages of necks in it. Gross. Then we got to the bad part of crabbing.

We had to eat them now. Well that's a pain. We boiled them, though Bill later came over and said we should have steamed them, and then went through the ridiculously tedious task of eating them. So not worth it. So so so so not worth it. We actually caught too many crabs to eat and finally just threw them back in the water (we figured something would eat them) The one in the above picture (blue) was actually a "casualty of fishing" and he died in the barrel before we cooked him. Right after this picture he sprung back to life and he's actually on his second chance in the Potomac right now. He was ANGRY too. It was scary. All in all we had a good time and it was nice to do a Southern Maryland tradition.

This morning I also branched out a little bit. I went to church and it turned out to be a contemporary service. I'm very "traditional" in my churching...I like the standard hymns and the standard creeds and prayer-and I like it to be Lutheran. Well I went to a United Methodist Church (cause I can't seem to get away from them) and enjoyed a roving good time with a Christian band performing some fun songs. I had my mocking guns loaded, but I put them in the holster because it was actually a good time and I rescind previous comments that "The Methodists can't sing".

And did I get my 10 miler in? Of course not. I woke up at 5:30 this morning to run and it was dark so I rolled over to get a little more sleep and it was 8:45, and it would be too warm for the running by the time I was 5 miles from the house. I'm going to go on a short run tonight. I am in BIG TROUBLE for the Marathon. Its kind of hard to want to run it and train for it when I lost my training buddy. It was something we were doing together (though I had wanted it to be for me) and I can't seem to brush off and buck up and do it by myself. I'm going to have to get over that. I've got a lifetime ahead of me to run alone. But I'm pretty fun-so hopefully I can keep amusing myself!

Hope everyone else had a good weekend-mine was a blast!!! I'm an official Southern Marylander now. Sometimes you just have to embrace the hand you're dealt!