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8:40 a.m. - 2006-04-24 I love the excitement of navigating my way around the crowded downtown during big events. I imagine myself a great sophisticate, assuredly weaving my way around cars stuck in gridlock, crossing against the light and stepping out in the street to pass the slower walkers. �Poor unfortunates!� I think as they are slogging their way along the sidewalk wearing inadequate flip-flops, pulling wagons and pushing strollers. I, the wise urbanite, understand the nuance of my city in ways they never will. Zigging east, zagging west, avoiding those few suspect blocks of nefarious character, I get to the waterfront park where I find a solid wall of people. Dirty people. Smelly people. Ugly people not wearing shirts. People standing there, eating all manner of deep-fried food. Oh, the humanity. I shifted my pack, took a swig of my Diet Pepsi and made a sharp southeast turn to backtrack away from the onerous wall. Up a hill and across the bridge over the water feature, (which was like a microbiology experiment in itself, what with all the diapered urchins and drunk adults splashing about), then due north and straight on to our little patch of concrete heaven. I snuck up on Ed, biting his neck and giving him a near heart attack all in one move. He was surprised to see me alone. We are just not used to doing things like Thunder Day without our pack of tadpoles. You see, we have attended all of the Thunders save the one last year when it was sleeting. Tadpole #3 was a mere 3 weeks old for her first. We would pack a full day�s worth of food, drink and games and set up shop on the levy at 5:00am. They were always good little polliwogs for our adventures, lots of fun memories. It�s hard to shift from babies to independent teenagers. Thankfully, they are still good girls with good friends and while I worry it is mostly for nothing. Anyway, Ed and I had a marvelous time, scrunched-up together watching the fireworks. Saturday is the Mini-Marathon, 13.2 miles of city walking. I estimated our time to be 4 hours on the entry form but hopefully we�ll be faster than that. We did the 10-miler in 2 hours and 40 minutes, which was not a record breaker but we did finish and we were not last. I think that after the mini I�m going to refuse to exercise for a while, vegetate for a time. Then the carrot starts to dangle in front of my nose again�just 10 pounds to my next goal and after that just 30 pounds and I can make an appointment with the surgeon to talk about getting my cosmetics done. Oh, happy day! Excess skin no more! Oh yes, I weighed on Friday and the scale finally budged. I have officially lost 100 pounds. Woot, woot! I�m going to say it again, double woot for me!
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