Welcome to Corndog Country

As promised, a C25K update. I just finished day 2 of week 2, and it seems to be getting a bit easier. Week 2 ups the amount of running to 9 minutes in 90 second increments from 8 minutes in 60 second increments. However, my exercise and diet haven’t yet translated to the scale yet, as I weigh the exact same that I did a week ago.

Perhaps partially to blame in my lack of weight loss is the pancake I had yesterday at the Alley Cafe (located in lovely downtown Pinole, California).

These guys were over 1" thick.

The Alley Cafe seems like something you might walk into on the set of an episode of The Andy Griffith Show, and all of downtown Pinole has a small town, slightly Mayberryish feel to it. This is why Morgan and I were taken aback when a lady walked by, looked at our plate, and said “Oh my God! That (pancake, I hope) is so fucking fat!”

Of course, to the uninitiated, a great deal of the amazing diet crushing breakfasts served at the Alley Cafe would probably elicit the same response. My personal favorite is an 8ish egg omelet with several links of sausage inside, topped with chili, served with about a pound of hash browns and a giant biscuit. Morgan and I are also partial to the French Toast Sunday, which is exactly what you’re probably imagining in your head, two giant thick cut pieces of french toast topped with powdered sugar and a melon sized scoop of ice cream. Needless to say, this is the type of fare I’m going to have to avoid for my diet to be successful. In our defense, we split half an omelet, a cup of fruit, and had about two thirds of a pancake each (we had no idea the pancakes would be as big as they were, as we had never ordered them before).

Later on yesterday, Morgan dragged me to a wine tasting/silent auction event in Sacramento that her law school was putting on. I actually bid $40, then $60 on a large framed photo of Gerry Mulligan, only to be outbid at the last second.

I was really annoyed. Gerry would have looked great in our living room.

Most of the night was boring, and because Morgan won a pair of tickets to the Cal-Arizona State football game for $38, we had to wait until the bitter end and then some to pay before we could leave. The boredom was eased somewhat by the presence of “Inappropriate Cleavage Girl,” who I will refer to as ICG. ICG is a small blond girl with a huge lower back tattoo and cartoonishly large breasts, which she apparently flaunts 24/7, including during classes with Morgan. As last night was no exception, the wine tasting was bombarded with about 270 degrees of boobage. Morgan says no photo allowed here, though she was quite complicit in my taking one to show my groomsman Russell, who’s into that sort of thing (when his girlfriend says its OK, at least).

Also providing me with entertainment was a thinner, slightly younger looking version of me. I promptly stalked this dude down to get a picture with my phone.

This is him standing next to the Gerry Mulligan picture, it would have been appropriate had he outbid me.

After the silent auction ended, we had to watch a live auction, where one of the items was a bar review course valued at $3600 that almost all of the law students have to take anyway. Morgan told me she had already bought into a program where you put in money each year and you lock in a lower price, but I didn’t catch how much she had already put down, or what the lower price was. After the thing went for $700, I said “wow, maybe we should have got it,” to which she replied “but I don’t want to lose my $240 I put down.” I then found that the price she’d locked in at was $2500, meaning that had I paid better attention, I could have paid $700 then to avoid us having to pay $2260 later. Oops. I was really pissed with myself about that, I could have even put the whole thing on my Visa since I had just paid it off. Combine this with having just had to follow the Giants falling behind 6-0 to the Padres (They would have clinched the division with a win) and being stuck at the wine tasting two hours longer than I anticipated, and I was downright cranky.

But all is well now, I have 12 hours of college football ahead of me, and that goes a long way. Talk to you later corndoggers.

P.S. I realize a lot of my readers might be unfamiliar with Gerry Mulligan. For you, I found this Youtube video of him performing Five Brothers. My personal favorite track of his was his version of Thelonius Monk’s Round Midnight, but I couldn’t find that one.