"People like my hair. dont mess my hair!"

Yes, I know. I never wrote up Piston Honda. All you hardcore Punch-Out!! fans out there won't get the full fix. What can I say- there's a lot on my plate right now.

Let's track August 11-18:

Monday: Off
Tuesday: 6 miles
Wednesday: 4.6 miles
Thursday: Off
Friday: 4.6 miles (in the rain, no less)
Saturday: 10 miles...?
Sunday: Off

Saturday would normally have been an off-day given the training schedule, but I felt pretty good and decided to give it the old college try. So I ran up to the GW bridge hoping to make my first interstate run. Unfortunately, the pedestrian entrance to the bridge isn't very well-marked, and I wasn't in much of a mood for aimlessly wandering around Upper Manhattan. But wander I did, over to the Harlem River, and down the East River side back to my apartment. Or sort of- the linked Google map doesn't adequately describe the number of dead-ends and "Closed for Refurbishments" I ran into while trying to navigate the industrial wasteland that is the series of "parks" on the Harlem/East River. I stopped a few times, not due to exhaustion, but due to general frustration. Thankfully, I didn't run into any impromptu public toilets (in a particularly concealed section of the Manhattan approach to the Triborough Bridge footpath) or homeless guys crapping on the sidewalk (not far from said toilet). So, in some ways, I was lucky.

Frankly, I don't remember my binge-drinking schedule for this week, but I'm actually fairly certain that it was a week entailing very little negative impact. Saturday I recall being invited out to a barbecue on Long Island, which involved a tall boy at Petrov's, a Foster's Aussie pint on the train, maybe 4 beers at the Q, and then another tall boy on the way back. The barbecue was memorable in that the hosts and their guests first tried to recall the explanations of the sexual classics "Dirty Sanchez," "Cleveland Steamer," "Rusty Trombone," and the like, and then moved on to attempting to define their own deviant (hopefully) imagined acts. (Mom, DO NOT look up these terms.) I didn't go out on Friday, and mid-week was generally uneventful. So, given the questionable officiating during Von Kaiser week, the official record after Week 5 is Matuska 3, Matuska's (Un)Social Behavior 2.

I'm not going to go into it now, but let's just say Don Flemenco is one despicable Frenchman:Hopefully, I'll soon wrangle up the gumption to detail what (hopefully) is a mid-season anomaly. A blip. A... Who am I kidding? As I told my sister recently, "We are the sum of the choices that we make." Train or party? Uh.... Both?

It's a good thing I get a rematch.