Hey friends! Happy Thursday! And thanks so much for all the sweet comments on my Boston post. I love this community.

I have so many stupid little things to tell you, so I’m linking up with Amanda from Running with Spoons today to Think Out Loud with all my randomness.

• Best news: J and I booked a vacation last week! We’re headed to Myrtle Beach in May, after school gets out. We haven’t had a lot of time to look at things to do there, but we’ll be there for a week. Any suggestions?
  
• As I was updating my calendar with all the end-of-year school stuff today, I realized that we will NEED that vacation. There are four days in May with nothing scheduled (yet). At least not all those things are work-related, and some of the work-related ones are fun, too.
• One of those things is graduation, which I rather randomly got put in charge of this year, along with the counselor. The last counselor didn’t leave any notes, timelines, etc., so we’re just kind of flying by the seat of our pants. Let’s hope there is a graduation….
• I get to be on an interview committee for another teaching position at my school. I’ve never been on this side of an interview. Should be interesting. I’m excited.
• Thinking about that interview committee, I asked my seniors today what they want in a teacher. They had some interesting answers, to be sure. My favorite was “young and attractive.” Oh, kids.
• They also have horrible senioritis. It’s driving me crazy.
  
• Every time I see the Amtrak go by, I kind of wish I was back here with my girls:
  Trains are fun. But train people are a little weird. On the way home, the man in front of Sam was singing and dancing… when he wasn’t snoring at 95 decibels.
• Microsoft ended the support for Windows XP. Old computers won’t run the new Windows. Know what their “solution” is? Buy a new PC.  If I could afford a new computer, do you really think I’d be using this dinosaur? Thanks for nothing, Microsoft.
• This weekend, my girlfriends and I realized that we are old.  Both nights, we went to bed at the time we used to be getting ready to go out.
• I am doing this race with Logan and Amy (team name: Cereal Killers). It’s a 12-hour relay… from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. I am ridiculously excited and also a little terrified.  But mostly excited.

So anyway, that’s what’s happening in my brain lately. What’s up in your world?

I had planned to write a Throwback Thursday post about one of my favorite-ever hikes, but I cannot find the pictures from it. And it’s one that definitely needs the pictures. So instead, I’m linking up with Amanda from Running With Spoons for a little bit of Thursday randomness. Enjoy this glimpse into the crazy that is my brain.

1. The 10k I’ve been training for is Saturday. Turns out, I get pre-race jitters no matter the race distance. Part of the jitters this time are, I’m sure, because this training plan was so different from anything I’ve ever done. And today’s rest day is definitely not helping with the antsy-ness. Especially since it was 64 degrees this afternoon.

2. Yep, 64 today. Saturday (race day) will be 41 with a 70% chance of showers. Gotta love springtime in Colorado.

3. I wanted to take a screenshot of the forecast, but my phone is still dead. Awesome. And since I live in the boonies, I have to wait until Saturday after the race to get it replaced. Makes me very glad we bought insurance, though.

4. I’m making baked potatoes for dinner. They’ve been in the oven for an hour and are still rock hard. Reminds me of this:

5. Today was one of those ideal teaching days with my freshmen. Everyone was engaged and focused. It was awesome. I wish every day could be like that!

6. Tomorrow is the 30th birthday of one of my best friends in the entire universe. We met shortly before she moved in to my college apartment. She was good friends with our other roommate, but I hardly knew her. That summer, it was just Sam and I in our apartment. I was nervous at first. I didn’t need to be.
Turns out, we got along fine.
Happy 30th, Sam! (Please don’t punch me for finding this picture and putting it on the internet).

6. Next week is standardized test week. Sarcastic yay. It is the most boring week imaginable. Teachers have to be “active proctors,” and the state of Colorado doesn’t believe that we can possible pay attention to what the kids are doing if we’re grading, or reading, or doing anything besides walking around and staring at the kids. For hours. Because if they go beyond the massive stop sign, THE WORLD WILL END! On the bright side, I won’t have much grading to do at night.

I think that’s a sufficient amount of randomness, don’t you?

Tell me something random, too!

I’m not trendy. Even kind-of. But I didn’t have the mental energy to write a Throwback Thursday post, and this list o’ random thoughts bit seemed much more my speed tonight. So I’m linking up with Running With Spoons (I hope… this is my first link-up and I may screw it up) and doing some Thinking Out Loud.

1. Maybe I’m just grouchy, but the Olympic commentators seem unusually annoying this year. Shhh, commentators. Let’s just watch.

2. My classroom is an icebox. Normally I walk around the room all day like a good teacher would. Today I hovered by my space heater the vast majority of the time, trying to thaw out my feet. Go away, winter.

3. Speaking of space heaters, a couple of years ago, I had a different little heater behind my desk. On a clerical day, I had it running pretty much constantly all day… until I smelled something funny and looked down to see it smoking up a storm. Whoops.

4.  I have an addiction to peanut butter. I know (wo)man can’t live on PB alone… but I wouldn’t mind trying.

5. I went to a conference last Thursday and Friday. When I told my students I’d be gone, one of them said, “Oh, what race are you doing?” I’ve only missed work once for a race,  and that was Boston, but apparently in his mind, that’s the only reason I would be gone. Maybe I talk about running too much.

6. I like memes. But the run-on sentence in that one is really annoying me.

7. I kind of miss marathon training. I know this faster/shorter spring  race training will help me improve my fall marathon time (at least I hope it will), but it feels weird. I miss 50+ mile weeks.

8. I keep reading all these blog posts about skiing/snowboarding, and I feel like an impostor Coloradoan. I’ve lived here my entire life and have never skied. I tried snowboarding once, when I was 15, and decided that if I was going to spend a day sliding down a hill on my butt, I’d go sledding. At least that way I’d start  on my bum and not painfully fall on it. But now I kinda want to try again.

9. I thought I’d at least be able to come up with 10 random thoughts. No, not so much. Maybe I should go to bed and hope to wake up with a better-functioning brain.

Tell me a random thought. 

Any other peanut butter addicts out there?

Who wants to teach me to ski?