I consider Part 1 to be the time I ran the Charles River Esplanade and then showered in the work locker room afterwards. I think this shows the level of daring required for me to consider something adventurous. (In other words, I’m not very adventurous when it comes to running – or anything really.) 

Disclaimer: You should be aware that this is quite a long post and the actual running adventures do not start until about halfway through. Don’t worry, there are lots of pictures. 

Thursday was my wedding anniversary. 4 years!

I think celebrating my wedding anniversary is a little funny. Mostly because my husband and I dated for so long before we were married – we’ve been together for roughly 11.5 years – so celebrating 4 years together seems odd. I know you can celebrate both a wedding and a dating anniversary, but before we got married we decided that we wanted to celebrate only one anniversary a year. So, our dating anniversary became Manganello day, and we celebrate our wedding anniversary.

What is Manganello day you ask? Well, I had a tough time changing my name. I really wanted to keep Manganello, but I also really wanted to have the same last name as my husband.  So, to deal with leaving Manganello behind, I decided to create a holiday called Manganello Day. On this day, we do Manganello-y things, like eat Italian food, play cards and/or Bocce, and drink Southern Comfort Manhattans (actually, I just think about drinking them, I’m not really up to making those myself). Sound fun? It is. Feel free to join us next year, it’s October 23rd – our “old” anniversary.

Anyways, our 4 year wedding anniversary was Thursday. Four years is Fruit and Flowers. I’d already gotten Jeff a card and a small gift, but I also wanted to make dinner.

Aside from the above deliciousness, I wanted to pop over to the grocery store to get some things I needed to make dinner and an appetizer. Unfortunately, when I headed down to the car, I ran into some issues with our parking spot. The ceiling above it (almost directly above our car) was leaking. A LOT. I could hear the water running, and there was a large puddle in the garage. This has happened before, but to a much less extreme extent. There was an issue with the drain from the hair salon above our parking space.The entire garage smelled like the salon, so it was pretty obvious that it was the same problem. There was a large bulge in the ceiling and bits of ceiling on the floor, so I was concerned the ceiling would fall onto the car at any moment. (Maybe I’m a bit over dramatic.) So, instead of going to the store, I pulled the car into the back spot, and went upstairs to call the management company.

The woman who manages our building is THE WORST. After three phone calls, I noticed someone from the management company walking past me in our building lobby, so I hung up (I was on hold) and talked to him. I’m not sure why, but the conversation was extremely awkward. I basically just wanted to know whether I needed to move my car out of the garage or if it was fine in the back spot. He didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about, but he confirmed that I shouldn’t be parked directly under the ceiling that was “about to come down”. He left with a promise to come knock on my door in case they needed me to move the car. (Are you wondering why someone didn’t tell us the ceiling was about to collapse on our car? I was. Refer back to the first sentence of this paragraph for the answer.)

I returned to our condo and emailed Jeff, explaining in a completely normal (and not semi-crazy sounding) email what was going on, and that now I wasn’t making him a surprise dinner, and I couldn’t go running or take a shower in case someone needed me to move the car. He agreed that the lady from management sucks, and told me I could run and shower because everything would be fine. With that news, I took a few deep breaths, read roughly a million posts on other running blogs to calm down, and formulated a plan.

The plan was to run to the grocery store. I would get my run in and get the ingredients I needed for dinner. Easy peesy. I got dressed in some super cool tube socks and pulled out the backpack we use for hiking. Ready for a running adventure:

The store is less than a mile from my house and I had an easy 3 miler on the schedule, so I ran the long way to the grocery store with my empty back pack. Long way meaning away from the store and then looping around towards it at 1.25 miles. It was around 3 pm when I set out, so there were plenty of high schoolers out, some of whom were kind enough to let me know how cool it is to run with tube socks and an awesome back pack. They know what cool is because they ride razor scooters.

Before long, I made it to Stop & Shop – around the 2 mile mark. I felt pretty awkward walking around the store in my running clothes, with my backpack on, and slightly sweaty, but I got everything I needed as fast as possible, paid, and shoved everything in my backpack. My bag wasn’t quite as roomy as I thought, and I almost couldn’t get everything in. Once, I had though, I was ready to power on home. Only a mile away, and the shopping was done, so piece of cake, right?

It was not a piece of cake. Turns out, the bag was extraordinarily heavy. Every step was hard, and it was the longest mile I’ve run in a while. I could see our building for most of the run, and was running low on time to get dinner finished, so I kept up the pace as best I could and before I knew it, I was home. I’ve never literally RUN an errand before!

I think it’s going to be a long time before I run to the grocery store again. It was a fun adventure, but I have no desire to run a mile as a pack mule ever again. I have to admit, though, this time was totally worth it. Jeff was super surprised that I had made dinner (probably because I told him I wasn’t going to), and it turned out to be delicious.

Before Thursday, we both thought that Fruit and Flowers was going to be a lame year, but I think we underestimated it a bit. This was definitely more fun than cotton (year 2). I had a great night filled with fruit, flowers, cupcakes, and time with Jeff. And surprises. Jeff came home with flowers for me! (Sounds obvious, but he’s not really the flower giving type, and he had to carry them on the subway and commuter rail train, so I was definitely not expecting it.)

There you have it – running adventures part 2 – the grocery store. I think this is more adventurous than running in Boston after work last Summer. Maybe not though, there was that unfamiliar locker room shower last time. I don’t like unfamiliar showers. 🙂

Have you ever RUN and errand? Am I terribly unadventurous? 

P.S. In case you are wondering, this is what the garage ceiling looks like now: