The Story of My First 5K Ever

Here is a picture of my 5K team being the driest we've ever been in our entire lives:

An hour or so before the big 5K this Saturday  team Crush Cancer with Carolyn gathered from all corners for the country, across generations, with matching shirts and a variety of cute to ugly but sensible sneakers (I put my beloved Brooks in the later category) to run down the Atlantic City boardwalk and back for 3.1 miles. (Don't forget that .1!) I don't know about you, but this is what I'd been picturing in my head for the past 9 weeks:

Image found via googling "woman jogging in the sun."

The sun on my shoulders, a view of the ocean from the dry wooden boards of the board walk. And yet, this was the reality:

Literally, right as the run was about to start, it started to drizzle then rain and then pour and continue to pour for the rest of my life. You guys, my contacts almost fell out at one point, and that only ever happens if I open my eyes underwater! Here is a reenactment of me running a 5K underwater, AKA losing my mind:

Let's just say, this really hard thing that I'd been training for and psyching myself up for for 9 weeks ended up being way harder than I thought it would be. Apparently, when my sister came up to me right before mile 1, I yelled "I'm fucking miserable! This is the worst thing ever!" I am taking this opportunity to blame my f-bomb on the rain.

But guess what? I ran the entire time! Mainly because I was able to convince myself that even though I thought walking in the rain would feel better than running in the rain, it wouldn't. And you guys, when I say "rain" I mean "pouring rain," every time in this post. Here is me not giving up when I really wanted to:

When I hit the 3 mile mark, my sister Emily, who had already finished with a personal best time of 28:09, found me in the crowd and ran me home. It was the longest and best .1 mile of my life and Emily was my rain soaked encouragement fairy leading my way as I crossed the line. At 33:11 minutes! Another rain soaked fairy was Carolyn. She ran this 5k with brain cancer, grace and strength  What a hero! I was so proud to be part of her team.

My cousin had organized a lunch for the team afterwards, but my totally clueless and in denial of rain family, did not bring a change of cloths. Luckily, this resulted in the buying of on sale matching track suits from a Tropicana Casino gift shop. Pair that image with copious amounts of Italian food and you will know that all is right with he world.

Post-rain Soaked Encouragement Fairy and her fiance.

So look, I'm going to keep doing this running thing, and sign up for another 5K, but I'm not ready to say I like it yet. I"ll do it, but I've earned the right to complain about it the entire time and drop at least one f-bomb during the race if I feel like it. And that is the story of my first ever 5K.

REPOST: The Great Gatsby Obsessive Trailer Analysis

The highly anticipated (by me at least) Great Gatsby movie comes out today! And while I can't see it until next week, I thought I'd repost the obsessive analysis I did for the trailer today, to get us all in the mood once again. Will you see it? Will you love it? Will you hate it? Did you see it by the time you read this? Tell me all about it in the comments ladies!

***

If you were a freshman girl in high school who considered herself "literary" in 1996, chances are you were obsessed with Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet just like I was.  The movie had post-Angela-Chase Claire Danes (looking totally adorbs in angel wings) and quintessential 90s-dreamboat- Leonardo DiCaprio- a name that often made me think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (I was a child of the 80s after all) so I affectionately passionately referred to him as Leo.  My boyfriend. And still do.

In 2012,I have not grown out of my love for either of these actors or for Baz Luhrmann.  While I never became a fan of Moulin Rouge or Australia, I saw Strictly Ballroom not that long ago and absolutely loved it.

I remember my high school English teachers rolling their eyes at new version of Romeo and Juliet- insisting that the Zeffrielli film was the real classic (I could't get over how horribly "70s" it felt) and I've often wondered if I saw Claire and Leo for the first time as an adult, if I would have even liked it.  Because after seeing the trailer for The Great Gatsby, I'm suddenly siding with my English teachers and I don't' know what to do.

I want to LOVE this movie.  But already the soundtrack is totally throwing me off.  And while Leo is still so totally my boyfriend and Carey Mulligan is super cool, I'm just not so sure what I think.  Well, actually I know exactly what I think and plan on giving you my analysis (highly scientific) of the trailer right now.  First, if you have't yet, watch it:



Okay, now for my highly analytical opinion.  Firstly, look, I'm not saying I'm against this really, but how is this a real thing.  This is "New York 1922"? Um...really?

Moving on. Obligatory Baz Luhrmann fire works.  Gatsby:

Romeo + Juliet

I like Toby McGuire's voice over and I like Carey Mulligan saying "Gatsby, what Gatsby?" But, and here's where I'm going to sound old, Jay-Z and Kanye? I don't' really get it. It's not really putting me in flapper mood. I am into the second song though- Jack White's cover of U2's Love is Blindness.

Why, hello boyfriend.

Now here's the part that made me mad.  Carey Mulligan says "You always look so cool.  The man in the cool beautiful shirts."  My first reaction was, no way.  Daisy would never had said, "you always look so cool."  So I Googled that line.  Turns out she does say it and it's actually one of the most famous lines in the novel, because it is what she says when Tom Buchanan realizes that she is in love with Gatsby.  However, she does not say it during the scene when Gatsby is showing her his collection of  imported shirts (also an extremely famous scene)- she says it over lunch.  And it is not followed by "the man in the cool beautiful shirts."

So why Baz?  Why use the most famous line in the book- use it in the trailer even, but then totally change it.  I just don't get it!  Is anyone else upset about this? Or do I sound crazy?  Also, as a side note, in the book, Daisy is obviously referring to Gatsby's temperature (even though what's really happening is that she is saying she loves him) not using the slang world "cool." However, in the trailer you get the feeling that she's telling him he looks cool in the modern sense of the word.

Okay, yes, I'll admit it, I wish my hair had looked like this for my wedding.

As all hell starts to break loose, all I can find myself thinking is, a rained soaked Leo is one of the best kinds of Leos. Gatsby:

Romeo:

So things go crazy, we get a cover shout out- which I like

and then LOL Giant bottle of champagne boy!

And that's about it!  So what do you think? I'm obviously going to go see it!  And I want to like it, but we shall see.  Do you think Baz Luhrmann intends to go through the entire cannon of high school required reading?  The Cather in The Rye?  Of Mice and Men? My Antonia? All set to a distractingly modern sound track?  Who knows? 

Someday, Someday, Maybe by Lauren Graham GIVEAWAY!

Visit the official Site of Someday, Someday, Maybe

First it was the Gilmore Girls, then Parenthood, and now Lauren Graham's gone and written a novel. Good news you guys, I read it, LOVED IT, and now have two free copies from Random House to give away to you all!!!

Thanks for the internet hug. I can tell you're supes excited.

The novel takes place in New York City in the 90s and is about a young girl trying to make it as an actor. You can tell that it must be semi autobiographically as we go through all of Franny's ups and downs, but it's more than that. A sweet novel with frustrating love triangles and the city portrayed in a way that it feels like one of the characters in the story. This is your perfect summer beach read, breezy and light but full and rich too and you don't want to put it down.

Don't you just love Lauren Graham even more now? How was that possible??

To enter, leave a comment below with your name and email and two lucky winners will be picked at random!

You have until Saturday at midnight to enter. For extra entries:

• Follow Well and Cheaply on Bloglovin!
• Follow Well and Cheaply on Twitter!
• Follow Lauren Graham on Twitter!
• Link to this giveaway on your blog!
• Link to this giveaway on Twitter!

So technically you can enter 6 times. Leave a comment for every additional entry.

 Get to it! Yay, summer's almost here!

 Here's to getting lost in a good book that you won for free.

Yes, That Elephant Is Me, And Other Updates.

Hello everyone! Please don't take my internet hermit tendencies personally. I've missed you all, I really have. And this weekend I thought, "this week I'll start up on the ole blog again!" And then it was Tuesday. But, I have been doing tons of non-hermiting offline, and for whatever reason, the sharing it all on the blog part of my non-hermitting has been falling to the wayside. Ready, here's the update!

1. That 5k is coming up on Saturday!! And our Crush Cancer With Carolyn team is shaping up to be awesome. I'm about to start week 9 of my couch to 5k today! That's the final week and is basically, walk for 5 minutes and then RUN FOR 30 WITHOUT STOPPING!

But, yeah...yes? I know I can do it, because last week was run for 28 minutes without stopping, and I owned that week. But it's really hard. REALLY HARD. I've figured out that in order to run for longer than 9 minutes (9 minutes is always my, "okay I want to give up now" time) that I need to listen to catchy tunes. No more podcasts if I want to run longer. Right now my perfect mix is Girl Talk because it's so unpredictable and exciting. Even if you've listened to it before (which I have) it's easy to forget where he's going to take a song next. If you're not familiar with Girl Talk, click here and become familiar and amazed.

2. This weekend I had the most heartwarming and adorable experience you could ever imagine. And you've probably never even imagined it before, because only my crazy friend Sean could think of something like this. Sean proposed to his girl friend Mandy by rounding up about 20 friends and family members, and making them dress up in furry mascot animal suits. Are you with me so far? We all hid out in this little parking lot in Brooklyn, waiting for the text from Sean. Once he was standing in front of the house where they had their first kiss (around the corner) we all took off running down the street, surrounded Mandy and pulled out a banner that read "Mandy, will you marry me?" Sean got down on one knee, and Mandy said yes.

You guys, the amazingness was almost too much.  And then we all went out to a bar and had children giving us hugs on the street and strangers waving and asking for pics. We brought joy to all of the world! On our walk home, Alex and I wore our costumes and every time we were waiting to cross the street we danced and waved at the cars driving by and it was the most fun ever. Now that I own a furry elephant costume, I've decided that if I'm ever feeling really down, I just have to put it on and go stand on the corner for a bit and wave at cars and all will be right with the world once again.

Here's the video! I'm the elephant that rolls out the banner and Alex happens to be the dancing panda in the background! I love the moment before she says yes the best. For some reason, watching it without sound makes it feel even more magical to me.



UPDATE: Someone just posted a longer version (with us waiting around before) with a song! Click on this one too if you have the time for pure joy.



Please stay tuned because tomorrow I'm holding a book giveaway on the blog! I have two copies of this awesome book to giveaway and I'm just going to give you a clue today about what it could possibly be:

Any guesses? Let me know in the comments!

Watching A Live Animal Cam: Like Going To The Zoo But A Million Times Better.

Do you guys remember the Shba Inu Puppy Cam of 2008? (Apparently it's still going!) That was my very first experience with some sort of camera set up on some sort of animal doing some sort of thing 24 hours a day. I did an email search for "puppy cam" to find out when I first saw a puppy cam (cause I totally emailed that shit to like, everyone) and found an email to Alex where I wrote: "I'm being totally serious when I say watching the Puppy Cam gives me the same feeling I had after we shared a klonopin on the plane from California that time."

So guess what you guys, I found a new animal cam and this time it's a Hawk Cam set up on the 12 floor of the NYU library, where a hawk family currently lives.

That's right, I said HAWKS. 

Hawk Husband, Hawk Wife, HAWK BABIES.

nyu_hawkcam on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

This is me all day:

The best part about the Hawk Cam, I think, is that unlike the puppy cam which is in someone's house, this cam is in the wilds of downton Manhattan. The Hawks are acting like they act when no one is watching. But guess what you guys, everyone is!

Hi Hawks, this is the internet right now, and you don't even know it:

http://www.mageemarsh.org/birdingtips.html

The second best part about the Hawk Cam is the live chat set up right next to the footage. Everyone on this chat is SUPER NICE and SUPER CUTE and SINCERELY EXCITED about the hawk cam!  People are writing things like "Mom, feed me feed me!" and "Down the hatch!" When it comes to animal cams, no one is a jerk because everyone is basically on valium while watching them.

Look, I know we've all been having a super anxious week. Just watch the Hawk Cam and I promise, everything will be okay.

Snail Mail & Friendship

I've noticed something going on with my friends of late- we've all been sending post cards to each other when we go on a trip. And getting one in the mail is really exciting! When Alex and I were in New Orleans over spring break we sent some postcards out and it was fun to be the sender too. It's like Christmas cards but without the holiday stress and long list. I made sure to write down addresses in my notebook before we went too for the specific purpose of sending postcards. In this day of facebook mania and texting and instagram- which I admittedly went crazy with too over vacation and was temporarily blocked by one friend for my showing-off-ocity- a postcard feels like such a special treat. A special "I'm thinking of you" present from a friend that barely costs anything but will look great on their fridge. There also feels like a real art to writing a postcard sized message. It always makes me feel like all of my friends are great writers.

Here are some postcards that I've gotten recently. Do you send postcards? If you haven't in a while, I highly recommend you do the next time you go away.

PS- Thank you cards fall in this category too! I have a smaller group of girlfriends where we always send each other thank you cards for things. Alex thinks we're weirdly formal but a thank you card can really make you feel appreciated and loved. Below are some recent thank you cards I've received. Hooray for the power of snail mail and friendship.

PPS- Don't you just love everyone's handwriting?

Weekend Guide: Cape May in April

I spent this past weekend in Cape May with my parents celebrating my dad's birthday and we had the perfect time! We all kept saying "this has been the perfect weekend!" So I thought I'd share our itinerary on the blog. Going to the beach in the off season is really the best. Here's how to have an amazing weekend in Cape May in April.

Day One

1. Leave early Saturday morning. After gassing up and picking up and bagel and OJ, you should be on the road by 8AM. With less cars on the road this early, it will knock a half hour off the usually 3 hour drive from Brooklyn to Cape May!

2. Pull into Shell Bay, the best trailer park in all of the land. We call in Trailer Chic because it so totally is with it's bright white shell paved streets. Hug parents and give dad his birthday presents. (Magnetic knife strip and DIY cheese kit! Plus a card that makes him teary. Score!)

3. Around 11ish put on your running/walking shoes and head to the sea wall in North Wildwood. It looks like this:

Run your current couch to 5K workout while your parents walk the wall together. Enjoy the ocean and breath that air.

4. Lunch time! Head over to Owen's Pub for burgers and 99 cent draft beers. That's right, I said 99 cents.

5. Head back to the trailer for a Saturday afternoon snooze. Nap and get lost in the book you're loving.

6. Back outside! Find a new beach on the bay side bring chairs, cookies and cheese doodles and set up on the rocks while your dad tries to catch some fish for dinner. The fish aren't biting, but that's not the point of fishing anyway. Enjoy everything around you.

7. Cocktail hour! Whip up some cranberry vodka martinis and have a drink before heading out to Lucky Bones for dinner.

8. Do not go to the tourist trap that is The Lobster House across the street. Head straight to lucky bones and take advantage of their specials! I had the weakfish with string beans and polenta and it was a memorable meal.

9. Go for a walk around deserted downtown Cape May! Look for ghosts in the windows of the old Victorian mansions. Make sure to walk down random side streets and alleys.

10. Consider going back to Owens for an 80's dance party but realize you're pretty exhausted and would rather go back to the house for a night cap.

11. One more vodka martini, share an ice cream sandwich with your dad and call it a day!

Day Two

1. Plan on going to George's Place for breakfast in downtown Cape May, but before you do, have your dad come home with a freshly caught 33 inch striped bass!! Jump up and down because this is exciting.

2. Go to George's and order anything that includes hash-browns. Love every single breakfast bite.

3. Walk down the Cape May boardwalk to the very end and then wander around town for a while.

4. Feel like it's time for a nap but don't want to be cooped up in the trailer. Pack up some chairs and sweatshirt and head to Stone Harbor for a nap on the beach. Make sure to throw a few bite sized milky ways in the beach bag.

5. Head back home for an early dinner of fresh caught striped bass!

Before and After

6. Pack up and head on back to Brooklyn.

And that's it! If you're ever in the Cape May area I highly recommend all of the above activities and places! I hope everyone else had a good weekend. I was planning on posting this Sunday night but blogging time feels harder to come by these days than usual. I'm not really sure why but I'm hoping come summer when I'm off for vacation that I'll be blogging more regularly. But for now, thanks for reading my few posts a week. It means so much to me.

And one more thing. It's always hard to blog after a big national or global tragedy happens. Everything feels a little trivial and disrespectful while commenting on the events also feels out of my league and unnecessary to add my voice to all of the chatter on the internet. Normally I don't comment on the news too often on my blog but came across this lovely post on Tomboy Style this morning and wanted to share. I encourage you to check it out here.  Hope everyone is having the best day that they can.

xo

Sarah