Three Things Thursday

1. The Hunger Games - Everyone and their grandmother has been talking about this book series and after much prompting from my older sister, Tatiana, I decided to read the first book. I finished Book 1 in about 2 days and started Book 2 this morning. I liked it but I was disappointed. I won't reveal any spoilers in case some of you are still planning to read it but I thought it was wildly predictable and horribly written. I'm pretty appalled that sentence structure like that can top the New York Times Bestseller list. I'll finish the series because I'm interested to see where Suzanne Collins takes the characters but I was surprised to find that The Hunger Games ended in Book 1, I expected the series to be all about the Games...although what I found most predictable was that, since the book is written from the first person point of view, you know that the character isn't going to die which makes it much more predictable. I didn't hate it but I didn't love it. Also, am I the only person in the world who has ever read The Lottery by Shirley Jackson? The Hunger Games is a total rip off of that short story and it seems no one I've talked to knows what it is or has read it. If you're interested, you can read it here.

2. Cherry Blossom 10-Miler - If you've been reading my blog for some time now, you know about the Cherry Blossom 10-miler that wasn't. Last year, I had glorious plans of running the Cherry Blossom 10-miler with some of my nearest and dearest friends in DC and because of a mechanical issue and my flight leaving 15 minutes early instead of waiting for the 7 passengers on my flight from South Bend who were trying to get to DC, I ended up spending the night of the Cherry Blossom in a hotel room in Chicago and flying to DC the following morning, landing in the capitol roughly 10 minutes after I should have crossed the finish line. I was devastated. Fast forward to this past December when I applied for the lottery for this year's Cherry Blossom as a team with 10 of my friends and we didn't get in. I wasn't heartbroken but I really wanted to run that race so when Gia tweeted that her bib was up for transfer, I jumped on the opportunity and secured an entry into the 2012 Cherry Blossom race. After tweeting my excitement about it, I found out that some of my favorite runners-who-blog like Emily, Katie and Andrea are all running it, making me absolutely ecstatic to take my revenge on the Cherry Blossom that wasn't and kick off my taper for Madrid with a 10 mile run through my favorite city in America.

3. Thesis - Thesis-ing is the word I've made up to describe what I do with all of my spare time when I'm not working or running. It is absolutely wonderful not taking any classes this semester. I'm a little bit  behind on my thesis because I was sick for two weeks but I definitely worked hard last night and I know I'll be caught up and where I should be by this weekend. I love the topic I'm writing on and the most difficult part about it is all of the different directions I'm going in but so far, I'm enjoying the process. I have my next advisement meeting on Monday which is perfect because we can figure out my next steps from there!

By the way, your comments on my post yesterday were absolutely amazing and make me so unbelievably grateful that I started this blog. So thank you, thank you, thank you!

Happy March 1st!