Carla Schoepfle

Last weekend my friend Tansy ran the Marine Corp Marathon (and she did really well)

Pete and I biked over to Bob and Ediths for breakfast (a local diner) and then biked over to the 14th street bridge so we could cheer.   Figguring out how to get onto the 14th street bridge was a bit more challenging than I expected.  We tried to follow the course backwards.  However, we did not realize that the 10K was on part of the same course.  When first seeing the 10K runners, I thought we were seeing the marathon runners (till we started to see the marthon runners).  So we tried hap-hazardly to reach the 14th street bridge.  However, Route 1 and 395 still had traffic!  Luckily, we changed upon the location where the runners were comming off the 14th street bridge near the Pentagon and then followed the course backards. 

Since that was so much fun, we found a couple more points along the race to cheer for.  But by the time we got home, I was really tired (and I hadn’t even done any running). 

The techonology that was used with the race was really cool.  I got to register my cell phone ahead of time to receive text messages at multiple points during the race.  Luckily each of the points we were cheering at where shortly after a text message, so we knew we hadn’t missed her (and then we could look for the pink shirt). 

So I know this post is a bit late - but it’s still fresh in my mind.  I had really been looking forward to going backpacking in Dolly Sods with some friends. (And I’ve still never been - but hear it’s beautiful.)  However, now everyone’s thinking it’d be great to try this trip again this spring (So hopefully we won’t have to worry about sick cats then).

So, the day before we were supposed to go (I can’t remember if it was Oct 23 or 24th) , Spunkie (our fraidy cat) had a tooth cleaning.  Our other cat Otto has one of these every other year, and it’s no big deal (other than me wishing the cats could brush their teeth).  However, Spunkie ended up with a gum infection and loosing two of his teeth.  This unfortunately
ment that we had to shove antibiotics into his mouth (luckily they were liquid and in a dropper) twice a day.  It takes both Pete and I to catch the cat and give him the medicine.  We did not feel that we could pass this job off to someone else for the weekend (although the thought of boarding the cat did cross my mind).  So we stayed home and fed him the medicine.

Gladly, yesterday was the last day of medicine giving.  It was really nice to get up this morning and not have to catch the cat (who has taken to hissing first thing in the morning as he’s about to be picked up).  It’ll also be really nice this evening to get home and not have to give him medicine.  Luckily, this did not interfere with the trip to Rome (we’re leaving on Wednesday).