I want to see a double feature of Wanted and Wall-E. They both start with W, someone must offer double features based on that sort of criterion. That’s my goal for July 4th weekend. I don’t think I have enough friends to bring such a plan to fruition, however, and seeing a movie by one’s lonesome is sad.
Speaking of sad, I have an hour and 27 minutes to go before the trials start tonight. They won’t finish until 1 AM. I’ll be very sad at 5:54 tomorrow morning when my alarm goes off. My bottom lip is already quivering at the thought. I am 27 years old, I have 50 q-tips left and I am loathe to staying up late, preferring to sleep. Go Team Cool.
Fortunately, on Sunday I went to two of my favorite stores, buying fun things from both. I expect there are a few more, but I consider myself loyal to four stores. SuperFresh is a weekly staple and RoadRunnerSports hasn’t been used as much as I would like. Sunday featured the other two, REI and Wegmans. I traded in a less big than necessary pack for a new, multi-night Gregory pack. I also picked up a book on lightweight backpacking, as well as a headlamp and water purification system, both on sale.
Wegmans was the destination for salmon. SuperFresh has decent salmon, much much better than Mars, Giant, or Safeway (don’t even ask about Shoppers), but Wegman’s salmon is arbitrarily good. I could pay $25 a pound if I wanted spectacular looking Alaskan Salmon, but instead of settled for the Canadian sort (still a very nice cut). A few weeks ago, Adam and Bethany, who are are getting married in October bought me cedar grill planks for smoking salmon. I normally steam salmon on the grill, locked within tin foil wraps and basting in concoctions of my creation.
This time I marinated the plank in water, dill, lemon juice and teriaki for an hour and a half, then prepped the flanks simply (salt, pepper, butter spread, some garlic, some dill) and coaxed the grill to the exact temperature. I assumed it would be a “try to convince yourself that it doesn’t taste exactly like ever other salmon you’ve ever made” sort of event. It wasn’t. I can hardly eloquate (verb, transitive, to verbalizein flow’ry prose) how delicious it was. You know how cedar has an almost orgasmic odor? The salmon tasted like the odor. It’s sort of like eating one of those sniffy markers, and having it live up to your wildest expectations. My sensory organs were wailing in a divine, harmonious communion with each other.
Anway, I love Wegmans, I wish I could crystallize it into some sort of biscuit and eat Wegmans too.
While we’re at it, look here. That was a fantastic rainbow, but, alas, it only stimulated my ocular nerves. Now, if it smelled like jolly ranchers and tasted like dimetapp, then we’d be on to something.
Words 
I love this post. I could identify with almost everything you wrote about. First off, I don’t have cable, so I can’t watch the trials on USA, which is so hard. So I wake up every morning and read about them on letsrun. I’m happy with how the men’s 5K turned out. I agree though, I prefer to sleep as well. No shame in that. I LOVE Wegmans (it started in Rochester) and the smell of cedar. As for dimetapp, didn’t we decide that grape jolly rancher jelly beans almost taste like it? Next time I see you, I’m requesting that you make me salmon. I’ll supply the jelly beans.
Can do for the salmon – sounds like you’re coming to MD to get it though, since it requires a grill.
Meanwhile, the 5K was interesting. Letsrun.com does a nice synopsis. I’m happy with the results too, though I’d rather have seen Solinksi get in somehow…he did a lot of the late race work. Teg and Dobson were just opportunistic hangers on. Also, I don’t understand why Curtis and Goucher didn’t go with Vaughn since neither had the A standard.
The men’s 800 was probably one of the top-5 coolest races I’ve ever seen. I hope NBC posts the video.
Interesting, Julia shaved her head then dropped out of the 5K. I was rooting for her, it was definitely a little sad. Knowing that she’d be running, I had the conscious thought, “There’s about a 40% chance that she shaved her head,” based on how she likes to deviate for the sake of deviation. I have been kicking myself for not enunciating it to Bethany, who essentially lives at my house as she plans her wedding and stayed up to watch the race with me; that would have been a fantastic prognostication had it been documented.
Katie, I met a nice young man this evening who is a post-doc genetics student at Columbia. His name is Paul, he is from England. How large is that world at Columbia? Any way you might know him?