Excuses while swimming with Santa, tumbleweeds and a rocket

First things first:
I've got a cold.
After one night of sleeping through the night, I've been up since 3:26am with C. (Whom I love so much and like to see any time outside of 10pm -4am)
It was my third 50 of the 5th 200 (for a specific incident I will reference later).
Now that the excuses are out of the way.

Santa swims at the pool. If this guys doesn't have at least a seasonal job as Santa then no one should. He's even got the small wired framed glasses, that I think he wore while kicking. Just seeing him made me smile through my next 400 set.

I hate hair. Not a great segue there, but it's true. The shower drain when I had longer hair- I used to have to ask Paul to clean it out. Hair makes me gag and hair balls could induce vomiting. (only human hair, pet hair isn't so bad with me) In the pool, there are these floating clumps that have a rolling tumbleweed shape and they move around the pool. Usually they're down at the bottom which is fine because I can keep my eye on them as I swim over. A couple weeks ago, though, one was in my lane and it was a good 6-8 inches long and it kept moving. Finally after about 20 minutes of swimming around it and trying not to gag over it too much, I asked the guard for a small skimmer to get it out. This morning there seemed to be more tumbleweeds than usual but they were on the bottom in the deep end so it was okay. I just kept my eye on them. However, on the first 50 of one of my 200s, I felt my right hand had a long hair around it. I tried shaking it while I was pushing back, hoping it would come undone, but it just wouldn't. When I got to the next flip turn I managed to grab it with the other hand before pushing off, and I only gagged once.

Finally, the human rocket story. When I got to the pool it was more crowded than usual so I had to share a lane. I ended up in the lane with a woman from work who took the year off from winning the work sponsored sprint triathlon this year. Notice I didn't say she took the year off from competing, she took it off from winning. I think she's won every time she's entered. She's fast and looking at her you can tell she's fast. She just looks hot, and fast. Anyway, I tried to make sure I didn't start any laps right before her, knowing she'd blow by me in a second. Then, in 1 of the 200s she did end up behind me and I stayed ahead! I was so excited but then I thought maybe she's doing the swim-as-slow-as-possible drill for some reason. Finally, on my last 200, during the third 50- always the roughest for me, while I was full swimming, she passed me while pulling. I was hoping she at least had the hand paddles, but no, she was just pulling. She did have a pull buoy which made me feel a little better, but I might as well have been treading water for how quickly she just swam away. It was a little sad. I finished my 200 and when she had a break I joked about how sad it was that my full swimming is so much slower than her pulling and she actually apologized for passing me! She's fast, she's hot and she's even so nice that I can't dislike her for being fast and hot. I've spoken with her before and she's always been so nice, which is why I was thinking I could joke with her about it and not offend her. She's rehabbing a knee injury, but I hope to some day be able to be beaten by her in the work triathlon. Meaning I hope she'll be well enough to compete again and unless she loses a limb during the race, she'd beat me.

Other than that, the swim this morning wasn't so bad. I did five sets of 200 medium pace, 100 kick, 100 pull. That's 2000 yards again, in 45 minutes or so. My time on the 200 is consistently 3:36. Actually the 200 where I was attacked by the hair, that one was 3:35, but the rest were all 3:36. Not too bad, I guess.

We took the boys out to eat last night. I know I went over my calorie range for the day (haven't actually calculated yet, but I know it) but the sweet potato fries at the restaurant were awesome. It's a vegetarian/vegan restaurant that uses all natural ingredients. We both had sweet potato enchiladas, which were good. M. had a grilled cheese and C. had cheese pizza. Both were good, but the boys didn't eat much. They did really like the chocolate chip cookies we took home, though. They were pretty well behaved and sat quietly most of the time. Right before the food came they got antsy and we walked around the dining room looking at the pictures on the wall- we went early so we were the only ones in the dining room we were in- just in case. Overall, the meal was good but a little expensive and when the boys are there we have to eat so fast that we didn't quite enjoy it as much as when we went alone for our anniversary.