Christmas shopping
Today, Greg and I made an aborted attempt at Christmas shopping.
We were in the mall for about 45 minutes before we gave up and peaced out. I think that our big mistake was to go to the Apple store first. Apparently that is not a good idea on the second-to-last shopping weekend before Christmas. Every store is incredibly crowded, but the Apple store takes the cake. We were packed in there like sardines in a can. The experience has made me consider attempting to buy all of my gifts online this year.
My real goal is actually to try and get most people on my list experience gifts — like event tickets, dinner gift certificates, and weekends away. It reduces waste and is usually a lot more fun than some random object that might or might not have been found at the end of a long stressful search. The problem is that now I have to think of what types of experiences my friends and family will enjoy. The stressful search is still there — it’s just that the trail meanders through cyberspace instead of the mall. Oh well, I guess that I am saving $3.50 per gallon on gas.
In other news, my groin is doing better. I swam a pretty serious set of building 200s breaststroke on Saturday. I did well enough on it, and my groin didn’t die so that was good. That isn’t to say that I enjoyed it (long breaststroke is not my favorite activity), or the 4×400 freestyle pull set afterwards, but I did them both.
Actually, I have to add a little outburst here. The breaststroke set was definitely better than the pull set. At least I knew that it was helping me get better. I hate pulling, mostly because I don’t see the point. I don’t use the freestyle arm pull in competition, my heart rate never gets over 140 so it’s not really aerobic, and I am miserable the whole time. I do it because my coach tells me to and that’s about it.
The bad news is that my shoulder has not improved as quickly as my groin. However, I had it looked at and the experts tell me that it isn’t a dire injury. It is just painful. I actually think that it hurts more outside of the water when I do things like vacuum, pick up Ms. Jackson (who has dropped a pound to 12.7 lbs!), and change clothes than it does while I swim. So I’m not too worried about it, it’s just a little annoying.