Reporting, Plastic Fish, and Neglecting Workouts

I had a midterm today. I'm 26. Something about that is wrong.
I also have roommates. I'm married. My husband is not one of them. Something about that is so wrong.
I didn't exercise for 3 days this week. I'm a triathlete. Something about that is so so wrong.

Welcome to the suck. The Stanford suck, that is.
(I watched Jarhead for the first time on FX last weekend, when coachubby and I escaped to a Best Western so he wouldn't have to sleep on the floor of my tiny campus housing room, or try to fit in my single bed, or wait in line while one of my roommates took a 30 minute shower. It happens every day. Sometimes twice a day. Disgusting.)

The reason I've been absent: I've been reporting!
Reporting is fun.
Without the excuse that I'm reporting, I would not have met Sue, an 81-year old Japanese American who lives in Mountain View.

I knocked on her door to get her reaction to having the Day Worker Center of MV move in across the street. She told me it might cause parking problems, then invited me to see her garden. Her ginormous, hidden garden. She made me eat her persimmons. I've never had a persimmon before. They were delicious. Then she made me eat a chocolate persimmon. I could not believe that a naturally occuring chocolate fruit exists. That made me very happy.

Then she told me that I was going to laugh at her because of how she's been keeping the animals from eating the food in her garden. She led me over to where some snow peas were growing and when we walked by, familiarly annoying music started to play.

Rock the boat, don't rock the boat, baby!

Billy the Big Mouthed Bass guards Sue's vegetables. He's set off by motion. He'd scare the crap out of any person creeping around in Sue's yard, too. Billy is a creepy fish.

Then she brought me inside to show me the pumpkin she'd been decorating. It had Chiquita Banana sticker eyes, a hat, and drawn on red lips. "Do you think it needs earrings?" she asked, before taking my armload of persimmons and peppers, putting them in a plastic bag for me and sending me on my way.

It had nothing to do with my story.

But I'm happy to have met Sue. And to have been introduced to persimmons.

Now to figure out how to squeeze in a 4 hour ride in addition to sleeping...