A Nice Spring Weekend

Angela and I had a relax­ing few days (most­ly) at home over the past weekend.

We spent most of the week­end at home, although Fri­day night we went to pick up our race num­bers for the fol­low­ing morn­ing’s 10k as well as hit the gro­cery store for the first time in weeks. We cleaned up the kitchen that evening as friends were com­ing over the next day.

I guess most peo­ple don’t con­sid­er run­ning 6.2 miles ear­ly on Sat­ur­day morn­ing relax­ing, but it real­ly did feel that way. This week­end was the Mon­u­ment Ave 10k, Rich­mond’s largest race, with about 25,000 entrants. Run­ning the big races in Rich­mond is a lot of fun, as I’ve said many times before, because of all the crowds that come out. Sat­ur­day, with near­ly per­fect run­ning weath­er, was no excep­tion. Angela and I rode with our neigh­bor, Teri, down to the race, along with friends Meredi­z­zle and Jess (who I dubbed “wing-nut” this week­end for no real­ly good rea­son). We were run­ning a lit­tle late, which end­ed up work­ing out just per­fect­ly. After rush­ing to get my bag checked in, I made it to the start line just about a minute before my coral start­ed. I had a good race. Even though I was about five min­utes over my best 10k time, I felt great after cross­ing the fin­ish line. Prob­a­bly a sign I could have pushed hard­er but also a sign I’m not that bad out of shape, either.

That after­noon, a bunch of friends came over for lunch off the grill (ham­burg­ers, most­ly) as well as play­ing the Wii. We sat around talk­ing and get­ting to know one anoth­er for quite a while (we have a num­ber of friends who don’t yet know our oth­er friends, like most every­one does). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, this meant that not every­one got to play the Wii as much as we would have liked. Also, it meant that I did­n’t get embar­rass­ing pho­tos of peo­ple play­ing Wario Ware.

Sun­day after­noon, we went to a baby show­er for one of Ange­la’s co-work­ers held at yet anoth­er of her co-work­er’s home. I have to say, if more baby show­ers were like this, I bet folks would­n’t dread them so much, espe­cial­ly males. There was a keg of local micro-brew, great music, and good food. I had met the cou­ple before and enjoyed get­ting to talk to them (well, actu­al­ly, most­ly him) more. The host, his girl­friend, and the rest of the guests (again, a lot of Ange­la’s new co-work­ers) were all lots of fun to talk with, as well. We love the peo­ple at Ange­la’s old job and miss them. How­ev­er, it was great to know she’s again work­ing with a bunch of nice folks who are fun to spend time with.

Inci­den­tal­ly, hav­ing co-ed baby show­ers is prob­a­bly much more com­mon now. Not that dads-to-be did­n’t have any inter­est in their chil­dren before, it’s just that now we don’t feel this need to hide it1. Read­ing some great sites online writ­ten by dads as well as talk­ing with oth­er cur­rent and soon-to-be dads has real­ly done a lot for me, both in encour­age­ment and in excite­ment. Any­way, Angela and I have agreed that hav­ing a dads-are-wel­come baby show­er is real­ly the way to go. Of course, there was at least one mom­my at the baby show­er who seemed to be upset.

“Why is he open­ing the presents?”

Well, maybe because he has an inter­est in his daugh­ter, too, just like she does.

1. I’ll write more about it after I’m done with Preg­nan­cy Sucks – For Men, but the book I’m read­ing right now kind of falls into this. It was the only preg­nan­cy book for men I could find and it plays up the whole dads-are-too-man­ly-to-care-about-preg­nan­cy thing. I’m not just try­ing to do stuff because that gets my nag­ging wife off my back. She’s not nag­ging, actu­al­ly, and I gen­uine­ly am excit­ed about being a dad. [↩]