Good things come to those who take their time

I came home this evening to find an unfortunate piece of mail waiting: official confirmation of my participation in the Medtronic Twin Cities Marathon (The Most Beautiful Urban Marathon in America) on Sunday, October 5. As the cover proclaims: "this confirmation booklet must be presented to pick up your race number."

Ah. In reality, this confirmation represents a non-refundable $95 registration fee for a race in which I can't compete. If you just joined us, last week I began running after a 3-month hiatus nursing plantar fasciitis in both feet. More recently, both knees ache as if attached to a retired MLB catcher's thighs. I can't run the 2.8-mile Longfellow-Harvard loop on the Charles without pain....although it is improving.

The confirmation represents rashness. I registered for the Twin Cities just days after finishing the 2008 Boston. Ha! Waiting an extra week to see if my legs would be up for it with injuries? Pshaw. But I was afraid registration would close without me. For that, here I sit -- not only can't I run in the race, but I have to pay for it. And I have to read all about it because certainly they will continue bombarding me with literature on it for the next four weeks.

However. My weekend is shaping up beautifully on a number of other fronts because, for reasons ranging from coincidental to brave, I kept my powder dry.

1) A date. I think, anyway. The CFO has been wicked busy since Labor Day, he said, writing his mea culpa e-mail after being offline for 9 days. He wants to be social....with me....soon. I am agitating, once again, for martinis and shellfish at B&G Oysters, since I now have the Medal of Female Patience pinned to my breast.

2) Recognition. My favorite theater company, The Longwood Players, just took home 8 awards at the Eastern Massachusetts Association of Community Theaters award gala tonight. Including best musical direction and ensemble for She Loves Me, a show in April on which I was the assistant musical director.

For three years I've also been this group's rehearsal pianist.....a no-pay job taking up evenings for months at a time. This isn't necessarily my big Boston Musical Break Moment. But it was fun to get a slab of glass with "best"-something engraved on it....in a scene this big and talented.

3) Big-time B.O. So for two election cycles I have resisted door-to-door canvassing for presidential candidates. This is sheer fear, my friends, of being seen as an agent of harassment. But as you know, I've been sucked into a Southie for Obama volunteer group.....and I don't know if it was the Bud Lite or the camaraderie or the nausea at the political blogosphere that converted me at our meeting Tuesday night: I agreed to drive to New Hampshire tomorrow to do that which I most hate.

And lo, just today, from campaign headqarters: news that the candidate and his running mate, themselves, are holding a rally in Manchester, the very town I was to canvass.

So not only do I get to hear Barack Obama and Joe Biden speak in person, the rally is replacing the canvassing.

Score another point for patience.