a bigger update
so about that Florida trip... awesome...
.tuesday 1.03.
drove to philly with my mom, aliina, sam and kimmy. flew to ft. lauderdale, drove to Islamorada key. blah blah blah. our van was me, sam, courtney, aliina, and anna. mark drove. he made us name the van. court came up with p-unit because mark's driving made us all piss ourselves. haha. we actually had to swim that night, but it wasn't hard. too much IM though.
.wednesday 1.04.
my birthday!!! morning and afternoon practice were both dumb and i guess it looked like I wasn't trying... so mark yelled at me. but it was still an awesome day. my roommies + kimmy decorated the room and gave me cupcakes and gifts. it was so sweet (and not just the "cool" sweet, but also the "awwww thanks guys" sweet). we got a free meal at the holiday inn before practice and i got to cut in line because i was the b-day girl :) haha and it was great food too. We also went to the Island Grill after prac. just me, sam, court, aliina, anna, kimmy, and erin. aww what an awesome group of people. it was so much fun. oh and best chocolate cake everrrr, and i gave the rest to mark because i think he was annoyed with us...
.thursday 1.05.
this was my best day of practice. mark wrote the morning set (longcourse)- 15 x 200. first 5 descend on 3:00. 5 on 2:50?, just making the interval. 5 on 2:45 with fins. i kicked MAJOR ass. I went first in my lane (i think my lane was dan, caro and manen). so not only was i beating all the guys in my lane, but i was beating people going first in the other lanes- caitlin and megan, specifically, because they are usually a lot faster than me. at the end, mark was high-fiving the people who did well and when he got to me i said "how was that for working hard" (since he accused me of not working hard yesterday) and he said "that was awesome. i liked that." just those words coming from mark is a big deal so it made me feel awesome. because not only did i know how well I did for myself, but my coaches actually acknowleged it too. kim said something like "wow, nicole turned 20 and now look what happened."
in the afternoon my neck was acting up so i started to put on fins to just kick the rest of the set and mark thought that was useless so he made up something else for me to do. it was hard. i didn't talk about it much to anyone because i didn't know how to put into words how hard it was. i did vertical kicking with a medicine ball and 2 lengths of underwater kicking in the diving well, no breathing, under 20 sec. about 10 times. it meant a lot (again, more than words can describe) that mark was working with just me the whole time. i felt like "needy nicole" again, so i thanked him at the end. he told me people with shoulder problems work harder than anyone else on the team. after that practice, i completely agreed.
.friday 1.06.
the next morning my neck hurt so bad again, so i kicked the rest of the set with fins. mark gave me the ok to do that. i just had to make the intervals. i guess i shouldn't say "just" because it was really hard, but it did it. it was longcourse 100s on the 1:30. i don't remember much about afternoon prac. it was short though because we had another free dinner. we kept getting free food because we were entered in the orange bowl on saturday. it was nice, but we ended up having sooooo much food left over in our room. we threw so much away :(
it started to get cold today. no one went to the beach. i napped. it was boring. i wanted to play poker because i had played so much the week before with my cousins when we went skiing. i even brought chips. none of the guys wanted to play though. they were being butt-heads. :(
.saturday 1.07.
in the morning we had the orange bowl meet. we swam against st. louis, george mason, and northwestern. all were division I schools. it was SOOOOO cold. the water was freezing and it was only 50 some degrados out. i did so terrible because all my muscles/lungs just seized up. our team ended up getting second. we beat mason and st. louis. yeah DIII.
we went to key west in the afternoon. it was a lot of fun. we didn't have much time though. on the way there i played my iPod. i made a playlist the day before of stuff mark would not consider "gay." everyone liked it. mark is so into music and he was so into MY music, so that was sweet. and he changed "stacey's mom" to "stanton's mom". and pop-rocks... yeahhhh. in key west we split from the rest of our group and it was just me sam, aliina, and anna. we went dress shopping. ooooh so fun. and other stuff. yeah. itrip again on the way home and mark rated my ipod 90/100. so i made dean's list. HOT.
.sunday 1.08.
i did well at morning prac again. first in my lane, but not beating as many people. i pretty much did touch-and-go the whole time, but i was making every interval by like half a second. the other lanes started going on easier intervals, but i wouldn't even stop to hear it, because i wasn't doing bad. we were supposed to go fishing that night so we got afternoon prac moved from 6-8 to 4-6. we ened up not going fishing though. :/
i don't remember which day it was, possibly today, but the vans left us at the hotel in the morning. our whole room got out there at 7:22, two minutes late, and all 6 vans were gone. way to go kim; could you not tell four people were missing? we started walking (the pool is 2-3 miles away; it would have taken us about 1 hour, but what else were we supposed to do?). court called eddie and eddie told kim and kim sent mark to pick us up. he was mad that we were walking, but we weren't in trouble. for the scavenger hunt we had to write a poem and sam wrote a haiku about it.
we woke up today.
the vans left us. WTF?
we walked. mark came back.
court turned it in and kim was really mad. mark told us later that it was the best out of all the other poems. i thought it was funny, but i don't think it should have been turned in. it was just a joke amongst us. i didn't think it was appropirate for the whole team to hear it. whatever.
.monday 1.09.
last day of doubles. it actually got warmer out :))) so we tanned and hung out on the beach all day. am prac. was really hard. pm wasn't bad, but i was really dreading it because i was looking forward to so much stuff after it (pizza, freshmen skit, going home). pizza was good. freshmen skit was funny, but i dont think it topped ours. a lot of the stuff was about dance parties in harfard, which ive never experienced, so it was like inside jokes and stuff.
.tuesday 1.10.
am practice was terrible. it was a kim set and it was just useless and boring. i wasn't really trying and i felt guilty for that. but then we got to leave. we got a totally cute pic of us + mark in front of p-unit. drove some. got lost. kim is retarded. airport. home. end.
i almost had to take aliina for the rest of the week, but we figured out that sam's dad could take her to the metro so she could stay with her uncle in d.c. that was a big weight off my shoulders. i wasn't really prepared to have a guest and i just wanted the rest of teh week to myself.
aliina and i totally clicked though. she is so cute. i didn't know her very well before the trip, but after living with her for a week, i learned a lot about her.
GOOOOOD TIMES :)))