My OC

Bad vacation karma has been following kristin and I this summer, but I was hoping that our 4 day vacation in ocean city, maryland would break our streak of bad luck. We drove down wednesday after a half day of work, checked into our hotel, and decided 20 blocks wasn't too far to walk to the boardwalk. so we hit the boardwalk to find a meal and within 5 minutes of walking on the boardwalk, kristin gets crapped on by a seagull. my next thought was fear of what might happen for the rest of the trip if it is already starting out unlucky...

the trip ended up being great. Relaxing, reading, and running on the beach, ate some good food, I think I only drove once during the 4 days, which was sweet. on the board walk we noticed a place called marble slab creamery. this sounded eerily familiar to the chain ice cream store where I occasionally binge on the apple pie a la cold stone. quite good. I decided to do a little research into which came first... here is what I found. I had never run into another marble slab creamery but apparently it is also a big chain with 350 stores (compared to cold stone's 1314) and they basically do the same thing... but which came first? It turns out cold stone opened its first store in 1988 in Tempe and Marble Slab opened there first store in 1983 in Houston. huh... who would have thunk it. apparently the franchise fees for marble slab are higher (8% for marble slab and 6% for cold stone) so maybe that has stifled their growth. who knows...

the week of the OC trip I run just under 20 which isn't bad because of the vacation factor and this week I should finish up over 20. My inconsistent training has certainly been apparent in my performance on the runs, but at least I am still running and no injuries to report! yay!