NOTE: It has been made apparent to me that this post is difficult to follow because there are TWO Dougs involved. One is Doug Cook, who ran the half-marathon. The other is Doug Nagengast, who I know from high school. Hopefully that makes things easier to follow.

Kickin' it Old School in Beantown, Day Three: or, George W. Bush is Personally Responsible for the National Plague Known as Erectile Dysfunction

Waking up Saturday morning was unpleasant. My mouth tasted like a hooker's armpit, someone had installed an owl head rotation device inside the base of my skull, and there was a milky brown haze throughout Emily's apartment, the result of hours of somniflatulence on the part of Sarah and me. There was only one thing that could save us:

Krispy Kreme donuts.

Luckily, as you'll recall from yesterday, I had the foresight to pick up a dozen (10 glazed and 2 chocolate cake, to be specific) the evening before. So Sarah, Emily, Emily's sister Sarah (yes, things got very confusing later on), and I scarfed down the remaining donuts and plotted out our day.

(BTW: To all of you who gave me suggestions on cool things to do and see in Boston, I feel I should apologize, because we saw and did none of them. George's Island remains unvisited; I certainly didn't venture near the library or the church. We did visit a lot of restaurants and bars, though, as you'll see.)

After hosing ourselves off as best we could and making ourselves as redolent as possible, we tracked down our friend Bob, with whom we were acquainted in college, and who is now studying screenwriting at Boston University, and met him and our homegirl Lynn (at whose home we stayed Thursday night, remember? Keep up) for lunch at a bar somewhere downtown. This bar featured a $5 "burger and a Bud" special, but I decided to start with a Bloody Mary, since I had internal wounds that required the application of that holy red unguent.

After lunch we played pool and drank beer until we got hungry again and, instead of going to see the sights of Boston that I promised everyone I would investigate, went to the Green Briar, where we met high school friends Doug N. and Kristy (as well as Emily's sister Sarah). D&K are wonderful people, but I was unprepared for their level of political interest, and found myself in the middle of a lengthy "If you, Matt Hearn, don't vote for John Kerry, this country will founder by 2007 and thank God we'll already have moved to Canada by then" diatribe. I think we talked politics for at least 17 straight hours.

Luckily, I had beer to comfort me.

Day Four: or, I was RUNNING!

After getting to sleep around midnight on Saturday, Sarah and I awoke at 7am Sunday morning. On purpose. Why? Because our good buddy Doug C. was running in the Boston Athletic Association Half-Marathon. At 8am. I'm not sure who's more insane, him for running it, or us for going to watch it.

We got there a little late, around 8:15, and found ourselves at about mile #2, watching the main pack of several thousand people go by. Then we realized that, without coffee, it was likely that we would not survive to see the runners come back at around 9am. So we wandered around a bit until we found a Dunkin' Donuts (Sarah almost wept with joy when we spotted it), got some refreshments, and came back to settle down and watch at around 8:30.

Around 8:40, the first of several extremely fast racing wheelchairs came by, its owner slapping his thumbs against the wheels to thrust himself forward. I'm told the fastest wheelchair racer finished in something like 53 minutes. Just shy of 9am, the first of the runners came by, 5 or 6 Kenyan guys in a pack. The race winner finished in just under 63 minutes, which divides out to less than 5 minutes per mile.

Doug C. came by at just after 9am, to the applause of many, and finished 38th out of 3158 finishers, with a finishing time of 1:18:02, or about 5:58 per mile. (Full results to be found heah, boss.) My one experience with competitive running was a 5K I did about 18 months ago, in which I ran 3.1 miles in 35 minutes and 36 seconds, or about 11 1/2 minutes per mile. Apparently I'm slow . . . who knew?

Doug C. didn't really have time to chat, what with still having another 2 miles to go, so we just headed back to the car before the main group came by, and went back to Emily's, where we rested for a while. Watching people run is almost as tiring as actually running, I tell you.

At noon, we headed to Tonic for a most excellent brunch with Bob, Kristy, and Doug N., during which I saw a baby of approximately 12 months with her ears pierced. Apparently I commented on this rather loudly and possibly drew the ire of the child's owners. I will reserve judgment, except to note that my children will not be having anything pierced until they are 47 years of age and I am dead or senile.

After lunch, we meandered back to Emily's apartment where we watched "Wet Hot Summer," easily the most disturbing film I've seen since Furburger, but with (unfortunately) much less nudity and a lot more shots of Janeane Garofalo doing heroin. We watched a little football, and then around 6pm we decided to get on the road, since we had a 5.5 hour drive ahead of us. We stopped off to see Lynn one more time, and then got on the road. We took a slightly different route home, detouring further west around New York to avoid having to drive through the Bronx again, and made it home by around 12:45am, exhausted but happy.

The next morning I had to go to work, and I have been largely miserable ever since.