today my baby brother is (omigod) 26. that makes me...old.

Labels: birthday, family

in the context of my own small cosmos, two important things happened last week.

1) spring arrived in chicago. there was that day, that one day when finally the trees went from being black tree skeletons silhouetted against the spring-blue sky to fuzzy green canopies shading out the sky. i wore flip flops to work. flip flops! i dearly love to be barefoot, i take my shoes off every moment i can (under my desk, as soon as i walk into an apartment), and it makes me terribly happy to be able to walk around nearly barefoot in the summers. the fields where we play ultimate turned from mud puddles to emerald green grass seemingly overnight. i am sprouting heirloom tomato, bell pepper, basil and cilantro seeds in my windowsil (the danger of frost not yet being past). summer in chicago makes life good.

2) the other item of note is that i passed my 5th kyu exam in aikido on april 19. i started my aikido training in january of 07, so this represents a big milestone. the way rank work in my dojo, you begin training unranked, then move through the kyu (grades) 5th, 4th, and so on up through 1st kyu. after 1st kyu you test for shodan (first blackbelt), and then most up through the grades of yudansha (blackbelt). most aikido schools don't use colored belts other than white and black, but it's the same general notion.

the format of the test, for those not familiar with it, is that each of the students taking a particular test (this time there were three of us testing for 5th kyu) is called up on to the mat. the rest of the school sits in seiza along the edge of the mat, the test committee (made up of the yudansha) sits at one end, sensei sits at the other end. from there we are asked to demonstrate any of a series of techniques. for those that require a partner then another student volunteers. there's a lot of ritual and a lot of formality. the pressure can be really intense. i remember leaving the first test that i attended (would be a year ago, last april i guess) sort of open-mouthed, thinking, i have to do that?

anyway, i'm copying another passage here that i wrote into my training log. beware a lot of waxing poetic and circular thinking.

april 19. 5th kyu exam.
first, the important news: i passed! this was not a total surprise, i was fairly confident that i was going to pass, but regardless it's a relief to actually get there and have that validation. i arrived at the dojo early enough to watch & take ukeumi for the kids' test, which was ridiculously cute. kind of amazing to think that a 6-year old can think that rondori (multiple attackers) is the most fun game ever, when to us adults (well, at least to me) it's positively terrifying. here's a rondori clip for you non-aikido folks. note the awesome 80's hairstyles.

now on to my test. what i was most pleased with myself was the amount of focus i felt out there on the mat. i had a moment or two of blind panic right at the beginning, but after that i felt very calm and focused. i was aware of my uke, aware of Glen calling the test requirements, and aware of Sensei (being called first i ended up in the right-most position on the mat closest to where Sensei was seated, which, as he pointed out, meant i got extra special attention). aside from those three people i was pretty much oblivious to the rest of the room, which was good. i didn't get tangled up thinking about who was watching me or what i must look like, or if i had screwed up that last technique or forgotten to do something, etc. i didn't even look over once to see how the other two guys testing with me were doing. (which also means that i never had to cheat and look over at one of them to figure out what a technique was).

there were definitely things i got corrected on, but they were the things i knew i was weak in (inexperienced in suburi, strikes that weren't sharp/aggressive/martial enough, the occasional extra step that leads to sloppy technique, the proper form for mae ukemi (forward breakfalls), the fact that i nearly always do ushiro kaiten ukemi (backward rolls) on the same shoulder). but i felt like i took notes pretty well and didn't get flustered or distracted. i was able to take and (hopefully) apply the correction and move on to the next step. i think i even parsed the japanese pretty well, though the tester usually followed the japanese call with some or all of it in english.

the test felt really long. we were out on the mat for more than 40 minutes, by my best estimate. i remember sweat just rolling down the sides of my face flushed red, feeling tired but thank god for my endurance training because i was able to reach down and push through that tired and keep going and keep my focus. if one thing stands out in my memory of watching other tests in the past it is seeing the student testing get physically and mentally exhausted and then just start to check out, lose focus, speed, precision. the endurance training i think really helps with that.

my friend marci kept promising me the value of passing my first rank exam would be that i'd feel more confident. she's right, but i realize that the confidence doesn't come from passing the test and knowing that i hold a rank as much as it comes from the mastery of skill that i had to go through in the past month of intense training.

i'm at a new place in my training, now. i feel on the verge of making connections that i didn't have before. the question is whether i will go forward with it or lose that momentum? aikido has been a big cloud sort of blocking out the sun for the past few weeks, stealing my focus from other parts of my life (which i've given over willingly because i wanted this goal). there will be times in the future where tech, or marathon training, or other things will block out the sun and distract me from aikido.

and if i'm going to be serious about this, how many other things will i need to sacrifice to make room for this thing that has muscled its way into my life? i'm lucky that i've made some friendships in the dojo in the past few months, because aikido can be really hard to talk about but i often feel like i'm full of thoughts/ideas/questions that i need to process with another person. the nature of training and fighting and conflict. and why i'm doing this in the first place, come to think of it. it's a martial art. it's not dance, it's not tai chi. we don't learn the kata (forms) to perform them beautifully. we learn them because they are effective. the samuri, whose sword work is one of the sources for aikido's largely open-hand techniques, used real blades. sharp, killing blades. i feel strongly that one has to examine the root of something in order to understand its fundamental purpose and nature. (e.g., guns were designed to kill living things. that's what they were made for. any attempt to decorate them, make them into art, distracts from, but does not alter, their fundamental nature as killing machines. if we are going to worship and admire and fetishize them, we should acknowledge that we are fetishizing their killing nature, not just the pearl handle or the flawless steel construction.) so at the root of what i'm doing is the word martial. but aikido is also roughly translated as the Art of Peace (among other things). talk about a contradiction in terms. how do i process this paradox? aikido turns the form inside out, it repurposes the attacking/fighting/killing movements into the art of dealing with conflict in an effective manner with concern for the well-being of the attacker. the founder of aikido, Morihei Ueshiba (O-Sensei), wrote that "to control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace." that is the nature of aikido. it is fighting repurposed into training. but to what end do we train? see how i go in circles on this?

while i don't want to get hurt (if we're being honest here, i'm pretty afraid of getting hurt, which seems logical of course but i don't think everyone i train with shares that fear), i am tough enough to take a few bumps and bruises, and i realize there is risk in anything worth doing. but aside from not wanting to get hurt, i'm not interesting in fighting, in physically besting my partner on the mat, in risking hurting someone else. and if i just wanted to be sure i could fight off a mugger, i'd take a couple of self-defense seminars, learn how to kick a guy in the balls, and go on my merry way. but aikido is something different. it is the path, not the end, that has the value. it turns out that having a goal like a kyu exam was important, not because of what i achieved at the testing date but what i achieved in the weeks of training leading up to that goal.

but honestly, do i have the guts, the belly-fire for this? how do i reconcile my own desire for pacifism with the reality of conflict (physical/spiritual/emotional/political) in the world? how will i grow as a person from studying this? will my belief in peaceful negotiation be strengthened as it is challenged or revealed as naive fallacy?

Labels: aikido, chicago, weather

here's a little plug for my brother's new project: www.giftjot.com. it's a closed-circle gift registry - you can create a wishlist from any vendor (so you're not limited to the items that a particular site is selling) - and then set up a network of friends and family that you want to share gift ideas with.

since my family is spread out across the country and we don't see each other except on major holidays or big events, so we used to have these group emails that would fly around, with subject lines like, "shh...don't tell mom" and then everyone EXCEPT mom would be copied on the email while we plotted a clever gift idea. pretty soon there was one of those emails floating around for each person and it was only a matter of time until the surprise was spoiled when it was copied to the wrong person. so, being the tech nerds that we are, my siblings set up a web-based database where we could log on, suggest gift ideas for ourselves or another person, see what gift ideas were already reserved, collaborate on a group gift, etc.

now that giftjot has officially launched, anyone can use it. it's free, and you can set up your own network of friends and family to share lists with. or use it for a wedding/shower gift registry by setting up an account name and password that you provide to your guests when they ask where you've registered. so now it's possible for the kids to collaborate on what they're getting dad for christmas, mom can indicate on her wish list that that she'd really rather have a new iphone for mother's day instead of that vacuum cleaner...you get the idea.

and since the registry isn't tied to a particular store, you can register for whatever you want: link to books on amazon, request sky-diving lessons, ask mom to make turkey for christmas dinner because you don't eat ham and then your grandparents always ask why don't you eat ham it's good for us look at us we're in our 90's and we eat ham, ask for the moon, or world peace or a donation to your favorite charity. you name it.

go there.

Labels: family, giftjot, gifts

come here: turning 30! i refuse to do the hide-from-my-birthday thing. i was pretty traumatized by the thought of turning 30 about a year and a half ago, when it first occurred to me that it really was inevitable. but i've had time to make peace with it now. i woke up the day after my birthday and thought: i guess i'm a grownup now.

go away: awkward office birthday parties. seriously. if no one likes them why do we persist?

come here: spring! my birthday weekend marked the first nice days of spring in chicago. nearly 60 degrees and sunny for both saturday (ultimate frisbee) and sunday (long run with my marathon group). the neat thing about running outside through the cold nasty months of feb/march/april is that i get to see spring arrive on a minute level. saturday was the day that the dead expanses of lawn picked up an emerald hue. on sunday the buds on the dogwood trees took on a fuzzy appearance and the weeping willows in the park were bright orange. on monday the forsythia bushes had a yellow haze about them as the buds were on the verge of opening into flowers. last night i slept with my window open.

come here: 1950's wedding dress i built for a friend's play. as long as it remains a hobby, not a profession, i love building period costumes. it's like sculpture but with fabric instead of clay or stone or a more traditional medium. there's an unfinished picture here; hopefully a photo of the finished dress on the actor if the designer sends it to me.

come here: shamrock shuffle. mom was in town visiting and so while i ran the 8k race she did the 5k walk. here we are nearly freezing our butts off in grant park following the race. the race comes with a coupon for a free beer at the post-race party, but it was 10am, drizzling and 45 degrees. a michelob ultra, regardless of being free, was not first on my list to do after gutting out five miles at an 8'22" pace in the rain. we skipped the party and headed to intelligentsia for hot coffee.
race stats:

distance: 8k
time: 41'33" (two minutes off last year's time)
overall: 4992 of 22575 - top 22%
women: 1374 of 12178 - top 11%
division (women 25-29): 519 of 4431 - top 12%

go away: stockholm marathon. because i dropped out of it. with the horrendous winter we've had i'm kind of undertrained, and while i could definitely go and tough out a five hour marathon and get to see the city and all that would be cool, it was going to be an ABSURDLY expensive way to half-ass a marathon with the exchange rate in the toilet. and when i looked at my spring, i realized that i have: aikido kyu test april 19, tech for the last show of the season may 9-24, then i'm going to berlin to visit wabes for a week in the beginning of june, and STP is opening our new play june 15. something had to give or it was all going to get half-assed and i don't like not doing thing well. so, my sights are set on the chicago marathon, october 12. and in the realm of more immediate athletic goals, passing my fifth kyu exam in aikido (april 19).

come here: birthday movie retrospective. i celebrated my birthday with a movie party in which we showed a film from each of the major decades of my life. the 80's selection: Princess Bride (Goonies was the runner up choice). 90's film: So I Married an Axe Murderer (runner up: Benny and June). 00' film: Chicago (runner up: Shaun of the Dead). the keys to the movie party (anne and i are starting to perfect this art after doing several) is 1) to start showing movies before anyone arrives - otherwise it's impossible to herd people out of the kitchen and into a dark living room where they're not supposed to talk, and 2) to select films that everyone has seen before so one can wander in and out of the movie room, watch your favorite scene, then head back to the kitchen for a drink or to hang out and not feel like you're missing something crucial. when summer comes around we mean to move the party out into the back yard and project the movies onto the fence, like our own mini movies in grant park.

Labels: birthday, chicago, running

for all the griping i sometimes do about work, i should mention here that i love my job(s) and am very grateful i have said job(s).

it's a dark day for the industry when this happens.

april 22 post-script:
thank you comment box, for reminding me. there are (at least) two other regional theatres that closed their doors recently: Studio Arena in buffalo (where i did a stage management internship years ago), and also Willamette Rep in Oregon.

Labels: work

i wonder that i don't blog more about aikido here. it's a pretty big part of my life. maybe because there's so much about it that i hardly understand that it's hard for me to wrap my brain around trying to explain it to readers who know even less about it. i realize that i don't talk about it very much except with my friends in the dojo. it's...too hard to explain. at the same time, i love it. it's changing my life, changing me. so, maybe i'll just start trying to blog it here more often and see what comes out. i'll try to save the nitty gritty details for the training log, since that's mostly for my own reference anyway.

what brought this subject up was that i was reading a friend's blog, which is mostly focused on aikido. he was musing in a post about the subject of ego in the dojo and whether it's different for men than for women. oh, kittlings...those of you who know me know that questions which reek of "men are from mars, women are from venus" make me hiss and spit and arch my back like a halloween cat. so i started to comment, but then it turned into a long long diatribe about aikido that was less about gender and more just about me. i didn't post it to his blog because, well, i got more than a little off topic. but so i'll post it here, because this is my blog and i'll get off topic if i want to:

answering this post is something of a paradox, or at least an exercise in frustration, because i hate being called upon to speak for my gender. i'm only one person. i have no idea what it is like to exist in someone else's skin. the fact that we both have boobs doesn't automatically buy us much in common. and i don't subscribe to the notion that there's is this deep divide between men and woman in terms of behavior, even with regard to learned patterns of behavior in our particular society. i am resentful of any axiom that tells me that my gender is the reason i am apt to behave in a particular way. that's like taking free will from me and handing me a package of determinism, all wrapped up in pink (girls like pink, apparently, altho i do not).

but, putting gender rants aside i'll try to answer your question about ego on the mat at least from my own (female) perspective. i don't often feel a sense of competition, of one upsmanship, on the mat. when sensei reprimands the class for fighting one another, i never feel like it applies to me. so maybe that means that there are a lot of guys on the mat who approach me differently because i'm a woman. does that mean that we can learn more from one another, train better in a cross-gender situation? maybe. i can't speak for what it's like for guys any more than i can speak for what it's like for other women.

i approach most of life and particularly athletic challenges with a sense of competition with myself. i don't care if i can run faster than the guy next to me as much as i care if i can run faster than i did last week. my sense of self-worth is all tied up in my pursuit of self-improvement (with a healthy dose of catholic guilt tossed in on top to provide necessary motivation).

but on the occasion that i do meet with a training partner who is too rough with me? i do feel that desire to prove how tough i am, that challenge to my ego - not through muscling him to the ground (my skill in aikido is always going to be about technique, not strength) - but through proving (however stupidly) that i'm tough enough to take what my partner dishes out. i HATE to have to tell my partner to back off a little. it's rare that i need to, and even more rare that i actually do. on the other side is the partner who is too careful, perceives my inexperience (or my gender, or some combination of the two) as a weakness and treats me like a china doll that could break if it hits the mat with any force. a good training partner finds my boundaries and pushes them, ever so slightly. this makes me better. i imagine it takes years of experience to get good enough to be able to truly to perceive your partner's skills, weaknesses, thresholds, and to adjust accordingly. while i strive for that, i suspect i err on the side of being too careful myself. i'm a pacifist. physically besting someone at the risk of his/her injury will never bring me satisfaction.

so what's a pacifist doing in a martial art? it's a reasonable question. i guess the answer is that i recognize that the world of is made up of conflict. to avoid conflict is to imply that all conflict is bad. but conflict just is. when you boil down the essence of a good play, it's about conflict. without conflict there's no story. no action. no movement forward, no change. aikido attracted me because it is about coping with conflict. engaging with, even encouraging conflict, but dealing with it in a healthy respectful manner that, in the most ideal circumstances, makes both parties better/stronger/happier/safer, whatever. we don't fight, we train.

i train in aikido because it scares me, just a little bit, all the time. every single time i walk into the dojo, there's some part of me that wants to skip out on class, to take the easy route, to stay home, sleep in, whatever the path of least resistance is for that given moment. and every time i walk out of the dojo, regardless of whether i've had a good class or a horrible one, i'm a better person for having trained. for having faced the things that intimidate me. in that regard, if i am sensitive to my own strength, my own reserves of energy and emotion and patience and skill, i am my own best training partner. i find the edge of what i'm capable of, and i push those boundaries ever so slightly. it takes years of training to become sensitive to your uke, to know exactly what he or she can take. i think it takes the same time to get to know one's self, to know what it is i can or can't take. in the process, i often push myself over the edge, take on too much, and then i have to draw back, admit defeat, heal or recover or generally hibernate, and then find the courage to start again. other times i allow myself too much slack, i treat myself like a china doll that i'm afraid of breaking. but you know what happens to china dolls? they sit on the shelf and they gather dust. i joined the dojo at a turning point in my life, when i was starting over, remaking myself and my life. i'd been kicked and i was down, and i was ready to take what the world was dishing me and prove that i was stronger (and in the process, hopefully actually make myself stronger). i decided that i'd rather risk getting broken than staying on the shelf.

fuck, now it's 2:30 in the morning. how about a little self-discipline when it comes to bedtimes, huh?

Labels: aikido

this just in: chicago is ranked (by Maxim) as America's Toughest City.

this is better than last month, when we ended up 6th on Forbe's list of Most Miserable Cities.

the best part, however, is the list of criteria Maxim used to make the assessment (as reprinted by Monday's Red Eye):

unemployment
years of sports failure
days of sunshine
active Marines
percentage of registered Trans Ams
women who smoke
people not eating their vegetables
people without health insurance
low rent motel rooms
miles to the nearest nuclear plant
number of people per kung fu studios, tattoo parlors and funeral parlors
number of starbucks per city block

that's right, detroit! you think you've got it bad? well, tough up!

Labels: chicago

i was wondering how long it would take for the question of a joint democratic ticket to emerge. what amuses me about Obama's rebuttal:

"With all due respect, I won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton...I don't know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to somebody who is in first place."

is that it evokes a memory of the first concert i ever went to. i was in the 7th grade and Vanilla Ice* was opening for MC Hammer. i'd saved up the $45 or whatever from an entire summer of lawn mowing earnings. i'd picked out the coolest outfit i had.** a friend's older brother was going to drive us so we could arrive at the arena in style, no parents in sight. then, the week before the tour was scheduled to come to my hometown, Vanilla Ice passed MC Hammer up on the charts. and, seeing as how he was now a bigger star, the frosty-haired popstar refused to go on as the opening act. of course, i was crushed, seeing as how we'd all bought tickets to the concert just to see Vanilla Ice (Hammer Pants already taking on a twinge of dweeb at that point).

i'm not sure how to wrap up this analogy. will Senator Clinton wear Hammer Pants? i is Obama coasting on cool he sampled without permission from David Bowie?


*did you know that Vanilla Ice's real name is Robert Matthew Van Winkle?? i couldn't have made that up if i'd tried. maybe all you watchers of reality TV already knew that.

**which, for the record, was a pair of denim overall shorts with one strap fastened and the other flapping down my back layered over a pink/purple hypercolor t-shirt color-coded to match my socks and hair scrunchie.

Labels: music, politics

Labels: california, chicago

happy leap day, kats and kitties.

a friend asked me earlier today if i know much about javascript. a bit of code he's written is behaving differently in IE than in Firefox. no, i tell him, i don't code much any more. which is true. i barely write my own HTML for blogs and such these days. but it is impossible for me to leave a coding puzzle like that alone. i ended up spending half the afternoon tracking down the bug. more annoying, in the end the bug was a result of IE allowing a case mistake slide and Firefox getting bitchy about it. but it required that i re-teach myself javascript syntax and totally re-write his script before we located the error. it was a reminder of why it is that i got out of coding in the first place. i find the activity to be all-consuming. i forget to eat, to take breaks, anything else i'm supposed to be working on (like, uh, work? the kind i get paid to do?) gets procrastinated as the hours slip by. i kind of LOVE that level of concentration, that mental zone, especially compared to the frenetic, multi-tasking manner i seem to usually work in these days. well, at least slithy-tove's formatting might benefit from the code i wrote today. might as well put it to use somewhere, right?

also, i must have this bookshelf/bed. in my future dream house, this will be the very second thing i will build.

okay, i'm taking a page out of lau's blog and attempting the dirty dozen to make up for my distinct lack of blogging:

1. be mine. i have to say that i've never been on the kate spade bandwagon. i'm not on the purses-that-cost-more-than-their-raw-materials bandwagon, really. but, luxury handbag issues aside*, my attention was drawn to the kate spade website on valentine's day which has a darn cute collection of e-cards one can send to their valentine. what the connection is between handbags and e-valentines? i couldn't say. but they are cute.

2. things you shouldn't buy on the internet: Hairsoreal. i swear that this was one of those sidebar ads on facebook the other day. i couldn't have made this product up if i'd tried. it's a hair-replacement product that, as near as i can tell, is a can of little tiny hair-shaped fibers, that you shake over your head like you were seasoning your bald patch with hair-shaped pepper. the fibers magically stick to one another and poof! there goes the bald spot. did anyone else go to the children's science museum when you were a kid and get to play with the magnetic iron filings? i imagine it's sort of like that. the thing i don't get, tho, is why men worry so much about baldness. seriously. everyone's bald! a receding hairline is like the last thing i'd notice on a guy, and it sure wouldn't be the deciding factor as to whether i'd go out with him or think he's attractive. balding heads areabout as common as having brown hair, or freckles. weird, the things we worry about.

3. things you maybe should buy on the internet: the under-the-sink urban-enviro-friendly compost system. this seems strange to me, because it doesn't use enzymes and worms to heat up and chew thru the garbage, but somehow magically heats (via electricity) the garbage into dirt. that sort of sounds...too easy. but there's a weird part of me that really really wants to try composting, but i also don't want to make my roommate and neighbors hate me.

4. things you should do on the internet: play scrabulous with me before Big Bad Hasbro shuts them down.

5. winter. the ugliest winter in recent memory plods along in chicago. there has been some sort of snow on the ground continuously since christmas. the temp keeps dipping down into the single digits, which sends the windchill plummeting to 20 or 30 below. the locks on my car doors freeze. i think of myself as a very good, practical winter driver, and yet my car has gotten stuck on patches of ice three times in the past week. it's also making marathon training (see item 8) particularly challenging. also, if the speed at which i am misplacing/losing mittens and hats continues to accelerate the way it has steadily since christmas, i'm going to die of frostbite long before spring arrives.

6. ultimate snow frisbee is the best sport ever. well, actually, i'd trade it for regular ultimate on a sunny summer day if i had a choice, but it has been a way to make winter bearable, at least for a couple of hours on saturday mornings. no one can run, cut, or handle the frisbee worth a damn, but dive rolls are awesome.

7. indoor ultimate frisbee. this is a historic moment, this new, ultimate-frisbee-playing self, because it's really the first time i've enjoyed and excelled at playing any team sport. anyway, after six months of a pickup game, i got brave and signed up for an indoor winter league. i got totally skooled on my first day, but by the end of the season my playing has improved considerably.

8. stockholm marathon. continuing with the sports-themed news items, the stockholm marathon is breathing down my neck. picking a marathon is sort of like doing airport math. when i schedule a flight, i think to myself, "hmm, mid morning sound good." and then i book a 10am flight, neglecting, as always, to do the airport math: to get awake, out the door, take public transit to the airport, and check in luggage requires that i am awake a minimum of 4 hours before the flight departs, which means that a reasonable-sounding 10am flight turns into a 6am wake up call. so, marathon math is sort of the same thing. may 31 sounds like a nice time of year to run a marathon, right? except that one neglects to count backwards by 4 or 5 months and realize that means runs in the double digits before the end of february. it's really really hard to run more than an hour on a treadmill without going kookoo with boredom.

9. marathon pied piper: i'm actually feeling like something of a marathon pied piper. without really meaning to, i find myself suddenly in the position of leading a small group from my dojo in training for this fall's chicago marathon. i'm the only one who has run a marathon before (and i've only done one, mind you), but somehow this makes me the expert. yikes. actually, tho, it's weird but good. i mean, leading and organizing people and projects is what i do for a living, but i've really only ever applied those skills to making theatre happen before. but leading people on non-work-related pursuits (that they are equally if not more passionate about): this...sort of suits me. huh.

10. enough with the sports, let's talk about food: C sent me the link to this food blog called 101 cookbooks, and it is now my new favorite place for recipes. mostly if not entirely veggie. gets a little out there with the hippy ingredients (where DOES one buy agave nectar?), but usually there are substitutions indicated for those of us still slumming it at the Jewel from time to time.

11. animal, miracle, vegetable: have been reading kingsolver's book about her family's year of farming and eating locally and...it has definitely gotten under my skin a bit when it comes to produce shopping. i look longingly at the four-dollar half pint of raspberries and think, those won't taste like anything, they've been shipped halfway around the world. and that's absurd to spend such money for something that won't even taste good anyway. i reach for the winter fruits: apples, grapefruit, and think that summer raspberries will taste that much better for the waiting. still, its not like i've seen a grapefruit tree hanging around outside in chicago, either. how does one reconcile the luxury of a varied diet with the economic, political, environmental, social arguments for eating locally-produced food? i mean, what would canadians living far north in the tundra do to eat locally? live off reindeer meat for 6sixmonths at a time and risk scurvy? no, they thank their lucky stars that they can truck in grapefruit from florida, of course. it's tricky, and thanks to this book and others, i'm more aware of the issue, but no more resolved. for about five months of the year, my CSA provides nearly all the fruits and vegetables i need, and they *are* local and organic. it's just the other half of the year that i'm not sure what to do. what i do know is, the hyde park produce market had ripe avocados on sale for $.50 each today. and i bought one and i felt guilty about it and still it tasted SOOOOO good on my sandwich. thank you, honduras, for sending me your avocados.

12. 101 in 1001: go completely veggie for a month: check, done. i conducted this experiment for the month of january. the play-by-play is linked, but the upshot is: i can get along just fine without meat in terms of what i crave to eat. leaning how to be veggie in a non-veggie world will take a little more practice (particularly with regard to when other people cook for me), but it's not an insurmountable challenge. the insurmountable challenge is that i think my body needs more protein than i'm capable of giving it from vegetable sources when i'm running/training heavily. while there are a lot of good reasons for being veggie that i can get behind, the primary reason that motivates me is that i think the disconnect between animals and food in our modern world is unnatural and it leads to unhealthful foods, unsound environmental practices, and unspeakable animal cruelty. (i mean, did you read the about last week's beef recall? the nation's school cafeterias are feeding our kids beef from cows that were too sick to even stand up. it's horrific.) so all this brings me to the conclusion that the right path for me, i think, is to continue to be veggie when eating out, and on the occasion that i'm feeling really short on protein, i can cook a piece of chicken or turkey at home. then as a consumer i can at least make some decisions about the source of the meat, buying organic, buying locally. the same goes for eggs and dairy, too, when it comes to buying but...i don't think i have the willpower to be vegan everywhere that i can't be assured of the organic status of the ingredients.

13 [baker's dozen]. the american dream: oh internets: what does the phrase "american dream" mean to you? i ask because, until this week, i'd never really thought much about it, aside from a vaguely negative connotation and association with the idea of manifest destiny. anyway, Next Theatre is producing a show called the American Dream Songbook, and as part of the lobby display, C asked the artistic associates and friends of the theatre to send in photos that represented our notion of the american dream. i couldn't really figure out where to start for a while. i dug through old photos, and came across a series of self-portraits that A and i took the day we left for chicago. we posed in front of the Uhaul truck, one hand shading our faces, head tipped up, starting into the future like brave explorers. they were goofy photos, but i remember insisting that we take them, because we were setting off on this grand adventure, this next step in our lives, and i wanted to be able to look back and remember how we felt on that day. so i dug up that picture and sent it in with the following caption: "aug, 2003: looking into our bright shiny future the day we left idaho to move to chicago. a few years later, he broke my heart. but i still live in chicago." some of my friends who saw it thought the caption was tragic, others thought it was hilariously funny. i realized later it was kind of both. it was weird to put up a photo of myself and A, especially in a public theatre lobby where friends of his might very well see it. but, i decided, that *was* my iconic american dream photo. the point (and this is the point of the show at Next as well) is that the american dream is elusive. it always falls short. life doesn't turn out the way we think it will, but what we find instead sometime surprises us, and it is the hope that sustains us and gets us to surprising endings.

fast forward five years from that day in front of the Uhaul, and now we're all grown up: A is a parent and a successful actor, he's teaching classes at the school where, five years ago, we came to chicago so he could study. as far as theatre goes, i'm living the dream: i'm working full time in my field, no day job. i don't have money to burn, but i can't complain; i can pay my rent, i never worry about scraping by till the next paycheck or the next gig. i have a lovely apartment, great friends, a good life. but A and i, as a unit, didn't survive. we found all those things we came to chicago to find, but in the pursuit, we lost the only thing that we brought with us to chicago: the us. and to be honest, i don't know that we could have gotten to the places we are now together.

so, we end with an essay assignment, comment box: what does the phrase "american dream" evoke in you? go!


*did i blog about the time that my darling cat actually threw up into my purse? when i'm not home for too many hours he sleeps or does whatever it is that cats do all day but neglects to eat, so i get home and he's starving and wolfs his food down and then sometimes yarfs it right back up. so one night he gulped some food, then sat down on his customary position of the footstool next to my desk. i had dropped my purse under the desk against the footstool. i left the room, and while i was gone, without even getting off the stool, the cat leaned over the side and PUKED INTO MY PURSE. what is it, a kitty barf bag? anyway, suffice to say that running the $25 canvas bag through a hot washing machine was no big deal. i laughed at the grossness of it all, and zeke looked mildly embarrassed. had i been carrying a $500 kate spade leather handbag, the cat-barf episode would have been a lot less funny.

Labels: 101 in 1001, chicago, food, internet, relationships, running, theatre, weather

what with the SAD, and all the rain and dark clouds this morning (it could still be night time for all the natural light that's coming in my window), getting out of bed was a herculean task this morning. the effort started with the radio, the gentle tones of NPR pulling me toward consciousness and the outside world. then my laptop (still in bed), emails from a few (early-rising) family and acquaintances further tugged my brain toward wakefulness and functionality. skimmed some blogs. checked my scrabulous stats. the cat slept on my feet. turned on the bedside lamp. eventually, in order to get up and stay up, it took turning on all the lights in the apartment, warm, incandescent glow* to fight off the sluggishness brought on by the darkness outside.

really, the drip drip drip of the 40 degree rainstorm is a good thing, it might eat away at the parking lot glaciers that are making owning and operating a car a ritual pain in the ass. this cold rain is the ugly process by which we move into spring.

for now, on to orange juice and yoga, then my to-do list. this is actually why my life is usually so over-scheduled. i *think* that empty days on the calendar will be wonderful, freeing, blissful, but instead i find them crippling. intertia takes over. i move slower, get less done.

can you tell i'm done with winter?

i should really really think about living in california. (florida's not an option).

*you will have to pry incandescent lights out of my cold dead hands before i switch to fluorescents. i would sooner give up my car than give up incandescent bulbs. (and what with everyone pitching their fluorescent light bulbs into the garbage and contributing to the mercury contamination in our food chain - talk to me about switching bulbs once you've set up a functional recycling or exchange program). when it seems that incandescent is going out of style, i will horde cases of them into my old age.

Labels: rants, weather

the punchline to a joke told by our sound engineer: "Duh. It’s the hundred-and-ten volt to two-hundred-twenty volt XLR to camlock adapter." hilarious laughter ensues. this was only funny to the joke teller and recipient. ah, tech geek humor.

the carpenters defending their choice to play Phil Collins all afternoon in the shop: "But occasionally the 80’s happens to everyone."

My boss, printing out a diagram about what parts of a pig are tastiest (answer: all of them): "I’m just going to add that to my wall of pork love."

and finally, this gem is from the stage manager's report:

Titus Performance Report #12

* The wardrobe ladies were sent on a frantic mission to find
Eddie's show shoes, only to discover 10 minutes before curtain that they were on Anish's feet.

Labels: work

CNN's Jon Klein on NPR this morning: "It's like the Super Bowl actually matters to people's lives, is what this election is."*

ah, profound. wait, pro sports DON'T matter as much as the political future of our country and our world? jeeze.

PS - i voted. did you do your civic duty today?

*as a disclaimer, i couldn't find this quote in print anywhere, so i might not have it verbatim.

Labels: politics

as if in response, the next time i started my car after passing the 100k mark, this horrible grinding vibrating sound started coming from directly beneath the shifter. i sat listening to it grow progressively louder for about 30 seconds, then turned the engine off in alarm. when i started it back up, sound was gone and hasn't returned. but i don't have a good feeling about all of this.

Labels: car

A: my car.

because it had been towed.

i swear these signs are new:



i've never had my car towed, because i am a responsible adult who reads street signs and evaluates the risk of possible ticket and/or towing before deciding to park illegally (which, come on, we all acknowledge sometimes has to be done in the city). apparently my tired brain was unable to process the if-then clauses of this particular set of signs when i came home on saturday night. and at 1am there were still lots of other cars (okay some other cars) parked on the street.

lucky for me (in retrospect only), i've taken other people to get towed cars enough times that i knew the retrieval routine, and also had some good friend karma coming my way. all my plates/stickers/tags/insurance/registration/paper trail etc were in order, so it simply took waiting in line for an hour and paying the $160 Idiot Tax to restore my car to me.

c, to whom i am eternally grateful, dropped whatever she had planned for her sunday afternoon to drive me to the tow lot, waited with me in the grimiest cold drafty smelly sorry excuse of a towing office to get my car back, and then took me to brunch afterwards to cheer me up. friends are good.

if the city would just use my Idiot Tax to pave ONE POTHOLE in lake shore drive, i wouldn't mind so terribly much.

Labels: friends, idiot tax

there is a world in which common math equations aren't just numbers, they have a physical manifestation and even a poetic nature. i am not one of those people who looks at numbers and sees anything besides the raw data. i can't see down the path, into the dimensions, around the corners. but i love that there are minds that do work this way.

thus, solitude is derived by the expression: x²yz +xy²+y³+y³z=x²z², and twilight is described by: (z³-2)² +(x²+y²-3)³ =0

Labels: art, math

Worst. Way. To Wake Up. Ever:

last night, 20 minutes after i fell asleep, my cat attacked my head. he gave no warning, was completely unprovoked, and it was no rough-play, it was vicious. it was a strike and retreat (he didn't sink his teeth in and hang on or anything), but he left claw marks on my scalp and a pair of puncture wounds on my forehead. i have a pair of fang marks on my forehead. i look like a vampire has been nibbling on me. it's gross. also, cat bites are notorious for getting infected, so despite washing the wound with soap and water and antibiotic anointment, in the morning i called the weekend answering service for my doctor's office. the nurse on duty, upon hearing the words "cat bite" promptly paged the on-call doctor who recommended a course of antibiotics.

needless to say, the cat and i are not friends this morning. he was grouchy about being locked out of my bedroom for the remainder of the night, i was grouchy about the fact that i have a pair of fang marks on my forehead. also, the sheer adrenaline rush brought on by being attacked in my sleep (not to mention the betrayal of being attacked by a cat i've owned and (mostly) trusted for seven years) kept me awake for another hour and a half, leaving me a cool 4 hours of sleep before i had to go back to work.

will this be funny at some point? i kinda hope so. it's not right now.

a handy list of the various reasons that cats are aggressive towards people.

Labels: zeke

the GOP primary field in Buffy villains

Labels: politics

happy new year!

here at slithy tove we are starting the new year off with a new marathon training plan. i've been in tech this week (ie, at work A LOT) and in spare moments at my desk have put together a training plan that is...ambitious, to say the least. in the process, i'm tackling a number of 101 tasks (fear not! the 101 in 1001 project has not been abandoned; the blog page is just waiting to be retooled). i've been training in aikido for the past 12 months now, so i think we can consider that task checked off. next up is passing my 5th kyu exam in april. so aikido is going to be the main source of cross training for the first part of the spring, switching the focus back to running just in time for the warmer weather and peak marathon training. all of which is leading up to the stockholm marathon on may 31.

all this training means that it's a good time to focus on eating better, so we're starting the month of january off with a couple of food-related tasks:11. go complete veggie for a month, and 37. keep a food journal for 40 days. and, since i've decided to devote this month to being more conscious about why and what i eat, i'm reading a couple of the books that have been in my to-read stack for a while: the omnivore's dilemma and animal vegetable miracle

how are you starting 2008, internets?

Labels: 101 in 1001

so there were a lot of half-finished posts that fell by the wayside, and treading water backwards is not worth the effort. so we'll summarized the busy past couple of weeks with an installment of come here/go away and then move on to thoughts of 2008.

come here: dr. atomic. H and i caught this at the lyric the week before christmas. i have almost no experience with opera, so the whole process was impressive - the grandiose opera house, the scale on which everything is done. however, sitting still for a three hour anything is not really my specialty, and i found myself getting antsy during the first act (okay, i get it: it's the night before you test the first a-bomb and you don't know if you've invented something that will ignited the atmosphere and kill us all. an intriguing question but not really three hours' worth of plot, and i've seen the same material treated much better by the excellent Carson Kreitzer). that is, until i reminded myself that plot isn't the point of opera. the audience is meant to sit back, listen to the music, look at the big pretty stage pictures and just be. as a sometimes-play-goer, full-time-play-maker, i'm used to being very actively engaged in a production. it took me a while to realize that i needed to actually disengage a bit in order to fully appreciate the experience, but once i did, it was lovely. still, it's sad that my total lack of musical talent/education means that there were probably many levels on which i failed to fully appreciate the work. it did look pretty, tho.

go away: aimee mann holiday spectacular. it pains me to have to give aimee mann a "go away" because i totally dig her, and her band sounded really great live. a "holiday spectacular" however, is not a concert. there was too much standup riffing with guests who are probably people i'd know if i had cable or ever watched tv but who really weren't that funny, and guest spots for off-beat musician friends who were quirky but totally NOT AIMEE MANN. also: aimee mann fans are OLD. and suburban. when did aimee mann stop being hip? maybe i was just feeling curmudgeonly that night. still, the ticket was free, courtesy of my roommate who works at the concert house, so i should really shut up and stop complaining now.

come here: sweeney todd. i'm pretty emphatically not into musical theatre and so i didn't know sweeny todd particularly well. the sondheim purists i saw the movie with objected to some of the changes (songs deleted/rearranged, mr. todd's part transposed from a baritone to a tenor for the tender vocal cords of johnny depp), but i totally dug it. the production design was so excellent, tim burton just keeps getting better.

come here: christmas with the family. it snowed and snowed and snowed, and provided for skiing and snowshoeing in the meadow, and there was a cute baby (my brother's wife's sister's baby, which we decided still makes him my nephew, for simplicity's sake). i cooked christmas dinner (turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, sweet potatoes, salad, and chocolate chip oatmeal cookies - everything from scratch) without any major disasters (with the help of a rotating cadre of sous chefs, it must be noted, some of them more helpful than others).

go away: food poisoning i got from the denver airport. for two days, i wasn't sure what my own name was. on the upside, by the time i recovered, i'd lost those pesky holiday pounds and started the whole eating-well-in-the-new-year with a fast. food poisoning and breakups are the most effective weight-loss tools i know.

come here: visits with old friends. had the nicest visit with A's parents when i was in boise last week, the odd circumstances of our relationship notwithstanding. i hadn't heard news of any of his siblings in more than a year, so catching up with the doings of the family was nice, and they are such gracious, lovely people that we navigated around the obvious social land mines without trouble. why do i bother to keep up with my former in-laws? i'm honestly not sure. i don't do it out of a desire to maintain any sort of connection between me and my ex. if anything, it's because in the past year i've learned to appreciate the myriad of forms that interpersonal relationships can inhabit, the blurred distinction between family and friends. there's no substitute for having good people in my life, and cutting people off out of a sense of injured pride brings a hollow sort of satisfaction.

when i got back home a number of college friends passed through the windy city, including the lovely wabes and entourage, also p & j, and db. (ha! nicknames and initials for everyone!). catching up was good.

come here: good jobs & engagements & baby news. lots of friends with news this holiday season. it's all happening to the right people and i couldn't be happier for all of them.

go away: cold cold cold! as i write this, the windchill is -6. this is the cold when homeless people freeze and poor people can't heat drafty apartments. it's no good. also, where do the wild bunny rabbits of chicago go when it gets this cold? wikipedia informed us that rabbits don't really hibernate but they sort of hibernate, but it didn't really answer the question, where do they go in the winter?

come here: chicago smoking ban! hooray! as of jan 1, the smoking ban finally goes into effect for bars. i intend to invest more time holding up a barstool at my local now that i can do it without stinking like an ashtray. i should be more sympathetic to the smokers shivering in their boots out in front of the bar, trying to hold a cigarette in mitten-clad fingers, but i'm really not. now's the time to quit! then you have more money for the other vices! our own cold turkey wonder woman inspires many.

come here: the ginger people's ginger chews. my tongue is on fire and i've eaten about half the bag while writing this. mmm, ginger candy.

Labels: relationships, running, theatre, things i hate, things i love, travel, weather

possibly the only thing more magical than a heavy blanketing snow fall late at night is waking up to 8" of deep fluffy snow under blue skies and shimmering sunlight.

it was *perfect* snow frisbee conditions, but unfortunately arrived a day too late for this week's game. still, i went running along the lake, and it was supremely beautiful.

Labels: chicago, favorite things, weather

this kind of snow - 6" deep, powdery fluffy, relentless - it delights me in a way that makes me laugh out loud like a little kid. i have knee-high wellingtons that let me stomp through the drifts, shuffling, because they are too big (i bought them, the smallest men's size i could find, at a k-mart one night after experiencing my first buffalo blizzard). the blanket of snow muffles the sounds of the city, softens all the sharp corners, hides the dirt. everything is clean, draped in graceful white curves, the little architectural details on old buildings and iron fences highlighted.

(also, coming home from work at 1am, i won the parking lottery my first trip round the block -- so that probably helped my outlook. that, and the fact that as i approached the house, i could see our christmas tree twinkling in the window, and knew the radiators would be clanking away, a sleepy cat waiting to greet me, and i have the time to sleep late tomorrow.) home is good.

Labels: chicago, favorite things, weather

the weird things i do for my job...



like driving 60 mph down the expressway in my own personal jungle...



back away from the starbucks, fake ficus tree!

Labels: work

...and i've got about 600 miles to run between now and then.

but i just sent in my registration and committed 700 SEK (about $109) to the endeavor. so i'm all in. here we go again!

Labels: marathon

moar hatching cookies

Labels: food, zeke

hullo internets! we have been away working a LOT lately...and then making up for all that work with a thanksgiving weekend of sloth and gluttony. now we are trying to get all that life/work/play back into some sort of balance in advance of the christmas storm.

today's question: preferred blogging software? while i do want cred* for the fact that i hand-coded my blog in the beginning, the truth of the matter is, blogger makes my life easy. but then i start to wonder what else is out there that i might be missing, all these years i've been together with blogger.

for example, who out there uses wordpress, and do you like it? there's an obscure widget that i'd like to use for the nike+ that is only available for wordpress. but is there something about having to pay to publish to your own domain? and also listed among their "premium" features is customizable CSS. does that mean that i'm stuck with their stock templates unless i pay a fee? their website = not so helpful, which gives me cause for concern. it might be silly for me to think of dumping blogger over one widget. like leaving the good, safe, slightly-boring boyfriend for a guy with a motorcycle and no job.**

*when i started slithy-tove, i hand-coded it because 1) i was a software engineer back then, and 2) blogger hadn't even been born yet. also, we still called them weblogs. yes, i am old.

**yeah, cause i've never made that mistake.

Labels: techie toys

so last night at a post-show reception C sez to me, "you can run 26.2 miles, but you can't spend two hours wearing heels?"

girl's got a point.

Labels: fashion, running

come here, puns on fondue. daily candy was pimping the fondude today. i'm willing to forgive daily candy all its "math-is-hard Barbie" take on today's modern gal, just for today, just for this. (fondue? i say, fon-don't!)*

go away, co-worker who left a hammer on top of a ladder. i came back to what i had been doing on stage, moved the ladder, and subsequently took a hammer to the forehead. a minor goose egg over my left eyebrow is all i really have to show for it, so no serious harm done, but it did hurt. first rule is, don't leave tools on ladders. second rule is, look for tools on top of ladders before you move them.

come here, halloween, oh favorite-holiday-of-mine. our party was low-key, being a wednesday night and all, but we made an effort toward costumes, and carved pumpkins, and watched scary movies, and lit the apartment with orange and black candles. and little kids still trick-or-treat on my street, though accompanied by packs of watchful parents. remember the days of tramping around the neighborhood armed with a pillowcase? you had to look out for the bully hiding behind the monster mask who'd snatch your candy and run if he had the chance, and mom always admonished you for eating the candy before she'd checked it for razorblades or other such horrors, but we were utterly free on halloween night. monsters and fairy princesses and superheros and tinfoil robots ruled the night. it seems like childhood has grown so safe.

go away, shoulder injury. my second class back to aikido after the marathon, and i tore my shoulder up. i'm waiting for it to heal...and waiting....and it's just not. sore muscles, i can take. but injuries that aren't better two weeks after they occur just make me feel, well, old.

come here, handy Select A Candidate Quiz. according to this tool, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and Chris Dobb are in a dead heat for my vote. i am least compatible with McCain.

come here, sunday brunch with pela. over the summer and fall, we have refined the sunday tradition: i wake earlish to go on a long run, then we meet for a late morning meal at one of the 43 good brunch places in our hood (no driving/public transit is key; somewhere we can both walk/bike to). eating good food after a long run is one of life's great pleasures; with friends, even better. i inhale my breakfast and have been known to eye the leftovers on pela's plate. we gossip about the men in my life, and her life, and about work and so forth. today we were at fireside, which ingratiated itself with me immediately by bringing coffee and a plate of chocolate muffins to the table before we'd even read our menus. never mind the standard restaurant breadbasket...a free plate of chocolate muffins? yes please.

go away, shin splints. the plan for late fall/winter was to back down to maintenance running - 5 miles three days a week or so, plus ultimate on the weekends (until it gets too cold to handle the frisbee), just to keep some general cardio endurance while i focus mainly on aikido, and then start a training plan for the Race to Robie Creek in the new year. but the shin splints (for which i think ultimate is the culprit) are not getting better any faster than the shoulder injury. as far as i know, there's no way to tough out shin splints: they want rest. non-running rest. there may have to be an actual vacation from running...like, where i get to know the machines at the gym again. ugg. i think i need to learn how to swim. i mean, if i fall out of a boat, i won't drown, but i need to learn how to *really* swim. for exercise, not just splashing about. are there classes for people like me?

*it is unclear to whom this pun should originally be attributed to. no one wants to take credit for it. but it still makes me giggle when p says it.

Labels: things i hate, things i love

Labels: chicago, nature

i'm not not entirely sure why, but this image scares the hell out of me.

i think it goes back to a general fear of swimming pool drains.

i found this image, btw, on a web page on which people were listing "really difficult halloween costumes". my favorites, for which i cannot take credit, were probably "Spinoza's God" and "string theory." i'm a sucker for high-concept halloween costumes. someone told me today about a two-person costume in which one person is text and the other is subtext. text guy says, "i like your hair," and subtext guy translates, "i want to know where you got it done so i can mine cut just like that." ha. no Pretty Pretty Princess costumes for me.

Labels: fears, halloween, holidays

so anyway. not much posting of late, because at slithy tove we have been busy playing chi-town tourist with lau and joe, which mostly means that there were many excuses to visit my favorite restaurants (over easy, rinaldi's, ringo, las mananitas), and no excuses for skipping beer o'clock (goose island, the map room, matilda's). now we are about five pounds heavier, but have dined well, and in good company.

friday i skipped out on work and we went apple-picking in wisconsin (hence the applePorn image in this post). a stop at the mars cheese castle was unavoidable, of course (sharp white cheddar to go with the apples...mmm). in order to gain entry into the orchard one had to purchase a bag that holds 25lbs of apples; now i am very popular with the carpenters at work since i bring in a basket of crisp apples in every day.

just wait until i bake the softer ones into apple crumble next week. those carpenters will be eating out of my hand.

Labels: chicago, food, friends

oh yeah: two more things to say about the marathon (then i'm done i swear):

1) the support from the crowds, and family and friends, was amazing. there wasn't a single city block, in all 26 miles, that didn't have some spectator on the street cheering. people turned on their garden hoses to cool us off, they set up their own informal water stations, bought bags of ice to give to overheated runners, hung signs out their windows. they gathered on street corners and sang songs, wore silly hats, cheered for runners they didn't even know by name. i love this city.

my family and friends were just as awesome. so many people called and emailed and texted me the day before the race to wish me well, or the day after the race to see if i was still alive. i have good people in my life.

2) speaking of good people in my life: we collectively raised 2274 dollars for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! which is pretty cool. more than 60 people made donations, and for months it was a constant source of inspiration for me. someone i hardly know at work just opened his wallet and handed me cash. friends-of-friends i've never even met made donations online. my sister-in-law looked up my website and sent money before i'd even begun fundraising efforts. my impoverished artist friends who don't have money to spare still sent it, because they had faith in me and generous hearts.

really, it was a win-win-win: marathon for me, support for cancer patients who need it most, and good karma for the rest of you.

Labels: marathon, running

(warning: this is long and self-indulgent. non-runners are welcome to skim).


88 degree heat + humidity = one brutal first marathon course.

we stayed on pace pretty well for the whole first half of the race, and for the 3rd quarter even we were running a pretty respectable pace. after that, it all blew up.

the first half was the way i remembered the marathon from watching it in past years: early morning sun, beautiful fall trees, crowds on the sidewalk, a sea of bobbing runners that goes on endlessly, festive atmosphere.

the second half was more like a news clip of people trying to leave new orleans after katrina. (okay, that's a little dramatic. but you get the idea). it was hot and bright out, with no shade, and the sun just seemed to blaze down on us relentlessly. just miles of pavement, industrial buildings, no trees. people were dropping like flies. we saw a guy collapse right in front of us, just outside of a water stop. callie screamed over her shoulder for a medic while several other runners stopped and got him up, but it was like his legs had turned to jello and wouldn't support him as they stagged over to the curb. there were people sitting on the sidewalks, heads hung in defeat, bags of ice pressed to their necks.

at mile 21, race officials along the course started announcing that the race had been canceled. they were out of water, out of ambulances. 300 hundred people had been sent to hospitals.

canceled? we had paused at a water station when the rumor first reached me. i burst into tears. 30 seconds ago, i was miserable, in the trenches, so far from the finish that i couldn't even see the end. but in the next moment, to have the finish line moved back, not six miles but another six hundred?

i don't wallow in despair for long, it's never been my style. a moment later, a new determination boiled up in my core, and it burned my tears of disappointment dry in no time. (besides, i had no breath to spare on crying). they can't take this away from me. not now. here was the belly-fire i needed to finish the race. it arrived in the most unlikely form (someone giving me permission to quit), but it was exactly what i needed at that moment. (extrapolate into a larger life lesson, anyone? the things we need sometimes arrive in the most unlikely packages).

you want to see determined? try telling a group of marathoners at mile 21 that they should quit. ha.

conflicting rumors and misinformation spread through the crowd of bobbing runners as we pressed forward, unclear when or if we were going to be stopped, loaded onto buses, turned around, or just what would happen. helicopters flew overhead with megaphones telling runners to stop running. police cars drove slowly up the sides of the course announcing the race was over and would everyone please walk for their own safety. we walked, we jogged, we trotted. we tried not to hurl. i was wracked with waves of hollow nausea from miles 20-24, callie bent over with stomach cramps from the heat. our legs ached, feet ached, my fair skin (sunscreen long forgotten) reddened with the passing hours. there were dark (metaphorically that is) moments when it hurt and it was emphatically not fun, not even in that grueling i'm-a-tough-i'm-a-runner sort of way. there were miles that just really sucked.

that final trek up south michigan avenue seemed to take a hundred years, the city skyline beckoning us all home to grant park where we'd begun hours earlier. the first few miles of the race seemed to have taken place on another day, in another life time. we came home changed; something happened out there on the pavement that brought us back to grant park different people. when we came around the corner and into the final stretch, i remembered the passing advice i'd gotten from an ultra runner i met on the trails earlier this year. she had told me, finishing your first marathon is the best feeling in the world. that last mile just soak it all in, the crowds, the accomplishment. you'll never get to experience that again.

she was right.

so we finished with a time of five hours and fifteen minutes. it never entered into my head that i'd run a five+ hour marathon. because it was my first, and the day was warm, we were aiming for a pace of 4:15, and really, i think (thought) that i'm capable of a four-hour marathon. maybe not yet, but i will get there. i have a four-hour in me. so i wouldn't say i conquered the marathon so much as it ate me for breakfast, but i'm proud of having finished, even when i was given plenty of opportunity, a perfectly good excuse, to quit.

paradoxically, twenty minutes after completing the most hellish five hours i've ever run, callie and i were seated in the grass, in the shade, stretching and nibbling on fig newtons and discussing which marathon we should do next year: chicago? montana? big sur?

it's not over between us, chicago marathon. you and me have got unfinished business.

Labels: marathon, running

657 miles
$2249 dollars
9 months & 7 days

today is my half-birthday; i am kicking off the year of turning 30 with a marathon.

they say that when you cross that finish line, it will change your life forever. how will it change me? how am i already changed?

bring it on, 26.2

Labels: marathon, running

the secret, underground city that lives beneath winnemac avenue

the bug that was terrorizing my roommate when i got home last night.

Labels: chicago

while this topic is nothing new, it never really gets old (for me, anyway): the random shit i get to shop/purchase at my job. today's favorite thing that came in the mail was the Museum Replicas Ltd catalog, featuring, among other things, renaissance eating utensils, packaged in a convenient leather pouch, "for the reenactor on the go!"

is ren faire-hopping really so stressful an activity? really?



now i am ordering 3 gallons of stage blood.

Labels: work

although i work on a college campus, i don't interact with the actual campus all that often - my theatre is located on the northern edge, i drive in, i work, i leave - and most of my interaction with "the university" is in adapting my department's purchasing and payroll systems so they'll interface with the university's bookkeeping behemoth. this evening during dinner break i took a walk across campus to get a book from the library. it was twilight, a warm, late-summer evening. all the undergrads are back on campus but there's no homework or classes yet, so the students were out in full force: dressed in board shorts and halter tops that will soon be rendered obsolete, groups of freshman moving swiftly across campus in packs of three and four, talking about home, about which AP exams they took, about picking a major. circles of kids throwing a frisbee while a perky RA tries to get them to learn each other's names, bands playing in the dormitory courtyard, party-cup holding guys bobbing their heads and casting sideways glances at the girl from down the hall. the hush of the long winter, and classes, will descend soon enough; for tonight everything under the full moon is new.

by contrast, the library was eerily vacant, only a few grad students lurking in their carrels. i dearly love the muted hush of dimly-let library stacks. but i find going into a new library for the first time to be terribly intimidating; will i know where the stacks are? will there be a map showing what floor my call number is on? is that computer the catalog or the internet kiosk or both? where ARE the stairs to the 4th floor? what if the book i want just isn't there? will i have to talk to a mean old librarian or will i get a bored grad student? will i look dumb? (am i the only one with library insecurities? probably).

the year after i graduated i found excuses/cause to sneak back into the libraries at stanford, (handing over my deactivated student ID card and explaining to the student at the desk that it wasn't working because of the wrinkle in the magnetic strip and could they please just buzz me thru) but after that first year i detached somewhat from the world of the research library and suddenly i find myself, seven years out of academia, holder of a chicago public library card that i use but rarely.* still, i find that negotiating the main campus library required the same sort of zen flow that one uses when navigating a huge foreign transportation hub like the main tokyo rail station or heathrow airport; if you just move with the flow of traffic, and don't stop to think too hard about where you came from and where you're trying to get to, it usually works out right, even if you can't read the kanji. i drilled down: the right floor, the right stack, the right call number, and there was my book; three english translations to choose from plus several in the original czech. as i was puzzling over translation a tinny old school bell rang to signify closing time; i selected one at random and flowed back down to the main floor. at the circulation desk a bored student looked up at me, took my book, my staff id card, scanned both and handed them to me: "due back january 20th." (january 20th? not a lot of demand for early 20th century czech sci fi, i guess.) book in hand, task succesfully navigated, i still felt vaguely like an imposter, like someone would notice i didn't belong, that the "staff" label on my ID card clearly excludes me from the legitimate pool of students and faculty who of course know their way around a library. i'm a janitor. the lunch lady. hospital intake coordinator. production coordinator for an obscure university subsidiary arts organization. still, the old rule seemed to hold true: if i just *look* like i know where i'm going, no one ever stops to question me. it's a rule i apply in the rest of my life and career, unconsciously as much as anything. people often comment on how in-control and on top of things i seem. really? seriously? wow. that's great. risky for you, good for me.

*i like paperback editions i can dog-ear ruthlessly, not to mention carry in my bag without undue weight of hard covers. also, i love the aesthetic of the shiny cover art, clean modern fonts, spines i can bend or break till they lay flat on the breakfast table.

Labels: books, waxing poetic, work

i ran twenty miles yesterday!

marathon, i am ready for you.

go see this: http://www.marathonmovie.com/home.html

Labels: running

i got pig trotters because they still have the flesh on them and they look like little boys' arms.

well, then we won't use cat vomit for the blood.

but is it BAD to breath neon gas?

is 'banana guard' an euphemism for something i should know about?

do me a favor and call me if you think she's going to call me about anything.

as long as it doesn't catch on fire like it did in philadelphia, that's alright.

Labels: work

okay, so i had an early dentist appointment and no time for breakfast this morning. i threw some blueberries into a tupperware and brought them with me, and when i got to work bought a yogurt from the museum cafe next door. since there was only one brand of yogurt i didn't bother to look at it too closely, just selected peach and paid for it. i stirred in my blueberries, took a bite and...that nasty whiff of sucralose crawled up the back of my tongue and settled, preventing me from tasting anything else. gross! creamy sucralose with a hint of peaches. i turned over the package and read, "dannon light and fit: o grams fat, 0 grams added sugar, 60 calories." what the hell! so this is just orange goo that will pass through my system without actually nourishing me? i'm eating this because i'm hungry. i actually WANT to consume calories.

i hate diet foods.

plus, now i've just finished my snack and i'm still hungry, since i mostly just consumed a handful of blueberries dressed with a mystery substance that resembled yogurt.

do artificial sweeteners taste this bad to everyone? maybe i'm just hyper-sensitive, like i am to fluorescent light, caffeine, and other people's emotions. i'm a delicate desert flower, people.

Labels: frankenfoods, rants

this is why it's hard to find your friends on the starting line.