Author Archives: admin

{30 August 2007}

this post was supposed to be about what a crappy day i had today – i left my coffee on the table and remembered too late to go back, then my ipod died, i got a flat tire on the way to work, had to spend $9 to park downtown for a 5-minute dentist appointment. on the way north i hit horrific traffic and was late for my staff meeting at bmg, the parking meter was broken and ate all my quarters, there was no parking on my street when i got home. my new invisaline appliance made my teeth hurt.* i could go on.

then things were put in perspective for me when a friend of mine learned that her father passed away earlier today. it wasn’t sudden or unexpected, but i don’t think that prepares anyone, really, for losing a parent. i’m fortunate not to really know what it must feel like, i can only try to imagine.

bad days happen. but family is the thing that gets you thru those bad days, and i’m taking this moment to be grateful for mine, in all its changing forms.

*altho my 16-year old braces-clad self can’t believe this, i’m actually voluntarily submitting to have my lower teeth straightened (which, in the post-braces years, have drifted a bit crooked again). at least braces have gotten a lot better since the 80’s. no hideous metal brackets or anything, now it’s just a clear plastic mold i wear over my teeth.

chicago distance classic

{12 August 2007}

today, i kick ass.

last week the ass kicked me, or something.

we’ll start with today: i ran the chicago distance classic half marathon. my time was 1:56:49. i’m pretty ecstatic to have run a sub-2-hour half. last year my time in the chicago half marathon was 2:11:01. which means that i took FOURTEEN minutes off my time. i rule.

rankings:
2513th overall (of 8720)
723rd of women (of 4461)
200th of my division (women 25-29) (of 1175)

as for last week, i ran my first 16-miler. i was doing it alone, along the lake front, which isn’t terribly inspiring. 16 miles is a long way to go by yourself – i get bored. and hot. anyway, i was really dragging the last four miles. my heart and lungs felt great – i could go along at a 10-min mile indefinitely – but my legs just started to ache, and then turn to jello. the inspiration off running a new long distance apparently just wasn’t enough.

for months i’ve been saying (truthfully) that i can’t really even comprehend how long a marathon is. i just can’t wrap my brain around the thought of 26 miles. so i’ve been not thinking about it too much and just slogging thru the miles, doing my prescribed training. for some reason, 16 was the magic mark. last sunday i stared the marathon in the face. and you know what? it scared the hell out of me. at the end of 16 i was dragging my ass in…how am i going to do TEN MORE miles above that? the answer is, i don’t know…so i’ll just go back to putting my head down and slogging thru the week’s miles, and hope that when i next look down that road, it’ll somehow seem more possible.

on the upside, for my 18-miler in two weeks, i’ve decided to do this 30k race. nothing like some redwood forest trails to distract one from the pain.

fire dancing

{04 August 2007}

catch up installment of come here, go away

{03 August 2007}

1. come here, vacation in idaho
the schedule was thus: wake up with the sun, 7 or whenever. go for a run on forest trails or logging roads. see some deer or other wildlife. come back, shower, breakfast. spend the morning reading or doing chores around the cabin, or sitting on the back porch with my ibook and wireless internet. forest, meet internet. internet, meet forest. maybe nap. late lunch, then bike into town. swim in the lake, then go to the grocery store and plan the evening’s meal. cook dinner with family and friends. spend the evening throwing a frisbee on the golf course, walking the dog in the meadow, watching movies, playing speed scrabble with my brother and sister-in-law.

2. go away, coming back from idaho
my boss is off getting married so that means that i get to be the boss for a while. it turns out his work suits me. what doesn’t suit me is doing his job and mine. where’d my summer go?

3. come here, veronica mars
season one has hijacked all of the time i would have otherwise spent reading books/sleeping in the past couple of weeks. curse lau for loaning me the complete first season! i finished it last night, but it turns out she sent me home with season two, also, so i’m not out of the woods yet. the fact that i know the series was abruptly canceled at the end of season three, however, makes me sad even as i invest in the first season. WB dramas, i love you.

4. come here, pandora
how did i not know about www.pandora.com until now? i’d vaguely heard of it before, but never really bothered to try it out till this week. i heart it.

5. come here, ultimate frisbee
i have a new love. take that, track workout! i’ve begun counting ultimate frisbee as speedwork for marathon training. we play saturday mornings, which means that i have to do my long run alone on sundays, but i don’t care.

6. go away, stinky hot weather.
i get home from running at 7am and i literally can’t stop sweating for the first 15 minutes or so. my body has become a sieve.

7. come here, 400 mile merit badge!
last week i ran my 400th mile since marathon training started. this is peak mileage month; if all goes well and i stay healthy/uninjured, i should hit 500 by the 25th or so.

8. go away, repetitive stress injuries
tendonitis and soft tissue strains and stress fractures are circling one another warily, growling low in their throats. on the upside, i got to see an x-ray of my foot (and no stress fracture after all!). there’s something fascinating about seeing a picture of one’s own bones. like, that isn’t just a black and white picture of foot bones on the screen, a theoretical image of what feet look like, those are mine. that’s me.

9. come here, awesome car-free weekend:
date with a cute boy on friday (i beat him at darts! turns out drinking beer actually IMPROVES my aim). ultimate frisbee on saturday followed by a double at ye olde corporate theatre gig. pick up organic veggie farm share with the first sweet corn of the season. sunday morning an easy 10-miler, followed by brunch at Over Easy with an old college friend. afternoon margaritas and chips and salsa with A and J, then 500 clowns‘ 365 project. finished the evening watching poi fire dancing at foster street beach – take out sushi and smuggled-in PBRs and crazy hippy drum circle, while the full moon rose over the still black lake. kept the car parked and rode my bike all over all weekend, and as a karmic reward, enjoyed excellent public transit timing every time i looked for a bus/train.

10. come here, popularity dialer
.

vacation adventures

{15 July 2007}


my brother, sister-in-law and i swam out to shellworth island today to find a geocache. none of us are particularly strong swimmers, but we’re all reasonably fit, so tho it took us a while, it was a pretty manageable swim. the scariest part was just making sure we were visible enough in the water that the speed boats and jetskis wouldn’t run us over. once we got to the island it only took us a few minutes to find the geocache. we explored the island a bit, hiked over to the other side, and took a few silly pictures. (T and i made my brother pose as the crazy hermit of the island.). then we swam back. felt like good exercise to stretch the body and soothe tired muscles from yesterday’s run, but not terribly high-intensity exercise. i’ve never been a good enough swimmer to make it work as cardio exercise.


mostly, by the time we made it back to the car we were just pleased with ourselves for a successful adventure in which the geocache was found, hiking shoes were transported to and from shore without getting wet, and the camera, GPS device and car keys stayed dry and afloat in our improvised mayonnaise-jar drybox. it seems we were something of a spectacle in the water, three swimmers crossing half of payette lake, and no less than 4 boats or jetskis pulled up along side to offer us a ride to shore or ask if our boat had sunk. “we’re just going for a swim!” we’d call back. they would look quizzically at us and then repeat their offer, “but do you need a ride to shore?” an eight-year-old girl leaned out of her father’s boat and asked us, “but why?” T called back “oh, just for fun!” the little girl processed this for a bit, looking at us as though we’d suggested that keeping rattlesnakes as pets would be a fun idea, and then admonished us, “okay, well, be careful!” it’s really more of a water-skier’s sort of lake, i guess.

indiana never wore impractical shoes

{06 July 2007}

it is a curious punishment for me that my physical therapist and running coach have come up with: they have prescribed wearing shoes with high heels whenever i’m not actually out running. (they’re not just doing this to mock me and my fondness for butch shoes — it’s supposed to ease the chronic achilles tendonitis i have been struggling with for the past two months). those of you who know me, and know what a tomboy i am, particularly when it comes to matters of fashion, will realize how funny this is that, in the pursuit of the marathon, i end up with my toes pinched into a pair of high heels. the upshot of this, plus the fact that i misplaced all of my shorts* means that i’ve suddenly been wearing a lot of dresses and skirts since the weather warmed up. it’s interesting. i move very differently when i’m wearing heels. i feel girly and a little precious. i feel a little like something that should be admired from afar (perhaps on a shelf of collectibles) but not very hearty. other women i know tromp along in heels without a second thought, looking both sexy AND functional. this is just a piece of fashion education that escaped me, somehow. all those years when the other girls were reading Seventeen and gossiping about boys, i assume they must have also been developing the poise, balance and calf muscles needed to wear high heels, marching back and forth in someone’s parents’ basement rec room with a book balanced on their heads. during those formative years i was spending much of my time programming an ancient UNIX mainframe with my posse of nerdy boys, or running barefoot and a little wild in the idaho desert on archeological digs, studying to become the next indiana jones. indiana never wore impractical shoes, you see.

* when summer finally rolled around and i did the bi-annual rearranging of clothing in my closet, i pushed the wool sweaters and fleece-lined jeans to the back and went to pull out my box of shorts…and discovered they were all gone. i apparently either 1) mistakenly gave them to goodwill with my last closet purge, or 2) accidentally gave them to my ex-boyfriend when i packed all his shit for him last fall. and since he has rebuffed recent attempts on my part to reopen any sort of friendly dialogue (even about pants), i can’t exactly ask for them back. it’s quite a blow to the wardrobe to lose an entire category of clothing.

five by five

{05 July 2007}

1: was spell checking an email on gmail this morning. “Islamist” was not in the dictionary. google suggested “slimiest” instead. hmm. google should perhaps work on their cultural sensitivity.

2: my cat loves to lick ice. weird, huh? my physical therapist has me making these ice pops, if you will, to treat the tendinitis in my achilles tendon. you fill a paper cup up with water, freeze it, then tear the top half of the cup off so you have what is a large ice cube with a paper handle on half of it for rubbing down the injured tendon. anyway, i set the ice pop down on a towel on the floor last night, meaning to go throw it away in a moment, and the cat came over, sniffed, and spent the next 20 minutes unable to stop licking it. he’d look at me, meow, get up and walk around it, and then go right back to licking it. i know it’s hot in the apartment, but it’s not like i’ve been denying him fresh water or anything. weird cat.

3: marathon milestones: last week i ran my 300th mile of the year, and also passed the 100-days-till-the-marathon date. the training is going well (much of my blogging energy is being spent on the training log lately, hence the large gaps between regular posts on this page), aside from the achilles tendinitis, and the occasional attack of boredom/lack of motivation. fundraising is on track (donate! it’s good karma!). it’s a little alarming that my thighs are visibly bigger (at least, to me) than they were when i started this project (no one runs a marathon to get BIGGER around), but overall i’m feeling very fit and healthy, so the increase in muscle mass is just something that comes with the territory i guess.

4: sandbox theatre project takes on suzan-lori park’s 365 plays/365 days project this weekend. it’s the guerrilla theatre my performance and politics prof in college always talked about! there’ll be an actor in a dumpster! the audience meets on a street corner and follows the performers around to the alley behind JP’s apartment! the neighbors just might call the cops on us at any moment! for anyone actually in chicago who reads this blog (is there anyone? perhaps), meet at the corner of wolcott and montrose at 8pm friday or saturday night. it’s 20 minutes long, free, and there will be beer afterwards.

5: last week i discovered the wonder that is mitsuwa, the best japanese market i’ve been in since leaving japan. shopping at mitsuwa is possibly reason enough to venture out of the comforting verticality of chicago’s urban landscape and into the flat wild prairies of the burbs. but just barely. throw in a trip to the nearby IKEA and i’ll take the plunge. city snob that i am.

summer cocktail recipe

{01 July 2007}

+ up at 6am, run 12 miles with my marathon training group
+ bike home, stopping for a bagel, to be eaten with the rest of my indulgent post-run breakfast, on the sun porch, coffee and new york times at hand
+ shower, ice my achilles tendonitis, do some paperwork for the play we are rehearsing today
+ rehearse said play all afternoon. it’s sunny out, 75 degrees, we are rehearsing on the back alley/porches of JP’s apartment building. it’s not exactly spending the afternoon in the park, but we are at least outside in the fresh air, and doing interesting work with awesome, creative people.
+ bike home through leafy, tree-lined ravenswood, stopping to pick up my organic vegetable share from a neighbor’s yard. bountiful lettuce and huge leafy stalks of kale, courgettes and cucumbers the diameter of baseball bats, spring onions streaked green and purple, fragrant tarragon, radishes, turnips, and beets still caked with mud from the field, crowns of broccoli and cauliflower wrapped in their own leaves.
+ put away the veggies, make a sandwich, then head right back out for a show call at BMG.
+ after the show, bike home through the madness that is wrigleyville on a saturday night, in summer, cubs game just letting out. feel smart about being on a bike, sailing thru stopped traffic and past buses inching thru the crowds.
+ when i get home, the last of the evenings fireflies are still hovering about the yard. the moon is full. my roommate is making french fries. we watch west wing.

following those ingredients, mix together:

+ 1 part gin
+ 1 part 100% cranberry juice
+ 2 parts ginger ale
+ 1/3 cup frozen berries (in place of ice)
+ squeeze of fresh lime

life is good here.
this is why i am not moving to utah.