mudrace

{04 March 2010}

saturday’s half marathon in the Santa Cruz mountains was a mushy, muddy affair. the saving grace (for the running shoes, anyway) is that after i stepped ankle-deep into squelchy mud near the top of the ridge, it poured down rain most of the way down, washing off the worst of the dirt. we finished in 2 hours 8 minutes, which is a pretty good time considering that there were 1880 vertical feet to climb and then descend, but i suspect that the course was mismeasured (to our advantage). i finished 36th of 71 women.

my running life is a million miles away* from what it was in chicago: the chicago marathon, with a field of 30,000 runners and its hot, flat, urban course lined with a hundred thousand cheering spectators. out here in cali, the running conditions are far more scenic, but also a lot more solitary. plenty of people go out running in search of solitude, but not me. i miss my running companions from chicago. saturday’s race brought me full circle in my running life, since i met up with callie to run, my very first running partner. i’ve known callie since the second day of 9th grade. we ran together on our high school track and cross country teams, and 14 years later we ran our first chicago marathon together. three years later our professional lives have taken us both to the west coast, and adventure running. someday, i’m going to tackle this race. and if anyone is batshit crazy enough to come along with me, i’m pretty sure it’s callie.

*well, about 2133, to be exact.

pillow fight club

{15 February 2010}


photo credit: M.Reyes

nothing says “i love you” like a flash mob valentine’s day pillow fight. as my friend adam put it, i live in a very special place. as mob scenes go, it was the most congenial crush of people i’ve ever been in — in spite of the fact that everyone was smacking the holy heck out of one another with feather pillows. in true san francisco hippy style, the organizers requested that only natural fiber-pillow be used, so that no nasty synthetic materials would get washed into the bay.

the lessons i learned about flash mob pillow fights were as follows:

1) it’s a pretty adorable valentine’s day date option.
2) the handkerchiefs and face masks people were wearing weren’t out of fear of swine flu — they were to keep from inhaling feathers. which i did. and coughed for the next 20 minutes.
3) dressing up in costume pretty much guarantees that people will team up and whale on you. dressing up in a giant pillow costume means that you won’t have free arms to defend yourself.
4) telling a total stranger – “look! over there!” and then smacking him with a pillow when he looks away isn’t poor sportsmanship, it’s brilliant strategy.


pillow fight 2010

weaving safety nets of compassion

{31 January 2010}

“Have compassion for everyone you meet even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit, bad manners,or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.” –Miller Williams

it’s been raining and raining and raining in california this week – there was a ten day period where we got something like nine inches of rain. it made me grumpy, and reluctant to run, reluctant to get up, generally reluctant. i’m a sun girl. but mostly it made me grumpy when the basement portion (ie, the bedroom) of my apartment flooded. since monday it’s been an adventure of mildewy moldy carpet, loud roaring dehumidifiers (and grumpy neighbors), muddy-footed contractors, and a lot of head-scratching. fingers were pointed at the water heater*, but really i think the foundation is cracked and groundwater somehow managed to well in. a LOT of ground water.

none of my stuff was ruined (clever of me to put all my furniture with legs in the basement room, wasn’t it?), so it was mostly just a week (and another week coming up) of hassle and inconvenience, treking back and forth from B’s place, living largely out of my car, looking a little disheveled, dressing in whichever t-shirt and jeans were cleanest and most readily at hand.

the handyman finally agreed, on day 6, that the carpet really was ruined, and pulled it out and promised to replace it with hardwood floors next week. the landlord agreed to adjust my rent. B has put up with all my whining with amazing patience and my arriving at his place after midnight, like a storm cloud. zeke is lonely, stuck at home where i can’t sleep. i go home to pet him for 20 minutes at at time, till the smell of mold and/or cold from having the windows open chases me back out.

anyway, the point of this post actually is that once again, life has a way of putting things in perspective. my car just looks like i’m homeless**. i’m not actually. i have lots of options, lots of safety nets still available to me. i sometimes think about how the difference between me and someone on the street or living in a shelter isn’t as much as it seems. it’s two things: one big (or a series of smaller) life-disasters, and a safety net. that’s the difference: the safety net. i have a community of family and friends who will pick me up and dust me off when disaster (even minor ones) strike. it’s the people who don’t have safety nets that end up in trouble. the disasters may be minor — flooded apartment, lost job, unexpected illness. but bouncing back from them, when you have no one to fall back on, sometimes becomes impossible.

i’ve been volunteering at the SF foodbank once a month and it’s a reminder to me to appreciate that i have a safety net. and more than that, to appreciate the generosity of the people who make a place like the foodbank run. they are creating a safety net for complete strangers. services like free meals*** help close the gap between minor disaster and life-derailing disaster. we all need safety nets. but it takes an act of compassion to create safety nets for total strangers.

*which, as it turned out, was nurturing a little farm of mushrooms under its warm damp belly. i knew there was a reason i opened the water heater closet on the first day i arrived, looked at that unfinished, spider-inhabited dark corner and slammed it again in horror.

**backseat contains: oranges, box of wheat thins, duffle bag of tshirts and jeans, shirts and slacks hung on hangers, running shoe and a pair of heels. necklace and earrings hanging from the review mirror, extra sweatshirt, coat, hat, gloves, newspaper and unread mail in the front seat, iphone charger dangling from the cigarette lighter, wrappers from starbucks commuting breakfasts on the floor in the back, running clothes and aikido gi and laptop in the trunk…

***South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer dug himself an impressive hole last week comparing hungry people with stray animals. his lack of understanding about the interconnectedness of community (ie, we all sink or we all swim) betrays him to be the worst possible kind of person to be holding public office. but what i find chilling is how it betrayed his complete lack of compassion.

{29 January 2010}

another one down: Pasadena Playhouse closes its doors.

i know this is just the human brain’s tendency to find pattern and order where none actually exist, but i find that events tend to balance themselves:

had a CRAPPY-ASS week at work — only had one day off in the past three weeks, working with a bad headcold (which is keeping me from running, making me far more cranky and unfit to deal with work stress). stayed at work till midnight on Thursday running numbers only to get to work early on Friday to discover that the boss wanted other numbers. this after two weeks of staying till midnight during tech. so yeah, kinda hating work (and the way it gobbles up my life) this week, making those flip remarks about “why didn’t I go to law school!?”

then another theatre goes down, and i feel grateful to have a job at a company that isn’t teetering on the verge of financial collapse. fiscal responsibility is EVERYTHING. take note, young not-for-profit theatres. the art will cease to matter if you can’t make payroll.

is this thinning of the herd a good thing, though? will we emerge from economic strife with leaner meaner more economically viable theatres? i want to believe that, that we’ll all learn a lesson about fiscal responsibility*, but i think the tough love approach is too simplistic in this application. when the economy tanks, art suffers.

*it’s spectacular, how long it takes to dig a theatre out of financial ruin vs. how quickly one can sink a theatre into unmanageable debt.

bread baking face-off

{26 January 2010}

got through the usual january tech crunch only to arrive at my first day off with a yucky head cold; i suspect this is my punishment for jogging past a clinic in berkeley yesterday where a cheerful guy offered us free flu shots, which we declined.

so big day-off hiking plans were derailed by a combination of the NEVERENDINGRAIN plus body aches, so it was a good day to stay in and continue my bread-baking education. i moved on to the King Arthur Flour recipe, the one that calls for making a bucket of dough that just lives in the fridge until you are ready to bake a portion of it.

the first loaf (dough made Saturday, loaf baked Sunday) came out tasty, a little denser than the NYTimes recipe from last week, and slightly underdone. (not that that stopped us from consuming it in a single day, mind you). i think my oven was a little hot; the top was browning before the inside was fully cooked. the next attempt is a pair of stubby baguettes (baby-baguettes = baguette-ettes?). lacking a pizza stone, i’m convinced by my beginner’s luck that using a ceramic baking dish is the key to a successful loaf; therefore i’m limited to loaf shapes that will fit into a 10″ round casserole dish. this dough is also drier (i’m sure there’s a more bread-specific technical term than “dry”) than the NYTimes recipe; it makes for easier handling but uglier loaves since the folds and creases aren’t quite as forgiving. to wit: one of the baby baguette grew a lump off one side while in the oven. how to prevent this? i have no idea.

thus far i’ve only worked with no-knead recipes for simplicity; and based on my knowledge of quick breads, i’ve been reluctant to handle the dough any more than absolutely necessary. though now that i think about that, that makes no sense at all, since over-mixing quick bread batters leads to the formation of gluten, and gluten is the cornerstone of leaven bread technology. anyway, maybe i should try a recipe that does involve kneading next, so that i can get in there with my hands and work the shape of the dough without concern that i’ll wreck it or make it tough.

thus far, the winner?

for taste: NYTimes. bigger bubbles, a satisfying chewiness, delicous crunchy outside.

for convenience: King Arthur Flour. two hours of rising time (vs 14-20 required by NYTimes) means less time that i have to construct a bread-rising shelf over my radiator, less time i need to stay home and tend the bread. plus the convenience of pulling it from the fridge and baking at any time in the next two weeks. (like fresh bread would last in my house for two weeks. ha ha).

art by the numbers

{11 January 2010}

this is probably the wisest and most succinct summary of my job that i’ve heard in a long time:

“We have three variables which are finite, and none are personal. Time, Money, Labor. It’s all just an algebraic equation from there.

How well these are applied to an artistic, flexible, emotional outcome is the art of the production manager.” – M. Botosan

sometimes i LOVE my professional network.

101 in 1001: [no. 09] learn to bake bread

{}


and then there was bread!


i made a few misguided attempts at bread a few years ago, but the result was always something dense and, while not actually inedible, not really appetizing either. what troubles me is that i’m not entirely sure what i did differently on this time around, other than following the directions very carefully. baking is science, people. respect the science.

the recipe, courtesy of kidchamp, is here. it really is pretty fool proof. now i’m excited about trying out this recipe that a friend sent me. it’s basically a bucket of dough that lives in your fridge and you can pull out a chunk, let it rise for an hour, bake it, and instant fresh bread. awesome.

relationship test no. 5: on competitive natures

{09 January 2010}

1. we go to a bar. over beers, we play checkers. he kicks my ass. i feel foolish, and then all the more so for feeling competitive over checkers.

2. we go home, play scrabble. i kick his ass. the night is redeemed.

—

the next morning we completed an analysis of each game – i dislike games like checkers or chess because they start with a completely level playing field – there’s no element of chance. so if i lose (which i invariably do), there’s no one/nothing to blame but my own ineptitude. in a game like scrabble, which relies upon skill but also includes the element of chance, the field is wide open. it’s more like life. you need to be good at it (whatever that means to you) to succeed, but there’s also a healthy dose of luck and everything depends on what you do with what you’re dealt. life isn’t fair, why should our games be?