i have a degree in this.

{26 October 2009}

one of the stranger emails i’ve had occasion to write to my co-workers:

Ladies of the MTC Staff —

Please save and bring in your empty tampon boxes so that Seren can assemble them into a prop. (In the 3rd act in BOOM, Jo walls off her “territory” of the set by building a wall of tampon boxes). It’s better not to flatten the box if possible. There’ll be a box in my office where you can drop them off. A variety of brands is desirable, which is why we’re collecting actual boxes instead of mocking up fakes. We need them by the end of this week.

Thanks!

J

best response so far:

it takes a village to build a play. apparently, a village of menstruating women.

directing my ire at Salt Lake City for no particular reason

{24 October 2009}

on the phone with B tonight, who is in Washington for the week, and we got to talking about city planning, the ways that major US cities conform (Chicago, DC) or refuse to conform (Boston) to a cartesian grid. generally, i’m a fan; when the numerical portion of an address corresponds to a physical distance it’s easier to know how far apart two locations are, how to navigate there, and so forth. but the discussion of gridded cities reminded me of one of my least favorite places: Salt Lake City. one of my chief objections* to Salt Lake is the way the city streets are laid out. instead of clarifying the street name’s position by assigning it a numerical position on the grid, they just skipped over the street name part and numbered all of the streets. So you can navigate to an address like 910 S 900 E. wait, what?** okay, so it’s a little confusing, but a few days and you get the hang of it. after which, navigating is a breeze. but tonight i finally figured out what bugs me so much about that. the city has no place names. think about what a deeply ingrained part of the cultural landscape place names are. there is an entire field of study (toponymy, thank you, wikipedia) built around the study place names. place names matter. how can you trust a city that refuses to name their streets? it’s like numbering your children or something.

it makes me love england even more, for all their crazy street names that change every third block, and the way that cottages in small villages still have their own individual names.

* okay, let’s be honest. another of my chief objections to Salt Lake is that it is the iconic center of the mormon faith. and having grown up as the only catholic kid in a mormon high school, i developed something of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the subject of mormonism. yes, that was 15 years ago and i need to get over not having been popular. i get it. but still.

** okay, so Chicago DOES have a corner where North Avenue intersects Western Avenue. I’ll give you that one.

{16 October 2009}

Here’s a new idea for you, airlines: free wifi in the terminals (yeah, in the air, too, but one thing at a time). I appreciate Southwest’s rocking chairs, the banks of leather arm chairs with outlets for laptops, even some table and chairs so you don’t have to eat pre-flight meals in your lap. But what about wifi? It could be unlocked with your flight’s confirmation code and last name, that way the terminal wouldn’t be flooded with other airline’s passengers trying to bogart it (tho, don’t get me wrong, i’d rather there was just free wifi for the people, especially in airports).

Bongo, i will not pay your exorbitant fees!

eco-friendly travel, or how it isn’t at all

{14 October 2009}

Mcdonald’s egg-mcmuffin-minus-the-canadian-bacon is my early-morning airport guilty pleasure. I’ve been indulging in this long enough that I’m prepared for the buyer’s remorse when it comes to eating the sandwich (delicious melty “cheese” suddenly congeals into a rubbery cold substance on the wrapper and you wonder what sort of “food product” you just ate), but what really kills me is the packaging waste. I finish my sandwich, and now have a paper wrapper, three napkins, a receipt, and a paper bag, all of which, besides the wrapper, are perfectly pristine. There is no paper recycling in this terminal so I tuck it into a corner of my bag, to recycle it when I get home. City of Chicago: see what your bad recycling policies have brought me to? Hoarding trash. This is not the first instance of this behavior you have invoked.

PS – the in-flight service gives me the guilty heebie-jeebies, too. one can easily go through 3 or 4 of those clear plastic cups in a cross-country flight. styrofoam for coffee. a bleached white napkin under each cup. and all those snacks in single-serving packaging. ugh. okay, i still can’t resist the those fake-cheese-and-cracker sandwiches that southwest gives out, but i’m making a point of filling up my own water bottle at the departing airport’s drinking fountain and using that instead of having a new cup of water every time they offer me one. err, don’t say anything about the ecological damage that the jetfuel is doing, okay?

101 in 1001: [no. 03] run a four-hour marathon

{13 October 2009}

October 11, 2009 — Chicago Marathon 2009: 3:59’01”

Okay, so I started running three and a half years ago. In May of 2006 I decided I’d train for a half marathon. the goal was just to complete it. I started out with a run-one-min-walk-one-min plan for 30 minutes at a time, three times a week. It took me 6 weeks to get up to being able to run 3 miles in a half hour.

Since then I’m four running seasons, 2600 miles, eight pairs of shoes, seven half marathons and three full marathons down the road. And I know that dry wit and self-deprecating humor is basically all that keeps this blog afloat, but i’m going to get all sincere for a minute and say that I’m really proud of that. I just am, okay? I fully recognize, and embrace, the fact that i’m a decidedly middle-of-the-pack, recreational runner. i’m never going to be anything besides that. But these miles, these races were not easy for me. The things these miles lead me to, and away from, in my life, were not easy. But I am so blessed, so fortunate, so lucky (is there a word there that’s both secular in connotation and yet as sincere as “blessed”? i can’t find it) that i found running, or running found me, when it did. It’s taught me how to break insurmountable tasks into tiny, achievable blocks. If what’s up ahead is too scary, then keep your head down, look at your feet, watch them carry you up the next block, around the corner, through the next mile, the next workout. since i’ve started my new job i’ve needed that technique in my non-running life a lot lately.

that’s life lesson number one. the second is probably even more valuable. it’s that, regardless of how you prep and organize and prepare for a big event like a marathon, the most important preparation you can do is to prepare yourself to respond to whatever unpredictable thing comes your way on race day. Being able to respond to what life throws at you with strength, grace and flexibility is, I think, one of the keys to happiness. And it’s really really not easy.

But anyway, the the sub-4 hour marathon has been a goal for a long long time. I wasn’t sure I had it in me this year, but conditions came together just right and there it was in front of me. And I reached out and grabbed it (just barely, with 59 seconds to spare, and not an ounce of energy left). So, the question is, what’s next? I have a few ideas.

1) The North Face Challenge 50k. yeah, it’s a 31 mile race. But it’s completely different from a marathon road race. A marathon like Chicago is all about finishing as quickly as you can. This trail race will be about the adventure, not the finish line. The course is on the single-track and fire roads in the hills of the Marin Headlands. Which, conveniently, happens to be my greater backyard. Participants have 10 hours to finish the course; there’s time to stop, to stretch, to refuel, admire the view, and then run some more. after pushing myself to run as fast as i can, i’m looking forward to doing some serious distance runs that are about completing the distance, not pushing for time.

2) Use marathons as a way to see new and foreign places. A couple of races I have my eye on: Stolkholm (annually in May), Dublin (October), Tokyo (Feburary), and Big Sur (April). But that’ll take time. I can only really fit one marathon into my life per year, it seems like. I gotta make sure it keeps being a hobby, not a burden.

3) Start training to be a marathon coach or mentor. I love dorking out on running physiology, and I seem to be pretty good at encouraging/cheerleading people through their goals. It’s a weird, satisfying moment when you find something that you are really suited for, you know? When you realize there’s something that you’re both good at and enjoy doing. That’s how I felt about “coaching”* a couple of my friends through their first marathon last year. Talking someone through a moment of crisis in the middle of their 20-miler, and seeing them find that inner strength, and finish, and go on to marathon and beyond, is a pretty great thing. (God, this post is all just inspiration pollyannay, isn’t it? Cue Chariots of Fire and release the slow-motion runners on the beach.)

But by coincidence, while i was on the plane home from chicago, and typing this blog post, i got into conversation with the guy sitting next to me. it turns out that, not only had he just finished running the chicago marathon, but that he’s a mentor with Team in Training (the training program/charity fundraiser that got me through my first marathon in 2007). he told me all about the mentoring program, how I could get involved. again…you know when it seems like opportunity is knocking?

* by coaching i mean, it was my 2nd marathon and their first. I’m no expert. I was more like the group cheerleader. But it was important. It got us all to the finish line (and the starting line) under some very tough race conditions.

not quite home

{11 October 2009}

hello, rainy cool weather dunkin donuts coffee bouncy walkway at midway long ride on the Orange Line to the Brown Line to the Purple Line potbelly’s sandwiches whole town talking marathon industrial southside tree-lined northside noyes street saturday morning brunch red eye crossword that only-in-chicago accent smell of incense at the dojo simon’s tavern bumping into friends on the street. chicago, i missed you.

id-nic

{04 October 2009}


id-nic

the fridge yielded beer, bread, cheese and and an apple. that didn’t seem like enough for a picnic dinner on the beach so we swung past safeway en route to supplement the meal.

apparently our ids were selecting the food: “mmm…chicken wings. mmm…sushi. wait, peanutbutter cookies? great idea!” thus, was born the idnic: no attempt at balancing nutrients, flavor, or style, just instant gratification.

{28 September 2009}


on saturday Chris, Teresa, Geneva and i drove up to Petaluma to go to the Windrush Farms FiberFest — basically an expo of yarn, spinning, dying, felting — all kinds of fiber arts that start with wool. one could follow the yarn-making process from start to finish in a single afternoon — there were alpaca and sheep on the farm, great piles of greasy, newly-shorn wool, tools for carding and cleaning the wool, spinning wheels and drop spindles, dyeing vats and beautiful skeins of yarn for sale, looms for weaving and knitting swatches.

aside from being really much too hot for late september, it was an awfully pleasant, pastoral scene: everyone was so friendly, sitting in the sun watching kids run around the yard and pet the animals, skin tanned and weathered from spending seasons out in the sun and the wind, trading stories and sharing knowledge of something that, now an art form, was for thousands of years, a basic skill. a pair of golden retrievers trotted around the yard loving up to everybody. there was a wood-fired oven in the yard and a guy making hand-made pizzas and lemonade, to be eaten at folding tables and chairs set up in the shade. the farm animals suffered to be petted on the nose (or fed tasty leaves).

the turn of the fall weather (fall arrived on sunday, by the way, the day after our hot trek up to Petaluma), plus the imminent arrival of several friends’ babies, means that i’m inspired to start crafting again. somehow the direct mail gods know this, as i have received three knitting catalogs this week (and, naturally, have earmarked more patterns that i want to knit than i shall ever have time or funds for). but anyway, getting knitting catalogs lets me play the “who would knit this?” game. see, that’s the tricky thing about knitting. finding nice yarns and patterns. because for every beautiful, modern or classic (classy classic, that is, not “christmas sweater” classic) pattern out there, there are a dozen hideously frumpy things to knit out of terrible, cheap plasticky nasty synthetic yarn. it’s almost too easy to play the WWKT game, especially with the patternworks catalog. so for this week, i submit this, to you, dear readers (knitters and wearers of sweaters and non-knitters or sweater-wearers alike): who would knit this?