finding sanity in miles of trails

Counting Down

2010-03-23T11:54:00.005-04:00

I count down the weeks before marathons. It's one of those things that I do. I'm sure many other marathoners do it too, but there's something about the numbers that motivates me and makes me happy.

I have just under three weeks of hard, heavy training, and then there's about a week and a half of decently hard training, and then it's all downhill. This week will be the worst of it, so technically from here on out, everything gets easier. This is so doable.

Saturday's pace run went exceptionally well. We had one of those "oh hell no" moments when we woke up on Saturday to the sound of the wind whipping around outside of our windows. And snow. did I mention the snow that was pelting us in the face when we went outside? Winds were somewhere around 20+ mph. So needless to say, it made the indoor/outdoor decision very easy. I took E-Speed's advice and put the treadmill on 1% and targeted an overall pace that was a bit under what my ideal pace would be. Nitty-gritty details are over at dailymile*, but overall I ended up with a pace that was 8:53/mile for the 12 miles. That's well under 4:00 pace, and decently under 3:55 pace (dream goal), so I'm feeling pretty good about this, especially because it felt good. A challenging sort of good, but not like I was exhausted by the end and couldn't go any further. When I reread the section on MP runs in Advanced Marathoning, Pfitz says that the objective is to get used to race pace, but it's also mostly to give you a confidence boost. If you can do this in the middle of heavy mileage, tempo runs, and interval sessions, you should feel confident that you can hit that pace for a marathon after the taper and resting up. I did a lot of visualizing how this run would go, and tried to follow a strategy that usually works for me on race day, and I think that really helped a lot. I'm excited.

This run was exactly what I needed. Last week's miles were a bit uninspired and I was feeling a bit run down on the recovery runs. I think that this run + getting a good amount of rest over the weekend were exactly what I needed to recharge. Yesterday's easy run felt great and I'm looking forward to the last LT run of the training cycle tonight.

I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I'm starting to decide goals for the fall and for my training this summer, and I'm getting really excited about it all. Now it's just a matter of putting in the rest of the hard work, seeing how things shake out on May 1, and setting a goal from there. I think this may be awesome.

* widget is in the sidebar -- if you like details, go there.

Currently Pondering:

2010-03-17T16:10:00.002-04:00

*This is reposted from dailymile, where I've been posting most of my workouts over the past week or so. I'll probably post more there from here on out, as I like that format better.

This weekend I'm supposed to do a marathon pace run: 15 miles with 12 at marathon pace. This replaces my long run for the weekend. Ok, awesome, right?

It's going to be cruddy outside. I hate complaining about it because let's face it, anything that's in the 40's rather than the 30's is like a heatwave compared to a month ago. But this is getting ridiculous. Rain, cold, winds at 15mph, possible snow. Ugh.

So I guess the question is: do I suck it up and try to do the run outside in the natural elements, knowing that on race day Mother Nature may just decide to toss me something equally as mucky, or do I move it indoors and complete the run on a treadmill?

I guess my real question is trying to understand the point of this run. Is it to simulate race conditions and get me used to naturally being able to hit marathon pace? Or is it to increase fitness by getting in a solid run of 12 miles at my intended goal pace? If I try running it outdoors and fail miserably due to the conditions, does that defeat the point of trying a MP run? Would I have been better off doing the run indoors where I could actually complete the workout as intended?

I can argue it for running indoors (the weather is likely not going to be this bad on race day so what's the point in "racing" in crappy conditions, my body is still "getting used to" MP even if a treadmill is regulating the speed) and against (you need to be able to regulate MP on your own - without the assistance of a TM, you're being a total wuss so stop whining).

I guess it comes down to the fact that I don't have confidence that I can "get 'er done" this weekend if I run outdoors. I'm nervous about being able to hit MP for all 12 miles, and feel like I'll be more likely to complete the run successfully if I do it indoors. So from a mental aspect, is it better for me to succeed and have confidence on race morning than to fail because of uncontrollable circumstances and be doubting myself come May 1? If I can't run my desired MP in 45 degrees, rain, and wind, should that indicate that I'm not ready to try for that MP?

So many questions!!!

officially a 30-something

2010-03-02T14:29:00.002-05:00

I had a birthday yesterday, which officially transferred me from the "20 something" category to "totally old". I'm cool with that. My 20's were kind of overly dramatic, and I feel like my 30's will be much more settled if that makes any sense. The 20's are such an awkward time when you're trying to establish a career and you're trying to actually do something with your life while trying to transition to adult-hood (you mean I have to pay for my car registration EVERY YEAR?) and I feel like there's a lot of fumbling and confusion because - let's face it - college life as most Americans know it doesn't do the absolute most stellar job in terms of translating to what a real work/real life environment will be like. Beer doesn't just magically show up in a keg at someone's house every weekend when you're an adult... you actually have to PAY FOR IT. I feel that I'm a lot more knowledgeable about what I want to be when I grow up, and while there may be some chaos in my 30's regarding subtle (or not so subtle) shifts in my professional life, I at least have a better idea of what my profession really means and where I feel that I need to improve. I had absolutely no self-awareness of this kind of stuff when I was an undergrad, so score one for developing the "metacognition" ability in the past ten years.

There is also the whole "finding a meaningful relationship" thing, which is officially figured out. I really couldn't be happier on that front.

Someone asked me the other night if I felt like I was more knowledgeable or "wiser" than I was ten years ago and whether I would trade that for the things that gave me that knowledge/wisdom. That was an interesting question for me. I do feel like I've personally grown so much and on so many fronts in the past 10 years, and I feel like I'm a lot more equipped to handle the crap that life's going to throw at me. I've had to deal with more crap in the past two years than most people have to deal with in a decade, and (with the help of several professionals) I've managed to find a way to handle everything (both practically and emotionally) and still make time for myself, have a social life, and be able to foster a healthy relationship with my spouse. Stuff still gets thrown at me, but instead of taking a week to get over it or obsessing about the "what could happen"s in life, I've learned to identify what I can control about a situation and only focus making the best out of what *I* can control. While I'm happy that I learned these lessons (I think most of the skills I've mastered throughout this process are relevant and will be helpful in all aspects of life), I would never, ever say that I'd be willing to repeat the grief, pain, frustration, and anger that helped me learn these lessons. The past five years, specifically, have been relatively awful for me and I'd never want to go through them again just to learn some life lessons. So to answer that question, no, I don't really think it's worth it. But I'm happy I learned some life lessons instead of just being a grieving mess.

OKAY. on to happier subjects. RUNNING!!! Let's see... last week's mid-week long run was put off because we got some significant news on Wednesday evening that I needed to sort through/process. I gave myself an evening to work through some things and then got up the next morning to get my run in. To say it was challenging doing 11 miles in the morning before work would be an understatement, but the whole run was completed, albeit slowly. Otherwise there were a few easy short recovery runs in there and a 16 mile long run on Sunday... Can I just mention here that I am SO. FREAKING. OVER. the winter weather? seriously. it's getting ridiculous. We had to adjust things to account for the Northern winds at 9 mph (SO. OVER. IT!) so it was hard to get exact mile splits since it's not one of our usual routes. I do know that we negative split the last 5 miles by 3 minutes, which is pretty significant. I think we ended with around a 9:50 overall pace, which I was pretty happy with. I half-heartedly attempted my tempo run yesterday but I knew that after Sunday's long run I just didn't have it in my legs so I did the warm-up and called it one of my recovery runs for the week. I'll tackle the LT miles this evening and then there's supposed to be some warmth coming our way later this week! I'm super excited about that.

I got to talk to two of my favorite people already this week, and we are doing all sorts of celebrating in these parts, so this week promises to be a good one. I officially have 9 weeks left of marathon training, which means only 6 weeks of "hard" training before the taper. For some reason, this is SO MUCH MORE manageable than previous training cycles. It's awesome, and so much more reasonable when I'm trying to convince myself to do ridiculous distances in the middle of the week.

On developing and GSD

2010-02-23T15:18:00.003-05:00

Runs have gone well over the past week. There was a bit of a fueling issue for last week's mid-week medium long run, but otherwise, everything felt pretty good. Here's the rundown (HA! get it? RUNdown!):

Wednesday PM: 11 mile medium long run. Totally unmotivated, but headed out anyways. If I could either do these when it's warmer or light outside, I don't think they'd be nearly as irritating. Went into it a little underfueled from the previous days' workouts, so ended up getting kind of bonky head-wise at the end. Weirdest bonking feeling I've ever felt because physically, I negative split the run, bringing the last three miles in at about 30 seconds faster than the rest of the miles, but head-wise, things weren't exactly clicking, if that makes sense. It took a concerted effort to get me refueled and feeling back to normal but it didn't really have any affect on any of my other runs last week. I'm writing it off as one of those flukey things and am taking it as a reminder that regardless of the quality of the food you're eating, if you're not eating enough quantity-wise, YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE A PROBLEM. Fueling for mid-week long runs are always particularly challenging because I'm just not that used to shoving huge amounts of food down my gullet during the regular workday.

Friday PM: recovery 5. Easy peasy. There's really nothing to comment on about this.

Saturday AM: 15 mile LR. In a word, awesome. No, seriously. Dice and I both were ridiculous stoked about how well this run went. I really wasn't feeling it all that much during the first few miles but once I warmed up the run was pretty much just steady as she goes. Turned around to just over a 10:00/mile pace and then seriously CRANKED. IN. the last 7.5 miles. I hit my split button on my watch with 4 miles to go just so we could get an idea of how fast we finished because it felt like we were picking things up. By the time we got to the last mile dice asked me how fast we were pacing and I said, "you don't wanna know. is the pace ok?" when he affirmed, we just kept it up and came in with an 8:45 average for the last 4 miles (between 9:30-9:40 overall pace for the run). The fast pace felt nearly effortless. Totally natural. It's so, so weird. But whatever, we'll take it.

Monday PM: 8 mile general aerobic. I didn't take my watch with me on this run, but based on when I left the house and when I got back, I was probably between 9:00-9:30 pace for this run. Again, the run felt great. I'm totally digging the runs these days. It's always more enjoyable when you feel like you're easily pulling off a decent clip on general aerobic paced runs.

I've got a nice easy 4 miler planned for this evening and then another medium long run tomorrow. It should be a good test to make sure last week's mid-week medium run was a fluke. I'm making sure I have a ridiculous amount of food packed for the day to help me fuel, which should help.

On a personal note, I did my annual review this week, and this time of year always reminds me of all the personal development goals that I have for myself, and how it's so easy to put them off and then a year goes by before I do anything about it. Next week I turn the big 3-0, so I talked to dice about it and I am going to create a Personal Development Plan that will be modeled after my Professional Development Plan that I do for work. Some of the things coincide, so that's the easy part, but there are a lot of other things where I want to make improvements in my home life, and I think that writing them down and taking time to reflect on my progress in a systematic manner every quarter or so will help me make sure I'm progressing in some of the areas where I otherwise may just put things off.

One of the big things on my PDP is to be better at balancing my personal relationships with my friends with my married and training life; I've found that it's really easy to just get wrapped up in training or in hanging out with the husband, and there's not really anything wrong with enjoying either of those things, but I know that making a more concerted effort to keep in touch with friends will add some much-needed balance to my life. Dice has his own ways of communicating with friends (usually through random, short daily text messages or emails) and I tend to do my communicating more in one mass clump where I'm on the phone with someone for an hour once a month, but with the introduction of married life (and a husband who's always around to entertain me) it's been harder for me to set aside an hour to chat with friends here and there so I need to make more of a concerted effort at it.

There are also a bunch of professional things that I want to work on that have absolutely nothing to do with my job, and this will be a great way to stay on target with those goals during my personal time. I think that overall, this is going to be a great way to make sure I'm GSD, as Mo says. Who knows, maybe I'll even put "blog more than once a week," on my PDP.

doubtful.

sold.

2010-02-16T15:16:00.002-05:00

This weekend was a relative success in terms of getting workouts in. I had planned to do my long run on Saturday but I was having some stomach issues due to eating a blended up grapefruit a bit before the run (evidently you're not supposed to eat extremely fibrous foods right before a run... IMAGINE THAT.) so I ended up spinning instead and switched the run to Sunday. That was a bit of a gamble since Sunday was Valentine's Day (a day meant for being lazy with your loved ones, right?), but I managed to pull myself away from the nook in the couch that dice and I had collectively created and get out to get my miles in. It was actually a pretty decent day, despite the winds from the North, and the run ended up being a refreshing addition to the day. I was quite pleased to crunch the numbers and see that I managed to pull off a 9:50-ish pace for the run; it felt relatively easy and the wind/cold/multiple clothing layer usually slows me down to an extent that my long runs in the winter aren't really comparable to those in the summer.

So that was pretty awesome.

And then came yesterday. Which was a huge test. Because really, I should have given myself some time to rest/recover before attempting LT miles. But for a variety of reasons, doing my LT miles on Monday was the best option (scheduling-wise) this week. I'm not going to lie, I was pretty nervous about it. Five weeks ago I attempted a 4 mile LT run, got through 2 miles and had to quit. That was when I decided to scale back training and get ready to do a 12 week play. Since then, I've done two 3 mile LT runs that were relatively successful (although at the slow end of my LT pace range), but the last one I did, two weeks ago, left me beat. Definitely more tired than I should have been. And that was only including 3 LT paced miles.

But hell, I decided to give it a try anyways, just to see where I was fitness-wise, and I've gotta say... I'm sold on the mileage + cross training + good nutrition combination. Because yesterday's 4 mile LT run was run smack dab in the middle of my LT pace range and I felt incredible (like I definitely could have either run the miles faster or continued on for at least another mile). And this was a day after my long run. I don't recall ever feeling that good after doing LT miles.

I know, I know, I know... I have to do these suckers outside to equitably compare them. But right now I'm settling for either doing them indoors or not doing them at all because there's no way I'm going to be able to do these in the cold + wind combo that this city gives us during winter months. So ok, it's not a fair comparison to say that I've "never felt this good following an LT run," but I'm still really pleased with how the run went relative to how LT runs have been going over the past few months.

So here are the paces:

2.5 miles - warm up
1.5 miles - 8:27 pace (high end of my LT range)
1.5 miles - 8:19 pace (mid range)
1 mile - 8:12 pace (low end)
1.5 miles - cool down

That averages out to an 8:20 average, which is squarely in the middle of my 8:09-8:31 range. sweet.

I'm trying to figure out what the difference is over these past few weeks where somehow things have just clicked, and really, the nutrition piece is the only thing that's truly new in the equation. I started running 30+ mpw back in December, so it's not really the mileage (and even did a few shorter - ~2 mile - tempo runs back then to start cultivating speed) and I've been doing a bit of cross training almost every week for the past few months. The past few weeks are when I've really started adhering to the "food is fuel" mentality and been paying attention to what I'm eating, and I'm wondering if that truly is the missing link. I guess only time will tell.

I was ridiculously tired this morning. I got out of bed and considered plodding on with the scheduled cross training and then decided it was really better for my body to just get some extra rest. I'm going to see how I feel later on this evening and may throw some cross training in then or may just take today as a rest day, depending on what my body is telling me. This whole "listening to my body" thing is totally weird, let me tell you. :)

Happiness, how'd you get to find happiness...

2010-02-12T14:25:00.007-05:00

I woke up on my own this morning at 4:30. Weird, right? I forced myself back to sleep for an hour before getting up to get my run in, but I found it simultaneously funny and annoying that my body is getting used to all of the early morning crap. Granted, I'm pretty sure I fell asleep on the couch at 9 PM last night, but I'm cool with that. I haven't been so great with the getting to bed early thing and it's been making my morning workouts kind of grumpy, to say the least.

Take Wednesday's 9 miler. There was a relatively significant amount of snow that dropped between Tuesday and Wednesday morning, and to suggest that the paths were a mess would be an understatement, so I ended up heading to the gym for this. I was planning to do a mix of treadmill and indoor track work due to the fact that I was totally annoyed with having to be up and running indoors for so many miles in the middle of the week (so many things to be annoyed with!), but I got into a groove on the 'mill and never really looked back. But man, was I grumpy for the first 3 miles. sheesh.

The week's been dandy so far, with all of my mid-week running complete, plus a few swims, some yoga, and a nice morning with some deadlifts yesterday to keep my body from getting too comfortable. I'm smack dab in the middle of Nutrition Experiment #328, which may actually be the last "experiment" I need to try because I'm actually feeling more energized and fueled than ever. I bought a book (I think it was Sports Nutrition for Endurance Athletes, which I don't particularly recommend, to be honest) way back when I was training for the Detroit marathon years ago in an attempt to make sure I was fueling properly for my runs, and I've never really been 100% satisfied with anything I've tried. It's looking like the current experiment might be exactly what I was looking for, but I don't want to jinx it by claiming I've found the solution to all of my fueling needs.

On an almost completely non-related note, I was reading this morning about Daniel Kahneman's talk at TED regarding the difference between experiencing happiness IN your life versus being happy ABOUT your life, and it really hit home. This concept (along with many others) is something I've been working to integrate into my daily life since I began working with my therapist, and I honestly feel that it's been life-altering. This concept, to live in the moment and experience things as they are happening rather than focusing on what may possibly happen or what happened in the past, has changed the way I deal with stress in my life (and integrates largely with how I've dealt with the grieving process) and has generally made me someone who is just much, much better to be around (in my husband's opinion, and despite the adversarial events that sometimes come up in our lives). This is largely what helped me get through my wedding day without my parents being there, and continues to influence how I look at things on a daily basis. It's weird how such a simple concept can change your life.

My favorite part of the recaps were the comments on how,

Research concludes that "happiness is mainly being satisfied with being with people that we like."

This made me laugh because a friend and I were just talking recently about how one of the reasons our 30's will differ from our 20's so much is because we've learned over the past ten years that it's ok to, "spend as much time as is physically possible with the truly extraordinary friends in our lives," as she stated, rather than trying to keep a wide circle of friends whom you only marginally enjoy being around. Learning to let go of relationships with my ex-boyfriend, certain family members, etc., has simplified my life in SO MANY WAYS and has made me so much happier.

Speaking of, this weekend I get to accompany one truly extraordinary friend to a wedding dress fitting to help prepare me to learn how to bustle her gown on her big day. I am SUPER EXCITED about this because she bustled my gown on MY wedding day, and now I get to return the favor for her. I'm so thankful (and excited) that she asked me to go with her! Also, running. There will be a long run. As well as spending Valentine's Day with a certain boy... I can't think of anyone that I like being around more than him.

there are reasons, and there are excuses.

2010-02-09T14:02:00.004-05:00

sheesh, it's been a long time since I've been around these parts, eh? Life is good, it's just been moderately busy and I haven't really felt like writing here was any sort of priority. But yesterday started yet another training cycle and that's always when I come back to tracking workouts and getting them written down on the interwebs so that NEXT time I've stopped blogging for 6 months and start training, I can go back to see how hard/easy it was last time.

So, let's see... what's happened since the last time I blogged? oh yeah. the whole "wedding" thing. that was great. and then there was Greece, which was pretty much awesome. and then there was a lot of non-running when we should have been running when we got back. also very awesome, although not conducive to running well in a marathon. and, oh yeah, there was a marathon.

Chicago '09 wasn't too shabby. The weather was near perfect. The crowds were a royal pain in the ass, as usual. and despite taking a full 4-5 weeks pretty much completely off of running, I still managed to negative split by something ridiculous (maybe 4 minutes?) and be 2 seconds/mile off of my PR. I was pleased with the effort given the fact that we got distracted toward the end of training, but to be honest, I was disappointed in myself for not following through with the plan once we were back from the honeymoon. But in the grand scheme of things, I wouldn't take back those weekends of newly-wedded bliss, where we just lounged in our pajamas, eating pancakes and watching football all morning, to get a sub-4 hour marathon. Ever. happiness happens. and sometimes you need to make room for it.

but this brings me to a discussion the husband and I were having the other day. about when a reason for not doing something becomes an excuse. and it really got me thinking. Because really? there aren't a whole lot of "reasons" why I haven't broken 4 hours yet. I truly believe I'm physically capable of doing it. I just haven't actually had a training cycle where I 100% committed myself to that particular goal and followed through. There *are* a bunch of excuses, though.

"I'm just getting back into running again after a long time off."
"Your father just died and you don't feel like exerting more energy than it takes you to get out of bed."
"Handling the estate is stressful."
"You're getting married. Give yourself a break."

I mean, really, they truly are mostly just excuses. They are (with the exception of the first one) relatively *valid* excuses, but excuses nonetheless. Physically, I could have trained through any of those things and possibly broken 4 hours. It just wasn't a priority to me at the time, plain and simple. and that's totally ok. I absolutely, 100% recognize that.

But really... it's time to get that 4-hour demon off of my back. for serious this time. And there is no room for excuses this time. If I don't break 4 hours, there had better be a physical REASON why.

We are about 12 weeks out from IL-thon '10, and yesterday I put in my first true training run on Pfitz's 12/55 plan. why 12 weeks instead of the usual 18? well, because I made a bunch of excuses over the past 3 months and I wasn't where I needed to be to get the workouts done RIGHT on the 18 week plan. I started it, and ended up dropping a run or cutting back the mileage, or not hitting the LT paces, nearly every week. So I made the executive decision that instead of continuing this program and not hitting my target goals, I was going to step back, bring myself up to speed with a month of really hard work, and be ready to hit the 12 week plan full throttle.

I honestly think that's going to be very possible. I've been putting in workouts similar to what I would have been had I stayed on the 18 week plan, but have been making adjustments where necessary so I could get my fitness to a level where the LT runs feel relatively comfortable (at least, for LT runs) and I don't feel like I'm going to TOTALLY FREAK OUT having to run mid-long runs in the middle of the week in either the freezing cold or on a treadmill. Coming into this with a month+ of doing 35-40 mpw is going to help too, I think. So even though I haven't been following a plan for the last 6 weeks, I've been working hard. And last night's 8 mile run outside in a "feels like" of 17 degrees with a double digit headwind for half of the miles felt great and were well within "general aerobic" pace, even though I was wearing about 80 layers of clothing.

So awesome. here we go again. and there are no excuses this time around.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

2009-08-21T12:00:00.002-04:00

remember in my last post when I stated that the "majority of the work is done"? yeah. hilarious. JOKE'S ON ME!!!

The past few weeks have been nothing shy of crazy. just full blown insane with the amount of stuff we've been doing. And despite it all, we've still managed to throw in some decently high mileage weeks (forty something last week and 53 or so the week before). We're looking at a possible 51 mile week this week if we manage to get all of our runs in over the next few days. I'm highly doubting this less because I don't think we *can* do it and more because I really think it would be better for us (or rather, me) not to. I'm feeling exceptionally run down and tired due to all of the stuff I've had to get done at work and at home (this was one of the worst weeks of the year for us at work) and while I've managed to fit in the miles so far, I didn't exactly feel all that awesome after our 12 last night. that we didn't even START until 8:15 PM. so yeah. that was awesome. the last thing I need is to get sick the week before my wedding.

So I'm going to see how I feel over the next few days and maybe scale back a little with the miles and then next week I'm going to do whatever feels right. If I'm feeling tired or run down, it's not really that big of a deal... I can take a few extra days off. I'm trying to keep some perspective here, and there will always be other marathons to run.

that said, I'm so, so happy that we've actually managed to semi-successfully train through this battyness. it really has been kind of crazy, but at the same time it's really kept me sane. It helps a lot that we run together, and that we're able to discuss details while we're running.

The past few weeks have been particularly difficult for me as I've been thinking about the big picture of things and that, inevitably, makes me think about my parents' absence quite a bit. And that's good. To feel those emotions is an important part of grieving. But I'm also not going to be upset with myself if I don't think about it all that much on my actual wedding day. Is it totally and completely shitty that they're not going to be able to be there? yeah, it is. but... it is what it is, as my friend Jill would say, and there isn't anything I can do about it. and the time I spend dwelling on their absence is time I take away from appreciating the amazing things that I have in my life. A person who loves me unconditionally, whose love is so evident to other people that they remarked last weekend how clear it is that he adores me. I am gaining an absolutely amazing immediate and extended family, people who absolutely model the support and love that a family structure SHOULD be, and I'm learning from them again what it feels like to be part of something that is good and happy and enjoyable to be around. People who make me feel like I am home when I go to visit them. I remarked to Josh's mom the last time we visited how truly remarkable her family is with their support and love for one another, and it's evident how they carry that back to each of their own individual families. I'm so happy to be able to learn from them and to be a part of that.

more than anything, I'm learning to be happy. really, truly happy again. My mom once told me that I was always her "happy child" and that she was afraid that her cancer and the end of another previous relationship were going to ruin that for me, and that I would be sad and upset from here on out. I wish I could tell her how wrong she was. how this man (and a lot of time talking with my therapist, I admit) have given me happiness that I never thought I could have. and that I get to have that for the rest of my life, as long as I let my self know that I'm deserving of it.

I cannot wait for next weekend to come.

overwhelmed

2009-07-24T10:57:00.004-04:00

There is so much happening in life right now, and I would love to be documenting it all in detail, but then that takes away from actually, you know, living life... so it's a hard balance. I'll just have to deal with fragmented recaps of what's been going on.

Running last week was pretty much awesome. I jumped back to full scale on Thursday or so with an 11 miler, did a short 5 miler on Friday morning. We flew to Kansas on Friday evening and within a span of 48 hours we accomplished so much that I'm not really sure how we didn't just collapse. We had dinner with some of Josh's extended family, we woke up early and ran 20 miler, we attended a wedding mass, we picked up our wedding bands, we visited some friends and got a tour of their new home, we went back to pick up my resized engagement ring, we ate sonic blasts (mmm... sonic), we went to the wedding reception, we danced obnoxiously to Miley Cyrus (yes, Miley Cyrus. don't judge.), we flew home, we cleaned up the apartment, we drove an hour to meet with the pastor who is marrying us, we had a great conversation in which we learned that we are PRETTY MUCH AWESOME, we celebrated by eating buffalo wings, and we learned all about the history of Santorini along the way. Whew. I'm tired just typing all of that.

But the 20 miler (which may or may not have been about a half mile short... we're not quite sure) was absolutely awesome. I can't believe how great I felt. I was literally dancing and singing obnoxiously while running the last 3 miles. PFITZINGER PLAN, FTW. I love the fact that I feel totally fine on ridiculously long runs! no dead legs, no struggling, no obnoxious muscle fatigue... it's seriously awesome. And the fact that I had the strength and energy to do ALL OF THAT OTHER STUFF after our run is pretty freaking awesome, too. There have been many times when a 20 miler wrecks me for the rest of the day and all I want to do is sit on the couch and eat nachos.

So last week ended awesomely. And then this week has been JUST PLAIN CRAZY. Monday I had to do some shopping for some cute outfits for upcoming events. Tuesday I cut out of work early to go visit KTG's grandma who is in the hospital, and then headed over to Ravinia to meet up with several of Josh's coworkers to see John Legend. We had SUCH a great time. Wednesday was just an awesome day at work... it's nice to see your work being discussed in presentations when you have no idea who the presenter is (I wanted to stand up and say, "hey! that's me! that's my master's thesis data!"). Oh, and we also ran 14 miles on Wednesday night. Yesterday I had a barbeque at work where everyone kept insisting I stay and drink more wine, and then I left there to get home so we could meet up with some friends for the most lethal margaritas in the city. There was also lots more running in there, somehow.

And it doesn't stop there. I'm heading to Michigan this evening to stay with MoMo for a night. We're doing the long run super early tomorrow morning and then we are heading down to Ann Arbor for a bridal shower being thrown by my bridesmaids (who, by the way, are unspeakably awesome). And then? Well, what else other than German Park... I cannot, for the life of me, think of a better way to spend my bachelorette party than by sitting at picnic tables in a field in the middle of nowhere, drinking German beer from buckets and eating delicious spatzen. I'm sure there will be some bar hopping after German park, but seriously. Does it get any better than that? (Let me answer that for you: NO.)

Today would have been my parent's 39th wedding anniversary. I got an email from one of my mom's best friends detailing a few of the celebratory events that my mom had before her wedding, and it meant so much to me to be able to hear those stories and to feel like I knew what she went through before her wedding to my father. I've become really reflective in the past few weeks, now that the majority of the work is done and I have time to sit back a little and think about things, and I just feel so grateful to have so many truly wonderful people in my life. But that's for another post because this one is already way too long and MAN AM I HUNGRY.

don't call it a comeback...

2009-07-15T10:38:00.004-04:00

so I'm not very good at this whole "resting an injury" thing. I took about two full days off and iced and took some motrin and all of that, and after a few days of that everything was feeling pretty close to being back to normal. I could feel the teeniest bit of tightness in the hip when I was stretching, but otherwise everything felt pretty much the way it always does. I decided on Thursday that I would try a few miles, just to test things out.

A few miles in, I was feeling pretty good. It was one of those situations where you're constantly paranoid that something hurts when really things feel just about the way they should. Since I felt good at the two mile turn around point, I wanted to try a few extra miles to see how it would act with a higher mileage load. If it felt bad, I wouldn't even think about attempting my long run that weekend. Well, predictably, I started getting some tightening at around the six mile point, so I walked the last mile home and decided I would rest a few more days. There wasn't any pain, but there was some mild discomfort and I wasn't going to push it to the point where that became pain.

I took the weekend off and enjoyed some time in Michigan on Friday and Saturday at the wedding of a good childhood friend. On Saturday I was sorting through some boxes in my brother's garage and upon squatting noticed the tightness in my hip area again. This basically led to me FREAKING out about being injured on Sunday evening... let me tell you, me + being used to lots of mileage + not being "allowed" to run high mileage = someone in total freakout mode. seriously.

so I came up with a plan to try things out this week and if things weren't feeling hunky dorey (which I was suspecting) then I would dramatically scale everything back to a point where every single mile felt comfortable (if I felt comfortable running at all).

Enter Monday. I'm planning to do 2, 3 miles max, with the option to go one extra mile if I feel 100% ok. I get out and start running. After 1 mile, I'm waiting for the ball to drop.

... nothing. No pain, no discomfort, no tightness at all. So I go another mile.

... again, nothing. Everything felt GREAT. It is so odd to me that two extra days of rest can seemingly repair a nagging injury.

I did 4 on Monday and felt fantasic, so I decided I would try 6 on Tuesday, with the option to stop and walk if there was any discomfort, and the option to do an extra 2 if I felt fine. Well, everything felt awesome so I ended up doing the full 8. I started out slowly so that I could just kinda test things out and by the time I turned around things felt so good that I ended up negative splitting the run by 3 minutes. Today is a rest day so I am going to maybe do some yoga and strength training tonight, and then I have to decide how to proceed the rest of the week with scaling my runs.

I guess I just needed to be more patient with my body and let it rest for a full week, but it's really hard to know when you need just a day or two off versus needing a longer chunk of time. I am beyond ecstatic though that things seem to be back to normal... I was going crazy not being able to run as much as I wanted to!

MEGA SUXORS

2009-07-08T15:48:00.004-04:00

Last week was a step-back week and I missed one of the short easy runs. I wasn't going to stress about it because it wasn't a mileage building week and it was four miles, so who cares, right? and then on Thursday while out dodging stupid people on the path I somehow managed to tweak my left hip flexor. It didn't really hurt much on Thursday so I proceeded with my 12 mile long run on Friday. The run went relatively smoothly, but I did notice a bit of irritation in the hip during the last half of the run; not enough to stop or really worry about it, but enough to notice. I finished the run averaging 9 minute miles for the last 6 miles, for an overall pace of 9:20-ish or so. (sidenote: normally I would make a conscious effort to not run that fast but it was a lower mileage week and the long run itself was relatively short, and honestly? I had no clue I was running that fast for the last 6.)

Friday after the run I walked around town doing some errands and noticed that the hip was still a bit irritated. When I got back I took some ibuprofen and didn't notice it the rest of the weekend, despite the fact that I walked about 5 more miles on Friday.

When I headed out Monday for the big LT run for the week, I had completely forgotten about the hip and went about warming up. The plan was to warm up for 3 miles, do our 5 at LT pace, and then cool down for 2 miles. The first mile went by uneventfully. Then we crossed the bridge at North Avenue and I noticed somewhere during the 2nd or 3rd mile that I could feel the hip flaring up again. Did that stop me from attempting/completing the LT miles? No. because evidently I AM A COMPLETE AND TOTAL IDIOT. So we start the LT miles and overall I feel pretty great, except for this stupid leg/hip issue. The pace feels nice and easy and we're just cruising along. We passed a guy who evidently didn't like being chicked because every time I would pass him he'd speed up, get ahead of us, and then slow down again. The first mile passed in 8:15, right on pace. Mile 2 I got really distracted by the dude who was cat-and-mousing with us; it really started becoming hilarious how he'd sprint ahead of us when we passed him, only to slow down and just get passed again. We crossed the 2 mile point somewhere right above 8:20 (8:24 was when I noticed we must have passed it, so we'll call it that). The first half mile of the the 3rd mile I spent wondering why my leg was feeling so weird. It would sporadically hurt and then stop and then produce a sharp pain (like a charley horse in your calf, except in your upper leg area instead) and then not hurt at all and then the pain would seemingly move to another area of my hip. It was all very weird and distracting. I eventually found that if I massaged the leg a bit while I was running it would feel fine for about a quarter mile. Josh realized we were probably well past our turn-around point (we forgot the Garmins) so we did indeed turn around and headed back to see a slow 8:30 pace for that mile (still within LT range, and the mile was probably a tad long). I didn't like seeing that number though, so we picked it up for the last two and came back with an 8:15 mile for mile 4 and then hauled it in at an 8:09 pace for our last mile.

Despite the leg hurting, we still ran the two miles to cool down, which was pretty much when I figured out that maybe doing the LT miles wasn't such a good idea. It wasn't like excruciating pain or anything... it felt a whole lot like your leg feels when you get a leg cramp and you try to run through it and then you have lingering soreness afterward. I iced and ibuprofened that night and, as expected, it was sore as anything yesterday. Just walking I could feel it, so I iced and ibuprofened and streched all day yesterday and took the day off from running. Today it's not hurting me to walk but I do feel it when I stretch and when I'm walking up steps. It feels more like a tightness in the muscle than anything, similar to how it feels a few days post marathon when your muscles are recovering. I did a lot of checking of the googles and it sounds likely that it's a mild hip flexor strain. I'm anxious to get back to running (there's all this freaking mileage that I'm missing!!!) but I know it's smart to let it rest for at least a few days, if not a week. I'm hoping that it's not something more serious than a mild strain, and I don't want to re-aggravate it by running when it's not fully healed, so I'm going to just cool my heels for a bit until I can't even feel it at all and then I might try a mile or two to test out how it feels.

In the meantime, I am cursing every stupid runner who is going by because they suck because they can run and I can't. It's one of those things that you never realize you rely on so much until you can't do it. grrrrrr...

the week(s) in review

2009-06-29T11:01:00.003-04:00

wow. it's been a while, eh? where to begin, where to begin...

• Kansas was beyond fantastic. Mrs. D & Co. put on a completely awesome shower for us. There really aren't words to express how thankful we are to her and her friends for planning it, for all of the people who came to hang out with us, and for all the gifts. Oh, and the barbeque... dear God, I'm pretty sure I ate my weight in brisket that weekend.

• We managed to get in all of our miles while in Kansas, which I'm really proud of us for doing. We had already totally blown the mileage that week, and it's really easy to say, "we already blew it, so why don't we just skip this run, too?" but we didn't!

• Mrs. D, the fair Jess and I had a GREAT girls' night out while the guys did all the bachelor party type activities. It's quite possible that we had more fun than the guys did.

• We got all of our miles in the week before last. All 42 miles, ran and accounted for. There weren't any really "hard" runs that week, just mostly general aerobic miles. We DID get our 10 strides in though, and we also planned things out so we finished a run down at Northerly Island and got to sit on the lawn to watch Robert Randolph and the Family Band play an opening set for OAR. There are many days when I love living in this city.

• We had another shower on the 19th, hosted by the folks at work. Again, a wonderful time was had, and we were overwhelmed with everyone's generosity.

• The past week was HOT HOT HOT and led to runs in the morning. It worked out well because we had a cupcake tasting that some friends joined us for. The 10 miler the next morning after fueling with mostly cupcakes the prior day was a bit rough, though. :)

• 46 miles last week. ALL done. Including a 9 miler with 4 @ LT pace. Paces were:

Mile 1: 8:20
Mile 2: 8:14
Mile 3: 8:13
Mile 4: 8:19

Awesome. Felt absolutely great the entire time. The only issue was all of the incredibly stupid people on the path. Drunk girl weaving? check. people walking 8 people across? check. Roller bladers and bikers going slower than we are and weaving back and forth across the path? check.

• Thursday night I had my first dress fitting, where the woman essentially told me that I need to start eating cheeseburgers and milkshakes for the rest of the time before the wedding. I generally know where my body "settles" when I'm training hard, and I'm still not quite there yet, so they're leaving the seams open on the dress so they can take it in even more if necessary. A friend came with me and we ran to catch the train back from the 'burbs after stopping along the way to grab a hamburger (see, I'm following directions!) and a bottle of wine to split on the train back. We then proceeded to call the boys and tell them to meet us for more wine. and beer. hey, dress fittings are totally cause for celebration, right?

• The 5 miler on Friday, after all the wine and beer, was interesting, to say the least.

• BEST. LONG RUN. EVER. on Saturday. Ok, maybe not "ever." but I felt fairly great through the whole 17 miles. Started out relatively slow, maintained just under 10:00/mile through the half point, picked it up to about 9:40's after that until the last two, which were fast finish miles at about an 8:45 pace. I felt like we paced ourselves really well and had a lot left at the end of the run.

• We have been the most productive people ever over the past two weekends. Seriously, we have gotten so much stuff done. I'm finally starting to feel a bit better about the space situation now that we've got some off-site storage. Invitations are just about ready to go out and we are nearly done planning all of the really "big" stuff. Good thing, because the next month is going to be a whirlwind of activity.

I am absolutely loving this round of running with the Pfitz program. The mileage isn't bothering me nearly as much as it did when I did this several years ago. I am only noticing soreness or a lot of fatigue when I don't take care of myself (getting too little sleep, not hydrating enough, etc.) but otherwise I'm feeling great! Yeah, I'm excited that this week's a stepback week, but I don't think I'd really mind building another week if I absolutely had to.

We've been so busy lately that our weeks are planned out down to the hour. While I thrive on this type of structure, Dice is not so much a fan; he enjoys being able to just chill out a bit and do what he wants to at some points. I keep reminding him that this is temporary and that all of the rigidness will be worth it in the end. I'm not quite sure he's buying it, though.

I am happy to say that we've still managed to stay relatively social throughout the busyness. Sometimes that means that people need to come with us to cupcake tastings instead of us going to dinner together, but I don't think they mind all that much. :) It's been really nice to be able to share a lot of this stuff with friends and bounce stuff off of them; it's times like these when I miss having the girls closer to me so they can help me with this kind of stuff.

Hopefully I can manage an update before the end of July this time. We'll see; it's going to be an absolutely INSANE month!

mid week long run FAIL

2009-06-11T11:16:00.003-04:00

SO MUCH GOING ON!

We got all our miles in last week, so woot for that. We even got nearly all the way through the strides before I felt like my quad muscle was tearing away from the bone on the 9th one. I decided that sharp pain in my muscle was less of a lame excuse than, "I hate the damn things so much," so we stopped on #9 out of 10. Not too bad. We managed to negative split our 13 miler, despite coming back into a fierce wind on Saturday morning. Our last two miles were in the low 9:20's which is dangerously close to "too fast" for long runs.

This is something that's weird about Pfitz. I tried it back in 2006 when I did Detroit and pretty much got bored of the copious amounts of running required by the time I was about 12 weeks in. BUT! back then I could never check my ego enough to understand that I had to do the long runs slow so that LT runs and the like were able to be accomplished at appropriate paces. I was always doing high 8's for my long runs and thinking I could just bounce back for the speedwork runs. If you go back and look at my training, I almost always failed on LT runs. It's actually kind of comical.

I'm being much more conscious now of making sure I'm in the "appropriate" long run paces on the right days. There will be a time to do so many miles at race pace, and right now is not it. I've learned to love the S in the LSD acronym, and I think that's a product of me being older and wiser.

This week was a big epic FAIL in terms of planning. Well, actually, it was PLANNED OUT well, but then SOMEONE had to go and screw it all up. I'll give you a hint: it wasn't me. See, we're flying to Kansas tonight for a couples shower that's graciously being hosted by Josh's mom, so we have to work our runs around that. It shouldn't have been a problem, I had it all planned out so we could fit everything in. But due to certain circumstances, we missed Monday's LT run and had a commitment on Tuesday night, so we couldn't just move it. Originally I had this really great (read: STUPID) plan to do our LT run on Wednesday night, our mid week long run (10) on Thursday morning, and then our LSD run on Friday morning. I figured that as long as we did the longer miles slow, we'd be fine, right?

Does anyone see how stupid that is? I mean, I'm sure we could have done it. In fact, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed at 5 AM this morning. But then I realized how dumb that would be, to do 8 and 10 almost back-to-back, and then to expect to recover for 24 hours and do our long run. My legs feel like crap from the LT run last night anyways, so that was stellar decision making on my part.

So we missed a ten miler this week, and I'm just going to have to deal with that. There are going to be bumps in training along the way, I just have to accept that. And if we HAD tried to do all those mile in such a short time, I would have been exhausted and not been able to enjoy the weekend as much. You only get married and get to celebrate that once (well... yeah, I'm not even going to go there), so I have to keep that in mind this summer and not get upset when little things pop up that sidetrack the old running schedule. As the wise Trisaratops told me earlier this year, that particular race or goal will always be there, but you only get one shot at some stuff... you have to enjoy it while you can!

What I am proud of is that given that the mid week long run or the LT run had to go, we did the LT run, and pretty much rocked it out. Pfitz says our LT pace should be 8:20-8:31, and Mcmillan says 8:09-8:31. We did the first of four miles into the wind and still managed to be on pace. They looked like this:

Mile 1: 8:20
Mile 2: 8:17
Mile 3: 8:20
Mile 4: 8:17

So yeah. Awesome. I was pretty happy with that. So the first LT run is in the books, and I couldn't be happier about it. Now on to a fun weekend with family and friends. Woot!

1 down, 17 to go.

2009-06-01T12:06:00.002-04:00

Lots going on around here since the last time I managed to blog. Our last week of non-training we did a whole lot of nothing. It was really nice. I went to Bikram a couple of times and I think we lifted once or twice, but otherwise we didn't run at all and we just generally hung out and enjoyed the fact that we didn't HAVE to do anything. awesome.

Memorial Day weekend we went up to the cabin and helped open the place up. There were about 3 too many kids present so the mornings were way earlier than they should have been. We came back on Sunday night, hoping to have plenty of time on Monday to prepare ourselves for the week, but we were so beat from working, the kids waking us up at an ungodly hour, and the general (read: MASSIVE!) stress of having to deal with my family that we slept pretty much half of the day away and were scrambling to get our 7 miler in before going to meet up with friends for dinner. We did it, though, and even got the strides in. BOOOOOO STRIDES. I cannot stress enough how much I hate these things. Seriously.

We completed all of our runs last week within the desired paces, so that was awesome. We were on the fast end of our 7 miler and our 9 miler, were right on target for our 4 miler. For our long run, we were right in the middle of the pace range McMillan suggests, and were on the low to middle end of what we should have been running according to Pfitz, so I'll take it. 32 miles total for the week, so that's a good start. Now we just have to nail the mileage each week for 17 more weeks and we'll be golden. :)

As Dice mentioned, we spent this past weekend purging my apartment in an attempt to begin to fit his stuff once we get married. If you've seen my parents' house, you'll know that our family DOES NOT THROW STUFF AWAY. like, at all. When we were up north we found an entire BOX full of lids that used to be on pickle jars. why? WHO KNOWS. because, you know, they MIGHT BE VALUABLE SOME DAY IN THE DISTANT FUTURE. My mother saved EVERYTHING and my dad was just too lazy to throw stuff away, so clutter is just part of my nature. Pair this with the fact that almost all of my worldly possessions are either in my apartment or are in the storage cube upstairs, and this becomes nearly a gargantuan task. I don't have the luxury of being able to store stuff at my parents' house anymore, and have already thrown away a huge amount of stuff because of that. There was a HUGE amount of stuff that I really would have liked to have kept and couldn't simply because of space constrictions. And I'm not just talking *my* crap, either. I've actually done a remarkably great job of getting rid of most of my stuff. But I've also had to decide what family heirlooms are worth keeping and storing, and that's a ridiculously difficult process. It's sorting through your entire life, as well as sorting through your family's history, all rolled up into one big, complex task. Having to look at every item that holds some sort of meaning or significance, and having to literally put a price on it (Is this worth storing if it's going to cost $X for a storage unit each month? Is it worth spending $Y more for a larger apartment?) is mentally and emotionally taxing. I know it's a task that I have to do, and in the end I'll feel better about being less clutter-filled, but it's just hard, you know? We are going to get a storage unit for stuff that we don't need immediate access to (my mom's wedding dress, Christmas decorations, etc.) and once we do that I know I'll be a lot less stressed out, but until then I have to decide what I should keep and what needs to go. Seriously... how do you decide what to do with your grandfather's diploma from the institution that you graduated from when you mom told you repeatedly while you were going to school there that he would have been SO proud of you? You can't throw that away, right? But then WHAT THE HELL DO YOU DO WITH IT??? ERRRRRG!

Anyways, so the giant rant is over. And we have to run 8 miles tonight. So, YAY! except, BOOOOOOO STRIDES. I hate those things, man.

Rock out.

2009-05-14T22:38:00.002-04:00

Dice and I departed from our normal routine of not ever running weekday workouts together this week and did both our speedwork and our tempo run together. He had agreed to do the speedwork with me on Tuesday and then when we got back to my place after work he was all, "I don't really feel like running. why don't you go on without me?" and I was all, "OMG, DON'T BE A WUSS." Evidently, those are the magic words to convince him to come out with me, because it worked. We warmed up a mile and then the speedwork looked like this:

2 sets of
800 @ 7:46ish pace (400 recovery)
400 @ 7:46ish pace (200 recovery)
200 @ 7:46ish pace (200 recovery)
1200 @ 8:30ish pace

We did these outside on the inner path and were fairly close to all of the paces (a little fast on most of them, actually) so I was happy with that. A mile and a quarter cool down and we called it a night.

But that's not the exciting thing. The exciting thing was tonight's tempo run, which I've managed a big fat FAIL on up until now. We decided to do a mile warm up and cool down and do a 4 mile tempo run. I was aiming for 8:31ish pace, but I decided I would be happy with anywhere around 8:40 and under. Here's how the run looked:

Mile 1 (warm up) - 10:06
Mile 2 - 8:41
Mile 3 - 8:37
Mile 4 - 8:33
Mile 5 - 8:29
Mile 6 (cool down) - 10:18

Not too shabby! Considering I wasn't able to string more than two of these together AT ALL over the past few weeks, and today I did 4 straight, I'd consider that a victory. Granted, we ran these at night which was immensely helpful.

Right now I'm nursing a nauseous stomach, which I forgot is one of the challenges of getting a longer or harder workout in at night. I guess that's another thing I have to figure out, because my non-appetite for the delicious steak we were going to have for dinner is ridiculous.

This will probably be my last full week of intervals and tempo runs, as I'll probably just do some intervals early next week and then do some general aerobic runs the rest of the week. The week after that, training begins! Woot! If you're actually running Chicago, you're probably thinking, "Uh, aren't you starting a little early? It's nearly 20 weeks out." Why yes, you would be correct. We're planning to do an 18 week plan. However, if everything pans out the way we expect it to, we'll be island hopping in the Cyclades (off the coast of Greece) and relaxing on Santorini for several weeks toward the end of our training, so we're building that in and are going to work around it as best as possible (read: we're pretty much not planning to run at all). And having just established what hotel we may be staying at, OH MY GOD, let me tell you... I think I'm more excited for the honeymoon than I am for the actual wedding. (KIDDING HONEY! I LOVE YOU AND CAN'T WAIT TO MARRY YOU!)

Man, it's going to be a good summer.

whole lot o' stuff

2009-05-11T17:00:00.003-04:00

things around here have been busy. productively busy, so that's good. I'm really enjoying these last few weeks that we have before training really begins, but it's starting to get challenging to fit in all of the stuff I want to do. It's a really great feeling to be outside doing stuff when the weather's this nice. so, to wrap up the last week, category style...

Nutrition
When I last wrote, I talked all about how I wanted to do better nutrition-wise. And then that night I believe we went out and had big ass margaritas, and then next day I had a big old burger and fries for lunch. Clearly, my resolve is lacking.

No, seriously though... my therapist and I were talking last week and she mentioned that I've complained before about being tired all the time and she asked if I've made any progress on that. I explained to her my "I have more energy when I'm not eating as many carbs" theory and she started laughing because she said that was the very next thing she was going to suggest. She agreed that if the tiredness wasn't due to stress or vitamin deficiencies, it could very well be from diet, and that she knows a lot of people are really sensitive to carbs and it will make them tired and sluggish.

Since I spoke with her and she reaffirmed my thoughts on the subject, I've been really good about tracking things and making sure that I'm getting everything pretty balanced out, food-wise. I'm pretty sure dice is tired of hearing me say, "It looks like I haven't gotten enough good fats in yet today," or "Is there some way we can fit some type of protein into the meal?" For the most part, I've felt really great and energized and I'm recovering well from my workouts, so all systems are go on that front. The only time I went carb-overboard was last night when we had heaping servings of pasta for dinner, but that was necessary to replenish the fuel used up by the longish run (10 miler) that we did earlier that day. It didn't really seem to affect me last night (more than likely because my body really needed it) so I must be doing something right. So yay on that front.

Activities
Not to confuse everybody now that I just said that I, "feel really great and energized" all of the time, but do you know when I don't feel energized AT ALL? First thing in the morning. For the most part I can get a run done or lifting in or a workout squeezed in there in the morning, and I love the feeling of having it done for the day, but if I even try to do something that requires me putting in a hard effort, I'm so screwed if it's before 7 AM. I keep trying to do my tempo runs in the morning and keep dramatically failing (3 miles instead of 4 on Thursday morning) even though I can do that speed with relative ease in the evening hours. So note to self: DON'T EVEN TRY TO TEMPO RUN IN THE MORNING, YOU IDIOT. Seriously.

The only other running I got in the past week was the aforementioned 10 miler on Sunday which was awesome. Dice and I headed out for an easy longer run in the sun and then all of a sudden these clouds came through that dumped a bunch of rain and hail on us. So that was pretty sweet. But we felt good through the run and had a blast doing it, and our pace wasn't too shabby for an afternoon stroll, either (almost exactly at 9:45 pace) so we were pretty happy with it.

We've been concentrating a lot on strength-work the past few weeks, too. As Dice mentioned, we started a new lifting plan that is supposed to focus on mixing things up more via supersetting and providing a cardiovascular workout while still giving strength gains. Regardless of what it's supposed to do, it's giving us a structured outline that we both are happy with (something that tends to be a point of contention between us) and I'm really feeling like it's a) kicking my ass, and b) making me stronger. We've been getting in 2-3 weight lifting sessions a week, each of them nearly an hour of grueling misery, so I guess there's a good reason why I'm feeling like that, eh? Most important, I think something like this is something I can follow while I'm running a lot, because it's not focusing on max weight lifts and more on enduring through a set of a fixed length, which tends to make me less prone to DOMS.

And last but certainly not least, I've been considering trying Bikram yoga for a while now since there's a studio up the street the offers the tempting "31 days for $29" deal. But sweating in a hot room with a bunch of people that are super duper bendy was really intimidating to me so I kept putting it off. A couple of friends have tried it and LOVED IT, so I keep telling myself it's something I'll try to work in once the miles start to pile up, but really, how likely is that to happen? We were hanging out with a few friends two weekends ago and one of them suggested I try it with her that week. Having someone you know with you to make you informed about all of the stuff that's potentially intimidating makes all the difference, so I agreed and we made a date for Friday night. And let me tell you, it. was. awesome. There was the standard "having to sit down and catch my breath before I passed out" feeling going on at a few points, but otherwise I felt great (albeit hot and sweaty) and afterward I felt so refreshed and awesome. I'm really, really glad she convinced me (finally) to try it. And, it was fun to just hang out without the boys... this particular friend is one of Dice's good friends from college and it's not often that we spend time together without our respective male units. Now I just have to figure out how to work THAT into my schedule, too, as it's quite the time sucking (and potentially addictive) activity.

Wedding Shiz
We also have been getting a ton of stuff done on the wedding planning front, mostly due to the fact that Dice is freakin' awesome. My dress has arrived and my boss and I may or may not be playing hooky later this week so I can go try it on. So that's super exciting.

So yeah... that's about all that's going on around here. There's the usual "day job" thing going on between all of this stuff, and that's always awesome too (see: the fact that my boss wants to play hooky with me to go look at my dress) so yeah. Life's pretty darn good right now.

Is this even allowed?

2009-05-09T11:17:00.001-04:00

Together with their families,
Mouse
and
Dice
invite you to share in the awesomeness
of their marriage
Saturday, the xth of month
two thousand and nine
at time o'clock in the afternoon
Location
Chicago, Illinois

This is Dice's vote for how we word our invitations. emphasis on "awesomeness." HA!

Now that I've eaten a pile of cookies today...

2009-05-05T15:27:00.003-04:00

So I was having a conversation with Dice a while ago when we were training for the Illinois Marathon about how if I actually paid attention to my nutrition, I really feel like I could probably shave a pretty decent amount of time off of my PR.

See, I have this problem. That problem is that I like to eat cookies. Well, really anything with sugar in it. And beer. I like that, too. And pasta. And carby stuff in general. I heart me some carbs. But I noticed while I was carb loading for the aforementioned marathon that the more refined carbs I ate, the more I felt tired and sluggish and generally just plain crappy. This tends to be a problem because with training you tend to create a rather decent calorie deficit, and I like to make up for the deficit by eating things like Joe-Joe's or ice cream. In mass quantities. And then I physically feel like crap. I told MoMo over my birthday weekend that I was vowing to actually pay attention to what I ate to see how it affected my performance, and that didn't really happen. (insert surprised face here)

I started really paying attention to what I was eating the first few weeks after the marathon and was really focusing on NOT filling my calorie deficit void with sugar and quickly digesting carbs, but instead focused on eating lots of GOOD foods. Now, that doesn't mean I wasn't eating carbs. I love me some steel-cut oats, and I'm not sure that I can go without them for any steady period of time. But I was focusing on making sure my carbs were coming from whole grains and fruits and veggies, and that I was getting a ton of good fats and lean proteins and, well, generally pretty much everything my doctor tells me I should be eating when I go in to see her.

You know what? I felt AWESOME for those two weeks. I recovered from the marathon fairly quickly, I was able to jump back into doing decent effort workouts right away, I didn't feel tired and sluggish like I was feeling while I was carb loading, and I was eating a TON of food every day. Like, literally bringing a big bag of food to work every single day. And then last week my week was all thrown off by a conference and the illness (I always want comfort food when I'm ill and conference food is notoriously evil) and this week we've had meals provided for us that were less than stellar on the healthy scale. Last week I had a muffin for breakfast one morning at the conference and by the middle of the morning I thought I was going to pass out, I needed a nap so bad. Clearly I am insanely sensitive to white starchy carbs or something, because I hadn't felt that tired in weeks.

I am working on a variety of things with my therapist, and at the top of that list is being more mindful of what is happening on a day-to-day basis. This didn't stem from my eating at all, but came from other areas of my life where I'm trying to improve some things, but I realized that it applies to pretty much everything I do. I'll walk by a plate of cookies in the breakroom and grab 2 or 3 of them without even really paying attention to what I'm doing or to how those are going to make me feel in an hour, or in three hours when I have to go run intervals.

I am just about in the same shape, weight, size, etc. that I was a few years ago when I was running pretty strongly, so I'm less concerned about the vanity aspect of things, and am more pleased that I'm back to feeling "in shape" and strong again. But I also know that when I got my marathon PR I was just a tad bit lighter, and I'm wondering if that's what it's going to take to get me under that 4 hour mark. Dragging an extra 5 or 10 pounds for 26.2 miles can really take it's toll after a while. But I also don't want to have to worry about "losing weight" while I'm training. I want to focus on being healthier, and having a higher fitness level, and just overall making sure that the things I'm doing are going to contribute positively toward my running goals. I want to work on eating intuitively and making good choices that will optimally fuel my body for the workouts that I'm putting it through.

So that's what May is going to be about. Finding a good balance between fueling myself well and not feeling like I'm depriving myself. And it's about letting myself have a cookie (or a beer. or a margarita) if I really want one, damnit! But also about realizing that eating/drinking 5 of them is PROBABLY going to make me feel not-so-hot later. Hopefully by the time training REALLY starts, I'll have it all figured out!

See? This is why I do intervals on the treadmill.

2009-05-04T22:39:00.003-04:00

Last week was pretty awesome up until the point where I got sick (right in the middle of a flu epidemic. Awesome.) and had to sit on my butt for several days straight. I still managed to get my intervals in earlier in the week at the gym, and got a few days of lifting in (more on that later, when I'm not so sleepy), but I missed my tempo run for the week and any additional shorter runs that I normally would have done. Yesterday Dice and I took advantage of the beautiful weather and did 8, despite the fact that my nose is still running stronger than a leaky faucet and the post-nasal drip was causing me to hack up a lung every half mile or so.

I had planned to do intervals this morning but then my alarm went off at o'dark thirty and I was all, "hell no," and cuddled back into bed. Plus, it was something like 68 degrees today! that's outside running weather if I've ever felt it!

Despite having a horribly unhealthy lunch (more on that, too, sometime when I'm not sleepy) I got home and procrastinated a bit, thought about not running, and then decided that was ridiculous. So I laced up my sneakers and headed out to do my intervals on the lakefront path.

Now, this isn't the easiest endeavor, because you have to balance crowds and potholes in the path and headwinds and all sorts of other excuses. But I know it's really important that I get a feel for these paces "on my own," so off I went. Here's how the run looked:

Warm up: 2 miles
2 x 1 mile, cruise interval pace (800 jog between intervals)
6 x 200 meters, speed interval pace (200 jog between intervals)
Cool down: a bit more than 1 mile

Cruise interval pace for me should be a tad over an 8 minute mile, so that's what I was aiming for on the mile repeats. The first interval I ran into the wind, and I was ok with that because I knew I'd have the benefit of a tailwind on my 2nd interval, where I could potentially be fatigued. I started out something ridiculously fast (like a 6:45 pace) for the first 1/4 mile and then slowly eased up until I was holding steady around 8:00 pace. I had to weave between tourists and hit the damn awful potholes down by Chicago Ave. on the path, so I know those slowed me down a little bit, along with the headwind, so my pace came in right around 8:05. This was about 2 seconds off pace, which is not too shabby for just getting a feel for things.

I jogged out a 1/4 mile and back and then headed off for my second mile interval with the wind behind me. YAY TAILWIND. I was much more consistent starting out this time and eased into about a 7:55 pace right away. I then started fooling with my ipod while I was running to try to find a more suitable song (damn ipod) and evidently slowed down a bit because before I realized it my garmin said i'd dropped to an 8:11 pace. No worries, since I had about 6/10 of a mile to go yet, so I just kicked it up a bit and cruised for a bit and when after a while I didn't see my pace lower I started thinking that maybe I just didn't know how to gauge my pace and that I was just way more fatigued than I thought I was. I decided with .3 miles to go that I was just going to lay it out there and try to get my pace where it needed to be and really put a lot of effort into moving faster. I saw my pace shift to about an 8:06 pace and was irritated that it wasn't faster. I seriously felt like I was freaking running a track race. How was my pace not any faster? Then when I thought I had about 5 strides left, my watch starts freaking out on me, telling me i'm already done, and that, HELLO!, my pace was a 7:27. W. T. F. Garmin, you suck. I DON'T LIKE MOVING THAT FAST UNLESS I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO (read: when i'm being chased by vampires), YOU STUPID PIECE OF CRAP.

ok, so obviously there were some issues with my pacing mechanism. clearly I can't rely on the Garmin's pace thing for this sort of stuff and will have to spend some time at the track instead. but man am I glad that all of that "feeling like I was going really fast" wasn't for nothing.

The 6 sets of 200's were a breeze after that. Most of them came in right around 56 seconds, which is right where I need them to be, so I was pretty happy with that. And then I headed home as a cool down. Awesome.

I was looking back to some of my older times doing these workouts. I followed the full version of this plan when I did Dexter to Ann Arbor in 2006, and I happen to be on the EXACT same week when it comes to this particular workout. WEIRD. I noticed that my times were pretty much spot on from that training cycle, and that makes me really happy. I recall these intervals being difficult, but not impossible at the time when I did them in 2006, and now I don't really think they're THAT hard. They're definitely a really good effort for me, but not to the point where I'm dreading the workout like I was back then. So WOOT! for being stronger now than I was back then! (or at least, perceiving myself as stronger.) This training plan pretty much led to a 1/2 mary PR for me back in 2006, so I'm really excited about the potential that I might have going into this next marathon training cycle.

weekly wrapup

2009-04-24T12:15:00.002-04:00

still working on figuring out the whole public/private aspect of things, but I like the idea of a digest in both places.

Last week I got back to it pretty quickly and put in about 20 miles before the week ended. I also had the opportunity to get out and ride my bike, which I loved because it gave me the chance to watch the sun rise and get a good workout in before gobs of people hit the path. Sunday morning it was lightly raining and I did 8 and felt pretty good. I told myself that if my legs were complaining at all that I would cut it short, but I got to the 7 mile turnaround before I knew it, so I just kept going. What's funny is that my super-easy feeling pace was actually 30 seconds per mile faster than my "marathon race pace," so I was happy to feel like things were truly coming around in the recovery area.

I set out this week to do a few things, 1) get some light speedwork in and 2) get a steady schedule set up for lifting. I miss strength training a LOT. I miss feeling strong. I felt during the last training cycle that I was very disorganized and chaotic and thus, ended up being really sporadic. There's nothing worse than sporadic strength training, because you never really feel like you're seeing results and it feels like it's more of a hassle than it's worth.

So this week I did a fairly easy interval session on Monday night and then hauled my ass to the gym to lift legs on Tuesday morning. And let me tell you, those suckers have been hurting ever since.

I did two easy general aerobic runs this week, a five miler on Wednesday and three yesterday, and then this morning I was up bright and early to do some tempo miles. I had intended to do 2x2 miles, but ended up doing 2 and then 1, all at tempo speed, but I was just out of it by the end of that third mile so I opted to just cool down. 5.5 running this morning and then an additional 3 miles walking (mostly to the gym, to the El, etc.) so not too bad of a morning. I will eventually transition to running these outside since it's getting to be super nice out, but for right now I'd like to get an idea of what paces feel like and program it into my head. It's been so freaking long since I actually paid attention to pace that I generally have NO IDEA whether I'm running a 9 or 10 minute mile. These tempo runs should also make me a bit more prepared for the LT runs when training for Chicago REALLY starts.

It's weird, but it's like a light switch flipped inside of me and I am really, really enjoying running so much these days. It's this sort of running utopia where I just can't wait to get out there and get a few miles in, and it's such a great feeling. I remember the first time I experienced it running track and cross country in high school; I had mostly run for the fellowship and because it was just "what I did," but then suddenly I ended up getting enjoyment out of just the running aspect of it and it was like I was on a running high all the time. This state generally only happens when my body is in good enough shape to not make the running feel like "work," and I feel like I'm mostly there right now and it's a great feeling. (although, I have a feeling that once i'm putting serious miles in again, it's going to feel a whole lot like work again.)

The other time that I remember feeling this way is after my mother died. I was relying a lot on running as a form of therapy for me (thus the header up there) and it came through every time I was feeling poorly. The past few years, I have been relying on other things for support. And that's great and all, but every once in a while you get this huge reminder that in the end, you have to stand on your own two legs and support yourself. I have, unfortunately, learned that the hard way. I leaned a lot on my mom for support before she died, and her dying was one of the things that first taught me this lesson: nothing in life is constant or guaranteed. except yourself.

This week marks the year anniversary of the time I spent in the hospital with my father before he died. Sunday will be the anniversary. And yesterday, I received that little reminder that the trails, and my ability to go exert some energy on them, are sometimes the only thing I need to keep myself upright and moving forward through life.

The past few years I've been really relaxed about training and keeping myself in shape. I went for about a year of not really running consistently at all. And that's all going to change. Because I need to be healthy and comfortable enough to get out there and crank out a few miles when I'm feeling crummy. It's pretty much essential to my well-being. And I'm there now, so how hard can it to maintain, right? so here's to my mental health being just as important in my running as my physical health. And to being able to stand on my own two feet.

"So that everyone can see how AWESOME we are!"

2009-04-13T11:57:00.003-04:00

very few people will get that reference, but it's what was going through my head all day on Saturday.

Dice and I broke our streak of signing up for races and not following through with the training for them when we ran the Illinois Marathon on Saturday. The quick and dirty report goes like this: "The race was awesome. We ran slow. We had a blast."

Overall, it was an amazing race. Personally, I thought it was the best road marathon that I've run. Chicago is great for all the hype but I'm not a huge fan of the crowds. I loved Cincinnati because it's my PR race. Detroit is the home-town 'thon. But this race had all of the external factors that I thought made it just about perfect. The field was fairly small (2k marathoners, 4k halfsies), support was great with water at just about every 2 miles and something like 3 gu stops, and the crowd support was unparalleled. It wasn't the headache-inducing, "crowd lining the streets the entire way" support that Chicago gets, but that's not really the support I like anyway. There were a fair amount of people sitting in their yards spectating, and unlike in many other races, they were *actually cheering* for people the entire way through. It was awesome, and that was what really made the race for me.

Dice and I ran the whole thing together, and we spent the majority of the second half of the race thanking all of the volunteers and spectators for their support and help. And just a tip... if you actually acknowledge people for the support they're giving you, they'll respond by supporting you tenfold. There were so many people who would be clapping for us and when we'd smile at them or wave or tell them thanks, they'd start yelling their heads off for us. It was really awesome. There were about a half dozen people who commented on how much fun we seemed to be having, and they were correct. It was a blast to be out there.

We didn't go into this race with any time expectations. We just wanted to a) follow through with the training and b) have fun running together. I would say that I put in about a 75% effort with training, missing a run here or there during the week and missing a few key long runs early in the training cycle. Taper was pretty much three weeks of no running, which is really something I have to stop doing, but whatever. This was just an "easing back into it" 'thon for both of us. I will say that while I didn't feel unprepared for this race (I hit most of the miles during key weeks and all of the longer 16-20 mile runs) I also think that any less preparation and I wouldn't have felt comfortable doing this race. I'm kind of the type of person who doesn't like doing something unless I can do it fairly well, and the 75% effort that I gave was about the minimum for what I'd feel comfortable putting in before a full marathon.

We finished with my slowest road marathon time, a modest 4:32. We crossed the half at 2:09 and felt decent, but miles 15-18 had us steadily slowing down, despite what we perceived as a persistent effort. It was at about the 17 mile mark that I mentally adjusted from trying to keep a decent pace to just relaxing and having fun. My feet were KILLING me at that point so I told Dice I was going to walk through the water stop. I don't know if it was the fact that we were running on mostly concrete or if it was the extreme tapering, but they were really, really making me slow down. Dice had some cramping during mile 20 so we walked a bit and then we stopped so he could use the bathroom during mile 21. Otherwise we ran through all of water and gu stops. Energy levels were great the whole way through and hydration wasn't an issue.

More than anything, this race reminded me why I love this sport. There was a point at about mile 22 where I was just enjoying the beautiful day and thinking about how great it was that we were out there doing the run together. But even more so, the fact that we are healthy enough to be able to go out and do that is beyond amazing. A lot of people can't say that. The past year has been extremely difficult for me, and the fact that we still managed to make time to get out there and get our runs in during the cold, blustery winter is bizarre to me. To be rewarded with such a perfect day was worth all of the snow and windchill.

There are so many people who would never think they could do something like this, and it's something that we just take for grated. For us, it's just running marathon 5, or number 7, and it starts to lose the magic at that point. But seeing all of those people out there, telling us how awesome we were and looking at us in awe before and after the race when we told them we were running/ran the full marathon... well, it reminded me that this *IS* kind of a big deal. And a lot of people would KILL for a 4:32 marathon; us putting in that effort for something we're doing "just for fun" is really not too shabby.

I'm going to take this enthusiasm and put it toward the next few months of off-season, building a nice base with a lot of speedwork. And then the real fun begins: training for Chicago '09. Despite the crowds, it will be fun to see this city I live in by foot and to be able to see all of the places I walk past every day. Granted, there's that whole "wedding" thing that will fall right in the middle of training, but whatever. I work better under pressure anyways. :)

I'm also going to make an attempt at being more diligent at blogging, as it's a good way to keep me accountable and to track my progress. However, since I've become fairly lame in my old age, I don't want the entire World of the Intarwebs up in my bizness, so I will probably employ those nice old privacy settings that blogs afford these days. If you care to follow, there is more than likely an email addy linked somewhere from this blog (I'm too lazy to look right this second). Employ that or hit me up via another method of communication.

Mouse out, yos.

flying solo (kind of)

2008-11-22T08:18:00.002-05:00

My siblings (or at least the majority of them) are coming to visit for Thanksgiving this week. The last time I made a thanksgiving dinner for my family was two years ago. It was the first year after my mother had passed, and I was a certified mess. That day two years ago, I had a key ingredient that I won't have with me this year: my father.

I've been making the dinners since the year my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Knowing that her oldest daughter was a complete dunce in the kitchen, she turned to me to instill the secret knowledge and intricacies of her famous homemade dressing recipe. And so, since that year she was diagnosed, I picked up more and more of the responsibility surrounding the meal. The last year she was alive, there was only one thing that she did, and I regret that because I still to this day haven't figured out exactly how to make her cheesy asparagus. damn.

Each of those years, though, I always had help. Whether it be from my mom standing beside me, or my father guiding me with the experience that he had gained after years of being my mom's co-pilot in the thanksgiving day festivities. When we made the dinner the year after my mom died, my dad was there with me, guiding me, and helping me with the things that I may not have noticed before or that I didn't think were "important enough" to pick up.

now i'm realizing how important those little things are. like, for instance, exactly how big of a turkey do we need again? I never BOUGHT the turkey. I just fixed it! and, uh, how many potatoes do we need per person? I can peel 'em, cook 'em, and mash them up into a delicious concoction, but I'll be damned if I can't remember how many we use. I've been kind of trying not to think about these (rather important) details, for fear that I might have a panic attack and freak out over the last few weeks. but now, it's time to start thinking about them.

This morning i'm up at an abnormally early hour (probably because I fell asleep on the couch at about 8 last night) and I've spent the last 45 minutes making a grocery list (thanksgiving dinner is serious business, peeps). and as I'm looking through the recipes and the notes that my mom had written down--some for me, some for herself that I had saved--I am seeing little scribbles here and there that I hadn't noticed before. and for the first time in like, MY ENTIRE LIFE, I am so, so happy that my mom was a bit OCD. because written on the top of one of the stuffing sheets is a little note that I had never noticed before (probably because I didn't need it... the turkey had already been purchased by my dad)... STUFFS A 13# TURKEY AND CASSEROLE DISH.

score!

and further down... "peel potatoes (10 large)"

moms are awesome, FTW.

I'm sure there are still going to be a few things that I can't figure out on my own and from my mom's scribbly notes, but that's what I have the internet (and a boss who's like a second mom) for. and I have a new man (much cuter than my dad, I might add) by my side to help me through everything, and I know that the last year and a half of making him help me cook is going to pay off come Thursday. I'm just thankful to his mom that she's letting me have him all to myself for this holiday, because I sure do need him. :) Some day, he and I will be helping our daughters figure out how to clean the turkey and make the stuffing just right. And just now, writing that, it occurred to me for about the millionth time that my parents aren't gone; they live on through me, and through my siblings, and they'll live on through my children some day when I'm gone. And that's a comforting feeling, knowing that they're still here in some way.

This year, preparing for the holidays hasn't been nearly as difficult as I expected it to be. Part of that is because we are still dealing with a lot of estate issues and I know that's preoccupying a lot of our energy and emotions. But part of it is because I'm getting the help that I need to deal with everything, and I can't speak highly enough about my therapist, and about getting help in general, if you think you need it. "How does it feel to be the first person in your family who's getting better?" someone asked me a few weeks ago. and, well, it feels damn good.

why did you vote?

2008-11-04T15:51:00.005-05:00

because there are too many jobs leaving Michigan, and I'd like to move back there some day.

because someone in my family was laid off on Friday, and won't have health care when they desperately need it.

because inequality and racism are rampant in this country. if you don't believe this, you are either ignorant or contributing to it.

because one of my best friends will probably be deployed for the... third? time this summer, and there's a good chance he won't be able to be in my wedding or see me walk down the aisle.

because "drill, baby, drill" isn't a good enough energy policy.

because I support stem cell research when there are ethical guidelines.

because I don't think my religious beliefs should be forced on anyone else.

because I went to grad school and be came TRULY educated in the last four years, and because of that, my views are different. and I'm excited to be able to make that count.

because I want to be able to tell my children some day that they can be anything that want to be, even if that's the president. and I want to be able to show them proof.

whatever YOUR reason, go vote.

running isn't hard.

2008-10-20T15:10:00.003-04:00

On Saturday, we had an experience (the first in a long time) where I thought, "hmm. I should blog about that." so here I am. yay blogging.

Have you ever said to yourself, on any given day during the offseason (read: untrained), "I wonder if I tried to run a race TODAY, if I'd be able to do it, and how fast I could do it in"?

yeaaaahhh...

At the beginning of the summer, dice and I decided that we were going to train for the Kansas City marathon and that we were going to go all aggressive and run an awful damn lot over the summer. That worked, up until about... oh, late July or so? so that was fun while it lasted. Life got busy and we got tired of having to wake up before work to run 12-milers and all of a sudden there was a day very early in the football season when Josh said, "well, we could just not run our long run today and drop to the half marathon." and I was all, "does that mean we can watch football and drink beer all day instead of worrying about having to run tonight?" and then suddenly a 6-pack of Oberon magically disappeared into my belly.

It was awesome.

We then proceeded not to run - like, pretty much AT ALL - for the next two or three months. I did Dances with Dirt with Mo and the crew on September 6th, but there was pretty much no running for about a month up until that point. And then dice and I ran about three or four miles... oh, three times or so in the last few weeks, just to make sure our legs actually functioned and all that.

But for all practical purposes, we pretty much hadn't trained for the past 2.5 months. I think my last "longish" run took place the first week of August.

And yes, we could have decided to just not do the race at all, but running isn't hard. especially if it's only a measly half marathon. plus, there was a $25 gift certificate for barbeque. mmm. barbeque.

I digress.

So we ran the Kansas City half marathon on Saturday. We were expecting it to be really, really hard, and we were expecting to run super, duper slow. And we were slow, don't get me wrong. I think the half-marathon split for my first marathon ever (read: SLOW) was faster than our time. BUT! we ran the entire thing. the course wasn't nearly as difficult as I was expecting it to be (everyone had told me how HILLY! it is). and we pretty much had a blast.

A family friend of Josh's picked up our packets, so I didn't realize until race morning that I had been assigned a full marathon number, despite both of us having switched to the half (I even have the receipt in my email... grrr..). Otherwise, race morning wasn't too bad. It was so totally stress-free because we knew we didn't really care about our time and we had planned to use a run-walk method if necessary so we weren't too worried about overexerting ourselves.

We got downtown and parked about 20 minutes before we were supposed to start. (yay for not caring!) We parked literally about two blocks away from the start, so that was awesome. I got to use nice, indoor, heated bathrooms instead of the port-o-johns before the race. And when we finally meandered our way over to the start, we found that we were just in time to take off with everyone else.

We headed through the Power and Light district for a while and went by a place where some friends had a wedding reception last year. Then we slowly made our way to liberty memorial where we headed up a decent climb and then ran around the memorial a bit. I turned to Josh and said, "so, is that like the 3rd or 4th hardest hill?" and he was like, "no, that was the hardest one. the rest aren't as bad as that one." and I was all, "uh... that wasn't that hard, so this will be awesome." I'd put the hill level pretty much on par with the Flying Pig in Cincinnati. There are a lot of rollers (which to me are a lot of fun) and there are two steep-ish climbs around Liberty Memorial, and then there's a decent gradual climb around mile 10, but then otherwise it really wasn't difficult. I'm not sure you really need hill training to manage them. shit, I'm proof that you don't even really need ANY training to manage them. I think the mile that we ran with the hardest hill was about 10 seconds slower than our other miles at the beginning of the race (we negative split, BIG TIME). Granted, by the time the last incline came, I turned to Josh and said, "where's the fucking downhill, eh?" But... well, yeah. I think I'd probably chalk that up to my general "not being in shape"-ness rather than the hill.

I was pretty much comparing it to Detroit the entire way, and one thing that really didn't compare at all was the fact that there was pretty much no crowd support. I mean, like none. It was abysmal. I thought it was kind of funny that a ton more people come out to watch in Detroit (which, you know, is SO! INCREDIBLY! DANGEROUS!) than do in Kansas City. (Did I mention we parked for free? that's unheard of!) Kansas City's course was beautiful, though, I had to give them that.

The only other things to note were that Dice's parents came out to cheer for us at about the half-way point (which, by the way, was totally awesome of them), and we decided that since we were taking it easy that we'd take the opportunity to go give them a hug and say hi quickly. They yelled at us to keep going. :) Also, the finishing chute was horrible. It bottlenecked horribly. And then we had to wait around in the finisher's chute for literally about 20 minutes before we could get through the food line. it was horrible, especially because it was kind of chilly out and most of us weren't dressed to be standing around after getting all sweaty.

All in all, I was really happy with the race. We finished just a tad over 2:17, which translates to about a 10:30 pace, I think. Not too shabby, I'd say. We spent the entire afternoon reiterating that running isn't hard and laughing that we had actually managed to accomplish what we had that morning.

Just think what we could do if we actually TRAINED for a consistent period of time...

figuring it out.

2008-09-30T15:09:00.008-04:00

Every week or two, I walk up to a nondescript office building and ring the bell for office number 1, and a person asks who I am and buzzes me in. I spend the next hour trying to fit the pieces of my life that have fallen out of place back into the complex jigsaw puzzle that my life has become. sometimes pieces don't go where they used to. sometimes they go into a totally new place. and sometimes pieces are missing. and they stay missing. and you have to figure out how to make the picture complete without them.

it's hard. life is hard, I guess.

I spent the weeks after my dad died in a somewhat comatose state of shock. all I remember is that I ate and slept very little. I didn't cry all that much, either. and every time someone approached me and said, "wow. I can't believe this. it's so sudden. and so soon after your mom..." All I could say was, "we'll figure it out." because really. what else is there to say? we would, right? we'd figure it out?

I've learned since then a bit about what happens, psychologically, to the family structure when children lose both of their parents. your concept of a family can simply fall apart. you have no cohesive factor forcing you to see each other at holidays, or yelling at you to, "call your brother, it's his birthday you know." You have to trust that the family values and sense of loyalty toward each other are strong enough to keep you together. But that's difficult when you have 4 headstrong young adults who are all trying to figure out their own place in this world. It takes a lot of work.

I'm not certain that anyone can really understand what we're going through right now. what i'm going through. This epoch of my life isn't just about understanding and coming to terms with the death of my parents. and it's not just about paying bills or, conversely, figuring out the inheritance. it's about understanding the tasks that have been left undone by both of my parents, and making sure than they aren't neglected. it's about making sure we remain a family.

I've always tried to be a person who didn't sit by idly and complain about my life without doing something about it. but there has been something lurking within our family that none of us has had the strength to deal with. Last week, I finally found that strength. I had a conversation with someone that I have been meaning to have for the last 10 years. and now, all of a sudden, I feel like there's something that can be done. and I feel simultaneously terrified of possibly not being able to help make that change happen, and excited to see if it can. A little part of me almost thinks it will be worth it to have lost both of my parents if that's the catalyst that helped us fix this. I know, for a fact, that they would have wanted it this way, and I also know that they didn't have the strength to do it.

it's incredibly stressful to have to deal with the things that we're dealing with, but it's also rewarding to feel that maybe everything can be ok. to feel that we're actually working toward something, instead of just feeling like we're sitting around and bitching about how horrible our lives are. maybe there will be a day when grieving for my parents is as uncomplicated as that, and will be about just plain missing them and won't have to involve wishing they were here to take care of problems.

The good thing is that all of this gives me a bit more perspective. for some reason, all of those trivial little things that irked me on a daily basis aren't even registering on my radar anymore. I don't have time or energy to deal with the bullshit in life. it's actually quite refreshing.

I don't like talking specifically about what's happening with my family out of respect for them as individuals and out of respect for our family as a whole. It's very seldom that I get into details about these situations with even my closest of friends, and I don't really feel like putting the details of my family life out there for the public is good for me. it's awkward and painful to have to watch someone sort through these sorts of things, I get that. but it's even more difficult for me when people don't understand what type of support I need. However, I do feel like sorting things out through writing will be good for me, so I will be writing privately for a while. before it was just "probably" a hiatus. now it is almost a for sure one. I'd apologize, but I don't even know most of y'all. if you do know me, well... you know how to reach me.

2008-09-17T18:24:00.000-04:00

Minnesota.

guess what's this weekend?

2008-09-05T14:01:00.003-04:00

I'm mitten-bound for the weekend. heading back in about, oh, 5 minutes to stay with momo tonight and then it's all about Dances With Dirt. We've got a new dirty girl to initiate. It should be a blast.

I'd say I'll catch y'all on the flipside, but... well, it's highly unlikely that there will be a lot of blogging when I get back so there's no real point, is there? I'll probably be "hiatus"ing from blogging here for a while and posting elsewhere about wedding planning for a few select family and friends, but that's about all i'm planning on documenting really these days. There's just a lot going on and it's really not that interesting to be talking about how I have to pay taxes on two residences that I now kind of own but don't really, in a state that I don't even live in anymore, and how complicated it all gets to be paying a dead man's bills for him. Maybe i'll do a weekly recap or something so I have a personal reminder of what all is going down these days, but for the most part I don't have the interest in keeping this updated all that regularly right now.

Never fear, life is complicated (I hear that's what being a grown up is about) but it's also very good. This is less of an "I'm so sad and depressed" hiatus, and more of an "I'm too busy living life to document it" one.

I'm off to live it to the fullest. bring on the waist deep mud pits!

lookit that dateline!

2008-09-02T00:08:00.002-04:00

My mom and dad would be horrified to see me writing this, but look at that dateline on this story. Um, hello, my hometown! I didn't even know he was going to be there, or I may have planned a visit home this weekend.

Josh's parents are kind of awesome.

2008-08-29T11:41:00.002-04:00

I just got a delivery here at work. An unbelievably beautiful flower arrangement from the venue where we are getting married. And a card was attached that says,

365 days to go. We can't wait until you're officially a Dysart.
-[Josh's dad and mom]

If they aren't the most amazing people ever, I don't know who are. My cell phone is officially dead, but my boss just told me to not even unwrap them, to take them home so I can enjoy them there and take the rest of the day off (by the way, it totally made her cry when I showed her the card), so I am out for the day. But Mama Dysart, if you see this before I get a chance to charge my phone, thank you both for being so wonderful to me. I can't wait either!

one year.

2008-08-29T10:53:00.003-04:00

one year from today, I will marry this man. To be honest, there are days when I worry that I will somehow scare him off before the big day arrives. I'm somewhat shocked that I haven't yet. Things haven't exactly been... well, easy, around these parts lately.

my stress, anxiousness, sadness, and grieving almost never have to do with anything relating to Josh, but he still has to deal with it and is almost as entrenched in it as I am. I know that there are days when he can tell that I am just a ticking time-bomb waiting to go off, and he works hard to make sure he's not the cause of the explosion; regardless, he usually gets at least part of the shrapnel. It makes me sad to know that he has to deal with this, and that a time that should be so happy in our lives is filled with such difficult emotions.

but at least I'm doing something about it. I started going to grief counseling a while back and I'm now seeing a regular therapist. And while it's not like seeing someone gives you instant betterness, for lack of a better term, it's at least helping me sort through things and is helping me make better decisions. I've talked with several professionals about how I feel like there's just a tidal wave of emotions following me around and that I'm afraid to let it go for fear that I'll drown, and someone FINALLY told me that, "hey, you're not going to drown. I promise you that. and if you keep trying to dam things up, everything is just going to leak out and seep through at the seams and it's just going to slowly flood everything in your life." And that makes total sense. I need to realize what is grief, and to let myself deal with it. and to have the courage to tell the people that are pressuring me that, hey, I just lost my goddamn father here... give us some time, for crying out loud.

Josh has been nothing short of amazing. I don't know that there are words to describe how thankful I am that he's in my life. Last weekend we were back at my parents' house cleaning stuff out and after he woke up one morning he ran into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and then ran back into the room I was in with an excited look on his face. I looked at him startled and said, "what's wrong?" and he said, "nothing, I just couldn't wait to kiss you, but I had morning breath and wanted to make sure I brushed my teeth first." I started crying as he kissed me, tears of happiness i'm guessing, because it gave me the answer to a question I have found myself asking a lot these days: is it really all worth it? Is it worth loving someone, having relationships and bringing children into this world who are just going to have to go through this same exact pain someday. It's nearly unbearable to think that someday I will cause this much pain for my children or for Josh.

but in that one instant I knew that yes, it is all worth it. every tear i've shed, every mood swing that i've had, every day when I didn't want to get out of bed because I didn't know if I could face the world... it was all worth it to know that you are so completely and utterly loved by someone.

I stumbled upon one of my favorite songs in my music collection the other day... Push by Sarah McLachlan. And I feel like these lyrics kind of sum everything up.

There are times I can't decide when I can't tell up from down
You make me feel less crazy when otherwise I'd drown
But you pick me up and brush me off and tell me I'm OK
Sometimes that's just what we need to get us through the day

happily, our lives are not completely about misery and sadness, though, and last night we spent a brilliant night out with some friends. When we got back to my apartment Josh put his arms around me and kissed me and said quietly, "I cannot wait to marry you."

I was lost in your words, and didn't respond right at that moment, but I cannot wait to marry you either.

new semester. EEK!

2008-08-22T17:56:00.003-04:00

The first day of school is quickly approaching. I remember my last first day of school in undergrad. My dad happened to be in Ann Arbor for some reason and drove me to my class so that I wouldn't have to take the bus to north campus. Along the way I got a text from my then boyfriend (now the ex) wishing me a happy last first day of school ever.

For a few years after I finished undergrad, the first day of school came and went and it was nice to not have the pressure of another school year upon me. Then I guess I missed it, because I went back to grad school and it started all over again for a few years.

I graduated grad school and then, again, thought I was done. BUT! evidently I'm not. Thursday will be my first day of school, only this semester I am teaching a course instead of acting as a student. It's something I thought about doing in the spring and then the wheels were set in motion and now the semester is here! It's an easy, one credit course, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but it will give me a bit of teaching experience, which will be awesome. And, well, it pays, which is also totally awesome. I'm pretty much putting it all in the wedding fund.

They're just college kids. How hard can it be to educate them, right?

saving money for my cocaine.

2008-08-19T13:46:00.004-04:00

so this morning I'm on the bus on my way to work, right? and a crazy lady tries to get on the bus and is bartering with the bus driver because she doesn't have enough for bus fare. the bus driver won't let her on the bus without paying, because that's pretty much his job. so she gets really mad and stomps off the bus, giving him dirty looks and kicking at something on the ground, all the while scowling in the direction of the bus. Her shoe flies off as she is kicking at some imaginary thing, and she gets even more irritated about it... it's pretty much an amusing scenario.

meanwhile, the crazy man she was with DOES have enough money to get on the bus, and proceeds to tell the bus driver in a very loud voice that, "if it were a black person, you'd let her on the bus." (the driver was black, the woman was white... but whatever. either way he wouldn't have let her on the bus. money is green, and that's the only color that matters here.)

so the guy is wandering around the bus, asking everyone if they have money so "that lady can get on the bus." we are all ignoring him, so he starts calling us all prejudiced. some sap on the street gives the woman some change, so she runs to the next stop and gets on the bus to meet up with her crazy man friend. he says something to her about how we are all prejudiced against her. Then he tells her that he'll forgive her for being a prostitute, but that's neither here nor there.

The dude on the bus is basically railing all of us who refused to give him money for the lady's fare. there were three young women who all refused him, and he had his sights set on yelling at us all until he got of the bus. He spent the majority of the time saying that

a) we refused to give the woman a dollar because we wanted to go use it to buy cocaine,

b) that we would have no problems giving money to black people who came around asking us for money, therefore we are prejudiced,

and c) that we all want to go to hell, but that we have to die to get there first.

You may be wondering why I didn't tell the crazy man to shut the fuck up, but point C illustrates that nicely. You never know when one of these wackjobs is going to have a gun or some other means of hurting you tucked away, so I generally try to ignore people who are seemingly unstable.

Needless to say, as amusing as it was at first, the last half of my commute wasn't all that enjoyable. I spent most of the time trying to ignore the man while he went around to each of us, tried to catch our eye, and yelled at us. so that was sweet.

So that's pretty awesome. I've been accused of being a lot of things in the last few weeks: a liar, a racist (against black AND white people), of favoritism, of being non-collaborative, a pot-stirrer... I'm sure the list goes on. it kind of gets a little bit stressful sorting through all of these accusations, and while this morning's new additions were something that I can toss aside and generally not think twice about besides giving it a nice, hearty laugh, the other accusations are not, could have serious repercussions, and are generally just difficult to have to deal with. It's less dealing with the names, and more about dealing with the name-callers, as they are usually annoying, mega pains in the ass who fall dreadfully short of their purpose in life.

thank god I have therapy to help me sort out who I REALLY am, is all I have to say.

wheeeeee!

2008-08-07T20:19:00.004-04:00

first of all, a big, public congratulations to skitzo, who successfully defended her dissertation yesterday. So now she is Dr. Skitzo, and I couldn't be more proud of her. I was just telling someone two days ago about her theory on sun dried tomatoes, and how they fill up your stomach by rehydrating while in your belly. I had to tell the person I was telling the story to that, "no, for real... she's a genius. that particular theory just sounds wacky."

so YAY FOR DR. SKITZO!

in other news, I finally had a doctor's appointment today. I've had this particular appointment scheduled since January, but I had to cancel a few times and it takes FOR-EV-ER to get a new patient appointment with this particular practice (they were recommended to me as "really good" by a friend) and today my appointment finally came. hooray! the appointment took TWO AND A HALF HOURS. ridiculous.

anyways, this particular doctor has cemented her way in my heart by telling me I never have to have a period again if I don't want to. She also talked to me about my running and informed me that I really SHOULD be on birth control, regardless of obvious reasons, because running more than 30 or so miles can screw with your cycle and it's good to keep things "normalized." so yeah.

I was way behind on getting my last HPV vaccination shot, and I had to pay a bunch of money for it, but whatever. I know that in THEORY, it shouldn't matter now, but you never know what's around the corner on this silly journey of life. I joked with dice about how if he ever died or we got divorced and I started dating again, I'd be happy I was protected, and... well, it REALLY KIND OF BOTHERED ME that he didn't seem at ALL phased that I said that. and then I think he stopped looking at his Blackberry and said, "I heard you, don't worry. neither of those things is EVER going to happen."

so that's that.

I decided this past week that I have to start getting my runs done in the morning, because otherwise I am just too wiped out by the time evening comes and I make to many excuses. There will always be an excuse in life to put off a run or to take care of myself. It is MY JOB to make sure this a priority. I have used "feeling shitty about people dying on me" as a reason to not run too many times, whether it's warranted or not, and when it's all said and done, there's no guarantee that life gets easier, that this is just a horrible phase in my life. I joke about how i'm going to celebrate when I turn 30 because my 20's were pretty shitty to me (besides meeting dice, that is) but I know more than anyone that there is no guarantee that my 30s will be any better.

anyways, point being... I need to take care of myself. regardless of the excuses. So yesterday was an early morning 9 miler (at a pretty speedy pace, I must say) and this morning was an easy 5. we'll see how tomorrow's early LT run goes. I have a really hard time with anything involving "speed" in the morning.

oh, and we came thisclose to being stuck in that horrible storm on Monday, as we unwisely saw the radar and headed out for 6 anyways. we got back JUST IN TIME before the worst part of the storm came through.

so it's been a pretty active week over in these parts.

This weekend is looking to be a bit crazy, but I'm looking forward to getting the long run done and to spending some time with oodles of friends. HOORAY FOR THE WEEKEND!

ok, so...

2008-07-31T21:52:00.002-04:00

you know those days... the ones when you just spontaneously start crying for no real reason? and it pretty much goes on ALL FUCKING DAY LONG? and EVERYTHING brings the tears on... EVERYTHING. and you just don't GET IT. because, like, looking at your coffee cup really shouldn't make you that emotional, you know?

yeah. I had one of those. so this afternoon I made some arrangements and had some discussions that will hopefully improve things a LOT. because I am finally ready to address the issues. and tonight I met up with dice downtown, and we went to our favorite restaurant and had a bottle of wine and awesome conversation. and now we're having another bottle of wine (spanish wine, at that) at home.

and I can't imagine spending my life with someone else. doing this with anyone else. I truly feel blessed that he is in my life.

and now i'm off to drink some more wine. bye. :)

best. news. ever.

2008-07-31T17:46:00.001-04:00

Bell's is coming back to Chicago!

EEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!

2008-07-30T17:09:00.003-04:00

I am feeling uber unmotivated to train over the last few days. Part of this is certainly because my head has felt like it's going to explode since we got back from Michigan.

the other part is that there is all this DRAMA! that I'm having to deal with. I'm used to there being quite a bit of drama in my life... shit, man, when your parents croak on you in a horrific fashion when you're in your upper 20's, all the other shit that you have to deal with or hear about from other people seems like child's play.

BUT THIS! is certifiably, batshit crazy. And I am, quite frankly, fucking tired of dealing with it. I'm tired of it sucking the energy from me and making me drink margaritas at night instead of doing my 10 miler like i'm supposed to (this may or may not have happened last night).

so tonight! tonight i'm going to take all of this anger and irritation and funnel it into having an awesome run. because evidently the DRAMA! isn't going away any time soon, so I guess I have to deal with it somehow.

wish me luck!

recovery weeks lead to exhaustion, evidently

2008-07-28T17:26:00.003-04:00

uh... so we kind of took last week's "recovery week" label very, very seriously and hardly did half of the runs. and, well, i'm not really too worried about that for some reason. If life has to happen in the middle of a training cycle, I guess I'm happy that a lot of it happened to fall on a week when the runs weren't supposed to be that important anyways.

Between the batshit crazy drama that's going on, and the whole going and drinking a whole lot of beer with friends at a pretty awesome concert (yes, Coldplay was awesome. you should buy tickets to this tour immediately), and then being stressed out by estate shit and family stuff... well, last week was tiring enough without adding in the whole running factor.

And then throw on top of that the whole trip back to Michigan. We rolled into my dad's driveway super late on Friday evening and then proceeded to have a really bad night's sleep. There's something really eerie about being in that house, when it used to be so filled with 6+ loud voices living there, and now there are none... I have a hard time feeling at ease when I'm there. We spent most of the day on Saturday packing up my mom's kitchen.

Saturday evening we cleaned ourselves up and then headed up to Ann Arbor to meet with some friends for the evening. Momo and the other girls all headed out to German Park to hang out with us (ok, I think they really only went for the beer and the oddly dressed German people, but whatever) and we had a total blast, as usual. I kept explaining it to Dice so he'd know what to expect, but he still seemed really confused when we pulled into a big field in the middle of nowhere and there were thousands of people filling a small space and all drinking deliciously strong German beer out of big old buckets. I once again had the joyful experience of walking through a crowd only to find that beer was cresting the spout of my bucket and flowing onto the children wandering through the crowd below me. Someone needs to initiate this event near Chicago ASAP. Seriously. Dice has already asked me if we can go back next month. (for those who plan ahead, I don't know... we have to figure out when the family will be in town to work again)

We crashed at my friend Jenn's place for the night on Saturday and then spent the next day at my sister's house, helping her prepare for the Rugrat's surprise birthday party. I got to spend a lot of time with my sister and the younger of my two brothers this weekend, so that was nice. There has been a LOT that has happened in the last few months with respect to the relationship we all as siblings have with each other. it is significant that I just wrote that it was nice spending time with them, because it's truly how I feel, and that means that i'm getting back to the point where I accept and love them all an awful lot, despite anything that has happened between us. They still piss me off and frustrate me more than pretty much anyone else in the world, but like I told everyone at my dad's funeral... we'll figure it out. we'll get through it.

Traffic on the way back in SUUUUUUCKED ass. the 30 miles of I-94 that pass through Indiana before you hit the toll way were ALL under construction. I was pretty much ready to kill someone by the time we got through the mess. We were probably about an hour and a half delayed getting back home.

The other great thing about this weekend was that I got to chat with both Airforcefriend and the twin. I play phone tag with Airforcefriend regularly, but I haven't talked to the twin in probably years. good times, good times. I miss those boys.

Tonight we are back to the grind, heading out for a 7 miler. We're shuffling things around this week, but we're intending to hit most - if not all - of the miles on our schedule. I just am not up for doing 5 at LT pace tonight, so we're adjusting to get those in tomorrow and we're going to get an easy general aerobic run in tonight. I am completely exhausted from the last week/weekend and need to rest up this evening. heh. 7 miles is "resting up." bizarre.

2008-07-26T20:43:00.001-04:00

I think he likes it...

2008-07-26T20:37:00.001-04:00

German park, anyone?

HAPPY BIRFDAY, RUGRAT!

2008-07-25T14:10:00.002-04:00

Not that he reads this or anything, but the Rugrat (my nephew) turns 6 today. I had to actually stop to think about how old he is... that's pretty sad.

He and my sister spent the week up at the lake, just as Nana Sue would have wanted it. So happy birthday to the little demon. :)

this day in history...

2008-07-24T22:53:00.005-04:00

38 years ago on this very day, my parents were married in a very warm church in Carleton, Michigan. It was pretty much the best thing that ever happened, for me at least (with the exception of my birth).

My parents' relationship was the very example of what you are promising when you take your wedding vows. In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, in good times and bad. I'm not going to suggest that their relationship was perfect, because that would be a complete lie. But their relationship was exemplary of what I hope to have in 39 years. They loved each other a ridiculous amount, despite their differences, and they always put that love first when all was said and done. And although my mother wasn't able to be there for my father when he was dying, she left four children who were. I love them and miss them both more than words can say, but I'm happy to know they are celebrating together right now.

The picture below is of a giant painting we have in our living room at home. It was a gift that they gave each other on their 25th anniversary. The image is of the shoreline of Lake Michigan up by our cabin. The lighthouse is called Point Betsey, and has been a part of our lives since the day we were born. Today I was speaking with my sister and she suggested that I should have the painting because she knows how much it reminds me of our parents, and it literally had me in tears when she said that. To me, it's one of the most significant possessions in my dad's house. Somehow she must have known I needed to hear that today.

crazy miles, crazy busy

2008-07-23T14:42:00.002-04:00

it's been kind of a crazy last week. Dice's family was in town and we had a ton of miles to do last week so shuffling things around to get them all in while still being able to spend fun time with them was a task.

We fell shy of our weekly goal by 3 miles, but we consciously chose to cut back one of our recovery runs since we are jumping so high in mileage so quickly. We capped off last week with 43 miles, including a 17 mile long run that was completed in the pouring rain (anyone else thinking of the Walton's when they hear that? oooooooh, standing in the pouring rain....) and was finished almost exactly at our target pace. It was pretty sweet.

There's been some major, major drama that I can't really talk about in these parts, and unfortunately it's been sucking the energy out of me by the time I get home and am supposed to be ready to run. Dice made us go run last night, so we were just planning to get in an easy 4 or 5, but it was so nice out that we decided to go the distance and got our 8 in. We've got more shuffling to do as we're heading back to the mitten this weekend to get some work done on the house.

Since it's the last weekend in July and i'm going to be back in Michigan, I got ahold of a few of the girls to see if they want to go to German Park on Saturday. Hopefully we can have a small gathering to drink BUCKETS OF BEER and eat delicious german food. we'll see. MOMO, I'M GOING TO EMAIL YOU GUYS. PROBABLY TOMORROW. JUST WARNING YOU. :) (that's mostly a reminder to myself)

I'm off to meet dice (and maybe some other peeps? I don't know WHAT'S going on these days. I swear i'm so clueless) to grab happy hour food and then going to the Coldplay concert. YAY!

mouse out.

early AM 10

2008-07-16T18:02:00.002-04:00

Will try to post properly later, but for now I just want to note that from the time I got home last night to the time I went to work in the morning, Dice and I did 15 miles. 5 recovery last night and 10 this morning at o'dark thirty (literally, we were about 3 miles in before the sun rose).

who knew 10 miles before work could feel so good?!

easy peasy LT running

2008-07-15T16:40:00.003-04:00

We did our second lactate threshold run last night. We used Mcmillan to calculate that for a 4 hour marathon, we'd need to be between 8:30 (15K) and 8:42 (half marathon) pace for our LT runs. Since I don't necessarily think we're in 4 hour marathon shape right now, we're aiming for the upper end of that range, so as long as we're at 8:42 for our miles, I'm a happy camper.

I was a little worried last night about my legs being a bit on the sore side, but after 2.5 miles of warming up I was feeling good and was ready to tackle these suckers. The run looked like this:

2.5 miles warm-up: noooo idea on pace

LT mile 1: 8:42
LT mile 2: 8:41
LT mile 3: 8:40
LT mile 4: 8:37

2.5 miles cool-down: again, no idea on pace

So yeah. we hit those pretty much spot on. The first mile actually felt easy, and then as we eased into it I felt like I was winded by the end of the last mile, but definitely could have continued on if, like, a bear were attacking me or something. The last two miles I was really having a hard time with my core muscles because we had done various bodyweight exercises out in the park on Sunday and I also had some residual soreness from that. (sidenote: a woman watching me crank out my push-ups gave me a "you go girl! I can't even do one!" that made me chuckle. It's nice to get random cheers from people who pass by.)

I'm pleased with how these are going, because hitting anywhere in our LT pace gets me really excited and pumped up about running. What doesn't pump me up? The fact that I keep forgetting that I really, really shouldn't drink a lot of sugary gatorade after a hard workout without getting some water in first. I drank a bottle of gatorade as soon as I got back last night and spent the entire evening with an upset stomach. SO UPSET was my stomach that I didn't even have a desire to eat any of the Ben and Jerry's that I had in the fridge. THAT'S HOW BAD IT WAS. so, yeah.

So that was Monday. Tonight we've got a recovery run. should be a piece o' cake.

something new

2008-07-14T17:25:00.004-04:00

i've been running for... well, for a really long time. Since the 4th grade, in fact (with a 4 year hiatus in there for college drinking). and I don't think i've never actually started a training run after dark.

until Saturday, that is.

Dice got us lawn seats to the Feist concert at Ravinia on Friday night, so boss told me to take off from work a bit early to head downtown to meet him and check out his new office digs. From there we headed over to catch the train up to Highland Park. KTG's grandma lives right down the street from Ravinia, so I had been there before, but it was Dice's first experience. It was close to a perfect evening, and if it weren't for the stupid people sitting next to us who were more interested in screaming at the top of their lungs than listening to good music, it would have been absolutely perfect. Wine, cheese, bread, pasta, spread out on a blanket with good company, good weather, and good music. Can you get any better than that?

We caught the first train back into the city, but still didn't make it home until late on Friday, which meant no early rising for a long run on Saturday. (ok, the wine didn't help either, but whatever). It was a bit warm for the run in the middle of the day, plus there would have been oodles of beach-goers out by then (especially with the AVP tour happening right down the street) so we opted to delay our run until that evening. We ate dinner and settled in with a movie and when all of a sudden it was 8:30 we looked at each other with a dubious look and I think we both suspected that we'd ditch the idea of doing our run that night.

Then all of a sudden dice said, "come on. let's do it." and, well... we did. So out the door we walked at 8:45 to get our long run in. We realized quickly that if we headed south we'd get to see the fireworks over Navy Pier on the way back. The added advantages were that we ran out to the end of the peninsula where Northerly Island is at and saw that Al Green was playing at Charter One Pavilion. We stopped and listened to the music for a few minutes before turning around and being greeted with the most beautiful skyline shot you could ever imagine. The city looks absolutely breathtaking at night from that point of view.

About a mile before we hit Navy Pier on the way back the fireworks started, so we got to watch them and simultaneously slip past all of the crowds of onlookers. It pretty much would have been a perfect run if it hadn't been for the horrible stomach cramps that I kept getting. I guess that's what I get for eating so much before a long run, eh? By the time we got back to the inner path I was tired of fighting the cramping and I was also dealing with a severe case of painful legs, so we cut it 2 miles short for a 13 mile long run instead of our intended 15.

I've been dealing a bit with a recurring case of PF, and Saturday's run reflected that (i'm just about positive the unusual pain in my legs was from me adjusting my form to take pressure of my heals) so I've been making sure to ice, stretch, and wear appropriate footwear whenever I'm on my feet. The sock thingy that I got last summer and wear to bed has helped a lot too, and I'm happy to feel no pain in my feet/heels today, just a bit of residual soreness in my calf muscles.

We'll see how tonight's run goes!

regaining some focus

2008-07-09T17:15:00.002-04:00

I went back in my archives to see how LT runs have gone in previous training cycles and I got caught up in reading the bizarre stuff that used to go on in my life. It was great to read how I felt during runs, and I feel a bit sad that I'm not doing a very good job of documenting that stuff anymore, so I'm going to make a concerted effort to blog more often, even if it's just lame "I ran 5 miles today and felt crappy" types of posts.

Obviously, Dice and I missed Bayshore, with the whole "people getting sick and dying on me" situation, so we had to refocus our efforts and pick a fall marathon to train for. Chicago filled up during one of the days in which my dad was in the hospital, and that was so far off the radar that I don't even really care at this point. (and besides... been there, done that. I'm not going to say I won't ever do it again, but Chicago was probably my least favorite marathoning experience, what with the crowds and all that.)

We considered twin cities for about a half a millisecond, but those Minnesota people are much too nice for my liking (KIDDING, JULES!) so we're tentatively planning to head back to Kansas City to conquer our 26.2 back there. I hear barbeque makes great pre-race fuel, right?

That said, I've got a goal. And I probably should have just followed through with my training two years ago and not stopped running the last 5 weeks of training, because i'm sure I could have done it then, but whatever.

I really want to break 4 hours.

I did the Pig after my ex and I split up in 4:07 and change, with two bathroom stops and a 7 minute negative split, so I know I have it in me. Hell, I did Detroit after hardly running in the 5 weeks leading up to it in 4:14. HOW HARD CAN BREAKING 4 HOURS BE?

And given my training leading up to both of those marathons, I know how much more focused and with it I am when I am going through a lot personally. I miss my trails back in Michigan a TON, but running has still been that magic "thing" for me that kind of stabilizes things for me in a weird sort of way. To be honest, if I weren't running so much the past month I'd probably be coming home and drinking and THAT'S not very healthy, now, is it? (although it's generally more fun :)

We're into our fourth week of a modified Pfitz plan. We're tentatively following the 18/55 plan since we had a decent base coming into it from the Bayshore training. Right now we're dropping the shortest run of the week so that we aren't too injury-prone; if we feel up to it once the high mileage stabilizes we'll add the shortest runs back in. For instance, this week we were supposed to do 42 miles but dropping the shortest run, that's putting us at a more reasonable 38. I think we're both comfortable with that and we're at the stupid-early stage where we aren't worn out yet and we're enjoying the mid-week long runs.

The one thing i'm not happy about is the fact that lifting has pretty much stalled for me. I really enjoy it, but my legs just can't handle lifting and being sore for two days and always having to do an 8+ miler on dead legs. We're going to adjust things and see if there's any scheduling combo that works with the plan, but for right now running well is my key focus.

So now that that's out there, I'll have to actually start talking about our runs. and maybe I can even get him to recap some of them so I'm not doing all the work. :)

regularly scheduled rambling

2008-07-07T17:48:00.004-04:00

I haven't been very good at posting lately, despite everything that has been going on. I think a lot of that is because things are different this time around and writing it down forces me to think about things in a very structured way - to sort through my thoughts, if you will - and I don't really feel like thinking about things more than I have to. Feelings and emotions and thoughts come out randomly to the people I want to talk to, at really random times, and I know that probably seems incoherent to them, but it's all I can handle right now.

I'm thankful that the people who are closest to me are awesome and don't push me to talk about things, because right now just thinking about everything is so, so overwhelming... it really kind of freaks me out. I had a week before the memorial day weekend where every time I began to think about the last three months, three years, whatever span of time, I'd physically feel anxious - like a gigantic title wave was about to envelope me and like I was about to drown.

So I decided I just wouldn't think about things right then. and maybe that's not healthy, but things have been surfacing slowly and i've been dealing with them as best as I can, and really, that's all you can give.

In the past, I've always felt that things happen for a reason, that God had some master plan figured out, and everything that happened fit somehow. I also was always able to accept that I, surprisingly, am not God, and that it's pretty much impossible for me to understand why shit happens the way it does. Basically, what I'm saying is that I've never really spent a lot of time moping and saying, "why me?" because I feel like that's a big fucking waste of time, and there's life to live, man.

But this time I'm having a hard time just going with the flow, and understanding that I'm not necessarily supposed to understand. And it's not even the "why did this happen?" or the "why did this happen NOW?" thing that's bothering me. Right now, it's, "why did it have to happen THIS WAY?" I don't think watching your parents die is ever supposed to be easy. but watching my father die was extraordinarily difficult. there were decisions that had to be made, and I had to be the one to make them. and I don't think that you can ever see someone be in that amount of pain and feel like you've made the right decisions.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. And I knew when it happened, when I spent that time in the hospital with him, and when the events leading to his death were so rapid and traumatic, that this was going to be difficult to move past. It is. the only reason why I can even get this out here is because I've talked to several people about it, and they've reaffirmed that there's absolutely nothing that I could have done differently, that I did the best thing possible for him, and that I need to move past this and begin really grieving.

The girls were in town this past weekend. The 4th of July has always been time that we spent together as a family, and it was too much for me to deal with this year so I spent the weekend away with my friends. and maybe that was selfish of me, but it's what I had to do for myself, and it's the best thing I could have done for myself. They let me talk when I want to, and to NOT talk when I don't want to, and to cry if I need to. But they don't look at me like i'm crazy if I start crying on the bus or over fireworks or muffins. It's hard having them so spread out and not here at my beck and call all the time. :)

The best part of the weekend, for me at least, was on Friday night when we were out with the girls and a couple here that has been outstandingly supportive the past few months. despite not knowing one another, both groups of individuals have been amazing to me... letting me cry or bitch about my family and just generally being there. Dice and I have been meaning to celebrate a lot of things lately. Rather large raises. A pretty fucking awesome promotion. The fact that we love our jobs and that our careers are going so well. The fact that we're healthy. The fact that we've found the perfect person to spend our lives with. The fact that we have awesome friends to share all these things with. And on Friday night when we were out, we ordered champagne for everyone and celebrated. Because despite the shitty things we have to go through, and not understanding why it's happening, there's an awful lot of good that's come our way as well. And celebrating that isn't just important. it's essential.

So here's to letting go of the things that are toxic, and to embracing the things that are good. And here's to the people who are willing to share those things - good and bad - with you. I feel blessed to have friends like these.

time flies when you're not blogging

2008-07-03T13:48:00.003-04:00

a lot's been going on and there's been a general apathy toward sharing it in any structured written format (I consider tweets to be highly unstructured) so blog posting has suffered. oh well.

the good news? THE CRAZYCHICAS ARE COMING TO TOWN! yay!

other than that, there have been boatloads of miles that we've been running, including an LT run where I ACTUALLY HIT MY INTENDED PACE. this never happens. EVER. so that's pretty awesome. We won't discuss the fact that Dice's pacing skillz are severely lacking. and I mean SEVERELY.

and lest I forget, Trisaratops came to town last week and I had the honor of going to dinner with her and her friends. needless to say, it was a total blast.

so yeah. lots going on, and so little time to write about it! happy fourth of july, peeps!

SU-PRIZE

2008-06-16T16:51:00.003-04:00

boy I bet you thought I had went and for-got, it's a special daaaaaay...

today is special for two reasons:

1) it's KTG and her husband's one year anniversary! yay!

and

2) it's dice's BIRFDAY!

I am horrible at keeping secrets so he's known what he is getting for a few weeks now. And this afternoon when I took a long lunch (and the 147 downtown) to eat with him, he guessed where we're going for dinner, so there goes that as well. oh well. :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BABY! here's to all the great things in the next year offsetting the shitty things that will inevitably happen [ie, me being a pain in the ass :) ]

stuff.

2008-06-08T23:19:00.003-04:00

we were lazy today. really lazy. and so i'm sitting here on the couch with lappy on my lap and I asked dice if I should blog, and he said, "yes." and I said, "about what?" and he said, "stuff." so i'm blogging about stuff tonight, I guess.

This weekend has been nice and relaxing. We ran an easy 6 yesterday morning. It was one of the first "hot" runs of the season, and when we ran by the fountain at Navy Pier and saw a bunch of children (and a few adults) running through the water that was spouting out of the thing... well, I just had to look at dice and give him a grin and it was understood that we were heading that way. Nothing makes you feel more like a kid than being sprayed with water from a fountain. As I laughed and smiled with every woosh of the fountain that drenched us, I looked around and saw the each person there, adult and child alike, had the same look of enjoyment and glee on their face. really, it's moments like that that make you feel like you don't have a care in the world. I think I may just spend the rest of my life seeking out those moments, recognizing when they come, and focusing on remembering how carefree life can be if you let it.

Later that afternoon, we both had long overdue eye exams. My prescription hasn't changed, but i'm long overdue for some new contacts. Unfortunately, getting an eye exam often means getting your eyes dilated. Let me tell you how fun that is on a sunny summer afternoon. We spent the entire walk back complaining about how bright the light was and how much it hurt. you'd think we were a couple of vampires or something.

what's there to do if you can't be outside in the sun? you sit in and watch movies, duh. So we essentially had a movie-o-thon yesterday afternoon. By the time the movies were complete it was time to mildly groom ourselves so we could meet a couple of friends out for drinks. two bars and a couple of beers at their apartment later, it was 3:00 in the morning and we were all beat. Dice and I headed back home for some well deserved sleep.

By the time we woke up late this morning it was storming, so there was nothing we could do besides chill out until things cleared up a bit. Then we took a walk around the 'hood and wandered over to the grocery store we don't usually go to so we could walk through some parts of the neighborhood we don't usually explore. by the time we got back it was time for dinner.

Aside from that, work is good. Things have settled down a bit for me, at least, in terms of the whole estate issues and such (although I'm still having issues with a sibling or two). We've been spending a lot of time meeting up with people and enjoying the summer season here... last weekend we had dinner with a couple that we don't see nearly often enough and this past week we gathered a group together to go see the White Sox/Royals game. We had a ton of fun and spending time with these people always renews our intentions to get this particular group together more often. It always makes me miss hanging out with the girls though, and I hope we all have the chance to get together soon.

Alright, I'm going to watch the celtics blow this huge lead and then head to bed. being lazy makes me super tired, evidently. Longish run on the docket tomorrow, so I'd better rest up...

being a grown up kind of sucks.

2008-06-02T10:34:00.006-04:00

the BULLETED LIST edition of grown-up crap I've spent the last few weeks doing:

paying the estate billz. there are many of them.

corresponding with various estate related people regarding stuff that needs to be addressed. also numerous.

researching new Chicago based therapists. by the time i'm finished dealing with my siblings, I'm going to need some professional assistance.

evidently engagement rings should be insured so I don't freak out when I nearly drop it down the bathroom drain? yeah. so why not insure ALL OF MY CRAP? great idea!

investing large sums of life insurance money in a CD isn't nearly as complicated as I was expecting it to be. Just like my father, I log on each morning to see how much money i've made. it makes me smile to know we're alike in that manner. and to know that my money is making money by JUST SITTING THERE. awesome.

reallocating which funds my retirement monies are invested in. also, not as difficult as I expected it to be.

to top all of those REALLY exciting things off, dice and I spent a chunk of time on Saturday morning determining our budgeting schema for the wedding. my dad was planning to contribute a significant amount for the wedding, and well... he kicked the ol' bucket. so yeah. there may or may not be money allocated from the estate for the wedding, but it's going to be months at the very least before any of that is sorted out, so we're moving forward with the idea that we will be picking up the tab for what my dad would have contributed. and really, there's absolutely no reason why we shouldn't be able to. we're both gainfully employed. (in fact, one of us got a big old promotion that they're not writing about. probably because neither of us has really blogged for a while, but whatever.) We're not THAT high maintenance. We have a ridiculous amount of time to save. really, it's not that complicated. evidently it just requires us being "responsible" and not eating out all the time and spending money on frivolous things. WHO'D HAVE THOUGHT THAT WOULD BE POSSIBLE? we'll see how it goes. in the meantime, we're going to pretend to be paupers and live like we're college students again (ie - we're going to buy the CHEAP beer instead of the high brow stuff). so yeah. fun times. all I know is that if drinking the cheap beer = not incurring debt from something as stupid as a wedding (yes, I just called my own wedding stupid)? well, I'm WAY excited about that.

In more fun news, we spent the entire beautiful weekend wandering around the city. Sunday we went down to Michigan Avenue because dice's coworker told him she was volunteering and that there would be cute dogs EVERYWHERE. sure enough, there were. I thought I was going to pass out from all the doggie cuteness. good grief.

On the running front, we FINALLY managed to get out of bed early this morning to get a run in. We've gotten a few sporadic, shorter runs in over the past few weeks, but otherwise our running shoes have been sorely neglected. OH! that reminds me, I got some new running shoes! I got a pair of Mizuno Alchemys and they are wonderful. but anyways, we got up at 5 the morning and were out the door by a quarter after or so and got a short run in before ending up at the gym to lift. it felt wonderful to be sore while getting ready for work! We got our run in early so we don't have to worry about it this evening. It's really much easier to get over the Pistons blowing the series against the Celtics when the Red Wings are pretty much on the cusp of winning the stanley cup. Some dude at the bar we were in the other day made a comment about me cheering for the Wings and he was all, "Oh yeah, where were the Wings ten years ago?" and I was like, "uh, I don't know, winning the Cup for the second year in a row?"

in other words, people are stupid. same old, same old around here, folks!

2008-05-25T22:10:00.001-04:00

KANSAS!

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2008-05-18T18:37:00.000-04:00

Amusement while driving back from the mitten.

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a moment.

2008-05-14T20:56:00.002-04:00

I've been at a conference since Monday. And I've hardly had any time to think about anything except the sessions I've been in and the sessions that I've presented, because really, coming back to work after several weeks off and effectively having less than a week to prepare for two conference presentations, as well as get caught up on all the other issues that have arisen since I was out... well, the last week has been a little bit stressful.

but at least it has kept me busy. This morning was my last session, which I was FREAKING OUT about, and it went really, really well. so yay for that. but now i'm sitting here in the hotel room, thinking I should probably go find some people to hang out with. because over the past few weeks i've fallen into "cannot, under any circumstances, be alone" mode. it's the whole "fear of losing people" thing, which I'm sure most people might think is warranted right about now, but it's bizarre in me because i'm generally not the clingy type.

I just finished looking at our wedding photographer's website, and listened to a few of the songs that Josh and I are considering for our first dance. and it's nice, wanting to be involved with wedding planning again. with moving forward. but then I think about it and... well, I start to have almost a panic attack. because two months ago, the idea of having my wedding day come without my mother there... having to go through all of these planning activities without her... well, it was heartbreaking. all over again. it was literally like she had just died again. I honestly was wondering how I was going to get through the day, when it comes.

and now there's an entirely new dimension. I truly, seriously, don't know that I will have the strength to do it. and I'm sure that's because everything is still so raw and new, but is it really going to be any better in a year? a year and a half? I can't imagine it is. even fathoming this day without both of my parents, it's so heartbreaking that I can't even breathe. I feel like my entire body collapses into itself just thinking about it; like I implode a bit. it's frustrating that the thought of such a happy occasion is causing me so much grief, but there's nothing I can do about it.

I know people will say things like, "they'll be looking down on you," or, "there will be people there who can fill in for your parents." I know this because already people have said these things to me. but for serious. I. DON'T. CARE. it's not them. they aren't THERE. and I wish people could understand that just saying, "they'll be watching you on that day," just doesn't cut the proverbial cake, you know? I have a right to be angry. I have a right to be upset. I'M 28 FUCKING YEARS OLD. there's no reason why my parents shouldn't be here right now. none whatsoever. It's not fair, and I'm ALLOWED TO BE SAD, UPSET, OUTRAGED ABOUT THAT.

ok. sorry. I just needed to take a moment to say some things. thank you.

PROOF!

2008-05-08T21:31:00.005-04:00

so, we have this constant battle, dice and I. because he says I'm not from the midwest, and I say he's from the south, and we end up basically yelling at each other about this pretty much all the time. BUT TODAY! I have proof that he is from the south.

This evening we were having a conversation about country music when I was reminded of a conversation I had with brent spears about a particular country song. basically, brent told me to listen to this song:

and to decipher the lyrics. Which I couldn't. because to me, it clearly sounds like she's saying, "there ain't nothing like the sound of a cooter slushin'..." and dice this evening was like, "she says, 'there ain't nothing like the sound of COOLER slushin'..." and I was like, SEE! THE ONLY REASON YOU COULD POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND THAT IS BECAUSE YOU, TOO, ARE FROM THE SOUTH!

and now I feel vindicated.

(any comments suggesting that he is not from the south just won't get published, fyi. pick your battles wisely, commentors.)

lighthearted banter

2008-05-07T18:00:00.003-04:00

because it's all I can offer up right now. there are lots of "serious" things running through my head, but they just aren't going down on ~~paper~~ the intarwebs at this point.

instead, may I redirect your attention to this photograph?

kthanx.

this photo means several things:

1) I am back to work this week, and am already stressed about two presentations I have to give at a conference next week.

2) I survived the meeting of two brown boys without spontaneously combusting on the spot when they shook hands.

3) I survived my siblings' idiocity over the last few weeks. but really, i'm trying to be more gracious about the whole thing, so I'll stop there...

4) HI! DID YOU SEE THE SHINY ON THE FINGER?! HELLLLOOOOOO?!

so yeah. I have a shiny now. which I didn't before. but I just realized I never explained that on here because I never really wrote down the whole engagement story. so I guess this doesn't really make all that much sense. but let's just say that I got to show it to my dad before he died, and he got to tell Josh, "congratulations, son."

and that meant more than anything in the world to me.

[sigh] the reprise...

2008-04-27T20:03:00.002-04:00

it is practically unfathomable to me that i am posting this so soon after my mother's passing, but my father passed away yesterday evening in the hospital.

I am currently numb to the entire thing. i'm not really sure it's hit me yet. I keep saying that it's "insane", and "so bizarre". I know part of it is that there's so much to do to make arrangements, and there's really no parental figure here to handle all of that stuff. My uncle and my "aunt" kathy have been wonderful about helping us, but it just seems so... odd.

give me a month or so for it all to sink in. I'm sure i'll be a basketcase in no time at all...

notes from the hospital

2008-04-23T22:22:00.003-04:00

I was going to title this, "funny things my father says while doped up on painkillers," but I decided that, while he is an extremely funny man both doped up and not, I will try to honor him by not repeating the things he's saying.

so we went to the hospital on sunday night due to various issues and it ended up being the best thing we could have done because they're caring for him well and they have expedited all his tests and stuff so we are getting a final diagnosis ASAP.

the bottom line is that things are bad. we've got what seems to be cancer in the lungs (yes, both sides), in the liver, and we also found out that it's in the bone in several areas. the additional bone mets don't really do anything to the prognosis, as it has already metastasized to significantly important areas. it's actually kind of a relief to know because he is complaining of pain in a few of those areas and they can actually DO something about that (well, potentially), so that's nice.

one of my aunts and I have been switching off staying at the hospital. tonight is my evening. the hospital has wifi, thus my posting.

my aunts and my uncle (my father's siblings) have been unbelievably supportive throughout this entire ordeal. even though they are all spread out throughout the country, they have really come together to help us through this and to help us give my father the care that he needs. I told my grandmother this morning that it was truly a testament to her and my grandfather, and that her children have been an absolute Godsend for myself and my siblings right now. we are going to have to really determine what we need to do to stagger our time to make sure we can adequately care for my father, and my aunt has already determined that she can take that on as part of her responsibility. my boss has been amazing as well, and has told me we can work out whatever I need to be here right now.

we will get an "official" prognosis this next week. but from what we know right now, it's certain that my father will not live through this. it's terminal. right now, just the odds of him making it a year are really slim. it's baffling to me how this all came on so suddenly. just over a month ago he was healthy and working and happy. and yet, there were so many signs telling us that now is his time. it's so, so hard to face, but in little ways, we are prepared for this. well, I am prepared for this. my siblings are not so much.

I would never say that life without my parents can or will be easy, or that i'll ever understand why they had to be taken at such a young age. but one of the things my father and I talked about on friday evening was whether or not I felt he and my mother had prepared me for life. and I could unequivocally tell him that yes, they had. that's not to say that I feel like I have all the answers to life. But I feel confident that i've learned, by example, enough from them to be capable of making good decisions regarding the majority of the obstacles that I may encounter. but more importantly, they've taught me how to love my family and my God, and have given me the Faith to know that this dark shadow, death, isn't something of which I should be afraid.

I understand a bit more now than I did when I went through this with my mom, and I understand that the hurt and the pain, in it's own twisted way, is a wonderful thing. because it reminds me and my siblings that he loves us, so, so much. that's why we hurt: because we have such a special person in our lives. and this time around? I'm taking the opportunity to tell him that I love him just as much, as often as I can.

ok, one funny thing, before I sign off. yesterday, we had this brief conversation as he was trying to doze off for the umpteenth time:

me (softly): "I love you, dad"
dad (irritatedly, because i was interrupting precious sleep): "I know you do."
me (laughing): "you're supposed to say, 'I love you too, sissy.'"
dad: "oh. i love you too, sissy. good?"

all I could do was chuckle and shake my head...

"three weeks ago, life was... different"

2008-04-19T19:21:00.002-04:00

this is hard to write. but i'm exhausted, and I can't talk to people anymore, but I still feel like there are things to say.

a bit over a month ago, my father got sick with the flu. and then, three weeks ago, that flu turned into atypical pneumonia. and while we were certifiably freaked out then, we didn't even know what was in store for us.

the various doctor appointments and blood work for the pneumonia reveal abnormal liver enzymes, which warranted an ultrasound of his liver. various masses were found and from there he went through a chest and abdominal CT scan. And from there, the memory of that day 6 years ago when my father told me my mother had cancer became, once again, a vivid reality.

yesterday, we found out that my father has extensive lung cancer, and that it's metastasized to his liver, automatically making his condition very, very grave.

and all the time that my father, my aunt, and I were sitting there listening to the doctor talk about getting radiation treatment ASAP and liver draws to determine the type of cancer so they can do chemotherapy... well, as my ex says, the chances of survival are not 0, but they are also not good at all. We are, quite frankly, mostly looking toward making him comfortable and establishing what his wishes are for us and for the estate.

Making him comfortable is difficult, to be honest. without being overbearing with the details, he's being particularly disagreeable regarding his med dosing, and he's not wanting to dope up on painkillers because it makes his head a little fuzzy, but at the same time, he's in a lot of pain. add to that the fact that, when he's in a lot of pain he doesn't want to be alone, and that the majority of the pain is coming in the evenings, and, Oh! yeah, that's right! i'm the only one here taking care of him during the evening right now. yeah... I slept maybe 2 hours last night, and got a bit of a nap in today, but being tired on top of the stress of dealing with my dad fighting with me on everything from what he is drinking to when he is eating to what pills he is taking... well, quite frankly I feel like crap.

tonight my sister is staying with us through the evening to hopefully give me some relief (more than two hours of sleep at one time would be amazing). I know that I have a lot of wonderful people in my life, and that they all want to be there at times like this, but it's very, very difficult to not feel so goddamn alone right now. even my siblings and I are not relating and communicating well about how to deal with the situation. I got a text very late last night telling me that I don't have to be alone when there are so many people that care about me, but calling someone or texting someone at 3:00 in the morning really doesn't do much to make me feel less alone, and I don't really think someone being here would help all that much either. My ex is in town and has been tremendously helpful, even offering to come over at 2:00 last night to be with me, but I told him there really wasn't much he could do by physically being here.

we expect things to be soon, based on how sick he is, how he is handling situations, and his general mood. the idea of finding relief from the pain and going to be with my mother is very welcome to him right now.

i'm kind of exhausted and frustrated and just plain old tired, so I guess I should end this. we are all kind of figuring things out with respect to becoming orphans at such a young age. i've had about a week or so to really, really adjust to the idea and you know... i'm going to be ok. I just hope we are able to manage the pain and make him comfortable so that things go as smoothly as possible from here on out...

SOCLOSE to the weekend!

2008-03-28T15:32:00.003-04:00

this week has been kind of wacky, which usually makes things go faster but has actually dragged the week out, and I am SO ready for it to be over and done with.

but first of all, there is a SUPER FREAKING AWESOME article on lecture podcasting published in the newest Academic Intersections online journal. If you're into that sort of stuff you should go check it out.

so yeah. someone around these here parts has been busy. we'll just say that.

on top of that, we've determined a date and reception venue for the wedding, and (knock on wood) hope to be signing the contract this evening. so woooo! for this whole thing being WAY more low stress than I expected it to be. I pretty much just had to look at the place and send the pictures and info off to the crazychicas before they kind of sort of insisted that I ABSOLUTELY! MUST! HAVE MY RECEPTION THERE! (thank you for making the decision so easy for me, girls!) here's hoping that the rest of the planning is taken care of easily...

on top of that, this week there's been spinning, running, swimming, more running, even more running, a mile or so more in the pool, and then another spinnin session. it's really not exciting enough to talk about on an individual workout-by-workout basis, so it will have to suffice for me to say that I, surprisingly, feel actually quite *awesome* with all the activity. KTG and I are going to pick out some triathlons to do this summer, and I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to handle anything she throws my way. so YAY for that!

know what didn't feel awesome? weights this morning. hooooooooly crap. I thought I was in decent shape when it came to the weight room, but I started the new plan this morning and good grief it kicked my ass. It could have been because I did it after swimming, but I refuse to compromise my primary workouts to get weights in. The squats actually felt great, but doing supersets of the other exercises was like, whoa. i'm excited to see my fitness in this area improve, because I felt like a wimp this morning! push-ups should really not be all that difficult. for serious.

looking forward to an excellent evening out at a bar (where beer is food) and then a 15 miler in the morning. WOOHOO! exciting times, people.

weekend roundup

2008-03-24T14:46:00.004-04:00

I got SO MUCH ORGANIZING DONE this past weekend. it was seriously awesome. I've kind of felt like my home has been a mess since... oh, January or something, because every time I'd get home from a business trip I wouldn't have time to unpack before the work week began and so there was just CRAP all over my house. Last weekend I finally did all the laundry for the past 4 weeks or so, so things were starting to get back in order and then this past weekend I took the extra day off to get some spring cleaning in. I have two more closets to go through but I cleaned and organized my bathroom, my kitchen, and two major closets this past weekend, so I'm off to a good start.

Having a clean home always makes me want to have people over, so after church on Friday night we had KTG and her husband over for dinner and some basketball watching. We don't spend nearly enough time together now that we're in the same city, so it was nice to be able to sit down and chat with the two of them. Friday I also got in a short swim (1300 m or so) and a short spin (45 minutes) so I was pretty sleepy by the time they took off. granted, it could have been the SUPER DELICIOUS wine that we had, but whatever. :)

Saturday we got a nice 10 miler in. Neither of us was feeling like running all that much, so we were ecstatic to get outside and to realize that it was actually REALLY nice outside. The way out was SUPER SLOW because the paths weren't fully plowed yet and I was just generally irritated about stupid stuff, but on the way back we pretty much cruised the entire way. I didn't have a watch on, but Dice told me rather irritatedly that I was pushing us at a pace below 9:00/mile... hrm. I didn't even realize we were going that fast so YAY US! Considering two months ago a slow 3 miler was about my upper limit... well, I'm glad that our bodies remember somewhat what they're supposed to be doing when we get back to running.

Saturday night we met up at a local bar and, as evidenced by the pics, had a great time watching the KU game and pawning free shit off of the miller high life girls. YAY FOR USELESS CRAP THAT I'M GOING TO THROW AWAY IN TWO WEEKS!

Sunday morning we joined KTG and Jon for a service at their church since she was singing in the choir, then we had coffee quickly before Dice and I headed back to have a nice meal at home. Since my mom died we've generally had really good steak for pretty much every major holiday (besides thanksgiving) because it's pretty much my family's favorite food. So, true to form, Dice and I broke out some fantastic filets and had a wonderful meal yesterday, followed up by an hour and a half afternoon spin and a few pieces of Easter candy. When I was young I thought that cadbury eggs had REAL egg inside them, and thus thought they were sick. Am I the only one who thought this? SO GLAD I figured out that they're really filled with delicious sugar. mmm... sugar.

This morning was another long (2500 m) swim to start the week, and this evening we're going to be lazy, because we've totally earned it.

After taking last week off from the weights, I'm going to try a new lifting plan that I think will work really well with all of the other running/biking/swimming things that I've been doing. It's moving away from a body-part split toward intense, full body workouts using more compound movements. It's supposed to be a great plan, and should end up with less hours in the weight room with better results, so I'm hoping it will both keep my strength up and keep me motivated to hit the weight room. When I get really involved in training for events I tend to slack off with the weights, so I'm excited to see if this can help me keep my strength.

woooooooooooo!

2008-03-22T21:47:00.003-04:00

what a great night. we ended up gettting TONS of free shit from the mgd girls, thus, the drunkeness... here are a few pics. but before that, ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK (yeah, I kind of almost threw up in my mouth too. :), mo, )
\

. (he thinks he's from the midwest, thus, the MW sign... it's cute....)

2008-03-22T20:16:00.001-04:00

A bar that claims `where beer is food.` can you get any better?

I feel like something is happening today...

2008-03-20T12:50:00.005-04:00

oh. yeah. that's right, some basketball tournament or something. how could I forget when dice was JUMPING UP AND DOWN AND EEEEEEEEE-ING this morning like a teenage girl going to a Justin Timberlake concert. it was ridiculously cute, and gave me some insight as to how ridiculous I look during football season. :)

since there are games, games, and more games this afternoon and evening, we got up and got our 4 mile run in this morning. It would have been a pretty awesome run as we got to watch the sun rise over the lake and the temps were fairly mild, but we were still a bit stiff from getting 7 miles in last night so we are all creaky and groggy and all that so it was kind of a slow, blah run. The good news is that last night's run and the 3 we did on Tuesday were absolutely awesome... just felt really effortless, so that's pretty sweet.

Yesterday morning was another swim morning. Most of the lanes were empty, which was really surprising. but hey, I'll take it. So I got 1650 m in before quickly showering and then heading out to lift. I am loving the alternating grip on deadlifts! Yesterday I did my last set at 135 lbs and felt pretty decent through the whole set. super excited about having a stronger back this year, because maybe I won't be ABSOLUTELY WRECKED after Dances With Dirt like I am every year. My back is always one of those things I think I should work on strengthening whenever I am lamenting the pains that I have after a long race. Inevitably, my back will be sore, and that's super duper annoying. Maybe this season's the one where I resolve that issue.

Tomorrow is a day off, and boss told me to take off this afternoon after I finish watching the KU game with dice over lunch, so YAY for working at an awesome place, eh? it's like, practically the weekend! Woo!

and now, because julie has been so patient... here are photos from my birthday weekend out in Mpls. good times, people. good times.

shoosh..shoosh..shoosh..

2008-03-17T17:56:00.002-04:00

that's what it sounds like from under water when i'm swimming.

it was an early morning again today, and somehow my first alarm didn't seem to go off (thank god for backup alarms, eh?) but dice and I were at the gym at 5:30ish when it opened to get a lane in the pool.

I've been taking the last month or so to try out the Total Immersion swimming technique. Less because I feel like my swimming technique is horrible (I don't really think it's THAT bad) and more because I always kind of wonder exactly how you're SUPPOSED to be swimming. the last time I took swim lessons I was a tot, and since then I just started swimming based on some pointers my old coworker gave me, and I kind of figured that since swimming a mile on any given day wasn't really that hard for me from the get-go that I was probably doing something right. but I still kind of wondered.

so I found some of the TI stuff and started doing the drills and they're really boring and basically reinforce the things I was doing right (rolling an awful damn lot) and give me something to work on (hi there lame ass swim stroke!). So yeah, a month later I kind of know what i'm doing.

The thing that made me the happiest was the day I graduated from drilling to actually swimming, and dice said he wishes it wouldn't seem to perverted to video tape people in the pool because I was much smoother and efficient than the girl swimming next to me (who happens to have been a Big Ten swimmer - I saw her gym bag in the locker room) so I was all YAY! granted, she's probably a LOT faster than me, but whatever. EFFICIENCY, PEOPLE!

anyway. so today was a "real" workout... random warm-up sets and then a long set and then some cool down sets and all that jazz, and when I figured out how far I had to swim - 2500 meters - I was like, "whoa. that's gonna be boring." but then I got to concentrating on working on the stuff that needs to be worked on and you know what? it wasn't all that boring at all! I was done before I knew it. hoooray!

and the whole thing took about an hour and ten minutes, including stopping to talk briefly with dice between warm-up sets, so I was pretty happy about that. I've always heard stories of people spending ridiculous hours in the pool (the ex was a swimmer in high school) so I was afraid that ALL swim workouts would probably take forever... SO FREAKING GLAD to realize that it won't really take that long at all!

now I just have to work on getting faster! woooooo!

yeah... we've been holding out...

2008-03-14T14:08:00.004-04:00

yesterday was what I affectionately like to call my "independence day," because right around this time three years ago was when my ex decided that he just wasn't ready to take that next step and broke things off with me. And at the time I was all, "MY LIFE IS OVER. I'M NEVER HAVING CHILDREN. MEN SUCK. I'LL NEVER FIND SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO MARRY ME."

hehe!

I've come to realize that this was one of the best things that anyone's ever done for me. and this year? I had an even more sarcastic smile on my face when I realized the significance of the date, how pathetic my reaction to the whole situation was, and how everything just seems to work out sometimes.

because yesterday also just happened to be the week anniversary of when Josh asked me to marry him.

and the week anniversary of when I said "well that's a stupid question. of course I will!"

it's amazing how your outlook on life can change in a matter of years, isn't it? :)

sooooo cloooooose...

2008-03-10T13:59:00.003-04:00

last week, I thought spring was ALMOST here. highs were in the 30's. it was nice. And then the weekend came, and Saturday brought the most awful run we've had here yet. 6 miles of running straight into a strong wind, when it's already frickin' freezing out, is totally not cool. At least the miles back were kind of nice, but it left me way more exhausted than I should have been for 12 miles.

yesterday was considerably better. We made a trip to the gym to lift legs and then ran a bunch of errands up there. mmmm... coffee from a french press... (thanks for the suggestion, Brent and Rae!)

last night I spent the evening making all sorts of food. Stuffed sweet pepper soup for my lunches this week, prepped the stuff for mexican pie tonight, and made pesto won tons for dinner last night. so that was fun.

Saturday we had dinner with KTG and her husband at their place. She made me a fantastic birthday cake that had lots of liquor (Bailey's) in the frosting. mmm...

other than that, just lots of catching up with people on the phone over the past few days. I finally caught up with Bullfrog (aka "airforcefriend") after about a month of phone tag (and not really talking to him fro 6+ months. sheesh!), and I've still got a few more people to "catch up" with. It's amazing how easy it is to get wrapped up in day to day life and get out of touch with people.

on a totally unrelated note... I do a lot of really weird "things." one of the weird things that I have been doing lately is that each time I go use the restroom I do 10-15 squats. just air squats. nothing fancy. I remember reading in a magazine or on a website one time that it's a great way to practice and reinforce good form on squats. and since I've just begun squatting with a bar instead of a smith machine again, I can use all the practice I can get. that shit's hard, yo. so I take a minute to really practice my balance and make sure i'm doing things right. it's a small thing, but it's kind of one of those day to day things that I think helps with overall fitness in the long run, like taking the stairs whenever you can.

Dice, predictably, laughs at me whenever he sees me doing them. he pretty much rolled his eyes when I told him I do it at work. BUT! Yesterday, I finally coerced him into doing barbell squats with me (simply because the smith machine was being used... he usually only does smith machine squats) and when he warmed up with the bar, I gently but firmly told him that he wasn't getting low enough. he told me it was hard to get lower BECAUSE IT'S DIFFICULT TO KEEP YOUR BALANCE. ha! and THAT'S when I got to break out with the, "SEE! THE BATHROOM SQUATS HAVE A PURPOSE!" thing. I think he was actually pretty impressed with my range of motion (as am I, quite frankly. I'm sorta inflexible).

so I guess the lesson of the day is that little things actually do matter!

disordered tact.

2008-03-06T19:56:00.003-05:00

I had an interesting encounter with a woman at work today. my boss and I were consulting with her on a project, we had also worked with her a few weeks ago. Today, boss casually mentioned something about how I was training for a marathon, and the woman blurted out something along the lines of, "YEAH! you look like you've lost weight since the last time we met."

wait for it...

wait for it...

and then...

"are you eating?"

am I eating? seriously? is that a real question?

I tend to not be overly sensitive about weighty issues because when you take a year hiatus from running (and really, exercise in general) and spend that year eating a lot of really great food with your boyfriend... well, I get that that means I'm going to gain some weight. I'm not stupid. So yes, I started cracking down on what I was eating when we started running again. We no longer eat take-out several nights a week, and there are no jars of candy hanging out around the house. The 6 pack of beer that was in my fridge before the New Year started is still there, in fact.

but to suggest I'm not eating is comical and, quite frankly, slightly offensive. I was pleasantly surprised to come home from almost a week of eating a lot of really good food with julie, not to mention pretty much all the alcohol one could imagine, and to see that some of my pants were actually looser. It's how my body reacts to RUNNING A LOT OF MILES IN A WEEK.

I guess i'm just frustrated that someone would suggest that, because it's pretty much not all that possible to NOT EAT when you're training for something. I don't know about you all, but my body lets me know if i'm not fueling it right. And, well, I kind of make it a point to make sure that I AM being healthy, so when someone just assumes that the results that I'm seeing from EATING HEALTHY FOODS AND EXERCISING are coming instead from just "not eating," well, it kind of irks me.

hrmph.

GSD.

2008-03-06T09:42:00.003-05:00

that should be changed to GWD - for "getting workouts done."

It was rough getting outside last night for my 6 miler all on my own. Cold weather and after work sleepiness require massive amount of motivation, and if dice isn't around i'm prone to just sit on my couch and read or something. alas, he's in Orlando due to some work drama, and I had a run to get in, so I put some dinner in the steamer to cook and headed off for my run.

As is the case 90% of the time, once I got out there I felt just great. really, it's just about getting out the door, but I play tricks with my body by saying, "if you don't feel well, you can just go 3 and do your 6 tomorrow," knowing that once I get out there i'll get them all done.

The run was fairly uneventful until a pile of group runners who were doing repeats on the path decided to end their repeats RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME and then proceed to NOT MOVE OUT OF THE WAY and just stand hunched over in the middle of the path in people's way. have I mentioned how much I hate massive groups of runners? no? well, I DO. A LOT.

yesterday morning I was at the gym before it opened so I could get a lane in the pool. granted, did that stop 4 old asian women from getting in my lane and walking up and down it, play pattycake along the way? absolutely not. one woman got in when I was halfway through and I thought, "ok, I can handle that." Then another got in and I was like, "ok, what's one more?" and then TWO MORE women got in (luckily as I was about done anyways) and I pretty much couldn't swim more than 4 strokes without running into an old woman hopping obliviously down the center of the lane, so I finally just opted to get out of the pool and go lift.

the exciting thing about lifting yesterday was that I realized if I use an alternating grip I can deadlift way more. so YAY! I did sets at 115 yesterday and it wasn't bad at all. granted, the ol' back is a bit sore this morning, but MAN AM I GONNA BE READY FOR DWD THIS YEAR. my back's gonna be solid, man.

I got up and got today's run done this morning, so that's another 3 in the bag. OH! one of the water fountains on the inner lakeshore path was on! woo! that's a sure sign that spring is close!

all about the WOOOOOO!

2008-03-04T17:51:00.003-05:00

I've been working on cranking out stuff for work all day but I just wanted to comment on how awesome it is to finally be bench pressing sets with 10 more pounds than I have before. This morning warming up with the bar just felt easy so I went ahead with 85 pounds instead of the 75 that I usually struggle with and it was most definitely doable. YAY FOR GAINS IN STRENGTH! soon I will be able to move on to the big girl (25 lb) plates instead of the dinky ass ones I use now. WOOO!

we also ran on the indoor track because there was just absolutely no way in hell I was getting on a treadmill this morning. It was nice because it gave us a chance to talk while we were running, which we don't get to do when we're on the treadmill. and man is there a lot to talk about.

can I just say that winter needs to be over immediately? like, now. I seriously just wanted to stay in bed and cry this morning when I heard the wind whipping about outside. I am THISCLOSE to being on the verge of a mental breakdown caused by weather. I just absolutely cannot handle another month of consistently crappy, freezing cold weather when I have to be out and about in it to get pretty much everywhere. BE OVER NOW, WINTER. YOU HEAR ME?!

(for the record, winter knows i'm yelling this because the sun is shining beautifully right now. too bad it's also still cold as shit. it's like mother nature is having the most fun possible taunting me.)

literally, the only thing that got us to the gym this morning was thinking about how great it will be once we can actually do all of our workouts outside. spring can't come soon enough, I tell you.

so this is kind of exciting...

2008-03-03T17:16:00.003-05:00

Dear MOUSALICIOUS:

This message is to confirm your entry into the 2008 Traverse City State Bank Bayshore Marathon.

Packet pick up will be at the Traverse City Central High School Gymnasium on Friday May, 23rd from 5:00pm to 9:00pm and Saturday (Race Day) from 5:00am to 7:00am.

For more information visit our website @ www.bayshoremarathon.org

Thank you for registering for the Bayshore. Good luck with your training, we will see you in May.

so dice and I have been wavering on what races to do this year. We tentatively started training for Bayshore, but given the fact that everything we thought we would train for over the past, oh, 12 months or so didn't pan out due to one excuse or another we were putting off actually entering. Well, registration closed the other day and *SURPRISE* we have actually been training. a quick email to the RD indicated that if we got our entries postmarked THAT DAY that we would be admitted. so Dice did the legwork and - PRESTO CHANGO - we are in like flynn.

so WOOOOO for having a spring race on the ol' schedule!

being back from vacation = suxors

2008-03-03T11:37:00.003-05:00

you know what's more fun than getting on a plane that you know is going to be turbulent as all getout because winds are gusting like crazy in Chicago? getting on that same plane hung over as shit. Jules just sent me a link to this video and while our landing wasn't quite that bad it felt pretty close. especially since I was already not feeling all that hot.

so overall, the birthday was great, as you probably gathered. Juju, the BFF, and I had a great conversation sunday morning when I told them, "dude kept buying me shot after shot after shot. that was so not a good idea." and they replied, "yeah, we should have warned you about that. he likes to do that. he's rather generous with the drinks."

THANKS FOR TELLING ME NOW, BITCHES. geez.

I also came up with a hypothesis that perhaps it isn't the mixing of beer and liquor that makes me feel nauseous, but rather the sheer volume of both that doesn't settle over so well. I'M PRACTICALLY A GENIUS, I tell you.

The weekend overall was pretty much awesome, but I would be lying if I didn't say that I was really, really happy to be off my flight and to be met at Midway by a pair of open arms. I spent the evening doing a load of laundry and then I had a nice, quiet, relaxing dinner out with dice. It was a nice way to commemorate our first date. I was pretty zonked by the time we got done with dinner, so I fell asleep on the couch by 8:30 while we were watching a movie.

I have approximately 120 pictures from going out on my birthday, so I will have to post some of them when I get a chance, because they are really super funny.

it's yo birf-daaaaaaaaayyyyy

2008-03-01T12:38:00.003-05:00

juju and I just listened to the r. kelly song that is pretty much pure greatness. waaaay fun.

yesterday was a fun day. I took off for my run and got to see part of the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. 5 miles out along the river went relatively smoothly, once I found the path, but then I crossed over a bridge and headed back and OH! THERE'S A REALLY BIG BRIDGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION! SUCKS FOR YOU, GIRL WHO NEEDS TO DETOUR AND HAS NO IDEA WHERE SHE IS! so I wandered around the city of Minneapolis for a bit. which translates into about an hour. and several miles of wandering. By the time I made my way back to julie's place I had gone about 11.5 miles running and had probably walked another mile or two. so i'd say I got my run in (and thensome! as julie says. she's JUST LOOKING OUT FOR MY TRAINING!).

Yesterday afternoon we headed out to do some non MOA shopping, have some coffee, and then do more shopping. then we headed back to quickly get ready to meet friends out for dinner. we had a rather long (2 hour) wait, which included several drinks. and we all know that me + drinks + hungry + running double digit miles = pure funness.

the valet at Chino Latino lost julie's car keys, which was AWESOME, but then eventually found them so it all worked out ok. We headed over to a nearby bar for some dancing and more drinks. I called all the chicas (and dice) on the way home. i'm sure they all appreciated it.

the best part was the fact that one of the drinks that I had tasted JUST like hop-skippity, and it had two plastic Poco's hanging from the edge of the glass. YAY FOR PLASTIC POCOS.

this morning we had breakfast out and now we are lounging around for a bit. Julie says we have a "surprise" at 1:30. I wonder what it is! I tried to get it out of her but she's really good at keeping secrets, much to my irritation.

procrastination station

2008-02-29T09:32:00.003-05:00

it's cold here in Minneapolis *surprised face* and there is snow all over the ground. I'm supposed to be out for my 10 miler in... oh, 12 minutes. I am currently curled up in jule's bed with my pajamas still on. it's nice.

The last few days have been pretty fantastic, with the exception of the flight that I thought was going to kill me as we started rolling almost immediately as we lifted off the ground. I expect a bit of turbulence on any flight, but this was exceptional.

Wednesday night we had a fantastic sushi dinner and then rocked out to the Foo Fighters. the show was incredible and it's always a lot of fun to see julie get really really excited about dave grohl.

I slept for a solid 10+ hours yesterday and woke up to pretty much just lounge around all day while jules finished up some stuff at work. when she got home we chilled out and went for a run in the snowy, windy mess that mother nature had concocted for us. by the end of the run we were both feeling pretty badass for having even made it out the door. Then we met up with the BFF (julie's roommate) and one of their friends for dinner and several glasses of wine. overall, a chilled out, relaxing day. a perfect way to spend a vacation day.

today I need to get my run done and get a tiny bit of work on the manuscript out of the way before we go shopping this afternoon and then out for dinner with a bunch of people.

the only bad thing about visiting any of the crazychicas is that I always wish that we lived closer. over dinner the other night, we had a spontaneous skitzo quote come out of the middle of no where ("I never thought I was that pretty until I met you guys") and we couldn't stop laughing about it. ah... good times. I guess we'll have to settle for reunions for now. *sigh*

another one bites the dust...

2008-02-26T17:18:00.003-05:00

well, nearly. today is friday for me because as of tomorrow I am on vacation to go visit Mpls Ju, who lives in - of all places - Minneapolis. why I choose to go to a city that is generally colder than my own when I am SO FUCKING SICK OF THE COLDNESS AND THE SNOW is way beyond me. (actually, it involves Dave Grohl and a date that we have with the Foo Fighters, but whatever)

I'm excited because I haven't spent much QT with jules lately, so it should be fun to share some beers and good conversation with her.

As of Saturday I'll be another year older... the ripe old age of 28 will be upon me. i'm excited. this past year has been a high point on the list of "years I actually enjoyed," so I'm hoping the coming year brings more of the same.

Dice has his own plans on Saturday (hehe!) so I don't feel bad about going. When I get back on Sunday we're having dinner out to celebrate the anniversary of our first "real" date; we'll celebrate the whole "turning older" thing next weekend or whenever we actually get ahold of the peeps to go out.

I'm hoping to get my runs in as planned while jules is workin' and then the rest of the week/weekend we have a big old pile of nothing planned, and let me tell you: I am super excited about that because I feel like the last few months have been a lot of crazy running around.

so yay.

to celebrate the turning of age I took a picture of myself at work to check for wrinkles. aside from the under-eye bags, which have been a permanent staple since I was like 12, I don't think i've aged all that much this year.

and now, I am off to pack. YAY!

exhausting weekend

2008-02-25T17:18:00.005-05:00

this weekend was exhausting, and too jam packed to properly recount, so here are some highlights:

- 3 people at my old job said they thought they heard my laugh in the hallway when I went back to visit them on Friday. They so miss me...

- the publication? soclose to being finished.

- evidently i'm a co-presenter at some conference coming up. it requires no work, nor does it require my attendance. awesome.

- my Grams may or may not have been hitting on Dice at several points over the weekend. I caught her telling him that he was "such a handsome young man", and that if she were 50 years younger...

- my aunt Mo made fun of dice for saying that he's "from the midwest." it's the ongoing argument. I enjoy having it around my family more than his, because then I win.

- rugrat? still a demon.

- my dad is perhaps the coolest dad ever because he bought a Macbook Air. I couldn't stop singing the "New Soul" song the entire weekend.

- did I mention my dad is pretty damn cool? alas, the coolness factor wears thin when I have to spend an entire afternoon teaching him how to USE said awesome lappy.

- my dad also isn't a fan of dusting. you should see the dustballs all over his house. I need to get him a cleaning lady for father's day or something.

- my cousin miranda is a ridiculously talented oboe player. who knew?

- my grandfather's funeral was quite touching, and it was good to have so many of my relatives in the same place.

- my aunts asked me how I could down two 25 ounce beers without having to go pee. I told them it takes training and practice. they were impressed.

- between all the familial visiting, driving all over God's creation, and me drinking a lot o' beers with the fam, we didn't get our run in. oh well. small price to pay.

no sparkles...

2008-02-21T17:07:00.002-05:00

Rae. but I did have a conversation with the girl who has the office next to me yesterday and she was all, "OH MY GOD. you can TOTALLY do Vera Wang on a TJ Maxx budget. I CAN'T WAIT!" she met Dice once, for like 5 minutes, and has decided that I ABSOLUTELY! NEED! TO MARRY HIM! I couldn't do anything but laugh at her because she's crazy and hilarious, a great combination in my book.

This morning we headed to the gym and got in an easy run and then did some swim drills. really not a whole lot to report on that except there was mega confusion over whether the pool was open or not because there are signs everywhere saying "THE POOL IS CLOSED" but the old asian women were still swimming in it. Maybe they don't read English. But then I asked the guy at the front desk and he looked super irritated to be bothered from his regularly scheduled MAGAZINE READING and looked at me like I was crazy and said the pool was, in fact, open. so yeah. that was fun.

I'm picking up my car in like, 45 minutes... all shiny and fixed, and then we're going back to Michigan for the weekend for gramps' memorial service. He was cremated in Florida, where they live, and my grandma and aunts are coming up so that we can have a service here and I think he will be interred at the same cemetery in Michigan where his family is. it is just a stone's throw away from where my mother's ashes are interred, so I will probably stop by and say 'hi' to her too.

so yeah. stressfullness on the radar for this weekend. at least we can escape for our 10 miler to get some relief.

water main break is mega suxors

2008-02-20T10:00:00.003-05:00

first off... uh... unless your name is "Monica Brant," I don't really need advice regarding lifting. while i've admittedly taken a lifting hiatus the past year, before that I had been lifting for like, 6 years, and have trained with people in the past who kind of know what they're doing (my sister's training partner long ago had her pro card. I think they both have the weight lifting thing down). I look to them for advice. not random peeps on the intarwebs.

kthnxbai!

and now on to the regularly scheduled bitching about the gym. Evidently there was a water main break by "the golden nugget" (do we live in rural Alabama? why are there places named like this in the city?) so there was no water at the gym this morning. Which was pretty obvious from the getgo, but they didn't have the courtesy to tell patrons until an hour after the gym opened. If you are like dice and have no need for water, you wouldn't know that the water wasn't functioning until you went to go shower, so that's pretty awesome.

I no can have gym shower. boo.

making this doubly awesome is the fact that I had to take my car in for repairs this morning so all arrangements were made to do this from the gym. it was pretty much a logistical nightmare, but I had it all figured out. and then I ended up having to walk all the way home to shower anyways, thus defeating the fact that I planned to leave from the gym and moved my car and had lugged stuff all over god's creation.

but, everything worked out due to dice's awesomeness and his ability to get ready for work in like, 8 minutes. and my car is being worked on and hopefully will be happy and ready to go home tomorrow night.

my birthday gift comes tonight. Yes, he told me what it is (I may or may not have coerced it out of him after he had been drinking). and i'm SUPER DUPER EXCITED! EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

so yay.

here, grippy, grippy, grip!

2008-02-19T17:21:00.004-05:00

in the ongoing battle of "my forearm strength SUCKS," my grip gave out yet AGAIN this morning while trying to do deadlifts. and quite frankly i'm as over that as I am over the horrible, horrible cold that just never seems to go away.

The good news is that I was able to go over 100 lbs this morning with my deadlifts! wooooooo! but the bad news is that I couldn't get a whole set in without my grip like, totally freaking out. so that's improved, I guess, since I used to only be doing 85 pounds. Dice has been showing me some forearm exercises and we've been doing those along with our bicep and tricep lifts, even though I HAAAAATE them. but they're working! so i guess I'll keep it up.

in the meantime, I've emailed my sister about lifting straps because she's the one who knows about all this crap. she's actually the one who got me into lifting after college and was quite a serious lifter for a while. hopefully she'll get back to me with some suggestions.

we also ran this morning and we did swim drills yesterday and all that, but that's not NEARLY AS FASCINATING AS DEADLIFTS. I KNOW YOU ARE ALL ENTHRALLED TO HEAR ABOUT MY GRIP STRENGTH AGAIN.

I also have this personal goal of being able to do an unassisted pull up. and let me tell you, that is a LONG way off, but I am making improvements on that too. I'm really enjoying lifting again, so I'm glad that I have someone to spot me.

oh, and my chest presses still SUUUUCK majorly too. i'll get there, I guess. blah. I also wanted to add that my bum is totally sore the lifting that we did on Sunday. I'm guessing it was the hack squats. sweet!

whataweekend.

2008-02-17T16:53:00.007-05:00

that's an ode to the whataburger commercials that are constantly played throughout almost every KU game, and to Dice's friend who told me that he would drive to Arkansas just to make a whataburger stop. HA!

The weekend has pretty much just flown by. We opted on Friday to ditch the trip to the pool that we had planned and to make it a full out rest day since we haven't taken one in a full two weeks. skipping the pool = me falling asleep on the couch by 9, which leads to early morning wakeup calls for Dice. good times.

So we were out running bright and early yesterday and hammered through our 9 with just about no problem save for the wheezy asthma that came upon me in the last mile and the copious amounts of people doing the "group running" thing. I *hate* group runners. seriously, seriously hate them. and I know a lot of people out there are all for it, but it just annoys the shit out of me when a group of 18 people goes to pass me and TWO OF THEM FEEL THE NEED TO FUCKING THROW ELBOWS AT ME. and no, I am NOT going to move further over to the edge of the path, effectively pushing my running partner onto a big fucking ice patch SO YOU CAN HAVE THE LUXURY OF RUNNING THREE ABREAST WHILE TRYING TO PASS ME. assholes. seriously.

after our run we prepared to head out to meet some of Dice's friends to watch the KU game at a local KU bar. goooooood times. enter pints 1, 2, and 3. and $.25 chicken wings. mmmm. after fighting with the waitstaff regarding the price of the beerz, we headed home and koonked out for about a 3 hour nap.

we woke up from our nap and got ahold of a couple that was having a gathering in the evening. The wife of one of Dice's friends from college works at the same institution where I work, and recently found a new position in the corporate arena. They were gathering people for the evening to celebrate her new job, so we met up with them at a bar that is literally 3 doors down from Dice's apartment. it was like, the greatest thing ever. until midnight came and it started getting busy and they closed the patio and we were forced to go inside. yeah, the guys ended up just heading back to dice's place to drink more beers and to play some wii. WIIIIIIIIII!

a few too many beers were had yesterday. let's just say that.

This morning we trekked to the gym to get in an awesome leg workout and some cardio. Holy hamstring muscles! We deviated from the standard lunges that we usually do and mixed it up with some good mornings, hack squats, some presses, and even some free form squats. They are SO much more difficult than smith machine squats, it's crazy! I have a feeling our legs are going to be hurting quite a bit tomorrow.

I spent the majority of the evening tweaking some edits on the manuscript that we're completing. thank God we're almost done with this sucker. i'm SO ready for the writing to be over.

dice is watching knight rider or something. he gets the entire day off tomorrow. I pretty much hate him.

12 inch league

2008-02-17T02:37:00.003-05:00

I have had WAY too much beer tonight. er... today. but.

the best conversation? was the one that went like this:

Mouse: "so are you going to play softball with these fools this summer?"
Dice: "only if we find a 12 inch league."
M: "what's a 12 inch league?" *chuckling*
D: "one where they have 12 inch balls."

HAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAH!

actual comment for the evening?

dice: "mama dice is gonna LOVE that headline."

best. valentines gift. ever.

2008-02-15T17:58:00.006-05:00

last night dice and I celebrated our first valentine's day together, and let me just tell you... this boy puts me to shame in the categories of "thoughtful" and "meaningful gifts." forget flowers. FLOWERS ON VALENTINES DAY ARE LAAAAAME. and chocolates? TOTALLY OVER THEM.

I bought him a pair of shoes he had been oogling every time we walked by the New Balance store, and he MADE ME A BOOK. seriously. it's ridiculous. and by "ridiculous," I mean "awesome."

he basically took the photos from the past year or so that we've been dating and compiled them into a book and he went through and accompanied each page of photos with the relevant text from our blogs that talks about the weekends and trips that we spent together. So photos from us in Atlanta, for example, also have the recap that we wrote about the trip. it's seriously awesome. We've always joked about how it's funny that we have kind of a written record of the beginning of our relationship, with all the IMs and blog posts that we have saved, and he put the words together with the pictures in such a cute way. It's really just such a thoughtful thing for him to do.

So now I have this cute, bound, professionally printed book of "Mouse and Dice's first year together". it's so adorable I almost want to puke.

I AM SO PUTTING IT ON MY COFFEE TABLE AND MAKING EVERYONE WHO COMES OVER LOOK AT IT!

We also had a wonderful dinner out at a great italian place that is new to us, and were in bed sleeping by 10, which is pretty much my idea of a perfect night. add to that a later morning than usual because it was rest morning (we're going to the pool to do drills tonight) and it was pretty much the best valentine's day ever. thank you for spending the last year with me, boy. I hope there are many more books in our future.

SO MANY PEOPLE.

2008-02-14T10:28:00.003-05:00

evidently, because today is valentine's day, everybody who made plans with their dearest ones for the evening decided they'd come to the gym in the morning to get their workout it. there were SO MANY PEOPLE there. almost all the treadmills were taken and there are A LOT of treadmills in the gym. it was really kind of insane.

and while normally I don't mind the whole "getting naked and showering in front of other people" thing, "other people" usually only comes in quantities of six, not like, THIRTY. there was a strategic battle of "get to the one unused hair dryer before the girl who just came out of the showers does" going on.

other than that, the workout this morning was great! well, except for playing the game of "find the hidden 20 pound dumbbells." NO BODY in our gym racks their weights. and this is seriously, seriously irritating to me because there's this BIIIIIIIG long line of weights that I CAN'T USE BECAUSE I'M NOT STRONG ENOUGH and the 3 sets of 20 lb dumbbells are nowhere to be found. people leave the damn things scattered off in random corners of the gym. it's really bizarre to me. HOW HARD IS IT TO PUT YOUR DAMN WEIGHTS BACK? seriously.

anyways, dice finally found the weights I needed under a press rack, which is LOGICALLY WHERE THEY SHOULD BE, OF COURSE, and then we were able to proceed. but let me just say that I am TERRIBLE at preacher curls. terrible. today I was at least able to move up from the baby weights to 5 pounds on each side, but it makes me feel pathetic that i'm so weak at them.

We always run first when we get to the gym and each day we play games with the treadmill speeds, because seriously... how can you stand running in a room with 30 other people on treadmills if you don't? and i'm happy to say that because of the speed games, i'm officially running my miles 50 seconds/mile faster than I was when we started back running a bit over a month ago. it just goes to show that if you have a solid base from years of training, you can still take an extended leave and get back into things. i'm about 30 seconds/mile off what I used to run my weekday runs at, but I'm sure it will get there eventually.

this getting back into things really hasn't been nearly as bad as I thought it would be. i'm super happy about that.

I be up in the gym just workin on my fitness

2008-02-11T12:32:00.000-05:00

he forgot to mention that we were totally listening to fergie last night, too. He has an obsession with the song "big girls don't cry" or something, because he gets really excited when it comes on.

so yeah. this morning, 4:45 came really early. after snoozing for a bit longer than necessary I was up and about and heading up to the gym with dice. we got in an awesome chest and shoulder workout, although I had to coerce him to do cable flyes with me and he was all, "I like dumbells better." FINE. BE THAT WAY. WHEN YOUR GIRLFRIEND'S STRONGER THAN YOU YOU'LL BE SORRY. (just kidding. he's much stronger than I am, for the record.)

but the happy news is that I am up to bench pressing 75 lbs. (i'm a monster, I tell you) and that I can do military presses with 20 lb weights. I have NEVER, EVER been able to do sets of these with 20 lb weights, even back when I was lifting a lot. so i'm super duper excited. I'm thinking it's probably the incline bench presses that we've been doing that have increased my shoulder strength, so I guess I can't be too irritated at them when I lift so little weight doing those. I love feeling like I (kinda) have muscles again.

then I swam, which is TOTALLY AWESOME after lifting shoulders really heavy, let me tell you. I felt like I couldn't even lift my arms out of the water. It took me about half a mile before I finally felt like I was gliding through the water instead of hacking my way through it with a machete made from arms. ERG! but once I finally started feeling the rhythm it was great! until some old asian lady decided to come share a lane with me.

have I not talked about them? because they are awesome. There is a group of elderly asian women who come into the pool between 6:45 and 7:00 EVERY SINGLE WEEKDAY MORNING. do they swim? no. they have like, social time or something. and they TAKE OVER THE POOL. literally every single lane, they will take up. and what do they do? they WALK UP AND DOWN THE LANES. sometimes they just hang out in the corners of the pool (isn't that what the whirlpool is for?). and other times... other times they HOLD HANDS AND SKIP UP AND DOWN THE LANES. I am so not even making this up.

so this morning there is an old lady walking up and down the lane next to me, and I'm 3/4 of the way through my swim so I'm just focusing on getting that last 1/4 mile done and enjoying the gliding gliding gliding through the water when I realize there's someone else in my lane. and she's an old asian lady. and she's walking up and down the lane. CAN'T SHE SHARE WITH THE OTHER LADY WHO'S WALKING UP AND DOWN THE LANES? good grief! by the time I got out there were only four people using the pool, but the woman WAS STILL HANGING OUT IN MY LANE. I have no idea what is wrong with people. I guess I should have kicked her or something when I went by. ERG!

anyways. other than that it was a great swim. I'm glad I got past the arms/shoulders made of lead, because that could have been miserable.

enough with the ranting, but just a quick moment to say, HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMA DICE! I'd sing her the "it's yo birf-day" song, but I feel like there's a generational gap and perhaps she might not find R Kelly's lyrical stylings to be as awesome as I do. so I will just settle for the traditional greeting. :)

week, end.

2008-02-08T17:50:00.000-05:00

there are weeks that pass by where the work you put in doesn't mean all that much, and then there are those where the sweat, the tears, the exhaustion, they all mean something.

this week was one of the latter.

I had three of my better runs of the past year and a half this week. they would be nothing compared to what my old self could accomplish. you know, the one who took her trials and grief out on her running shoes and whatever stretch of path was in front of her.

this week was one of those weeks.

in the past year and a half, i've learned to become more... balanced, I guess. I put aside my running and spent time with a HUMAN. a boy, at that. and talking to him made me not feel like I needed to release my frustrations via physical activity so much. This past month or so, running has taken a different spin because it's been running just for the sheer enjoyment of running, which is odd. I guess it's been a while since I ran without having a reason involving stress.

but this week was one of those weeks. yesterday, Thursday, was the anniversary of my mother's passing. Since I met with my mom's friend Karen in San Antonio, though, things have been different. I realized over dinner with her how much I focus on her dying and how I rarely think about her living. hearing stories of them yelling to each other from across the street reminded me that she was once a vibrant, happy young girl. and that, in turn reminded me that her life wasn't summed up by her being in a hospital bed those last two weeks. and so i've been concentrating on remembering her in life, not as she was dying. and you know what? it makes a world of difference.

when I was home this past weekend, my father told me that my grandfather, his father, wasn't doing well. he's been ill with Parkinson's for a while, but he had recently taken a turn. On Monday, dad called to tell me that my grandfather had passed away. It broke my heart. My grandfather and I weren't close, as they moved away when I was very young, but he and my grandmother have always been there for us when our family needed them. more than anything, it hurts to see my dad hurting. and this week, the pain is double what it should be. It's hard for him to watch my grandmother lose her husband, her partner in life, and I can tell how much it reminds him of his own personal pain.

I was at a funeral a bit after my mother had passed away, and the priest told the congregation that losing someone you love, someone that is so close to you, changes you for life. from that point on, you understand the pain that someone is going through when you see them grieving, and empathizing with that person brings back the pain that you've felt. I said once that grieving, no matter how much you do it, never gets easier... right now I would almost even say that it gets a lot worse.

so this week I took out my pain, my grieving, my frustration on the treadmill. hopefully i'm a better person because of it. but i'm glad this week is over.

totally badass

2008-02-04T14:32:00.000-05:00

this weekend was kind of crazy. dice came over to michigan with me on saturday, and after having lunch with the girls (and momo's boytoy), some super speedy bridesmaid dress shopping, and a quick visit with the fam (the whole family, at that. we haven't all been together since... well, probably last christmas) we headed back and I was able to sleep in my own bed that evening. mission accomplished.

Sunday we procrastinated until about 1 before we actually got our butts out the door. seven miles later and we were happy, but cold, campers. actually running outside isn't really the issue. it's running, getting all sweaty, and then STOPPING RUNNING that makes me frickin' freezing. but we still trekked our cold asses up to the gym to get in some leg lifting. I'm not nearly as sore today as I was after we did legs last week.

This morning was an early morning again. We somehow managed to grab a bus up to the gym and spent the morning lifting chest and shoulders and then completing the workout with some swimming. I got in a solid 1600 meters with little time to spare before I scampered off to shower. A solid effort for a monday morning.

one of the lamest parts of the weekend was the fact that the mile stretch of path before you hit navy pier was only cleared on the banked part of the path, which is incredibly irritating when you are prone to knee issues and are JUST finally feeling like the bum ankle has gone away. lame. and totally not badass.

I was sad last evening. Not because we had fabulous steak and baked sweet potato fries for dinner, but more because plaxico burress was successful. I dislike him more than I like his royal dreamboat tom brady, so it was painful to watch him catch that last pass. But it's times like those when I'm glad I don't have much emotional investment in NFL football. I pretty much only care about three things:

1. Tom Brady being dreamy.
2. The Colts sucking ass.
3. People I hated when I was in college NOT succeeding

so, while #3 was kind of a bust, Tom is still a dreamboat, and the Colts still lost in the playoffs to... shit, man. I can't even remember at this point, that's how sucky they were. Sure, if Tom had won the superbowl, his dreamyness would have been plastered EVERYWHERE, but as it stands, he is still dreamy, and most of the people who hate him are still ugly sonsofbitches. So all is still right in this world, I suppose.

here's to the fact that it's RAINING here! wooo for being above freezing!

SNOW DAY! kind of...

2008-02-01T11:49:00.000-05:00

this morning I schlepped my way through the snow to my bus stop and stood there a good 40 minutes before dice called me to tell me that the road up by him was completely blocked. Evidently a southbound 151 got stuck and then a southbound 134 (?) tried to pass him and got stuck, so all traffic going in both directions was pretty much screwed. My bus needs to pass that area going northbound, so even IF IT EVER CAME, i'd not be able to get through so I thought it a good idea to warn the boss that I should be in by... oh, noon or so.

She told me just to go work downtown. awesome. Until I realized all the busses going downtown were uber packed. also awesome.

I finally got a bus and got to work about an hour and a half late, which is always fun, only to find that our offices were locked up tight. evidently word came from the provost to not even bother coming in, we just hadn't checked our emails and received that message.

so i'm working here this morning and then heading home to beat the evening rush. total sweetness.

in other news, I got like 9.5 hours of sleep last night because I was totally awesome and turned off the alarm when it went off at 4:55 this morning. I still have one more run to get in during the week, and then a longer run this weekend, so I was hoping to get the shorter run done this morning. SO DIDN'T HAPPEN. I have been exhausted since I got back from Texas. but whatever, at least now I have all afternoon to go pounce around in the snow.

the good news is that I get to have lunch with dice before I go. most excellent. and then maaaaaybe a swim in this evening even. woooo!

MEXICAN FOOD OUT THE EARS

2008-01-29T18:32:00.000-05:00

Sure, we've been out for mexican food since we've been down here. I mean, it is Texas, after all. but i'm going out for more tonight. Karen, my mom's old friend, uttered the word "margarita" and I immediately found myself agreeing to the eating arrangements. and seriously... can you EVER have too much mexican food? i think not.

luckily i've been able to drag my ass from the super comfy bed each morning to run, or I'd probably feel just a teensy bit guilty about the whole "eating lots o' great food and drinking margaritas" thing. oh well.

boss and I decided we're skipping a session tomorrow to hit up more shopping. I think I will finally buy myself a cowboy hat.

aaaaaand... the meeting is being twittered by all the participants, and it is perhaps the coolest thing about any meeting i've been to. if you're a geek (like me), check it out here...

pretentious youngsters

2008-01-28T18:48:00.001-05:00

so i'm at a conference, and I go to this session, and the main guy speaking is a really renowned person in the field. great. well, he's brought along two students who are not so renowned to share their experience. which is great, I guess. one of the students was very nervous, but the stuff he was presenting was really intriguing. the other student was a girl and her content was pretty much useless. but then she starts waxing poetic about web 2.0 and i'm all *yawn* because I didn't pay a lot of money to come to a conference to have some student who really doesn't know what she's talking about tell me her opinion on stuff.

one of her insightful comments was about how blogging is quickly starting to replace all traditional forms of writing and publishing. uh... how do you people who write in traditional formats for a living feel about that? well, don't worry, she really doesn't know what she's talking about. there's a reason why I go to scholarly journals when I'm researching a particular concept, and it sure as hell isn't because they're easy to use and search through.

in other news, I ran this morning in a really packed fitness center. but again, it was all ok because AGAIN tom brady was on sportscenter. hooray for excessive coverage of the super bowl! I also found a pair of cowboy boots that I love, and if it weren't for the fact that they are $$$$$$$$$, i'd totally be bringing them home with me.

THE STARS AT NIGHT! ARE BIG AND BRIGHT!...

2008-01-28T01:08:00.000-05:00

guess who loves Texas? (the state, not the school.) that would be MEEEEE. because it's like 70 DEGREES HERE. i'm hanging out in the hotel in San Antonio and the Alamo is like, pretty much a stone's throw away. I told my boss that I would give her a dollar (yeah, i'm a high roller) to ask the information desk lady how you get to the basement, but she said that's the most asked question at the Alamo, so it wasn't happening. We had two fabulous meals on the Riverwalk, with lots of walking around a touristy stuff thrown in there. and I even dragged my ass up to the fitness center at 10:30 this evening to get a workout in. woooo cross training. but seriously. is being on an elliptical a chore when there's a little tv built into the display and his royal dreaminess (Tom Brady) is on sportscenter for the better part of an hour? I think not.

Yesterday dice and I met up for a ridiculously difficult 6 miles. the weather was absolutely perfect. any day when I can get by wearing just two layers on top and on bottom is a great day if you ask me. It wasn't even that bad going into the wind. except for, you know, the snow covering the path. but even that wasn't bad until the mile 3 and 4. We did an out and back on the lakefront path. the first two miles seemed a little bit cleared, but still really slushy and in need of careful footing. miles 3 and 4 we were trouncing through multiple inches of snow because there was no clearing whatsoever on the path, so I was really, really challenging. especially with a bum ankle. But that made miles 5 and 6 SEEM really that much easier and the last two miles flew by. It was pretty much an awesome run.

then we walked to the gym and lifted legs and let's just say that a) I haven't done walking lunges in forever, b) nor have I done squats on a smith machine in forever, and c) holy shit, I cannot even WALK today. it's unreal. Which is pretty much why I insisted on getting my legs moving this evening. I would have loved to have taken the evening off as the day has been exhausing and who really works out when they travel anyway? but I knew getting them moving would help them recover a bit quicker.

Tomorrow morning i've got a run scheduled and lifting chest and shoulders. It should be interesting because they have exactly 6 weight machines, three of which are leg-related so I am staying far away from them. BUT! they have an adjustable cable machine and you can pretty much figure out a way to lift ANYTHING really well with cables. YAY CABLES! so wooo to that.

additionally, after asking my dad for the past 2 months to find her number for me, i've finally gotten in contact with my mom's best friend from childhood who lives in San Antonio. I am super excited to be getting together with her, but I am also kind of nervous because a) while she's always been super nice to me via phone, I don't know her all that well. I've met her like 3 times in my life, but she was one of my mom's closest friends, and b) this time of year is hard already; hearing stories about her will be simultaneously wonderful and awful, you know?

not to mention that I was the one who had to break the news to her a few years ago that my mom had passed away, so I'm not exactly sure that she associates me with positive things. oh yeah, and she didn't know that my mom was even SICK for 3 years. My mom carefully avoided telling her because a friend of theirs had passed a few years earlier and my mom had seen how it had hurt her friend and wanted to shield her from that. needless to say, that was probably the most difficult phone call i've EVER had to make in my entire life.

but i'm excited to get to know her better and to have her tell me more about my mother's family, since they have all passed, so I'm looking forward to it, too.

oh, and yeah, there's a conference too. :) I guess I'll go to that as well. But the awesome news is that I have no preconference things in the morning so I get to sleep in. NOTHING TO DO UNTIL LIKE 2. except shop for cowboy boots and a hat, I guess. I called my favorite southerners to tell them how weird it is to see all the hats and boots (they thought that was funny because it's pretty normal for them) and had a hilarious convo with Rae.

so overall, it's been a pretty awesome, yet exhausting, weekend. so now, i'm off to bed.

AVOID! AVOID! AVOID!

2008-01-25T23:03:00.000-05:00

So this evening i've managed to:

-avoid the killer that's loose on the north side
-make myself dinner
-do 4 weeks worth of laundry
-actually fold that laundry
-blog
-put away the laundry (these three "laundry" related things rarely get done within even days of each other, so that's a major feat)
-knit a little bit
-start watching brokeback mountain
-realize that the movie is STUPID and turn it off
-find the pistons game and watch them defeat Orlando

and now I really have nothing better to do, so I'm blogging again. all week I've been doing this thing where I've been avoiding the Big Issue at hand. Sissy sent me a text saying she was thinking about me. I ignored it. My dad called twice and I finally got the chance to call him back, and we practiced the AVOID! AVOID! AVOID! tactic with one another as well.

it seems almost stupid, to commemorate the anniversary of the day when you had your last conversation with someone. but I would give anything, anything to have that day back. to be able to tell her everything I should have told her.

some day, I suppose.

so for now, I'm going to go run a nice hot bath, and have myself a good cry. and then i'm going to sleep like a baby. because all of this avoidance? it's exhausting, let me tell you.

that's my dad for you

2008-01-25T19:08:00.000-05:00

I work in not exactly... well, the safest part of town. It's not definitively "unsafe," but there have been days when I was standing at the bus stop, waiting for my ride home, and I thought, "you know, this large group of suspicious looking men could drag me about a block that way and kill me and I don't think anyone would notice."

it's a little bit sketchy. let's just put it that way.

So today there was a shooting near campus. And I get the security alert that says some dude was shot outside a convenience store at 11 a.m. So basically, this happens in plain daylight. So I google the location and realize that... uh... yeah. my super sweet bus stop location that I stand at for up to 45 minutes in the dark of night? is like 25 feet away from said convenience store.

pretty. freaking. awesome.

so I am, predictably, freaked out by this. A coworker gave me a ride home, as I was freaked out and there were still police everywhere.

so I get home and call my dad and tell him this story, and you know what he says?

"That's what you get for living in a big city like that, sis!"

heh. that's my dad for you...

peoplewatching

2008-01-25T12:15:00.000-05:00

I went to bed at 8:57 last night (really though, is this abnormal?), and I am still managing to be tired. it's incredibly irritating. I've cut back on my caffeine intake drastically since the holiday break, so I haven't been having my usual cup of coffee in the mornings, but when I got to work today I needed something to wake me up. and cocaine is really expensive. or so I hear.

this morning, even just ellipticalling, the EASIEST GYM ACTIVITY IN THE WORLD was difficult. man, am I sluggish today. so I passed the time by examining all the people on the level below me at the various cardio machines. Dice pointed out yesterday that there's a girl who is obsessive compulsively ellipticaling each morning and she is the size of a twig... her legs are literally as big as my arms are, it's bizarre. I saw her on one of the leg machines in the nautilus area this morning and she could barely lift the bar when it had no weight on it. it was pretty awesome to watch. it made me wonder what motivates people like that.

I guess I feel like lifting and cross training and even getting on the easiest gym machine in the world is in some way contributing to me being a better runner, and that's why I do it. and I get that a lot of people do the gym thing to look fit, toned, and healthy, but people who are as skinny as she is don't look good.

In the end, if you take away the marathon running and all that stuff, the only REAL reason to work out at the gym is be ready when THE FUCKING CLOVERFIELD MONSTER INVADES THE WORLD or when the zombies from I am Legend take over. YOU NEED TO BE READY FOR THESE THINGS PEOPLE! EVERYTHING YOU SEE IN THE MOVIES IS REAL. so I guess it makes me happy to think that i'll be able to get away from the cloverfield monster or the zombies because they'll catch the weak anorexic girl first, but it does me no good because her scrawny bones aren't going to fill either of them up so they'll just end up coming after me anyway.

*sigh*

at least they serve some purpose by giving me amusing stories to make up in my head while i'm doing my cardio.

oh, we also lifted this morning, and it's quite possible that my biceps are actually getting weaker by the week. I'm giving them a week to get their act together.

half the battle

2008-01-24T14:34:00.000-05:00

the dudes from G.I. Joe totally had it all wrong, because knowing isn't half the battle. getting to the damn gym when it's o'dark thirty and the wind chill makes it 18 BILLION DEGREES BELOW ZERO is half the battle. perhaps more than half the battle even, since once you get to the gym in the morning you're greeted by Snow's "Informer" about 70% of the days. Who doesn't love that song? Any song sung in English that you can't understand EVEN WHEN YOU ARE STARING AT THE LYRICS is absolutely awesome in my book.

so yeah, we were up and headed to the gym super early this morning and I ALMOST detoured once I reached Dice's apartment to retreat to the nice comfy warmth, but then a bus happened to be coming our way (which pretty much NEVER happens in the morning) so we hurried to catch it and took that the rest of the way.

I tried out the elliptical because I wasn't even going near the pool with my sinuses still kind of plugged up, and that was (happily) successful. I was a bit worried about the whole ankle thing but it really doesn't hurt unless I apply pressure to the skin around the ankle because it's all sorts of bruised. putting pressure on the joint really isn't bothering me at all. It seems that I probably lucked out with this whole ankle turning thing.

And then we lifted back and I realized how abysmally weak my forearms are, because I fatigue really early when doing deadlifts with anything over 80 pounds. So I guess I'll work on that a bit, because it really makes me feel oddly inadequate to have weak forearms.

This weekend begins a really fun stint of traveling which will be nice only because I get to go to San Antonio where it's FRICKIN 75 DEGREES AND SUNNY. And then i'm hoping, HOPING that I'll get to hang out with the girls and see the best cover band ever while on a brief trip back to Michigan for some bridesmaid dress shopping. and then it's another way fun work trip to the-middle-of-nowhere illinois. Also known as "pretty much every city besides Chicago," but whatever.

swimming by numbers

2008-01-22T11:16:00.000-05:00

one of the really thoughtful gifts that dice gave me for Christmas was a lap counter that I can use in the pool. Every time I swim I always forget what lap i'm on and I zone out and I never get the count right so I always end up doing about 5 extra laps "just in case" I overcounted. i'm obsessive compulsive, so I always want to make sure i'm over rather than under. Having not even expressed this frustration to dice, he got me this great gift and I was like, "sweet! how did you know i'm stupid at counting when I'm in the pool?!"

So fast forward to Sunday, when I get to use the superawesome lap counter for the first time. because I haven't swam in for.ev.er. So i'm in the pool and it's cold and I get through about 4 laps and i'm like, this is really not as fun as I remember it being but then I just chilled out, got in a zone and went. But since it's a new pool and all, I wasn't sure the length. I *thought* that the pool I used to swim at back at Michigan was longer for some reason, and I remembered that I swam 36 laps to get a mile there. So I figured that this pool was probably about half that length. so that's like, 71 laps that i'd have to swim to get a mile in.

I get through about 32 laps and i'm like, "screw this, i'm done." I remember distinctly thinking that it had taken me an awful long time to go just a measly half mile. I mean, usually I can get at least a mile in in 40 minutes, and on Sunday I had gone half that distance? good grief am I out of shape.

So we asked at the front desk what the length of the pool is, and they said 25 meters. and I was like, well, that's right... I'd need to do 64 laps to get a mile in.

it wasn't until yesterday, as I was sitting in the locker room lamenting my slowness in the pool after having swam 18 laps, that I realized that it's 64 lengths that equals a mile in a 25 m pool. evidently I am TOTALLY STUPID AT MATH when it comes to swimming or something, because I had this TOTALLY screwed up. and to think, I thought multivariable calculus was a breeze in college. hmph.

I did some investigating when I got home and sure enough, the pool that I used to swim in at michigan was 25 yards, so it's even shorter than the one I am swimming in now. It's amazing how much chlorine can distort your depth perception, eh? :)

anyways, so that means I did a mile on sunday and over half a mile yesterday. And more importantly, it means i'm not nearly as slow as I thought I was. granted, still slow, but whatever.

so YAY FOR FIGURING OUT NUMBERS IN THE POOL.

on a side note, after we swam dice and I were sitting in the hot tub and these two dudes walked out of the sauna in what was CLEARLY their underwear, not a swimsuit. They proceeded to get into the hot tub; we proceeded to get out. ick.

we also lifted chest and shoulders yesterday and let me tell you, I am a beast when it comes to bench pressing. GRRRRRRRR!

This morning I woke up with a super awesome sinus infection/head cold/general ickyness. I still got up and trudged down to dice's to meet up with him to head to the gym, but he ordered me inside to go back to sleep. I guess my misery was pretty evident or something. So no workout today, and probably not tomorrow either unless this mess clears up. The good news is that I think the ankle only has some bruising. it's tender to the touch, but putting weight on it doesn't hurt at all. super excited about that.

BAH.

2008-01-20T20:17:00.000-05:00

so yesterday dice and I are all bundled up to run. We have about 20 layers on each, with the temp hovering around 4 degrees and with a -17 degree windchill induced "feels like." We were pleasantly surprised that with that many layers on, the cold isn't really all that bad at all.

So we're hopping along, doing the planned 6 out and back, and half a mile in I step on this THING on the path. and poof! my ankle is turned over and i'm all "AAAAAAARGHOLYFUCKTHISHURTSFJDKSL;AFHDJKS;FKLDSJ!" let's just say it wasn't very pleasant. Somehow I managed to run on trails for two years without ever turning my ankle, but i'm out on a fucking city path and boom... i'm down for the count.

So I'm freaking out because, seriously, this thing HURTS! and the tears that come to my eyes are immediately FREEZING, so I have ice forming clumps on my eyelashes, and it's making it difficult to open my eyes fully. and i'm hysterical anyways because "I HAVE SO MUCH TO DOOOOOO! NOOOO! I CAN'T BE INJURED! IT'S GOING TO DELAY MY GROCERY SHOPPING!!!!!"

I clearly am good at overreacting.

so by the time I get home both sides of my ankle are throbbing. under ~~doctors~~ MoMo's ~~orders~~ suggestion, I spent the rest of the afternoon on the couch, knitting (Dice's brother taught me how over Christmas break) with my leg propped up on an ice pack. The left side was only about 3 times its normal size, the right about twice as large.

With enough prescription strength ibuprofen, I was pretty much ok for the night, and even headed out with dice to watch the kansas game at a bar with the rest of the jayhawk clan. needless to say, I wasn't exactly drinking. I appreciate my liver and like to have it functioning appropriately.

It was stiff this morning so I iced and propped it up for approximately 1/2 an hour. Alas, we've been walking around all day running errands, and then we went to the gym so that I could lift (nothing involving putting weight on it) and swim while dice ran. By the time we got back, the ankle is pretty much a big mass of swolleness and is nice pretty shades of pink and purple. yeah, i'm icing now.

While I was swimming I had the super great experience of having to share a lane with some girl who came in toward the end of my workout. Normally, if a pool is crowded, i totally don't mind sharing a lane. but there were TWO LANES OPEN and the bitch asks me to move over so she can swim in the other side of the lane. I was like, whaaaaa? I only had 3 laps left so I just went with it but the girl complained about how cold the water was and then was out of the water and out of the shower by the time I was dressed, so I'm guessing I shared a lane with her so that she could swim for like, 10 WHOLE MINUTES or something. On the way out she was complaining to the people at the front desk about how cold the pool was, but I told the girl that yeah, it was chilly at first, but it REALLY wasn't that bad once you got moving. maybe if the girl had been in the pool long enough to even warm up, she would have realized it wasn't so freaking bad.

Tomorrow's day off will probably involve some more swimming along with some lifting in the morning and then I have a conference call in the afternoon to get the publication i'm working on with the former boss wrapped up. We're getting awfully close on it, so i'm excited as i've done the bulk of the work.

and, in case you all forgot, Tom Brady is the most dreamboatyest of all dreamboats. he makes me swoon. *sigh*

on a quick related note, I am glad that dice loves me, because he puts up with me telling him that every football player that ever played for Michigan is dreamy as all getout. And he eats things that I make for dinner without complaining. Even when it has things that we don't know how to pronounce in it (like, quinoa).

that's mighty early.

2008-01-16T17:16:00.000-05:00

I've done the whole "go to the gym before work" thing quite a few times since college. it's a great habit to get into if you don't have much to do during the evenings that force you to stay up super late and you don't mind missing out on a few hours of sleep here and there. but actually starting that habit? well, I imagine it's like the first few days without crack for an addict or something. it's difficult. but it's one of those things you have to suffer through for a bit before you get used to it, and then it's really not so bad.

I decided that doing the whole before work gym thing was going to be my only option for actually getting to the gym. by the time I get home from work i'm exhausted and it's just so much easier to sit down on my couch rather than actually go out and do anything. and the whole new years resolutioners thing makes the gym wacky anyways at this time of year so it would really just be miserable trying to fight people for a treadmill that you feel too tired to be on anyways.

I've craftfully conned dice into believing that the before work gym thing was a good idea too. so last week we tried it, and regardless of whether we were staying in the same apartment or not, it just wasn't happening. We did manage to get up and meet for a run one morning, but otherwise... it wasn't happening. runs occurred in the evening for the rest of the week.

this week, however... well, it started off shaky, with me not being able to get to sleep at a decent hour on Sunday night. But so far Tuesday and today have been successes. I'm super excited about it because now I don't have to feel stupid for falling asleep at like, 8 o'clock at night. IT'S TOTALLY JUSTIFIED! I GOT UP EARLY THIS MORNING!

so yes, runs yesterday and today, and then some weights. have I mentioned how much I love free weights lately? I haven't done presses with an *actual* barbell since I worked out with my old coworker a few summers ago. and deadlifts! with more than 80 pounds! woooooo!

so that's that. We'll see how it continues through the rest of the week and the weekend, but the non-busyness of the gym and the whole "feeling energized all day" thing has got us hooked, I think.

changing topics...

last weekend was a big ball of fun. We tried a new place on Friday night that has $5 martinis. we still ended up paying as much for our drinks as we did for our food (the waitress was quite persuasive in getting us to order our third round).

Saturday we spent the evening with KTG and her husband. They took us to a WONDERFUL Italian place that seriously had what I believe to be the best Italian food pretty much EVER. It was great catching up with them as we haven't had a chance to hang out in a while. We also took the Christmas decorations down this past weekend, and I'm working on throwing out as much junk that I have as possible. I threw out a big pile of stuff that I have in storage that i'm never going to use, so I consider that a victory.

This weekend we're looking forward to the extra day off. I haven't gotten MLK day off since I was in college, since Michigan has this strange policy where students get the day off but faculty and staff do not. Between the extra day off and a probable sushi date we have with another jayhawk-loving couple on Friday night, it's looking like it should be a relaxing and fun filled weekend.

except for, you know, the single digit weather that's coming our way. totally NOT excited about that.

running solo with some geekiness thrown in for good measure

2008-01-11T16:56:00.000-05:00

Last night dice was at some stupid work related event in the evening so I took the opportunity to run solo for 4 miles. Surprisingly, it was awesome. Nothing but me, the darkness, the rain, and some of Snoop Dogg's Blue Carpet Treatment - I know, totally gansta, right? that album reminds me of running in the dark, cold winter because that's when it was released and it's perfect music for just plodding along slowy... exactly what you need for winter running.

anyways, the run was great and I got back feeling like my head had been cleared from the stressful day that we had had at work. We hold these conference type things twice a year, and yesterday was our spring event. The entire day I had tables full of people picking my brain about stuff we're working on and how to integrate technology into classes, etc. It's great to see people get really excited about some of the stuff we're doing and to be able to help someone teach more effectively using technology, but it's also draining to have to talk about it for 8 hours.

there was a nice session on Second Life in education which was way more interesting than I thought it would be. I've never gotten into the whole Second Life thing because, well, I don't quite have my first life figured out, why would I want to have a second one? but a lot of people are using it for education, and it brings up the interesting question of how altering our identity can affect how we learn. Because really, who we are affects SO MUCH of what we're able to (or not able to) learn, especially when you're talking about the icky "soft sciences" like... well, education.

anyways. one faculty member got really upset because a presenter talked about how people pay others in second life to give them psychiatric advice, and the faculty member, being a psychologist, was outraged that people who weren't properly trained were giving advice and making money off of people in such a fashion.

this struck me as being really funny. how, exactly, does this differ from any other online community. Or even from real life, for that matter? There are constantly people giving advice that they're not qualified to give, and people will constantly do things that they really shouldn't be doing because other people told them it was a good idea. It's called "stupidity," and our world is overrun by it, unfortunately. It's an individual's responsibility to be educated enough to be able to distinguish between good and poor sources of information.

For instance, say the crazychicas tell me that tattooing "203 RULZ!" on my ass is a good idea. Now, they're trendy, sophisticated girls, so I'm generally ok with taking their advice on such matters. Does that mean I should just go ahead and do something because they're encouraging me to do it? pffft. If I'm stupid enough to take that advice, I deserve all the pain and suffering that that stupid tattoo is going to give me.

We deal quite a bit with questions from people asking, "BUT HOW WILL MY STUDENTS KNOW WHAT INFORMATION ON THE WEB IS GOOD?" and it thoroughly drives me crazy. it's like information literacy and rational thinking are dead and popularity is totally in.

anyway. just wanted to get that off my chest because I see it SO DAMN OFTEN.

it is January, right?

2008-01-07T14:05:00.000-05:00

because seriously, my office is overly warm and it's humid as all getout outside. crazy. Dice and I took advantage of the nice weather and went for a nice run yesterday. As a bonus, we even met up before work and ran on the lakefront path at o'dark thirty. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt in January and was still sweating like crazy, so it was way, way odd. I'm not going to complain too much because it's supposed to be back down to frigidly freezing by this weekend or something like that, so I guess we'll enjoy it while it lasts.

we ran this morning because there's a football game on this evening and there's just no way we'll get home and change and be ambitious enough to get out and run and get back quickly enough to watch. As previously stated, I'm kinda hoping OSU wins, but regardless, I really really hope it's a blowout because I want to go to bed early, yos. I'm tiiiiiiiiired.

the weekend was full of all sorts of GSD. We ran some errands on Saturday afternoon and it was HORRIBLE. everything was SO, SO busy. and don't even give me that "you live in a big city" bullshit explanation - stores weren't even this busy when people were out Christmas shopping.

In other news, I'm officially afraid of pretty much every elevator I get in because one in my building freaked out, stopped, thump-thump-thumped, seemed to freefall for a second, and then stopped suddenly on a floor that was not my own and refused to budge from there. I literally have nightmares about being in a falling elevator now, so that's pretty sweet. That elevator, FYI, has been out of service since the incident. I heard someone saying they were ordering parts for it or something.

My sister is planning to come visit some time in Mid-February when the rugrat has a break in school, and then i'm going to visit Jujubee for my birthday weekend and to see some Foo Fighter goodness in Minneapolis. Should be a good time, as always.

No real "I'm training for x event" status, because i'm not really training for anything right now. As much as it's been nice this past year to hang out and explore the city with Dice, though, it's time to get back to it. The whole "pick your workout of the day" thing is totally odd. hopefully I will also find it be totally awesome, but that is TBD. we'll see.

I did, however, put up my reading list because I spend a huge amount of time on the bus and I figured staring at the crazy people MIGHT JUST GET ME KILLED so if I just look down at my book they'll ignore me and not try to eat my brains, right? (we totally watched a cannibal movie this past weekend. sorry.) so i've been throwing back about a book a week and that's been interesting.

alright. today's episode of "mixed bag - mouse's random thoughts" concludes. Here's to getting up out of bed to run again tomorrow morning. I hear there's some sort of basketball game on, and the boy likes watching them live (Tivo is for suckers syndrome, I guess). Wish us luck.

eeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!

2008-01-01T18:49:00.000-05:00

first things first. an important lesson: just because you volunteer to take care of someone you love when they are sick doesn't mean you are immune to their sicko-ness. Last night, Dice came down with a horrible case of whatever I had on Saturday night. Happily, it was after the New Year turned, so we had an hour or so to enjoy it before he started feeling shitty. He was sick pretty much most of the night so it wasn't exactly a pleasant evening. I felt incredibly horrible that he caught this wretched bug from me, but we are lucky in that I am pretty much over it as of today (graduating off of toast and on to some rice for dinner. WAY EXCITING!), so I could spend most of my day getting him stuff and cleaning up where necessary.

but what is there in this whole wide world that can make someone feel better when they're sick? Michigan football! I kid you not, as SOON as the game came on he stopped getting sick and started feeling a bit better. He was even able to down quite an amount of fluids throughout the four hour duration.

But seriously, who wouldn't feel awesome watching that team play? Even my brother (an avid UM hater and MSU fan) called to say he was rooting for Michigan and that it was an unbelievable game. And for real. Is there anyone out there who is seriously going to tell me that they were rooting for Tim "I'm spending my spring break in the Philippines at the orphanage my family runs. so that I can learn about teamwork from the orphans" Tebow to win that one? because if so, you're probably a Payton Manning fan, and I PROBABLY HATE YOU, SO GO AWAY.

EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

suck it, SEC. that's all I have to say about that. and, as much as it pains me, go bucks! I'd love to see them knock off LSU in the national title game.

OH! and did everyone see his royal dreaminess watching on the sideline? mmm...braylon edwards...mmm...

holy shit was it a great day! IT'S GREAT! TO BE! A MICHIGAN WOLVERINE!

(aside from the whole "my boyfriend is feeling deathly ill" thing, of course. but at least i'm feeling much better!)