April Vacation

I've been on vacation for the past three days. Whoopee! I haven't taken time off since the holiday season, so it was much needed, and it was good planning on my part because we were able to go down to CT to visit my father (who was in the hospital having surgery for abdominal hernias - don't worry, it was a planned surgery, but hospital stays are no fun for him so we wanted to go down to visit him to try to cheer him up), catch a Hartford Symphony Orchestra performance, hang out with Adam pre-Marathon, finally watch the Boston Marathon (first time ever, and I think it will have to be an annual event - too much fun!), and get some chores done around the house. Doug went back to work today, but I am still off, about to check my work email one last time before I'm back to the old grind. I'm kicking myself for not taking the whole week off. I have the time to use, but I didn't think it was appropriate for me to take a whole week off. Why not? I don't know. I have this silly idea that work will fall apart if I'm not around, but if I'm really being truthful I'd say that everything runs just fine without me.

Anyway, here's a peek into some of the things I've been doing over my vacation. You'll see here that there are a lot of photos of the cats (though none of Sasha, surprisingly. She's really the most photogenic cat, but I guess she wasn't doing anything noteworthy these past few days). I think that if I were to create my blog all over again, I'd have it focus on two things - the food that I eat (since I love to eat food, or at least seem to eat a lot of it) and the crazy things the cats do. I have more photos of food and cats on my computer than I really should, and maybe I need a blog to properly showcase both loves. Here is Meg, trying to stow away down to Connecticut. She loves the basement there, which I'm sure was her motivation behind the stealthy move. Then we have a couple of Wyatt. The first is of him doing this new behavior that he's turned into routine - humping. Not that humping is new for him, but humping arms is very new for him. His favorite new past-time. He likes to hump my arm the most (ha ha, Doug! My arm's more sexy than your arm!), but he does try to get it on with Doug's every once in a while. He'll start to yell really loudly before making his move, then he'll bite my wrist, hand or forearm to get a good grip. Once his teeth are in place he begins the thrusting action, but I rarely let him get to that point. It's not that I mind being humped by my cat - for him I think it's some sort of reflex - but I certainly don't want to encourage the behavior, so I throw him off of me before the action gets too far along. One of the reasons I am not too upset about his humping is because he's just so cute at other times. Like when he hops into the laundry basket. I just can't resist the camera when he pulls this trick.

Other than being entertained by the cats, we've been slowly doing little things to the house. Doug fixed our shower door on Tuesday morning (I helped, but then cut myself with a razor blade so was not allowed to help anymore), and we moved the fish tank down to the sun/cat room to get it out of the bedroom. We then moved Doug's dresser over to where the fish tank was and put the TV on a taller table, so that when we're watching TV at night we can see all of the screen (and read the captions and/or subtitles, which we couldn't before and that was really bothering me). Again, photos: I also put up our new shower curtain today (no more vinyl fish in the first-floor bath): and gathered more stuff for our upcoming tag sale. I decided that these canisters should go into the tag sale pile, as I was never really crazy about them. They were functional and cheap, so they served their purpose, but I found some that I liked much better. Don't you agree?
Old:
New: I also planted some flowers this afternoon, right before it started to rain, which actually worked out well because then I didn't have to rummage through the garage looking for the watering can to water these babies. I wanted to put new flowers into both of our window boxes, but I ended up having only enough for one (guess I'm not too good at a) remembering just how big these particular window boxes are, and b) judging how many flowers should go into each one). No matter - I planted the few remaining plants I had in these flower pots that the former owners of the house left us, and will tackle the front window box this weekend. For now, I'm happy with my small gardening accomplishments for today and will proudly show them off here:
As for the rest of the day, I plan to check my work email and then wash some dishes, getting the place ready for when I make dinner tonight. That's another reason why I love to be on vacation - I can actually make dinner at home and eat at a reasonable hour. I wish I could be on vacation at least one day a week. That would be nice indeed.

A is for Awesome Adam

People are going to get tired of hearing me say how awesome Adam is, but let me say it again - Adam is awesome. He ran the Boston Marathon yesterday in 2 hours 47 minutes. Can you believe that? I can believe it - but it's still amazing. He hasn't always been a runner, and he hasn't been seriously training for all that long. He finished something like 365th out of about 25,000 runners, and he's the 6th place runner of all those from Connecticut. He was pretty bummed that he didn't run 2:45, and that the last two miles really killed his time, but all that aside, I think he was awesome. Clearly. A bunch of us stood out near the Kelley Statue in Newton, at the base of Heartbreak Hill (which is mile 19), to watch Adam run by, and while many runners (even some of the elite runners) looked pretty miserable by this point, Adam looked great. Didn't look winded, wasn't red and sweating, didn't have blood running down his cheek like one runner I saw in his pack. If Adam sticks with his running, which I'm sure he will, I have no doubt that he'll be able to be sub 2:40 next year.

Adam stayed with us before the race so that we could drive him to the start in Hopkinton on Monday morning. He arrived Sunday afternoon - here's a photo of him showing off his number: We hung out watching some videos on how to pick out a proper running shoe, how to tie shoelaces (do you tie granny knots? We did, until we watched this), and on Nike naked running camp. We then headed out to get Adam his dinner of choice - pizza on wheat crust - and to pick up some adhesive and polyseal for the piece that fell off our shower door (perhaps the subject of another post). Adam ate his entire pizza, and if he had been anyone else I would have been thinking, "What a pig!" In his case, I was thinking, "Shouldn't he order another?" Here are some photos of our favorite runner out the night before the big run: When we got back from dinner and Lowe's, Adam ate homemade cookie after homemade cookie (still carbo-loading) and watched You Don't Mess With the Zohan, a movie I never would have watched if Adam weren't around. It wasn't bad - but it wasn't that great, either. I'd say a solid effort, but nothing I'll watch again. After the movie we decided how we were going to drive to Hopkinton the next morning and Adam got his bag together for the next day. His coworkers made him a shirt that said, "Go Adam" on the front and "My Motto is Public Service" on the back, but the lettering was falling off so he decided not to wear it. I noticed that none of the elite runners wore shirts like this while running, so maybe that also factored into Adam's decision. Nevertheless, the gesture was a kind one. Here's Adam with his shirt:
We decided to leave at 6:30am on Monday to get Adam to Hopkinton by 7:15 - here are some photos of Adam and his gear before leaving Dedham: And here's one of Adam in the car on his way to Hopkinton: I won't go into too many details about the ride there, but I will say that next year we will be driving Adam to the shuttles in Boston that all the runners take out to Hopkinton. A) it will take less time to do that, and B) it will mean that we won't have to let Adam out of the car on the side of the highway five miles away from the high school in Hopkinton where all the runners start. I was so upset that we couldn't get Adam any farther to Hopkinton than we did, and I was paranoid that he'd never make it to where he needed to be. I was hoping and hoping that some kind person or maybe one of the shuttles would pick him up and give him a ride, and someone did - so he didn't have to walk all that far, after all. Thank god! Here is a photo of me driving back to Dedham - you can see one of the shuttles that we passed on our way back driving towards Hopkinton. We saw dozens of shuttles filled with runners. This is definitely the way to go next time, Adam. You live, you learn - at least everything worked out!
We met up with Mike, Chris, CHRIS, and Julie at about 10:30am at the Kelley Statue in Newton, and we were able to see some of the wheelchair racers as well as the elite runners. The wheelchair racers are amazing. Truly amazing. There was even a guy running by on two prosthetic legs. Now he was amazing. Thankfully Adam reminded us to bring our cowbell, so I had cowbell duty for the first half of our time at the marathon. At first I felt funny banging it like I was - it was rather quiet at first and not many people were out and cheering. But I warmed up to it, and after a while my arm got into a very steady rhythm. Here are some photos of the race before Adam ran by: These last two photos are of some pretty elite runners - one is of the first pack of elite women, with Kara Goucher in the pink sports bra and black briefs. I'm sure the female winner, Salina Kosgei, is in there somewhere. The last photo is of Deriba Merga, the men's winner, and ultimate winner of the marathon. It was pretty cool to see him run by, but not as cool as it was to see Adam run by. Everyone kept a look out for his yellow shoes, and we were able to spot him well before he got close. We cheered and banged the bell and got a wave from Adam - I'm glad that he knew we were there cheering him on! These aren't the greatest photos, but you can see Adam if you know what to look for. In the first photo, he's right behind a guy in a white shirt. In the second, he's at the far right waving his hand to us, and in the third he's to the left, a lone runner in a blue tank and black shorts. Once he ran by, we stood around for another couple of hours cheering on everyone else. People would have their names written on their arms, or on their shirts, or would have messages on their shirts. We'd scream them out. Doug eventually took the cowbell because my arm felt like it was going to fall off, and so he screamed and banged the bell. He was such a good fan that the official Boston Marathon media guy took a photo of his cowbell. Doug's enthusiasm was catchy and made the cold, windy day a little more bearable. Here's a photo of a boy and his bell:
At about 1:30pm I got a call from Adam - he had finished the race about 45 minutes earlier and now wanted to meet up so that we could take him back to Dedham to get his stuff and his car. We went to Newton Center to pick him up from the T. Doug greeted him with the camera: Adam requested a latte, so we brought the champ to a Starbucks for his protein, then headed back to Dedham where he was able to get cleaned up and relax a little before heading back to CT. We discovered that Adam was the #6 runner from CT, placing well before a few very good Nutmeg runners. I predict next year Adam will be one of the top 3 runners from CT. Adam showed us his medal for running - it's engraveable, so if anyone knows an engraver please get in touch with Adam so that he can put his time and rank on the back. Adam also relaxed with his latte before heading out and back to CT. I was amazed that Adam so easily slipped back into "normal" life after just having run 26.2 miles. I mean, by 4:30pm he was sitting in Dedham, drinking his latte and eating an orange, plotting his strategy for next year's marathon, talking about furlough days at the State, and lamenting Kara Goucher's loss. It would have taken me days to come back to my "normal" self after such an adrenalin rush. I would have been bouncy and jittery for days; either that or I would have been in bed feeling like death had run me over. But Adam just picked up and continued life, packing up his things and heading on back to CT.In many ways Adam amazes me, and this is just one of them. I mean, think of the hard work and dedication that running a marathon takes, at least running a marathon seriously and competitively. He's out there running a hundred or so miles a week, running several races a year. For fun. His diet and sleeping habits have completely changed. His life is now focused on running. He does it and likes it and excels at it and I find that kind of focus and determination to be inspiring. He won't inspire me to run (I don't believe the human body is designed to run that far; I'd much rather ride a bike than run like that), but he does inspire me to be healthy, be focused, and to enjoy what I do. Here's one last photo of Awesome Adam, pulling away from Dedham. We'll be out there next year, Adam, cheering you on (we promise next year to get you to the shuttles in Boston) - more cowbell!

If I weren't me

Last Friday while not being able to concentrate at all at work (which seems to be happening a lot lately) I started to make a list. It was titled "Top 5 Careers," and one column was subtitled "Top 5 If I Were Not Me," and the second column was subtitled "Top 5 If I Were Me." I didn't make it to 5 choices, though - seemed to get stuck at four for each column. Here, I'll let you see the list:
You'll likely notice something that I didn't notice at first - all of the top five career options for if I weren't me are actually things that I'd like to do but am simply too scared/anxious/nervous/conservative/introverted/unwilling/uptight to do. If I were listing things that I'd do if I really weren't me, the list would have more options along the lines of astrophysicist, leader of communist nation, Navy Seal, or butcher. How far out of the realm is writer for me? Or artist? Granted it would take a lot of guts to quit my job and start writing full time. A lot of guts and a lot of cash reserves. But it's not something that's impossible to do as me. Perhaps I should have qualified the list even further and subtitled it "Top 5 If I Were the Version of Me That I Want To and Know I Can Be." That doesn't have quite the same ring to it, though, does it.

Anyway, this exercise really wasn't all that helpful. It did allow me to waste plenty of time on Friday checking out how to become a guidance counselor, and looking up possible job options for registered dieticians. All of these things require further schooling, though, and as much as I love and adore school I just can't bring myself to take that leap and spend the money on more education. As it is I'm paying a pretty penny to Sallie Mae each month for my most recent bout of education - I can only imagine how difficult it would be to pay for further schooling, especially when I'd most certainly be going back to school to learn how to become something that gets paid just about as much as a librarian. I can't rule out some form of schooling entirely, but I just can't take that plunge into another master's degree just yet. Not quite yet.

No, in the meantime I'll just think of more things that I might want to do and then come up with a million and one reasons why I can't do those things. Guidance counselor - can't do it because it seems one has to already be a teacher to be accepted into a guidance counselor program, and maybe I don't want to be a teacher. Besides, if some hooligan kid gets into a fight in class am I going to be the one who calms the kid down, who reasons with the kid and gets him to rationally talk through his anger? I don't see me doing that. And I also don't see myself counseling people in proper nutrition all day only to go home and have a dinner of graham crackers and chocolate soy milk (yesterday) or a couple of bags of single serving trail mix courtesy of Pain Capital (tonight). However, here's the rub - I can do those things, and I might actually enjoy them. Imagine helping people be healthy, to eat right, to choose proper foods, to outline health and wellness programs for schools or universities or other organizations. Imagine that! That seems so worthwhile, so gratifying. It's no more out of the realm for me to be a dietician/nutritionist than it is for me to be a writer, or director of research services for a top global alternative investment company. Seriously. I mean, if I really wanted to start analyzing this, being what I am now is probably more off the mark for "me" than being any of those things on either column of my list. So if I can do this, then how come I can't be a pilates instructor? Or a professional tennis player (age and ability aside for the latter option)? Again, the thing is that I can be these things. Any of these things. It's just a matter of how outside of my comfort zone I want to roam. Because as much as it's a struggle to be who I am each day and to do what I do, I know it. I know the environment now, I know the people, I know the process, I know the basics, and so it's a lot easier for me to face those evils than to learn to face new ones. Does this make me a creature of habit, or worse yet, a worthless excuse for a human being? It probably makes me somewhere in between the two, a very capable and talented person who's paralyzed by fear and anxiety. Is there a cure for this? Therapy doesn't seem to be helping much. I'm old now. I can't afford much more of this time-sink thinking, this obsessive thinking. Action. I need action! I need to learn to live by Nike's rules.

Land of the giants.

Hello there. I should be ironing, or finishing the laundry I started, or doing my exercise video, but instead I'm blogging. Go figure (more evidence of me having the shortest attention span of anyone I know, and also the time management skills of a... well, of someone who can't manage her time for beans). I thought I'd blog about Easter, though, since I have such great footage to share.

Doug and I went to Easter at my sister and brother-in-law's house down in Norwich, CT, so it was a Connecticut Easter. Easter is a no-pressure holiday (at least for me, since all I do for it is cook some desserts); it's like a vacation day in the middle of the week. There's no build-up and you can just relax and go with the flow. And I love the food at Easter - it's one of my favorite holidays for food. Antipasto salads, fruit salad, regular salad, ham, lamb, potatoes, green veggies, applesauce, pasta, breads, and then the desserts! Definitely a feast. And this year was no exception. My sister and Mike had 36 (yes, 36) people at their house on Sunday and we all sat down to a 4-course (or was it 5?) meal. Mike and Laura do most of the cooking, with the rest of us bringing a dessert or a side dish. I feel only slightly badly that all the cooking falls onto my sister and brother-in-law's shoulders - they really do an outstanding job with the food. Mike is the kind of cook who will mince his own garlic cloves and the little pieces of garlic will be perfectly uniform in size. He has such patience in the kitchen. He's amazing.

Being that there were 36 people at this dinner, everything was giant-sized. We had a giant ham a giant salad and all sat around a giant table . Me, I tried to start a giant-sized wine habit (move over coffee, wine may just take your place as my vice of choice!) but I realized too late that the screw-top has to be off the cheap bottle of wine that I bought in order for the wine to have any effect on me at all. I did have fun seeing the family again; some people, like Amy and Mike, I haven't seen since last fall. Here's a photo of me, my sister, and Amy, sharing a smile. Awww, it's like a Hallmark card. Here's another Hallmark-type photo - my sister and Mike cooking amidst a sea of smoke. I was soooo glad that Mike kept setting off the smoke detector while cooking the ham. The sugary glaze probably was running off the body of that giant piece of meat onto the oven bottom, burning it and causing a giant smoke attack. We opened all the windows, fanned the house out, etc., but the smoke kept coming. The meal was still delicious, of course, but I was so pleased that someone like Mike made his smoke detector go off while cooking. That means that the next time mine goes off I will tell Doug that the high-pitched screeching of the alarm is really a compliment, the highest praise a cook can get. Finally, look at these fine desserts! Note that in the key lime tart there's a mark where my finger had been. There's a story behind this tart (as there is with all of my attempts at baking), but to keep this blog relatively short I'll just say that I needed to stick my finger in the tart to see if I had totally ruined it. It tasted fine, so I brought it to Easter anyway. I think Doug and I ate most of it by ourselves. I slaved over that thing. Squeezed eight slippery little limes by hand, swearing never, ever, to squeeze my own lime juice again. The tart was good, though. It really was.

I suppose in the spirit of Easter I should also post this photo of the treat Doug and I found in our driveway on Friday evening. Isn't there some kind of biblical story around Easter-time relating to fish? How when Moses parted the Red Sea one lowly fish popped out and Jesus turned it into a feast of fishes in order to feed people facing famine? Anyway, as we drove into the driveway on Friday night I see this strange shape. We park the car and get out to inspect it. It takes us a while, but eventually we figure out what it is: Now how in the world did this thing get here? First of all, we don't eat fish, at least not whole fish. And second of all, even if we did we wouldn't toss the body out onto the driveway to decompose like this. So this little dried-up feast of fins must have been some kind of present from the many critters who run around our yard. Like the squirrels or the birds. We didn't move the body; left it there for the kind soul who dropped it off in case it might want to take it back. And sure enough, by Sunday night the carcass was gone. Poof! I swear, it was an Easter miracle. Maybe each year the fish body will come back and we can charge admission for this most holy of events. If it gets me out of Pain Capital that much faster, then it's a done deal!

Beer, beer... American beer...

So, another great weekend. CHRIS was here for Thursday night, Friday night, and then for Saturday (the big Revs extravaganza), and on Saturday morning he and Doug were doing a little recording. They put together this VERY catchy tune that I call "Beer, Beer, American Beer," because that's the only part that I sing over and over again (and it's been in my head since Saturday, going round and round and round...), and Chris laid down a few (stellar, really) vocals, too. That burst of creativity may have been the highlight of the weekend, but it's really hard to tell because all elements were really good.

The Revs game was cold. Cold and windy. And windy. Did I mention windy? My face is still red from wind burn. We had a lot of fun, though. Tangerini's made their tailgating debut, which just added to the excitement. Here are some pre-game photos... not too many, though, because I didn't feel like taking off my glove long enough to take pictures: We managed to be some of the first 5,000 fans inside the game, which means we all snagged free Revs scarves. We also each got a popcorn, pizza or hot dog, and small drink as part of the birthday package - gotta love stadium food, right? The wind somehow did not penetrate the area where we were sitting, thank god, but it was still pretty chilly. Despite the cold, the game was enjoyable to watch - so quick! And the fans keep everything lively, with their shouting and drumming, and screaming and gesturing. And throwing things. And shooting muskets. Yes, games are not boring. Here are some photos of during-game excitement: Another highlight was seeing my name on the Jumbotron. I know, I know, it's probably a little conceited of me to be excited about my name being up there for everyone to see, but one's 30th birthday should be an occasion to be a little self-important, right? We didn't hang out after the game (too cold, and people had to travel back to far off places like Worcester and Portland, ME), but before going our separate ways we did gather for a group photo. I love group photos, and this one ranks right up there: Oh, and did I forget to say that the Revs won the game? Thanks, team! And extra special thanks to everyone for coming out for my birthday. It's been a great couple of birthday weekends. Every birthday should be this good.