ok, so adding "keeping a blog" to my list of to-dos was obviously overly ambitious. but what else is new. if only they had a major in over-acheivement. and it was somehow related to humanitarian aid.
but yesterday the time came to make a few decisions. well, not the time itself, that wasn't actually available at the time. but as the decisions demanded to be made, i made some decisions anyway. and despite being a better vacant space than a friend or relative lately, many of you seem to still want to know me and know what i'm doing, so now that i finally have some answers for you, here they are, in no particular order (which has also been absent for quite awhile now):
i will be in california for september. the sports nutritionist i'm working with can only see me again for our final consult at the end of september, and i really want to work with him, so i'm going to plan on travelling on the abroad-adventure the first week of october. what this means i don't actually know. but i DO know that i don't seem to be figuring anything out from this side of the atlantic, so perhaps if i go to THAT side i'll have a better chance of finding (or tripping over) the answers i'm looking for. no idea if this will work, no idea how long i can live off my savings, no idea how to get any the stuff i'd need there and back, or where "there" is precisely beyond the general, don't really much care to dwell on anything that complicated; i have to keep things simple or i'll have a panic attack, so since i want to be there and i want to go to nursing school there and i can't seem to figure that out from america, then i'll go there. that's logical, right? i will not be working after august 26th, other than small odd jobs, just enough to cover my expenses without dipping into my savings. no kid stuff, though. i will still be selling sophie the subaru at the end of august, so no car payment, no insurance bill, no gas money. just groceries, tri gear (minimal, after the upgrade), and my cell bill. i will upgrade my tri gear (new triathlon bike being #1) with what i make in cash from sophie, and have a good base to train with here and there. september will be about training (always the big one) which has been suffering under my workload and stress levels, and about playing 1.5 years' worth of catch-up; paperwork, finances, unfinished knitting projects, garage sale-ing away 90% of what i own, going to the eye doctor... everything for myself i haven't had the time to since i moved here. including working on nursing school and other future plans. i'll compete some, though i just found out from eric that he's moving to north carolina (yay eric! you inspire me beyond the sport, taking the big blind leaps to get where you want to go is a lesson i needed along with drills and climbing out of the saddle! thanks for having faith in my ability to impove, and for making time for a newbie-wannabe!) so i'll have to find another coach for august and september... and play around with sponsorships and grants and so on, so that i can do what i want (interchangable with need/crave/lust) to do: go to school and do triathlon, period. i will get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep per night, with 8 being the goal. i will blog. i will write. i will play the fiddle i haven't played in at least 2 months. i will eat sitting down in an non-moving seat in quiet, i will eat food that takes longer than 1 minute to throw together, and i will chew it. i will take time to enjoy being here in this beautiful place, to enjoy being strong and alive. to speak to and write to and SEE the people i care about. to have time alone. to rebuild the parts of me that feel broken and over-used. to revel in easy access to tofu. and double rainbow vegan chocolate ribbon mocha almond ice cream. and rain-free world-class training venues. and redwood trees.
so far, i like all these decisions. and since lately it seems that i'm mentally reduced to only being able to focus on one moment at a time (if that), i'm going to just go with them and see what happens.
thanks for still being there. and for not giving up even when i do. it may be awhile, probably september, but i will indeed be striving to write/call/email back to everyone. cause if you can't find two minutes together to type "HI" to the people you love, what the hell is life for anyway?
namaste.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
I Can Strive, Anyway
Quote of the Day:
“I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”
-- Maya Angelou
Monday, May 30, 2005
Yay for Good Authors
Quote of the Day:
"There is nothing particularly wrong with salmon, of course, but like caramel candy, strawberry yogurt, and liquid carpet cleaner, if you eat too much of it you are not going to enjoy your meal"
- "The Ersatz Elevator", Book the Sixth in the Series of Unfortunate Events, by Lemony Snicket
There All Along
I have discovered something that will make a lot of the craziness I've slogged through in the last few years look like an even bigger waste of time than it already did:
(queue fanfare, colored lights, majestic-sounding music, and chickens waving mylar batons)
Yahoo! Mail has a calendar feature.
I'd been waiting to get a computer and therefore MS Outlook to have a way to organize my thoughts and my life into something resembling the order I am inherently prone to but don't have the time or tools to create (for myself, anyway). And here, for the past 10+ years, I've had the option right under my nose, and a BETTER one at that: the calendar can be accessed, modfied, and shared from any computer with internet access, not only my laptop. And will send me email reminders. And is viewable by YOU, my dear friends and extended family who are always in the dark about just which window my time is being thrown out of at any given moment. Now, to keep it up...
update: calendar made invisible for
obvious, post-adventure reasons...
(queue fanfare, colored lights, majestic-sounding music, and chickens waving mylar batons)
Yahoo! Mail has a calendar feature.
I'd been waiting to get a computer and therefore MS Outlook to have a way to organize my thoughts and my life into something resembling the order I am inherently prone to but don't have the time or tools to create (for myself, anyway). And here, for the past 10+ years, I've had the option right under my nose, and a BETTER one at that: the calendar can be accessed, modfied, and shared from any computer with internet access, not only my laptop. And will send me email reminders. And is viewable by YOU, my dear friends and extended family who are always in the dark about just which window my time is being thrown out of at any given moment. Now, to keep it up...
update: calendar made invisible for
obvious, post-adventure reasons...
Thursday, May 26, 2005
How True
Quote of the Day:
"Ahh... (big grin). It has such a different kind of happy taste. Water is so much fuller-making when you drink it from a smiley"
-- Patrick, age 5, on drinking from my Nalgene with a smiley-imprinted spashguard
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Bay to Breakers... Sort Of
More like: 4th&King to Mission to Spear to Mission to 9th Street (Actual Race Route) to Breakers to Muni to Bay to 9th Street. Is the short version.
Long version: I took the special Bay to Breakers CalTrain, as intended, up to the city for the race. The first problem was the train ended up running 35 minutes late. With 15 minutes to race time. At approx 1.5 miles from the start line (well, the way i ended up going). With a strained hamstring (not great for sprinting like a bat out of hell to starting lines in crowds of 100,000+ people). With a queue for the bathroom. So that would be about 6 or 7 problems, actually...
Anyway, the mad dash following the bathroom break led to a series of frustrated attempts to gain access to the route. And when I finally got to the actual starting point for runners, about 4 minutes after the whistle had gone off, I found it full of... WALKERS. And (horror) JOGGING STROLLERS. And people throwing tortillas through the air like frisbees (over 1 million thrown this morning, apparently), which I still don't understand the reasoning behind, especially given that the hundreds of homeless people just a block or two outside the route might have in fact enjoyed eating those tortillas. But oh well. I was stuck, unable to move backwards or forwards, and certainly not able to run.
Eventually the crush began ooooozing in the general direction of the Pacific Ocean, with me hopping up and down and in circles, trying to keep my hamstring from seizing up. And when it dawned on me that it had indeed taken a full 20 minutes to go exactly 2 blocks, I decided that, since my goal of getting a decent time and making the top 10,000 runners was at this point a very impossible thing without a teleporter, difinative action was called for. Namely, running. Which I did. Inching out of the throng, and up Mission Street, instead of Howard with the stand-still crowd. So I had a gloriously empty first few miles (which I'd actually already run to get to where I'd just been from the train station, but oh well), being cheered on by homeless and high-fived by hookers (who might have been lost race participants...?). All well and good for the moment, but the fact that I was not running the actual course meant that I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I'd really done the whole thing, as in, all the miles of the actual intended course. Which I did later on, but for now, back to the story.
I rejoined the course at 9th and Mission, which because I'd essentially hopped ahead was a comfortable number of people, all running. Hayes Hill was that much easier, with the extra breathing room, making it a leisurely uphill clip while enjoying a medly of disco tunes and of course the sights: various costumed runners, various naked runners, "Through the Hayes Optometry", and a group dressed as paper mache salmon with bright red eggs on their noses making their way DOWN the hill against the flow of traffic (ha ha).
The rest of the course was uneventful and lovely; cool SF weather + blocked off streets + Golden Gate Park + running = happy Antonia. The hamstring held, and I arrived at the Great Highway and the Breakers feeling like I could have done the distance double (which is good, as I have a half marathon in three weeks...). After dipping my shoes in the Pacific, a water break, t-shirt collection, and a free bread clip from sponsor Oroweat, I took the Muni Bay to Breakers Express (which took as long as it would have taken me to crawl the distance upside-down with taffy on my hands) back to the starting point and, you guessed it, ran out to the Bay at Embarcadero, dipped my shoes in, and ran up Howard to 9th Street, the leg I'd mirrored earlier.
And now I've done the Bay to Breakers. Which means I don't EVER HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN. Give me a nice old-fashioned 5000 participant half-Ironman triathlon, thank you very much.
P.S. If none of this makes any sense whatsoever to you, either I must appologize for being a bad writer (which I do) or I will provide the website to the Bay to Breakers so that you can read up on what I'm talking about if you're unfamiliar with the event: www.baytobreakers.com
Long version: I took the special Bay to Breakers CalTrain, as intended, up to the city for the race. The first problem was the train ended up running 35 minutes late. With 15 minutes to race time. At approx 1.5 miles from the start line (well, the way i ended up going). With a strained hamstring (not great for sprinting like a bat out of hell to starting lines in crowds of 100,000+ people). With a queue for the bathroom. So that would be about 6 or 7 problems, actually...
Anyway, the mad dash following the bathroom break led to a series of frustrated attempts to gain access to the route. And when I finally got to the actual starting point for runners, about 4 minutes after the whistle had gone off, I found it full of... WALKERS. And (horror) JOGGING STROLLERS. And people throwing tortillas through the air like frisbees (over 1 million thrown this morning, apparently), which I still don't understand the reasoning behind, especially given that the hundreds of homeless people just a block or two outside the route might have in fact enjoyed eating those tortillas. But oh well. I was stuck, unable to move backwards or forwards, and certainly not able to run.
Eventually the crush began ooooozing in the general direction of the Pacific Ocean, with me hopping up and down and in circles, trying to keep my hamstring from seizing up. And when it dawned on me that it had indeed taken a full 20 minutes to go exactly 2 blocks, I decided that, since my goal of getting a decent time and making the top 10,000 runners was at this point a very impossible thing without a teleporter, difinative action was called for. Namely, running. Which I did. Inching out of the throng, and up Mission Street, instead of Howard with the stand-still crowd. So I had a gloriously empty first few miles (which I'd actually already run to get to where I'd just been from the train station, but oh well), being cheered on by homeless and high-fived by hookers (who might have been lost race participants...?). All well and good for the moment, but the fact that I was not running the actual course meant that I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep until I'd really done the whole thing, as in, all the miles of the actual intended course. Which I did later on, but for now, back to the story.
I rejoined the course at 9th and Mission, which because I'd essentially hopped ahead was a comfortable number of people, all running. Hayes Hill was that much easier, with the extra breathing room, making it a leisurely uphill clip while enjoying a medly of disco tunes and of course the sights: various costumed runners, various naked runners, "Through the Hayes Optometry", and a group dressed as paper mache salmon with bright red eggs on their noses making their way DOWN the hill against the flow of traffic (ha ha).
The rest of the course was uneventful and lovely; cool SF weather + blocked off streets + Golden Gate Park + running = happy Antonia. The hamstring held, and I arrived at the Great Highway and the Breakers feeling like I could have done the distance double (which is good, as I have a half marathon in three weeks...). After dipping my shoes in the Pacific, a water break, t-shirt collection, and a free bread clip from sponsor Oroweat, I took the Muni Bay to Breakers Express (which took as long as it would have taken me to crawl the distance upside-down with taffy on my hands) back to the starting point and, you guessed it, ran out to the Bay at Embarcadero, dipped my shoes in, and ran up Howard to 9th Street, the leg I'd mirrored earlier.
And now I've done the Bay to Breakers. Which means I don't EVER HAVE TO DO IT AGAIN. Give me a nice old-fashioned 5000 participant half-Ironman triathlon, thank you very much.
P.S. If none of this makes any sense whatsoever to you, either I must appologize for being a bad writer (which I do) or I will provide the website to the Bay to Breakers so that you can read up on what I'm talking about if you're unfamiliar with the event: www.baytobreakers.com
Thursday, May 12, 2005
A Question of Slinkys and Goats
Regarding the question (see full profile) of well-escapage with the tools provided (goat + slinky):
Way #1 - Unfortunately I can't kill the goat, as I'm a vegan, but assuming I was able to outlast the goat and it died of natural causes, and assuming the slinky was metal, I would break off a sharp piece of the slinky, gut the goat, build a ladder out of tendons and bones, and climb out.
Way #2 - The goat being no use at all when alive, I would ignore the goat, break the (assuming) metal slinky into four pieces, put the pieces over my hands and feet, and (assuming a well width conducive to this method) climb up the well spread-eagle style, using the slinky bits as crampon-like traction-giving devices.
Way #1 - Unfortunately I can't kill the goat, as I'm a vegan, but assuming I was able to outlast the goat and it died of natural causes, and assuming the slinky was metal, I would break off a sharp piece of the slinky, gut the goat, build a ladder out of tendons and bones, and climb out.
Way #2 - The goat being no use at all when alive, I would ignore the goat, break the (assuming) metal slinky into four pieces, put the pieces over my hands and feet, and (assuming a well width conducive to this method) climb up the well spread-eagle style, using the slinky bits as crampon-like traction-giving devices.
Hello World
I am here, wherever here is, which in fact, to be precise, is not here, as I am not where I normally am, wherever that is.
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