I'm as tired as I've ever been. Run #3 kinda blew up on me this afternoon. Legs were dead from the start. Reach the Beach was a blast, t...
posted 17 hours ago
I’m in New York for the weekend, ostensibly to see Péter Esterházy speak tomorrow. The snow here isn’t nearly as bad as the news made it out to be – it’s been rather nice weather actually. I went to see Billy Elliot today, which made me notice we’ve covered this ground before
Mileage this week was not impressive. None of the last few weeks has been actually, and I may need to reassess the feasibility of the 1000 mile goal. Extrapolating my current three week average forward for the next ten months leaves me several hundred miles short of the goal. Changes need to be made, somewhere.
The Italians deemed gnocchi night to be an abject failure, and given their overall more refined sense of taste, it’s hard for me to disagree (but I will). The making of the gnocchi, from mashing the potatoes into dough, to spinning out ropes to cut into little cubes to flicking them off a fork to give them a fancy little pattern, all great fun. So whether or not they turned out to be too large, too gooey and potato-y is a side issue of less importance than the overall process.
Anyway, next time we’ll do better, whatever it was that was done wrong. And next time I’ll have a real camara, and we’ll deconstruct.
After a fine day out and about yesterday I arrived home safe and sound, only to have my SLR fly out of my camera bag and bang along down the hill by my house a good distance. My prime lens took one for the team, breaking clean in half. The camera body suffered some damage as well – the contacts that communicate with the lens are not connecting properly anymore. Poor camera barely made it past it’s first birthday (and it’s not like there wasn’t foreshadowing).
Anyway, this is not good stuff. Bad fiscally, worse for me mentally. It’s made my life feel even more disjointed and aimless than usual.
Fortunately, some of quasify’s (semi-anonymous?) benefactors recently gave me a somewhat uncomfortably large small business grant towards resolution #4, wide angle lens acquisition. I have been debating between two options (the Sigma 10-20 or the Canon 10-22), both of which will require a functioning body to be useful.
So here’s my plan, barring a better suggestion. I’m shipping this guy back to Canon for a repair quote. If that comes back prohibitively high (say, more than $200) I’m going to bite the bullet and get one of the new T2i bodies, three generations up from my XSi. And once that spending seal is broke, I’ll get a replacement 50mm and whichever of the wides looks better after checking them out in person.
The lesson learned here is to securely clip the camera bag shut. And be more careful. And buy the extended warranty. And have exceptionally kind & generous friends.
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but YJP’s visit has given me the push I needed. By semi-voluntary consensus our official Ragnar team name is Sole Survivors. Thanks for the suggestion Hondo!
Just FYI, we still have a single solitary open slot on our 12 person Ragnar roster. Email or comment below if you’re interested. The race itself is May 21st-22nd, and the fee is $155 (which will cover our entry fee and van rental).
So I’ve got this new nephew. This is the first male born into our family in quite some time (and first new kid in almost three years). Historically my extended family has trended towards an abundance of girls (I have only nieces, sisters & blood aunts, and very few male first or second cousins). So this little guy is more than welcome to help reset the ratio. As he’s only a small number of hours old, he’s a bit of a blank slate right now, perfectly inable to refuse our various projections on what kind of future he’ll end up having. In reality we really have no friggin clue about what kind of kid he is or will want to grow up to be. Knowing his parents though, I’m guessing he’ll end up making upright choices more often than not, be more capable then me, ably skilled in the practical and yet well aware of the range of big possibilities an aware life offers. Is it possible that I can contribute some small random influence into his life that might lead him in interesting directions? I hope so. The electric guitar awaits.
Anyways, there is he, Eben Samuel. Mad props on making it safely thusfar little dude.
It’s become clear to me that I won’t reach my annual mileage goal of 1000 miles (#1) without more accountability. Towards that end, I’m bringing back mileage sunday tag.
MILEAGE UPDATE: February 8-14
Miles to date
Past week
Three week average
Annual pace
Miles to go
28.4
12.3
7.1
241.0
971.6
A second idea that I’m playing with is revisiting the same 18 week training goals I used for San Francisco last year. If I started that now, I’d finish June 21st*. So, huh, that’d put me in good position for Kona.
Anyway, regardless of whether or not anyone actually reads this, it’s helpful to have it put in print, as statement of fact. This is what I’m going to do, this is what I’ve done, this is where I am now.
Ok, for hondo*, a quick king cake recap. Got up ass early on Saturday to bake for zannejude’s birthday thing at Soulfire. Made three batches of sweet-bread dough, the kneading of which will, the following morning, result in a disturbing amount of shoulder muscle self-awareness. Baking on cakes #1 and #2 wrapped up some five hours later due to massive kitchen inefficiency and my obsessive desire to photograph each stage of the process (with incessant hand washing breaks to keep the camera butter-free). Cake #3 turned out to be the best of the batch (despite being eaten at a point in time where the entire king cake experience was devalued due to repetition), and not just because I got the baby(!!!). The secret to massive success, I believe, turns out to be to use the full bar of cream cheese in a single cake instead of foolishly splitting it in half.
Anyway, here is this year’s recipe. My new photos from this year’s process are the bottom rows here.
*who updated her own blog yesterday, after TWO AND A HALF MONTHS of radio silence. Sheesh.
The last several times I’ve moved I’ve packed and unpacked this sad solitary single-use disposable camera. I was never really sure whose it was or what was on it. Unpacking in Boston yet again, I figured it was finally about time to find out.
Today, I got the photos back from the developer. I know most of the people in the photos, Ambre, BTQ, Katie, YJP etc. But I’m pretty sure I didn’t take the majority of these, I don’t remember being around for when or wherever this was. The exception is the last five, those are definitely mine from some random Fourth of July with Z, possibly in 2007. Any ideas about the others? Australia, Hungary, Italy? Where did you come from little camera? And why has your life been so much more exciting than mine?
OMGWTF Juliette reincarnated as Jacob!!! Who saw that one coming?
Ok, that said. I wasn’t going to watch Lost tonight because some friends are having a Lost party tomorrow due to a work conflict one of them has tonight. First, any boss who schedules a work event for the long anticipated final season premiere of Lost deserves to suffer the terrible wrath of your employees absenteeism. Second, screw waiting. I don’t like to wait. Third, spoilers like the highly accurate one above are going to be de rigueur throughout the internet tomorrow. It’s going to be impossible to even check my most boring of work emails without some jackass writing a company-wide alert about what’s up with Kate & Sawyer.
Point being, I’ve decided to just watch it twice. Ask me no questions I’ll tell you no secrets you don’t wanna know.
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