running 4 miles

That pretty much wore me out yesterday! Bowzer, bowzer.

 Yesterday, I finally got everyone to ride the log ride with me at MOA. I bought the tickets and raced over to the Log Chute Ride.
Sadly, the two guys decided they were not ride people. Lovely. Then the line got really, really long.  So instead we rode the MOA equivalent of the Falling Star.  I must say that it was delightful to squeal and feel my stomach jolt and look around over a crowded mall. I'll be sad when all of our out of town visitors stop coming to see us!

I'm the best complainer in the whole wide world!

Yes, yes I am. While I wait for this to become some kind of lauded feat in today's society, I will instead blog my complaints, with the hopes of getting a local nomination for "Best Complainer!" If there are semi-finals and final rounds, after all, I need to be ready. I'll have to think of some measurable method of complaining so I can have a convention for other big whiners. Hopefully, it will be similar to the Boring Convention.




So the real thing I have to complain about is the apartment. It meets 3 great requirements: CHEAP, DOG-FRIENDLY, UNDERGROUND GARAGE.


It also has a tanning bed, 2 pools, a sauna, a weight room and treadmill, and on-site laundry.

Below I shall list my complaints:


The elevator is really slow. No biggie, taking the stairs is good exercise. Never mind that someone else got stuck in it this weekend for 45 minutes and the fire department just stood there trying to figure it out.

The sauna doesn't work. Ok, I can deal with that.  It's not like I really needed a one. It said it was going to be fixed when we first moved in, but that hasn't happened yet.
The room to the tanning beds is locked with a key that I don't have.  No biggie, I can get a key sometime or something....
The weight room lock doesn't open with the key I have. Ok, I sought some assistance with it and the door was just really extra hard to open, but we figured it out.
The treadmill is really loud when you run on it.  No problem, I can still deal with that. Upon second use, I discovered:
The churchkey to the treadmill is missing. So I couldn't run. Did I mention that I have a marathon to for which to train? 
Someone stole all the pins to the weight room. No solutions for this!

The washing machines suck at drying our stuff and they eat our money. They don't fully drain the water and they're only open until 10 pm.
The apartment's solution is to install an entirely new set of washing machines and dryers. This is great! But it's been 4 days and they're still not installed! I'm out of clean clothes!

Tried to talk to the management office today; they close at 6 pm. We went there at 547 and they were gone. I called, got voicemail.

Oh yes, this IS why people buy houses. 

Bucket List for the Summer

We keep talking about the large amounts of stuff tht we really want to do this summer.

-Visit Chicago and stay in Hyde Park
-Drive to Canada
-Go to the lakes and swim

-Visit Lake Superior and kayak
-Ride our bikes a whole lot
-Run Grandma's marathon

February does indeed truly suck

It's been 3 long years since I've been seized with the impossible February blues, the kind where you want to do ANYTHING to escape the winter doldrums, anything to change your job, where you live, and the philosophy of life.  And since it's been 3 years, I forgot to recognize what was happening to me.  The black depression swept in, fed me all sorts of lies about myself and my future. Depression provides an old promise to me, a repetitive stanza that became poetry. Yes, I will be happier if I just end it now, the infinite human sleep is relaxing, soothing, and without pain. It's stupid to keep living in pain, and it's ok to say goodbye to it. In fact, I deserve to say goodbye to it, because how can it be ethical to force someone to suffer. After all, haven't I already suffered enough? Isn't it fair for me to just put everything in order,  explain it in writing, and then just ease gently into darkness and permanence of death?  Sometimes the lie will show me the after-life, which I tell myself is just like "What Dreams May Come" and not just an oblivion where my consciousness ends.

This is so very 2003, isn't it? People know so much about depression now, it's really just sort of old news.  People don't really want to read about it or hear about it and shouldn't the "afflicted" just get some help and some Prozac? Answer: YES!

But it doesn't stop the repetitive lie, or the awkward feelings when I'm around other people while feeling like this.  Ugh. Sometimes I feel like there is no escape, it's rude to blow off plans with friends, it's impossible to explain to someone, so I just end up sitting around people, feeling even worse about myself because I don't feel like absorbing their jokes that aren't funny. And then I know the other people think I'm a boring lump of space and feel even more self-conscious. The whole thing becomes an impossible situation for me. I even force myself to snap out of it and become cheerful, but I just don't find the same things funny as everyone else does.  Which makes me just want to retreat from these people and sleep it off. :shrug:




Not all is futile, of course. There are still people that I adore and things that I love to do in February. Last night there was a Saturday night dance party and it was one helluva fun time. I drove by Lake Calhoun and saw a golden frozen lake, I swear, it was heaven. I begged my friend to stop with me and walk across it, but it was too cold and she was not interested.
So, I will just post a photo of it for you to enjoy. I promise it was lovelier than this photo.

Durwin Rice for 3rd district rep in Kansas City

We met Durwin Rice briefly at an art gallery that one of our neighbors owns. I blogged about it on my other site a few years ago, as the evening is still a warm memory from our time in KC. Without boring everyone with a recount of that event, I will instead shamelessly invite other people to support Durwin in his bid for 3rd district Kansas City city council seat in the race this fall.

Durwin has a sincere approach to restoring the urban core and is a very hard worker. I just donated some money to his candidacy as I've seen the work that he does positively affect our neighborhood. The tulip planting brings people to Troost and shows them that it's not a terrible place to live or visit and that economic and private investment is exactly the thing that will change the city.  Durwin himself has restored a building on 44th and Troost, literally by hand.  I think every 3rd district candidate understands the third district's needs, but I think Durwin will do the best as he has a proven track record of bringing private money to the area.

On a side note, the message in this blog doesn't represent Durwin and I posted this out of my own free will, not because someone told me to do it or any other stupid shizzle like that.

Black Swan

I am going to make a costume of this for the Oscar Party.  Mine shall be more modest than this, perhaps, and I will not look anything like Natalie. A good exercise in creative projects, nonetheless.

Sibling?

Evidently I'm about to have a new sibling. This is sort of shocking.

It will be curious to see how this genetic relative looks and acts.  Babies, babies, babies.

The Video You've All Been Waiting To See

We met Stephan over Thanksgiving with Michael and Virginia. He was doing Px90 and eating a bunch of protein to bulk up. He joined us for our early AM run and talked about building muscle a lot. Why was he so desperate to build a strong body? He was going to be in a FIGHT.

This was no ordinary fight. It was him--against a girl! And the stakes were high: The loser of the fight fails the class.
It's a performance art masters class, and you're allowed 2 fails to graduate. The ethics committee said the fight was kosher and the fighters got to determine the rules. It would be 3 minute rounds until someone taps out or knocks out.  There would be no rules aside from eye gouging, hair pulling,  scratching, etc.
There would be no points. Straight KO or TO.

I asked Stephan if he was worried. I can't remember what he said. He did say that he wasn't worried about fighting a girl, because this girl was TOUGH.

After seeing her on file, I have to agree.

We waited from Thanksgiving until now to see the results. No spoilers. See who won:
http://vimeo.com/19605728

Not going to change--but why?

Boy, I've been blogging like mad. It's because I've given up my online posting message board and want to post stupid shit here instead. I need to find another source of broadcasting my evoice to the world that doesn't include facebook or twitter.

At any rate, this stupid yahoo story says that if you spend $4 a day on coffee and a snack, you will spend $190,453 dollars over 30 years. That sucks. I shouldn't do it.
But I've been working for 10 years and I haven't stopped yet.  Maybe I like spending money? I should find a way to turn this into a tangible moment for myself and change my behavior. I've never bought pure coffee for myself in my life and rarely buy donuts for myself. But I do spend $4 day on salad or soup.



How have you changed your habits of purchasing stuff at work? Were you able to get better at it?

Coffee/donut

$4 a day

$22,389

$190,453

Welch Village

Finally made it out for some decent MN skiing. There's a few other places that are better, but these hills were much better than Buckhill or anything at Sundown Mountain in Dubuque. I went to a place that all Iowans recognize: Welch Village. It's been at least 15 years since I was there last, but I still remembered one of the runs.

We went down almost every black diamond, save for the moguls. I still want to try them, but maybe another time. I did fall twice, once because I crossed my ski tips and once because someone sort of skiied over me as we were unloading from the lift. Oh well. It was really hard for me to get back up. My legs are too fat and not muscular enough, thus I felt like the blimp queen of 2011.

Before the skiing, I was supposed to work on a project at work and do all of the other millions of things that I didn't get done this week. One of them was write a development plan and goal plan, which is actually fun for me. There was a strategizing meeting about goal planning at work and while those things are usually bogus, I really did find it helpful. The comment that sticks with me is: "The movie of your career should have you in the lead role." I guess that for most people, that makes sense. But I'm denser than most people and have often let my job's progress get bounced around by other people or have tried to fit a mold that I think other people want to see. This one is better.

Anyway, I've spent the last 2 days at work popping ibuprofen like a fiend and covering my right eye. I desperately need glasses and develop eyestrain,  neck aches and sinus pressure and grind my teeth until my jaw aches for days. These symptoms  make me want to crawl into a miserable hole until 2013.  I hate feeling like that and thus realized that if I worked today, I was going to be a miserable excuse for a person. So I said I couldn't be a volunteer on this project and went skiing with 9 people that Jim and Amy know.

Upon my return, I feel human again. Skiing is delightfully fun. I want to race. I want to go to Colorado! I want to exercise! I want to walk my doggie and find another dog to play with and volunteer. And tomorrow, I will go back and do the work that I missed and visit my coworker's party and try to forget that I may or may not have drunkenly asked questions about my boss's gonads. To be fair, he had just ended a story about gonads, strippers, fraternities and one night stands....

Girl who played with fire

Now I'm on to this book. I even tried to skip ahead and had to stop because I actually wanted to read each part. Ahh, it is a guilty pleasure. At the end of the book, I recognized that thrillers aren't exactly my thing, but it was a fun and light read.

This weekend: Skiiiiiing (Cross country?)
Skiing! Downhill!
St Paul Ice Carnival

I'm completely sad b/c my coworker/friend from KC was going to come up here for work this week and now she can't make it b/c the KC airport is closed.  We were going to go to all of these restaurants and outings, tourist style, and we can't make it now.