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.