Squashed wellies!

I found this company, Smile Plastics, by googling “smile”.  I have no idea what I could do with their materials, despite having looked at their photos of products in use, but I love the stuff, particularly the “whole wellies”.  It all looks like a tactile Impressionist painting!  Plus, it’s recycling!

The road goes ever on and on…

I’m currently reading a book titled Why Don’t You Fly? The author bicycled from London to Beijing via India; he didn’t set himself any particular timescale and, since I haven’t finished reading it yet, I don’t know how long it took him - about eighteen months, I’m guessing.  But A and I were talking about it last night, and I thought I’d ask you your opinion.

- Is cycling from England to China a challenge?
- Would it have been more of a challenge had he set himself a particular time in which to complete the journey?
- Conversely, would it have been less of a challenge had it taken him five or ten or twenty years?
- What about bicycling around the world, like the author of another book I’ve just read (Moods of Future Joys)?  It took that guy four and a half years to go all the way around; is that a challenge?  Would it have been more/less of a challenge had he done it in less/more time?
- Is the distance in and of itself a challenge, or does it only gain “challenge” status if one tries to complete it in a certain amount of time?
- What do you understand as the meaning of a “challenge?”

P.S.  If you’re thinking about picking up either of these books, read Moods of Future Joys.  I found it very engaging, if not necessarily as polished as the “big” travel writers’ books.  The author of Why Don’t You Fly is a bit off-putting to me: too full of himself and antagonistic.

New poet

I’ve just heard mentioned a poet that I’d not heard of before, Gerard Manley Hopkins. On looking through the poems listed at the bottom of his wikipedia entry, I found one in particular that I like:

Inversnaid

This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home. 

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróth
Turns and twindles over the broth
Of a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,
It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning. 

Degged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn. 

What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Okay, so it’s a personality test.

But I liked the results I got, so I’ll share it.  And you can decide whether or not you want to look at it.

My personalDNA Report

Grrr!

All these bloody diet ads and books and everything all over the place, shouting from every conceivable direction: “the smart way to lose weight: the best low-calorie recipes...” “Blast the Fat,” “Eat Your Way to Love"… whatever.

JUST EAT LESS!!!  EXERCISE MORE!!!  Your body isn’t stupid: a heaping plateful (say about 500 granules or so) of 1-calorie-per-granule whatever-food is still only going to power you for about 500 calories’ worth of activity!  Radically changing your diet or cutting out food groups (yes, even sweets) doesn’t work in the long run!  Just eat sensibly!!! (And maybe eat more identifiable food - you know, things that you can understand when you’re told what they are, less of the mono-tri-glyc-acyt-whatever-ides.)

::takes several deep, calming breaths:: Rant over.  Sorry about that.  It’s just frustrating seeing all these people being sucked in by all these glitzy claims, and being subjected to all of them myself, even with as little interaction with commercials as I have. 

Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever else you may celebrate, even if it’s just celebrating having a few days off work/school/for good behaviour!  A and I are safely back in Gloucester; after a few adventures and a wrong turn in Atlanta, so too is our luggage.

Our trip down to Texas was absolutely wonderful.  The weather was gorgeous, with highs in the mid-70s and low 80s and clear skies.  We got into Dallas at midday on the 19th and were met at the airport by my wonderful grandfather.  After picking up our rental car and grabbing a quick bite to eat at Wendy’s (mmmmm… Frosty…), we drove down to San Antonio.  The drive actually consisted mostly of A sleeping in the passenger seat and me driving, but that’s just fine, as he looks really sweet when he’s asleep and it kept him from complaining as I sung along to the Christmas carols that were playing non-stop on a radio station I picked up just outside of Hico.

Our time in San Antonio was brief but great.  We saw Mom’s new workplace and went and bugged my brother at his work (he works at the same Borders where I worked for a couple of summers at the beginning of college), and had all the good food that I can’t get outside of SA.  One evening we went down to the Riverwalk, had dinner at the VERY nice new restaurant at the Tower of the Americas, and wandered along the river briefly, admiring the lights and jumping in place to stay warm.  The cats were all lovely, although Tabitha didn’t really stir from her heated cat bed very often.  But that’s to be understood - she’s getting up there in years.

Sunday saw us back up in Dallas and at my aunt’s house.  She hosted a party with a bunch of people that I’ve known for varying lengths of time, but none of whom had met A.  They all loved him, of course!  And A got to meet his namesake, my aunt’s Jack Russell terrier.  They got along swimmingly.  We stayed with my aunt for the rest of our time in Texas, and for a good part of that time shared the house with my uncle and my two cousins.  It was great to get to see them - as they have lived in Denver for most of my life, I haven’t seen much of them over the years, and it was nice to catch up.  Things are changing a great deal for the whole family, and I liked getting to hear about plans straight from them.

Christmas Day was so wonderful.  We all piled around to my grandfather’s house - me and A and my mom and my brother and my aunt and my uncle and my other aunt and my two cousins and a long-time family friend and her two sons.  Mom made her usual scrumptious Christmas dinner (we helped!) with all the good stuff, and we all ate until we couldn’t eat anymore.  I contributed a gingerbread cake with cream cheese icing for dessert!  I went for my usual post-dinner walk, which involves walking two blocks down the hill from my grandfather’s house to the playground of the local elementary school, then sitting on top of the monkey bars watching the sky and trees and listening to the sounds coming from nearby houses, then walking back up to the house in time for dessert (which always comes a few hours after dinner, so that you can properly appreciate it).
We met up with my dad for lunch on Boxing Day - my brother, A and me.  It was so nice to see him - as both he and I are so busy, we don’t get a lot of time to talk or see each other, so every time that we do is wonderful.  We sat at the table so long that we doubled our waitress’ tip, as she could easily have had another group through in the time that we stayed.

Most everybody left on Thursday - all the out-of-towners except A and me.  We spent Thursday with my grandfather, another person who I don’t generally get to see much just by himself.  The morning was spent at the Dallas Aquarium, a spectacular, often-overlooked highlight of “things to do in Dallas”.  Then came lunch (BBQ!) and a couple of hours at the Dallas Museum of Art.  Friday saw me, A, my grandfather and his partner go to a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, a Christmas gift from my aunt.  It was fantastic, although very loud and strobe-y!  I got goosebumps all the way down my legs when the group started into their version of “O Holy Night (Cantique de Noel),” which is my favourite Christmas carol.  The first half of the concert was a straight run through the songs off of “Christmas Eve and Other Stories,” my favourite CD of theirs, and then the second half did bits and pieces from their other albums, and a few others besides.  The two pianists did a brilliant duelling pianos set, playing snatches from various songs.  The whole audience started cheering when one of them went into the Linus & Lucy theme, with its distinctive rolling bass line.  After the concert, my aunt picked us all up and we went for dinner to Opa!, a Greek restaurant owned by a guy named Charlie who has been friends with my grandfather for a number of years.

A and I reluctantly took our leave on Saturday.  Our original non-stop flight from Dallas to London had been cancelled, and we’d been rebooked onto a Dallas-Atlanta (on AA), Atlanta-London (on BA) set of flights.  Our luggage decided to go for a jaunt while in Atlanta, which had the unexpected benefit of relieving us of the necessity of lugging two 70-pound suitcases onto the train and the bus back to Gloucester.  We got back to Gloucester, grabbed some clean socks, then headed straight back out the door down to Somerset to spend New Year’s with A’s mum and her partner.  We started off by managing to stay up until about 10:30 on Sunday night, then promptly sleeping until 1:30 in the afternoon (!) on Monday!  We couldn’t believe the clocks when we woke up.  New Year’s was spent pottering around the house and helping out in the garden.  We intended to go down to the village pub for midnight, but the miserly landlord had decided to not open on New Year’s Eve!  So instead the four of us poured ourselves a glass of champagne and toasted in the New Year with the televised fireworks on the Thames in London.  I got chills down my spine - at about twenty seconds to the hour, the Clock Tower at Westminster starts its famous changes.  Meanwhile, the crowd begins the countdown.  As the crowd chants, “three, two, one,” the Clock is silent.  Then, at the stroke of midnight, Big Ben tolls out.  (I got goosebumps just remembering it to write this!) The fireworks were spectacular - all centered around the London Eye, turning it, as A put it, into “the biggest Catherine Wheel in the world!”

The best, most overarching theme of these holidays was love.  I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s true.  I snuggled down, so to speak, into my family, a family that I love and which loves me and which is filled with people that I get along with - not something that can always be said by someone of their family.  A fits right in, which makes it even better.  I feel very lucky.

May 2008 be a year of equal love and acceptance and joy for everyone who reads this.  You will all be in my thoughts, and I look forward to seeing most of you who I didn’t see over Christmas during my stay in Portland in March/April!

Merry Christmas to all!

We’re off to Texas now, and I won’t probably get to update again until we get back.  I hope that you have a wonderful holiday, whether it’s Christmas, Hanukkah, Saturnalia, or any other celebration!

Well, that decides that.

I just called STA to see about changing my tickets back from Portland in April by a day, so that I don’t have to step off the plane and then immediately head for the starting line of the marathon.  However, they have no available seats for either of the two days preceding my current departure point, and I’m not willing to cut into my trip to Portland any further. 

So I’ll arrive into London from Portland at 5:55 a.m. on the morning of the 13th and head straight for the marathon starting line.  The race starts at 9 a.m.

Maybe I’ll look into taking the 14th off work.  I think the combination of trans-Atlantic flight plus marathon adds up to a justification to take an extra day off work.

Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea

Out of sheer laziness, and a lack of supplies immediately to hand, I have neglected to fix my bicycle’s flat tire for the last two or three weeks.  So I’ve been walking everywhere.  At the beginning - and intermittently since then - I have been frustrated by how slow I am forced to go when on foot and on my way to something that I can’t arrive sweaty at.  And the day where my doctor’s appointment was rescheduled twice was a real blast.

But as I was walking back to work from lunch at home just now, I remembered again just how much I love, really love, walking.  Of course, it helps that it’s a gorgeously blue-skied day, and, although cold (5 degrees Celsius), it’s not windy, so once you get moving, you’re fine.

I walked along, humming and sometimes singing along with my iPod, which was so kind as to play Three Dog Night’s “Joy to the World” for me.  I enjoyed the contrast between very cool shade and the warmth of the sun when it poured onto my face.  Even the construction site looked dashing in the sunlight, glinting with metal and interspersed with brilliantly-coloured sheeting and ties.

And it’s Thursday, and in a few hours I’ll be free, and can go to rehearsal for music that I love, for our concert this weekend, and tomorrow is a Christmas party that A has organized for all our friends here in Gloucester, and next Monday and Tuesday are fluffy training days at work, and Tuesday afternoon A & I catch the bus to London, thence to Dallas on Wednesday morning!  As the Grinch would say about Christmas: “it’s practically here!”

::recommences humming “Joy to the World”::

Baa baa… Bactrian camel

Just as a note/forewarning: I’m going to run the London Marathon for a charity.  Now that I have a ballot spot, and therefore don’t have to earn a specific, astronomic amount of money to gain a charity “gold bond” spot, I still want to do something to contribute - the London Marathon is one of the world’s largest fund-raising events.

I’m going to run for Farm Africa. They work primarily in eastern and southern Africa - the very area that A and I will be visiting next year.  The charity helps pastoralists, forest management, smallholders, etc.  They’ve been around since 1985 and seem to do a lot of good. 

So if you could mentally earmark a few dollars/pounds/rubles/whatever in the next few months to donate to my run, I would appreciate it.  I’ll send around an email and probably post here as well when I have the information about how to donate.  Thanks!

Christmastime is here, by golly…

In a week from tomorrow, we head off down to Texas for Christmas.  I am very much looking forward to this, not the least because I’m about ready to throw something at my job.  But that’s okay - we’re almost in 2008, and there are a lot of things in that year’s favour.  The Marathon, the trip to Portland/Seattle, the trip to Africa… I’m a bit worried about applying to grad school, mostly in terms of recommendations, because I didn’t really show any inclination towards this line of study back when I was at Reed (I wrote a single environmentally-oriented paper in my Law & Economics class), so I don’t know who I should go about asking for recommendations.  Should I go with a prof who knows me very well and can vouch for me personally, but who may not have a lot to do academically with my studies (like one of my music profs)?  Should I ask the prof who sat on the Honor Council with me for the three years I was on it, and might be able to talk about my work in mediation, etc.?  Or should I go talk to one of my history profs, who might be able to scrounge up some sort of acceptable commentary on my writing/academics?  ::sigh::

Anyhoodle, I’m not going to worry about all that until next year.  While I’m down in Texas, I’m going to focus completely on the two, opposing goals of eating as much delicious food (Mexican!  BBQ!  Mom’s dressing!  Granny Street potatoes!  Pecan pie!) as I can keep down, and starting my training for the marathon.  I’ve printed out a training schedule that scares me with its intensity, and need to start the week of Christmas if I’m going to follow it.  I went for a run yesterday evening and am displeased with how out of shape I am.  I’ve added a minute per mile to my best training pace, which isn’t going the right direction if I intend to finish the marathon in good time.  So I’ve got a fair amount of work ahead of me, including in Texas.

We get down to Texas on Wednesday, arriving into Dallas.  We’ll pick up our rental car immediately and head straight out to San Antonio, arriving (hopefully) by early evening.  Then a few days in San Antonio, to walk on the Riverwalk amongst the beautiful lights, eat some Mexican food, pet the kitties (Tabitha!), and visit a few friends around that area.  Do some running.  Oh yeah - and to go annoy my brother at his job at Borders.  ::grin::  Then, on Sunday we’re back up to Dallas, when my aunt is throwing a party at her house.  We’ll stay in Dallas for the remainder of the visit, and I look forward to seeing my dad and having some barbeque, making full use of my aunt’s hot tub, and generally being a lazy bum… when I’m not running.  (Must to get some new shoes - maybe I’ll splurge and buy some Asics.  That’s the brand that fits me the best, and I’m NOT going to repeat my idiocy of the Portland Marathon and try to run the London Marathon in Payless sneakers.)

Thence to England, to reattach my nose to the grindstone, but with the beacon of my March/April trip to Portland shining on the horizon.  And more running.

Thursday Now.

I just finished reading Jasper Fforde’s “The Eyre Affair” last night.  What a wonderful book!  I babbled at poor A (who hasn’t read it) for several minutes afterwards about how fantastic it was, and now think that I’ll probably have to read the other books in the series.  :-)

Deja vu

“President Bush said today that Iran was still a danger despite the new assessment by American intelligence agencies that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.”

Anyone else feeling like this is Iraq Version 2?

An update of sorts

I don’t really know that I have all that much to talk about, but I feel like I haven’t been a very good blogger of late.  It’s funny, because I read my friends’ blogs, and everyone seems to have something going on, or at least something that they are trying to work through mentally, or something.  I don’t know whether it’s because I’m just by-and-large contented and settled, or just dull, or because the things that are troubling me mentally are not really things I want to share.  Sometimes I do worry that I’m just irretrievably dull.

As you all well know, I am a goal-oriented person.  I like having something to aim for, even if it’s years away.  I currently have two very nice goals in my sights:

1.) Short-term, and only recently created: complete the London Marathon in - ideally - four and a half hours.  But I’ll “settle” for finishing in under five.  Given that the last/first marathon I did took me seven and a half hours to finish, and given that the half-marathon I ran back in September took me just under two and a half hours to finish… well, it’s a goal.

2.) Long-term: earn a Master’s degree in Environmental Policy or Sustainable Development.  I won’t be applying to grad school until next autumn, but between now and then I need to do some serious work to pump up my application.  To whit: I’m hopefully going to start volunteering in the office of a local conservation society once a week, as well as participating in conservation activities some weekends.  Once my current job and the trip to Africa are over, I’m going to find a job in the environmental sector, even if it’s not a brilliant job.  Just something to get me on the path.  It’s frustrating, because I know, finally, that this is what I want to do, but as I haven’t been pursuing it in the past, I don’t really have the resume to back up my conviction. 

… Africa.  Need to start thinking seriously about countries and visas, etc.  Maybe over Christmas. 

The day-to-day of my life has pretty much settled down to a routine.  Work (bleah), a bit of running, orchestra on Thursdays, the occasional concert, reading (trying to push myself out of my genre comfort zone; hence the current Satanic Verses)… Even my thoughts tend to be on the same few subjects.  It’s strange to me, but in the last few years I seem to have developed a bit of a melancholy streak.  I find myself (not to sound TOO teenager-ish) thinking about death more often than I ever have before.  It’s not usually in a frightful manner, but just contemplating the contrast between the solidity of my life at the moment and the fact that it could easily end at any time.  There is that nagging desire to do something to have a lasting impact on the world.  Since I don’t want kids, I have to seek some other route; my career, hopefully.  However, since I feel that I am living pretty much the best I know how to live, I’m not terribly bothered by the thought of my death.  And it’s not like mortality takes up all, or even a majority of my thoughts.  It’s just (oddly) the one realm of thought that I feel comfortable sharing.

It will be good for me to get out of this job, because I’m starting to get so frustrated - to the point of rage - with the students.  Not my students, specifically (that’s another subject), but with all the students who, for whatever reason, drop litter without a second thought.  The piles of crap that are left lying around the school make me furious.  It makes me furious in the city, too, but because it’s spread over such a larger area there, it’s not the concentrated rage of school.  The lack of thought or control or care or whatever that leads to littering is something that I simply don’t comprehend.  I’m thinking about trying to get permission from the school to have a week where either a.) the custodians don’t pick up the litter that the students create or b.) they gather it like usual, but instead of disposing the bags, they pile them in the center of the atrium or something like that.  Just something to try to show the students just how much of a mess they are making.  I don’t know if it would make any difference, but it might.  I have already taken to thanking students I see taking the effort to put rubbish in the bins, and a few days ago I saw students throwing wadded-up paper at each other then leaving it where it fell.  I picked it up and took it over to them, saying “I think someone lost this.” When they said that it hadn’t been lost, that someone had thrown it, I said, very sweetly, that I knew that, but thought it belonged in the bin more than it did on the ground.

La dee dah.  So life goes on.

::tears of laughter streaming down her face::

Take a look at Snowball’s dance moves.  Note: sound is important!