Livestrong Challenge – Rest Stop #1
I was so wrapped up in work this week that I almost completely missed all of the commotion for the LiveStrong Challenge only two blocks away from my office. I knew the ride was happening because I was signed up to work at the Austin Flyers rest stop, I just didn’t realize the extent of the transformation at Mellow Johnny’s. I walked over on Friday to see if I could get my stuff for volunteering only to find the street completely shut down. The expo and packet pickup are usually at the convention center 12 blocks away. For whatever reason, this year it was moved. I always find these transformations interesting.
Today it was a very early wake up call to get over the the rest stop, themed “Texas pride”. We were there quite a bit earlier than we needed to be but when the rush finally came it was all we could do to keep up. At one point my gloved hands were covered in a mixture of peanut butter and jelly. It was how hard a time we were having with the PB&J construction. Part of the issue was that we had preserves instead of jelly so the first third of the jar was just huge chunks of fruit that wouldn’t spread. The second issue was the lack of real knives. The best was Rhe breaking all our plastic knives with her super human strength and over-zealous PB&J making. We finally got a decent assembly line going and, with the three of us, almost caught up to demand.
We also had fun cheering on the riders and watching the main group go by with Lance and other Radio Shack celebs. The best was the actual cancer survivors. There was a little girl, maybe 7, who was in remission. She was doing the 20-mile ride on her little kids bike with the basket and all. Last year she was in treatment and her family pulled her along behind. Her family was doing everything they could to help her but she was having none of it. She wanted to walk her bike up the hills herself, and get her own food. She was fantastic.
Towards the end of our shift it was getting hot. Lance had already come through twice and the string of people was thinner and thinner, Since we were only 6-miles away from the start/finish, those who did stop on their way back were mostly using the Porto-poties. I rode back to my car with Kate, Kim, Diane and Meredith. It was a super fun day.
Date Night w/ Death Cap
Last night Brain and I did date night with dinner and Death Cab for Cutie. We don’t do date night often and we never do concerts. Brian and I typically have very different taste in music; which is why I was shocked the day he asked me if I’d ever heard of Death Cab for Cutie. On a side note, he hates The Postal Service? The venue is just around the block from my office so we met up at my office and walked over to get dinner nearby. Dinner was really tasty but the service was horrible. It turned out to be fine as we got to the venue just before 9:00 and only had to wait a few minutes for Death Cab to start playing. Our seats were general admission so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to see much. I was just looking forward to a good show
They were amazing!! One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to; yet the crowd was listless. I don’t know what’s happened to concerts in the last 15-years; I suppose I wasn’t keeping track. Apparently, if you really like a show you sway, take some photos, and whisper to your friends. I felt so out of place. I dressed for this concert in a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers specifically because I thought it would be rowdy down on the floor. I made sure I had nothing but my phone and my ID in case I wanted to crowd surf. When we got in the door, I saw most other women were wearing heals and carrying large purses.  Throughout the show I was jumping up and down, dancing, singing and screaming at the top of my lungs. The people around me… looked annoyed by my behavior. What absolutely killed me though was when people came out from the front nobody packed in! Even if it meant there was a huge hole in the crowd! Forget crowd surfing! The band tried so hard to get everybody riled up but to no avail. The people around me kept saying how good the show was so it seems they were enjoying themselves…
When did this happen? When did concert going, especially with general admission tickets, become about texting your friends and taking photos. I remember when you couldn’t help but let the music infect you. Before you even had time to think about it you’d be jumping. Then everybody would jump. It didn’t matter that you were all bumping into each other. In fact, that’s exactly how mosh pits got started. If you didn’t want to be there anymore, you’d just crowd surf your way out. And to think, we didn’t even have cell phones back then. How did we ever find each other?!?
So while it was an amazing show, I left feeling cheated. I wanted to be a part of a sea of moving bodies and instead I spent most of the night swaying with my arms crossed; like everybody else around me. In the end, it felt more like a lame work party where you don’t really know anybody. I can only imagine how difficult it is to be a rock start these days. Fantastic show guys! I wish I could have “gone upâ€. Not that anybody would have known what I was talking about.
Week in Review – 10/09/2011
Everything that’s been going on that just doesn’t fit into it’s own post. I’ll use this space to include links to interesting reads, miscellaneous photos, puppy stories, and anything going on that just didn’t fit anywhere else. I might even include some of the more interesting Google searches that brought people to my site.
This Weeks Posts:
Tuesday: The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
Interesting Reads
- Â How to Read Unemployment Reports – An excellent tutorial on some of the mistakes people make when trying to understand unemployment data.Â
- What Your Coach Really Wants to Know … – Having been coached, I can tell you how difficult this is. You want to do every workout to perfection and never want to admit when things aren’t going well or you’re not feeling well. You’re paying your coach (usually a large sum of money) to help you achieve your best. That’s a very individual thing and if you’re not being honest then you’re not getting your monies worth.Â
Other Happenings:
Stuff that just didn’t fit anywhere else. AKA, the kitchen-sink section.
The Pillars of the Earth – Ken Follett
I gave this book three-stars. I don’t really know where to start with this book. If I had to sum this up in one word it would be overwhelming. I get the feeling that the author didn’t quite know who the audience for this book would be. The relationships and story lines are fairly complex and yet the author feels the need to constantly “sum up†the events of the previous chapters as if we were continuing from last weeks episode. The writing describing the characters motives were also very brute force, assuming the reader was too stupid to understand the characters well enough to understand the motives.
Second, there are so many stories, they are all good on their own or paired with one other, but all of these stories combined added to the weightiness of the book.  All of these characters are connected by loosely sown threads that are too coincidental to be believed. Tom finding Ellen who’s husband had a connection to the priory where Philip ends up. Philip saves Tom, Allen and Aliena. Aliena was engaged to the William who fired Tom and was given the title of Earl by a king put in place by a piece of information passed from Philip. With all that, I have not given a way anything about this book. There are ten more relationships within those. I suppose it could be argued that the upper class was a very tight nit community but that hardly explains the relationships to a mason and an outlaw. Furthermore, there is far too much happenstance.  Like when Philip just happened to be right next to Aliena at the market and that Aliena ends up in the same town as Jack which happens to be the same town the baby, born miles away, ends up at.
Finally, my biggest gripe with this book is that it was about 300 pages too long. I would have liked less plot twists and more subtlety. My favorite parts of this book were spent making rounding out the characters; such as Jacks storytelling and Tom’s love of cathedral architecture. There was not enough time spent on the emotional aspects of the characters and far too much time spent on their actions. There are three characters in the book that do nothing by “take revenge†on the “good†characters. The only motive seeming to be pride? These characters were hell bent on revenge even when revenge would benefit them in no way. By the end it felt like Wiley-coyote going after the road-runner again. Come on, the road-runner always wins!
Resentment burned in his stomach as he regarded Aliena’s prosperous, dignified, happy family. Everything they had should have been his. But he had not given up the hope of revenge.
Seriously, this would have been revenge number eight or nine. He’s in his 50’s at this point!
Week in Review – 10/2/2011
Everything that’s been going on that just doesn’t fit into it’s own post. I’ll use this space to include links to interesting reads, miscellaneous photos, puppy stories, and anything going on that just didn’t fit anywhere else. I might even include some of the more interesting Google searches that brought people to my site.
This Weeks Posts:
Not much going on this week
Other Happenings:
Stuff that just didn’t fit anywhere else. AKA, the kitchen-sink section.
The big happening this week is the breakthrough my made with my ucode at work. I know this isn’t of much interest to most people but getting this done meant real honest to God sleep and much less time at work. It was a huge relief also because my in-laws drove in from PA and arrived on Thursday and this week I’m attending a two day symposium for work. It seems that just as quickly as I had free time it was gone again.
Last week we also got word that somebody is poaching dear in our neighborhood. One of our neighbors woke up to find a field-dressed deer in their front yard. After a few calls to the game warden, it was determined that the deer had fresh gunshot wounds and had been killed and dressed in the neighborhood. Many of us had heard gunshots before but didn’t think much of it since there is so much land behind our neighborhood. I don’t think it occurred to any of us that anybody would be using high-powered deer rifles so close to a community. We’re still not sure how the deer got into her yard but their appear to be drag marks so maybe an animal got a hold of it.
Asthma?
Last week I finally decided to make an appointment with the doctor. Why? Well I didn’t really know. I had some bad post nasal drip and my workouts had become harder and harder. My output was horrible for the same heart rate. It seems like it’s been weeks of not being able to do a decent ride but I wasn’t going to jump to saying I was sick because it’s often the equivalent of thinking you have a flat tire when your legs suck. I figured I was just over-trained or stressed or something simple. I took all last week off from exercise and tried to get more sleep. Friday, I decided to see if I felt any better on the bike and joined Dianna on an easy spin. The entire ride my HR was really high and I was gasping for air. I made the appointment thinking I had a sinus infection. It made the most sense.
All weekend my incredibly easy workouts were horrible and for hours after each I found that I really couldn’t breath. It felt like somebody was stepping on my chest. When I woke up this morning, I felt fine and a little stupid for making the appointment. I always feel like a hypochondriac when I go to the doctor. He was asking me about my symptoms and I’m explaining the post nasal drip (thinking I’d be leaving with a Z-pack) when I bring up the shortness of breath. He starts asking me more questions and after a while he stops me. Turns out I’d been taking a deep breath once every two or three words. He listened to my breathing and tells me I’m basically having an asthma attack!!
I’ve lived here for over 10-years, been very athletically active for more than 6-years and I’ve never had a problem before. I was in total shock. instead of leaving with a z-pack I left with an inhaler. I felt totally broken. How can you exercise if you can’t breath? The good news is that I feel better than I’ve felt in weeks after using the inhaler and there is always the chance that this was kind of isolated. For all the other athletes out there, how would you feel after getting this news? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?
Week in Review – 9/18/2011
Everything that’s been going on that just doesn’t fit into it’s own post. I’ll use this space to include links to interesting reads, miscellaneous photos, puppy stories, and anything going on that just didn’t fit anywhere else. I might even include some of the more interesting Google searches that brought people to my site.
This Weeks Posts:
Saturday: World War Z by Max Brooks
Saturday: It’s My Birthday
Other Happenings:
Stuff that just didn’t fit anywhere else. AKA, the kitchen-sink section.
Monday we finally got a slight cold front and the temperatures dropped to the upper 60’s at night. I let the dogs out in the morning, in the pitch black, just like always. I had the spots on which gave me a little light. The dogs ran out to their usual spots in the natural areas and I started walking towards them to herd them back inside. I was about 6-feet out from the patio when I saw something under my step. I don’t know how I didn’t step on it or scream my head off when I saw it. Turns out I had somehow stumbled on a baby western dimondback rattlesnake.
My biggest concern was that the dogs would get bit on their way back to the porch to go inside. I walked around the edge of the house and opened up the garage. By the tried to move quickly but also wanted to watch every step. By the time I got back to the back of the house the dogs were at the porch already and were now moving to meet me at the garage. I was so mad at myself for putting them in danger again but they both made it inside safe and sound. I spent the next 5 minutes contemplating whether I should wake up Brian. I’d never killed a snake before and there was no way my first one was going to be in the dark alone. In the end I decided not to wake up Brian because I thought chances were I was over reacting and Brian is no morning person. Over the next two days, we got multiple updates from neighbors about baby snakes being killed by cats. So we spent the rest of the week being very creative with how/when we let the dogs out.
It’s My Birthday
Yesterday was my birthday and also the first day of the music festival craziness we call ACL. I had already put in a ton of hours at work this week so I didn’t feel bad at all about meeting up with Dianna for a morning birthday spin. It was supposed to be just the two of us but she ran into Glenn Kasin and invited him to ride along. He works with the Radio Shack team and so we got some interesting perspective on professional training regiments and also on InterBike, which he had just returned from.It was supposed to be an easy spin but I am not well and, again, found that I couldn’t breath and my heart rate skyrocketed quickly out of range. I made an appointment with the doctor for Monday so I can find out what’s going on.
Since I work very close to the festival grounds, most of my coworkers bailed before 2:00 so they wouldn’t get stuck in traffic. I did the same and had time to take care of the dogs before Brian got home to take me out for my Birthday. We went to The Grove since it’s not near downtown and it has good wine and food. We didn’t do the whole tell-everybody-its-my-birthday thing so desert was just desert and not a birthday cake slice.
World War Z by Max Brooks
This book was chosen by our book club. I was excited because I was expecting something very light and easy to read. This book disappointed in a good way. While the book does center on a zombie plague, the real story is the reaction to the plague. The “crisis†could have been anything and 90% of the book would have held true. The book was smart, thought-provoking, and emotional. It was not at all what I expected.
The first thing that caught my attention is that the whole book is written like a post-apocalyptic documentary. Every chapter is an interview with a short introduction of the interviewee; just like you would read in a magazine. Normally this would be distracting as the reader is not able to connect with any one character. Instead, it adds world-wide prospective and the short nature of the narratives emphasizes the scale and speed of the epidemic. The narratives flow chronologically and often reference people from other interviews.
The book makes you question how a crisis like this would be handled by the world. The use of zombies is actually genius in this way.  There is hardly a crisis out there that doesn’t have some political slant to it. The use of zombies as opens the reader to consider the questions, posed so subtly, without bias.
I’m not sure how Max Brooks managed to cram so many social issues into one book without it feeling overwhelming in the slightest. Through the interviews, he is able to expose the events and the choices that led up to those events. Often, he offers multiple view points on the same issue. Many of the stories are from within the organization which made the decision then from the outside observer. These are not always successive, which further adds to the depth of the overall story. There are the large-scale themes of freedom of information, human selection, and rebuilding civilizations. Woven within these larger issues are painful stories of survival and loss. These were the most gripping.
“I looked behind us and thought I could just make her out, this little spec getting smaller each second. I thought she looked like she was running after us, but I was so tired and confused I couldn’t be sure. I probably just didn’t want to know.â€
“We should have known way before he dropped out of formation, before we heard the shot. He was sitting in the living room, in this worn, old easy chair, SIR between his knees, that smile still on this face. I looked up at the pictures on the mantelpiece. It was his home.”
I spent many nights questioning what choices I would make if the time came. This is not an easy read in that it will stay with you well after you are done reading it. Even the end of the book is very open ended. I will read this book again.
The Power of the Internet
Lately I’ve been completely blown away by the power of the internet, and blogging specifically. When I started blogging, blogs didn’t even exist. Now people make a living off blogging. People are offered opportunities and make connections with people that would not be possible otherwise. Not just one instance, but a ton of them. Check out these examples.
Political Math (AKA Matthias Shapiro or 10000Pennies)
Ever seen this video? It was posted on youTube my Matthias and quickly became viral. The videos got the attention of the news media and Washington. His videos have been linked to from many national news outlets and shown on cable news shows. He now has tons of followers on his visualization blog and twitter accounts. He continues to do experiences on TV and has been eluding to a change coming in his career.
Dooce (AKA Heather Armstrong)
I’m not really sure how this blog got to be so huge. I think one of the things that drew women to it is that Heather wrote about her experience with postpartum depression while she was going through it. Her blog is raw and truthful but Heather is a brilliant writer and also makes you laugh. I have to imagine that many first time mothers connected with her and looked to her for support. She is now often invited to speak at conventions and video blogs regularly on Momversation.
DC Rainmaker (AKA The Boss or Ray)
I stumbled on this blog through a mention in a review on Amazon. As I understand it Ray is a triathlete geek who got into doing really good product reviews on his blog with all of the super geeky details that most of us care about. The reviews started getting mentioned all over Amazon.com as a great place to see really good reviews of cycling/running/fitness type products. As the reviews got more popular, he started to get early releases from companies like Garmin and Polar to do reviews on (and give feedback to them I’m sure). As far as I can tell, Ray still has a “regular” job; whatever that means. I didn’t classify Ray in this “famous blogger” category until I read this post on detailing the plethora of items that were delivered to him as a media reporter at Interbike. Wow! Interbike is huge and this guy is on the radar.