Fun Interesting Informative and Delicious!

My big present to the family was a cooking class we all took together. I set it all up via email, and printed out some info from the web pages and wrapped them up in a box. I also warned everybody a week in advance that I had scheduled a family thing for Friday evening so they should plan around that.

Added this in an update: photo sent by the chef so I'm in it.

I stumbled onto this while searching for a present for the boys, both of whom like to cook a lot. Actually, all three kids like to cook. It was actually hard finding something that either the two boys, or all three kids, could do together. My middle guy is 17, so purely adult classes at most venues don't want him, but he's really too old for the "teen" stuff, and certainly his older brother is as well. Knowing my boy, I thought he would have a lot more fun if he did it with his brother rather than with strangers. So through the magic of google, I found Ben Tehranian, a personal chef, who also teaches classes in his house.

We were all a little awkward at first, but then everything thawed and we started to have a lot of fun. I had picked one of his set menus in advance:

Maryland crab soup
Baby spinach salad with hot bacon sauce
Gulf shrimp with anchovy butter sauce
Duck a la orange served over saffron risotto
Braised celery with Madeira sauce
Pistachio and almond Baklava

He started with going through each of the dishes, and what was involved. (We each got a packet of recipes, which were then set aside until the end.)  But of course, we didn't make one thing at a time - he had set it up with some prep work, but we started with the soup because it would take the longest.  So early on, he gave us each a knife and some vegetables, and had us chopping away.  Good to get the interactions going first.  

We were on our feet for about two and a half hours doing the prep. One of the most fun things was he had us tasting everything along the way. We started with the soup, and as things were added along the way, or time simply did its thing, we tasted again. It allowed us to start to figure out how individual ingredients affected the taste of the whole dish.

He was also focused on presentation.  Some of the ingredients were only for show, for color or texture, and he explained that. He plated one of everything with a good presentation, for the photo op, then we sat down and ate there, family style.

All in all, this was a terrific way to spend time together.

We had left over baklava, which was sloppier than usual baklava.  Nevertheless, the leftovers were all consumed in the car on the way home, using our fingers.  (Yes I did too!)






The summary comes from one of the kids:  Fun, interesting, informative, and delicious!

[Updated to add one more photo at the very beginning: 1/5/13]

Irresolute

I'm thinking about New Year's resolutions. Because who can avoid it at this time of year? It's all over the news and radio. I looked at last year, where I was totally and absolutely focused on learning how to run and completing the epic win:  a 5K. I did that, actually two, but I failed to make it a habit.  I signed up for additional 5Ks as a motivating tool and for a variety of poor reasons did not keep up the running.

I've got bigger problems now. In the continuum of mind-body-spirit, I think its my spirit that needs shoring up this year with some kind of resolution. So I've signed up at 750words.com, which is built on the concept of "Morning Pages". Morning Pages are one of the techniques used in the book The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron. This book saved my life, back in the mid 1990s. It is because of this book I am here, in DC, able to be with my family. It pulled me out of a deep deep funk of despair, and got me off my tush and doing things. It was written out of workshops to help writers and other artists suffering from writer's block. I have never defined myself as an artist, so would never have gotten this book if it hadn't been highly recommended by someone. The book is big on the concept of serendipity, which I remember being explained as more than just coincidence, but the universe pulling together in unexpected harmony. But it doesn't just come to you, you have to get off your duff for it to happen. The practical thought is, if you are out there shaking the apple trees, the universe is likely to shower you with oranges, and its up to you to recognize the gift and use it when it comes. Don't spend time whining about how you didn't get your apples.

So I worked through the exercises in the book, most prominently the morning pages. Write three pages every single morning. Just simple, stream of consciousness. But do it. Three whole pages. Long enough to get into some actual thoughts. I did. I decided I wanted to change my job, and I thought it would be cool to live in the east, close to my family. In the middle of working through these exercises, the internet finally reached my computer at work, and I discovered a job posting in DC, described as if it were designed for me, and reporting to one of the only three people I had met that worked at the agency I'm at now.  This would be serendipity at work.

This "750 words" website is an online way to do morning pages, typing instead of writing longhand. It keeps cool stats on when and what you write, which you regular readers will know I'll like. It's all fun-ified and automated, because its designed as a project of love by a very competent Silicon Valley guy.  I stumbled across the website sometime last year, but wasn't ready to give up handwriting. I browsed to some Quantified Self YouTube videos a couple of days ago, and found Buster explaining some things he has discovered about tracking and monitoring himself and he mentioned this site as being his own. I was ready to make the move, and I've committed to 750 words every single day in the month of January.

But what about diet and exercise?  I'm not sure. I'm thinking about making a goal of a mile every single day - not between the kitchen and dining room, but a mile walk or jog, outside or on the treadmill. I've started experimenting and will decide next week if I'm going to do it.  I'm really trying for the habit.  I'm distressed about my weight, but of the mind-body-spirit continuum, I'm willing to put a bit less emphasis on the body.

For my loyal readers, I have been doing very short entries on my other blog (idea copied from KCF). I've re-titled it, from Credit Log to Quick Log, good and bad. I can make little entries on the fly from the iphone, just to remind myself to pay attention. Probably pretty boring, but there you go. Some element of accountability.

Really Good Food

No apologies. Much of this holiday has been (and will be) focused on food.  I don't cook that much, but enough time off and wanting to spend it at home with the kids has reconnected me with the fun of it. I'm very mindful of the need for vegetables and fruit in addition to the centerpiece of meat. Unusually for us, carrots keep showing up.

Sunday: Carbonnades Flamande. Originally from Julia Child, this is a Belgian not French recipe - beef stew with onions and beer. A good dark Belgian ale is best, and I had an extra bottle for seasoning the cook. Served with rice and good bread to soak up the incredible juice, I also used a lot of carrots in the stew, and asparagus from Chile steamed with balsamic vinegar sprinkled over it.  I poached some seckel pears in a brown sugar sauce while the stew was bubbling and hid them in the fridge for later.

Monday, Christmas Eve: Boneless leg of lamb. (We're a big lamb family, both by preference and default. I minimize my purchase of beef, since I steer away from factory farmed beef and that drives the beef price sky-high. The rest of my family is not so wild for chicken, though ethically raised chickens are much easier to come by and reasonably priced so we eat it pretty often since I usually do the cooking and family dinner prep. Most lamb is from Australia, New Zealand, and Iceland, or else purely local, and I've done enough research to be ok buying it without digging deeper.)  I marinated the leg with bottled French salad dressing (our traditional family lamb recipe), re-rolled it, lined the bottom of the roasting pan with carrots (since I didn't have a rack to keep the meat off the bottom), and roasted it in a hot (400 degree) oven. Simple green beans on the side, and gravy made in the roasting pan with the carrots. I made orzo with a simple olive oil, garlic and lemon juice sauce, since my gravy skills are weak, but as it turns out the gravy was excellent.  My mother brought two types of our traditional cookies: brown sugar with a pecan on top, and almond flavored wreaths with powdered sugar.

Christmas:  This day was pure tradition, which the kids absolutely insisted on when I asked before prepping.  My oldest boy made the Julekage for the second year in a row. He is a very accomplished baker, including baking bread for a hundred people every week for his dining coop at college. Julekage is the traditional Norwegian Christmas food that we actually like (in contrast to the herring which we can pass by easily). It's a sweet yeast bread flavored with cardamom and with dried or candied fruits in it. When I asked my mother a few years ago for the family recipe she offered a couple of index cards with different recipes pasted from magazines, so every year now we just wing it on the proportions. We also had make-ahead sausage,egg and cheese casserole after the presents were opened. Then it was off to naps and to read our new books, play with our new toys, until time to stuff ourselves again.  Dinner was our traditional beef rib roast, with onions, potatoes and carrots roasted with it. I made roasted brussels sprouts with a sweet balsamic and cranberry reduction sauce served on the side (from Pioneer Woman). I made gravy, but there was not a lot of meat juice to base it on, (I supplemented with a bit of beef broth) and it was way too salty.  We had the poached pears and cookies for dessert.

My big present is an ice cream maker, something I have wanted for years. The containers had to be frozen overnight, and the ingredients also have to rest in the fridge after being mixed. I've got them ready now, so that will be some of the adventure today.  Aside from that, it's leftovers and salads from here on out!

Except for Friday... My big present to the family is we are going for a group cooking lesson!  All of the family likes to cook, and I came across a local chef who gives small cooking classes in his home. I'm pretty excited about it and the kids seem into it. I'll report back on how it goes.

Ruthless Pruning - The Drawers

I'm back to sorting through all of the clothes in my room. I decided, fairly arbitrarily, I should only own the amount of clothes that actually fit in my room. I live in a small house, but I live alone, and I could just have clothes stashed all over the place. In fact, that is what has happened to me. But it doesn't result in a more diverse set of clothes I wear.  I just keep wearing the same things that are in my room and accessible. I totally forget I've got stuff in the guest room closet or down in the basement. So I've got to get it all together, and keep them all in one place, and limit myself to things I will actually wear regularly.

I've just had a new closet built and used that as an opportunity to review, consolidate, and prune all my hanging clothes, which are 99% for work. I got rid of a bunch of stuff, even if it fit, based on whether I would ever wear it. I broke my ruthless rule for dresses - I found several in the depths of my old closet that I would like to wear (next summer) and they all fit nicely in my new hanging space, so they stay for at least the next year.

Now I'm finishing up with stuff I don't hang. One of the results of the closet construction is that I have more and accessible storage at the top of it. I will still have to rotate summer and winter clothes between the convenient drawers and the boxes at the top of the closet.  I'm trying to figure out how to do that more easily in the future. I acquired clear plastic boxes from the container store, of sizes that fit into this new space, and that's where my summer stuff - shorts and tops - is going now.

I found my dresser drawers stuffed with things that aren't clothes. Toiletry and personal care items for travel in zipped nylon packages - multiples of them.These went into plastic boxes under the bed, to be dealt with before my next trip. Old pairs of eyeglasses, which I will rarely reach for when it fits meets my mood. Those went into a plastic box in the new closet, within reach. Band-aids and other, bulkier, first aid items. I put those into a clear box very accessible (and portable) in the new closet and noted what needs to be added to make it more useful. Scarves. I actually own some. I would like to wear them more often, but I do only once a month or less. There are hanging solutions, so I'll see them and thus give them a try. Jewelry. I wear a necklace and a pin pretty much every day, earrings and bracelets rarely. I dedicated a big drawer in the big dresser to the jewelry, with the idea if it was better organized I would wear the right thing more often. Right now its all jumbled together in the boxes in the front of the drawer, not laid out nicely in the little trays in the back as I planned. They migrated over time, and need to be sorted and restored to their individual places. I'm not settled on a plan for keeping that going yet.

How many socks should a girl own? I've got thin dress crew socks for work, other pretty-colored cotton socks for not-work in the summer, white hi-tech gym socks for gym and running, thick wool socks for the winter when not at work, acrylic hiking socks for, well, hiking! Here's part of my problem, not just for socks:  how many different multiple sets of clothes, for my many different roles, should I own?  I usually wear at least three different things a day: work clothes, after-work clothes, and sleep clothes. Plus gym clothes, at least twice a week. On weekends, chore clothes (sub-divided into gardening, cleaning, boating, running at least) and social clothes. I'm washing the sweat shirt I wore when I painted the closet. It's now got paint on it, and I know I'll be painting again, though maybe not for months. So I should keep a set of painting clothes, right?  Where?  Will I remember and be able to find them again when next I paint?  It might be on the boat, not here, so keeping them with my paint cans may not be the brilliant solution I first thought.

This is also tied to how often should I do laundry?  Or more practically, how often will I do laundry?  I still spend most of my evenings and much of my weekends over with the kids and my brother-in-law. I want to  own enough of each type that I'll have something clean to reach for between laundry bouts.

As all my clothes are laid out and organized, some things are obvious. I just discovered I have five pairs of jeans that fit, in varying thicknesses of denim and shades of blue. That's at least three pair too many, as I've got other slacks I wear on weekends that aren't jeans (think hiking / cargo aesthetics - look at Sahalie to see the type). So do I dispose of three pair, or do I find a way to squeeze them into the top of the closet for when the others wear out?  Which might be twenty years from now?  I will not store them not in my room, where they will be forgotten yet again.

All good questions, to be figured out as I go along. At least I've convinced myself I won't need to buy anything for a while.  I'll probably need to stick to the regimen of disposing of something every time I want to buy something new just because I like it, or else this will just get out of control all over again.  Right now, I've got a box in the guest room where I'm putting all the stuff to donate. I might want to keep a box in there after I get rid of this tranch, so I can keep pruning as I go.

It feels self-indulgent, to think so much about my clothes and how they make me look. This was not something my family encouraged when I was growing up, and the high school vibe was all natural, baby, no fashion or artifice. But this organizing also appeals to the engineer in me - lets get this figured out, laid out, organized and efficient!

Small things in the tool box

I keep losing the same pound over and over. I bounce up a pound or two, then bounce back down. MyFitnessPal, the weight and calorie tracker I'm using, proudly announces to the world, "Nan has lost 1.2 pounds since her last weigh-in and 0 pounds so far!" Then it falls silent for those days it is bouncing back up.

But I keep plugging away. There is no magic bullet. Just a series of small choices over and over again.

I've added a new trick to the toolbox, over the last couple of unseasonably warm weeks. On several mornings when I haven't had early gym appointments, I've kept the alarm at the same 5 am time and head in to work early. As I drive in the sun rises, and as a bonus the time enroute is nearly 10 minutes less. When I get to the garage (in the basement of my building), I leave everything in the car and head out for a walk. I work on the National Mall, a place tourists come from all over the world to see. I have my choice of looping towards the Capitol or the Washington Monument. Just a half hour or so, but it does so much for my spirits. Most people out are runners, and I long to join them but I'm in my work clothes. It helps absorb some of the continuing stress in the office, to get the fresh air. I don't so this every opportunity I have but sometimes.

A few evenings I've walked on the treadmill while watching tv on my iPad. Once I walked in the morning while reading the paper, but I like outside just after dawn better.

Tonight I pulled an older tool from the box and walked between my house and the kids. Crisp and clear and better than nothing.

Food has been good this week. I've found a new dedication to trying to make decent dinners for the family. I'm wanting to have them eat the way I want to eat, rather than my cooking what I think they want to eat. More vegetables. Less rice pasta or potatoes. Cauliflower braised in beef broth instead of mashed potatoes. That's another old trick pulled out for the occasion. Actual cooking, not just hearing something up.

An apple every day before dinner. Keeps the portions down and resists the kids junk food lying about. I brushed my teeth early tonight to make sure I was done with the snacks.

Small tricks. Keep plugging away.

- iPhone uPdate

Reckless Abandon

Tracking my eating in detail is useful; being brutally honest about what I've consumed is essential. But it can't stop me from consciously choosing to eat destructively.

It happened again last night. What am I thinking when I do this? My recollection is feeling reckless, almost giddy, the way I imagine an alcoholic must feel. I want this, I deserve this, no, rationally I know I don't deserve it, I just want it and I don't care. I am going to eat this because I want it and I shouldn't have it. I am just going to press the accelerator to the floor, head for the cliff and not worry about what comes next. I am choosing to subvert my future. It's why I do it. I don't want to be careful. I want to close my eyes and jump.

Yikes! I suppose I should be glad my self destructive urges happen in thousand-calorie gobblings of minimally harmful substances, rather than something more drastic with actual severe long term consequences.  But it sure would be nice if my need to fling myself overboard manifested itself in running till I dropped instead. It is the same mindless suppression of self I'm aiming for.

What can I do when I get like this? I could try to get physical - put the dog on the leash and head outside (not likely in the cold and dark) or go to the treadmill in the basement. I could turn on really loud music and dance (if only I could dance). I could just go to bed. When wound up like last night, though, I'm less likely to go under as soon as my head hits the pillow.  Maybe I could try writing, try to capture what I'm feeling and probe beneath the urge.

I'm not sure any of these approaches are viable, since almost by definition when I do this I am physically fatigued and emotionally drained, with very little reserves left. My reading on willpower indicates a tough week has used up physical reserves and low blood sugar makes it even harder to make rational choices - my body knows it needs sugar to be mentally and emotionally sound again. That would help explain my self-destructive weapon of choice.

It doesn't take a thousand calories to restore those reserves, but once I began eating last night, putting on the brakes seemed unimaginable. I put my food in a bowl in a feeble if valiant attempt to slow the onslaught, but four times I went back and re-filled the bowl. I remember even thinking, "I don't really want this but I'm going to do it" as I walked to the kitchen, filled with wicked glee (not full enough, apparently) and appalled at myself at the same time. I did stop before the bag was empty, unusually, realizing eating more would likely make me actually sick.

This morning, the magic food logging app on the iphone took a shot of the bar code and I added up the damages. The sight of more than a thousand calories shocked me - if asked, I would have estimated half that, though I didn't even look last night. So that's another technique I could try - log it before I start, so as the refills add up I've got the actual data starkly in front of myself.  This magic app every day estimates the impact of a day like I just finished on my future weight - if every day were like yesterday, in five weeks I would weight 10 pounds more than I did yesterday. Oh my.

Closet Makeover Part 2: The Reaping

I thought I had been through all of my clothes last year, but actually I got pretty tired before I got to the back of the closet, and there was a bunch of stuff I just hung onto for no particular reason. Plus, there was stuff in the guest room closet I had totally forgotten about.  Now, I've been quite rigorous on the hanging clothes for my spanking new closet.

My hanging clothes are for work and the rare festive event. (My play clothes are folded in drawers.) What I wear to work each day is tailored pants, a knit top, and a blazer or sweater. Sometimes a men's style shirt. I wear a necklace every day or (rarely) a scarf, and a lapel pin on the blazer. I swore off heels more than a decade ago, though I left a pair of pumps in my desk in case I ever got to meet the president. Then I did actually meet the president, and I didn't wear the pumps, so that is that for heels forever for me. In summer, women in DC do not wear hose, and this summer especially I wore dresses with bare legs fairly often, with sandals when my toes are painted and ballets when not.  Now I have a pair of boots so I can continue to wear the longer dresses without needing hose. I do, however, wear "shapewear" under my dress.

I find I make the same fashion mistakes over and over.  I have bought not one, not two, no, even more, FIVE long cardigan sweater/jackets. The ones that hang down to mid-thigh.  It turns out, they make me look like a huge knit pear, totally accentuating my hips and rear end.  So I wear the sweater once, am uncomfortable whenever I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I put it in the back of the closet, and forget I have it. They look so good in the catalogs!  But I think I've finally learned my lesson. I've put all of them in the box to give away.

When I find something I like at a nice price, I go to town on it. I've got a dozen silk knit tops from Jones NY, mostly in shades of taupe, grey and black. They come back from the dry cleaner on hangers, but I'm going to put them folded on a shelf or in a drawer, now, I think. The better to see them each day. I am out of the dry cleaner habit, and I've also got an extensive collection of cotton tees. But frankly, the cotton ones are old, they really ought to be ironed but I don't iron them, so I think I may try to wear the silk ones more often, as an alternative to buying a bunch of new cotton ones, which would still need ironing. When I get to organizing the drawers I should just dispose of the older tees.  (I did get rid of a bunch of them in last year's purge, but that was a while ago now and they are looking more worn all the time.)

I used to wear a cotton men's style shirt most days. I had them laundered (light starch, hangers) and liked the way they looked. Now, going through them, they seem huge. Not that I've gotten smaller, but current styles are more form fitting. I think most of my clothes are timeless classics, and yet there is that indefinable air of the width of the collar, the shaping of darts, that make things out of date. I've kept a couple of the old, big, shirts to wear as over-shirts for more casual events - no starch, but ironed. My new shirts are more slim-fitting, and are truly wrinkle-free from the dryer (as long as I hang them while still warm).

Blazers and pants get into winter and summer issues. When I assembled my trousers, I had twenty pair of wool slacks! Some of them are a decade or more old - from previous times I've been near this weight. After trying them all on, it was only down to 15 pair. With the couple of pounds I've added back, some that I thought would be big are somewhat more comfortable than a couple of pair that are very slightly too tight. I'm keeping the small ones, but I put them in the back. It's still more pants than I need, but I can't quite make myself get rid of any more, at least not yet. When I sorted by color, I have a bunch of very dark navy (I had to take them outside to natural light to be sure and I wrote on their labels with a laundry marker), a bunch of grey and tweed, but no pair of actual black pants (the only black ones I have are polyester summer weight). The problem is I have six good quality blazers that work with black, and only one of them will work with navy (all but one will work with grey). I've also got some browns in the pants, and couple of blazers that work with them, one a tweedy brown and one sage green. I've got several fancy sweaters with sage green in them that also work with the earth toned pants.

I don't wear skirts, but I have more than half dozen of them, from probably a decade ago. They are all fairly similar -lots of navy, mostly rayon - and they would work well in the summer. But how many skirts looking very similar do I need? Not that many.  Especially not when I wore none last summer.

So basically, I own too many clothes but not all the right ones. How could I possibly buy another pair of wool trousers, just so I have a black pair? How can I go buy a blue-toned blazer when I've got more than enough jackets in the closet already?  Now that I've got all this stuff assembled, sorted, and out where I can see it, I think I should work with it for a while before making any more moves. No buying (yay, my wallet) and no more getting rid of something that fits, not until I've tried wearing it first.

Plus, I might lose those 15 pounds and need all new pants! (It could happen.)

Closet Makeover

I've just had a closet makeover - literally.  Not the clothes in the closet, but the closet itself.

Before

My house was built in 1950.  It's actually really modern for a house built then - there are definite Frank Lloyd Wright influences in the pitch of the roof, the size and placement of the windows, and the open plan with a tiny cramped kitchen.

So no surprise the closet was a single 80" long rod (with very big, if somewhat inconvenient, storage above).  So last weekend I moved everything out, and just now, got convenient stuff installed.

Demo

First came the demo - I had to pull out the shelf and doors. In addition to pulling off the folding doors on the closet, and the sliding doors on the shelf, I took off the door to my bedroom because when it's open, it blocks the closet.  (A peculiar "modern" touch of my house is the trim around the interior doors is not woodwork, but one piece of molded metal. It has the hinge for the door melded in. so I can't switch which side the door opens on. It's a complete rectangle so to take it out completely requires ripping up the hardwood floor.  Either of those is beyond the scope of this quickie project.) Demo is fun, but hard work.  It took some hours with a hammer and saw, but was very satisfying.

Prep

On Sunday, we painted. We did such a nice job the closet installers came in, took one look, and called up the office to say they had time to fit in another job because this one would be so quick.

Ready

So now I have this great space, and I need to decide how to organize things, and what to put in there.  I've also bought a new small Ikea dresser, and pretty much the rest of the weekend will be spent going through all my clothes and deciding what to keep.

When I emptied the closet, I tossed it all into the guest room, and hung a few things in the closet there. I knew I already had a couple of things hanging there, things I hadn't decided to get rid of but knew I wasn't likely to wear.  It turns out it was a lot more than a couple of things. I went through some of it during the original emptying out, and filled one big box of things to give away.  But I don't want to hang up anything in my new closet I won't want to wear, and so this will be a slow process. It might also require a trip to The Container Store (I love The Container Store!) to get some good looking boxes to put things in.

Ready to fill

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to put doors on this closet, but I'm torn on the door to my room. I live alone, and normally sleep with it open. But I do have guests, so there is a need for privacy.  I'm contemplating a nice Roman blind that can be lowered down from inside the room.  I may also want sliding fabric panels to be able to hide the closet contents, but I'm less sure about that.

The best answer for a tiny house like mine is pocket doors, but the wall I'd want to pierce for the pocket door is load bearing. To put a sliding over-the-wall door would still involve complications - when open, a sliding door would cover the thermostat and two light switches. This is all fixable, but like changing my door jam it scales the project up from a few hours and a few hundred dollars into skilled renovation work.

This is stuff that is fun, and easy to think about when on the treadmill or otherwise engaged.

Off to shop at my funky local small businesses!

Walking

Twice this week instead of flopping on the couch to read the paper first thing in the morning, instead I went down and walked on the treadmill while reading the paper.  I went all digital on the NY Times and it's easy to prop my iPad on my treadmill.  Selecting articles and flipping the pages while walking is do-able, though I don't think it would work while running.

I had a couple of medical appointments this week and the empahsis on exercise was notable. Not just for my body, but for my mind, and for stress.  So I'm trying to find the gumption to get back into running. This walking is just the first step, and better than nothing.  "Better than nothing" is my new mantra.

Sadly, my knees hurt badly. I hurt the left one on the ladder cleaning my gutters before the hurricane - a sudden snap and I couldn't bend it for a couple of days. With the enforced inactivity it was fine three days later, but now that pain is back, layered with arthritic pain in both knees.  This morning's gentle walk (half an hour at 3.2 miles per hour) was fine so far. But it's a potential obstacle to running.


One of the articles in the Times this morning says about exercise "more intense for shorter is better". They were discussing longevity specifically, but subjectively, I tend to agree for my immediate benefits. I want to get the heart rate up and get me some endorphins.

But something is better than nothing. And I can feel the blood moving faster than the couch alone would have done.

Food Truck Frenzy

So I went out to walk between our two buildings at lunch time, and had to deal with this. For fifteen years we bemoaned the lack of restaurants within a half mile of the office. And I wonder why my jeans are tight.  But I walked right past, and got a plain salad from the salad bar in my building.

Halal Grill has a nice lamb kebab over salad - the ONLY salad among these trucks - and the biggest line, not coincidentally.

Food Truck Heaven

Baked Empanadas

Cuban Food

More Kebabs

Pizza - not tempting

More Empanadas

The BEST Mexican food?  With no line? The lines definitely reflect  quality.

Grilled Cheese if you need some comfort

Felafal

Subs

Chef Driven is eclectic asian fusian, usually

No clue what Goode serves

Crepes

Korean

This is new - and very very tempting to me

PHO

The pie truck

Yikes!

I pulled out last year's jeans to put on--and they were tight!!!!! Time to buckle down.

Here is the recent trend, since May. Faintly seen is each actual weight, more easily seen is the trend and range. Not sure what I'm going to do, but let's fully acknowledge the problem.




- iPhone uPdate

Storm Surge

I aspire to be competent and self sufficient, to be the one who is in a position to help others who need it. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but after disasters and catastrophic events, I get motivated to further equip myself and prepare for the next event.  I start by ensuring I am prepared, and then think about how to support others.

I lived 25 years in the upper midwest, where it snowed and got very cold (-27F!) and we had thunderstorms and drought. I think the power was off for maybe 25 minutes total during all that time, and never ever was there an excused absence from work. I have always been a camper and sailor so I had some basics like a warm sleeping bag and tent, and thought that's all we needed. But it changed when I moved to DC in the mid-1990s.

I started taking preparation seriously in all the hype about Y2K back at the turn of the millenium. I actually learned about the basic computer programming problem way back in the 1980's (as did everyone else who had anything to do with mainframe operational computers), but no-one did anything about it until time was running out. Then, there was a lot of hype in the media for the general public, but I had a bit of a peek behind the scenes. Working at a government agency that provides safety oversight for complex industries, it was a major focus at work. Contrary to some press reports, it was unlikely the laws of physics would be repealed and airplanes would suddenly plunge out of the sky as the clock ticked over, but there were potentially serious issues of communications and data processing. Supposedly everything was done but how well can you debug the complex interactions of real-life massive systems? So that year, my Christmas presents to the family were a Coleman camping stove (with 3 weeks worth of propane), sleeping bags and other camping equipment. The rest of the family didn't take it seriously, and so I filled my basement with big water jugs and some shelf stable foods, and was comforted to know there was a plan. As it turns out, of course, unless you were playing the slots in Delaware, there was no issue.

In my first three years in this leafy older suburb, the water main broke three times and the power was off for hours every time the wind blew. So definitely, there was a need for some level of preparedness. I started collecting candle lanterns, using them as decorations, but stockpiling lots of candles in the basement. I got a windup radio as my premium for the public radio fund drive.

And then September 11th came.

The hysteria in DC lasted for more than a year. We were a target, and the pressure and reminders were constant. There were the anthrax incidents and we all got trained on how to open our irradiated mail. At a Christmas party that year I met someone who had been rushed out of the Capitol when Senator Daschle's contaminated mail was found, without her purse or keys, not allowed back in for eight months.  Some tiny little 2-seater planes violated the no-fly zone over downtown DC, and congressional staff ran screaming into the streets. I was aware of the plans for relocating to an undisclosed location in the event of more attacks and participated in drills and exercises for various scenarios.

In this atmosphere I made sure I had my canned goods and water ready. I made evacuation plans - a close friend of mine lives over the first mountain west, and I made sure the whole family knew the address and phone number. I bought a motorcycle at least partly to make sure I would be mobile in the face of gridlock.

Isabel struck in September 2003, on a Thursday. We were more than a week without power then. But we had twelve hours of daylight, very comfortable temperatures, and the office was open every day from the following Monday, so there was power for charging. Gasoline was not an issue. The supermarket opened and food was available, though ice was mostly not available, and we through away a lot of food. Except for that, truly, it was no more than inconvenient.

Never-the-less it did spur me to enhance our readiness. Compact florescent lighting had come along, and I added some battery operated lanterns.  I added another radio with rechargeable power. The lanterns and radio were also useful on the boat. Batteries were stockpiled to make them available. I rotated and kept current the water jugs in the basement, and kept a couple of cases of water bottles current, taking older ones up to the boat where they would be drunk quickly. Portable 12-volt batteries became widely available. These are batteries you plug into the wall to charge, and they can be used for starting your car. But they also have plugs right on them - 12 volt round cigarette lighter type, and some have built in inverters to take house plugs (for low power things only). I got one for my house, and one for my brother-in-law (who is often involved in jumping cars.)

The winter of 2009-2010 was very very snowy. We didn't lose power in either big snowstorm (December and February) now remembered as Snowmegeddon, but life was extremely disrupted and we couldn't drive. We were forced to rely on the supplies in the house for a few days, and we did just fine. We have a good collection of hats and mittens, I had just bought new long johns, and I dug up snow pants for the kids. They had adequate jackets, but snow boots were lacking for them. I wrote about how the storm made me want to eat blubber here.  Going to the store before the storm showed empty shelves, emphasizing again how important it was to keep some stuff in the house. The big improvement I vowed to add to the preparedness category after struggling through four foot drifts to get from my house to the rest of the family a half mile away was snow shoes.  Again, not just an emergency item - something to use for fun - but makes me feel good to have another option for mobility.

Then in January 2011 we lost power for several days, after an ice storm. It was cold.  I wrote about it here.  I was extremely unhappy about being so cold, though again I went to work every day and charged things and got warm. Stores and restaurants opened quickly. But before fall came again I added a wood heater to the house. In essence, its an airtight wood-stove that sits inside the existing fireplace box, and sends the heat from the wood into the house instead of up the chimney.  With glass doors to watch the dancing flames, it is at least as charming as ever was the actual open fireplace. It supposedly would heat the whole house. Wouldn't you know it - last winter was the one that never came, and I only used it a few times, and never really tested it out.

We were hot and miserable after this summer's derecho, out of power from Friday through Wednesday in 100 degree weather. But again, while this was massive, the outages were local, and near-by stores and work and restaurants were open as refuges from the heat and for charging. I fired up the propane stove in the back yard for making my morning coffee, but didn't really try to do any other cooking. But cell-phone power management was an issue. But, cell phone communications were always available, which gives me the internet. My brother-in-law had a hole in his roof from a branch, but we didn't discover it until a rain storm later on when water dripped through into a bedroom. Off to the hardware store for a tarp to make our own quick temporary repair. Now he has a brand-new roof and gutters, thanks to his insurance.

I began to think about what it would mean to have some kind of a wider spread disruption, one caused  by something other than downed wires.  I invested in a rechargeable power brick, one that could not only recharge an iphone several times, but also had enough current to recharge the more-demanding ipad. I also bought a camper's solar panel, which can charge some very low power electronics directly, or it can recharge AA batteries which then can re-charge an iphone. My immediate reason for investing in both these items was to use them on a voyage on my boat planned for October, which had to be aborted for non-weather reasons.

Storm supplies - heavy on the sugar!

For Sandy last week I brought in wood to keep it dry, and stocked up several days in advance with water and shelf stable food and started eating up what was in the freezer. I made sure everything that could be charged was charged, including the battery on the Vespa to increase my mobility. I did an ATM for extra cash. Because I just ran out of gumption, I didn't top off the car's gas tank. I kept the phone and ipad on the chargers so they would start out full when the power went off. I talked to my neighbor late Sunday - he acquired a not-quite-whole-house generator (involves flipping many circuit breakers) and was ready to offer assistance if it was necessary. I assured him I was set for the time being - in fact, I had a basement full of candles in case we had a breakdown in the market economy and we needed to move to barter. But of course, the lights hardly even flickered. Which is good, because the water did come through the walls of the basement, and I have an electric pump and a shopvac that helped me keep damage at bay.

As I read about the wide spread devastation, I am spurred to be even more prepared. Total devastation - from fire or other source - that means moving out - is so scary to me I'm not going to focus on that now. Instead I'll think about a longer term disruption where we hunker down.

Shelter first. I need a lot more firewood - what I have would only last a few days. I should have a couple of week's worth to feel secure. I'm also going to buy a couple of blue tarps in different sizes to keep in the basement - I've got a hammer and roofing nails - they just seem like they could be handy for roofs and for other things.

Food. What kinds of food supplies are best? I try to buy stuff I would actually use, so I can keep rotating stock. I like milk boxes, but their shelf life is less than a year, so I got powdered milk. I have broth (good for a couple of years) and plain pasta a-plenty, as well as white rice (the brown stuff goes rancid in weeks). I'm thinking dried tortellini could be useful. Tuna cans for sure. Spam? Surely not. That cold cereal is good for at least a couple of years. Water I've got covered, though maybe not enough for very long.  (On the other hand, I have a ceramic water filter in my camping kit, and there is a (very urban and nasty) stream just a few yards away.)

Transport.  Top off the tank in the car and Vespa, for sure, and make sure the temperamental Italian machine is charged and working.  But I'm thinking bicycle. I have one, don't ride it, I ought to make sure it has air in the tires and works.

Communication. Cellphones, check. But what happens if they don't work? Cellphone coverage in the devastated areas is definitely an issue. Remember family radios?  They were all the rage a decade or so ago. I'm thinking acquiring at least a pair of radios with a range of a couple of miles would be useful. I've got a hand-held marine radio, (and an aviation one, for that matter) but I could see use for the family radios on the boat or other trips, so they are now on my list. They seem cheaper and more practical than a satellite phone.

BTW, I got the idea for the radios from this article which came my way via Boing-Boing.

Obviously, my focus is on my family in all this. But I was inspired recently by a Ted Talk, for a way to get organized, to use social media like twitter and facebook, to provide actual specific and useful information after disaster strikes. The website is here. This would be right up my alley - this is what I did after September 11 at work (organize things) this is what I did after my sister died (organize things) and I could see myself doing this on a wider scale if it were necessary.

Places of Power

A seriously bad day in a seriously bad season... and the busyness in my head needed to be calmed.

I am not religious, but I believe there are benefits to the outward forms of ritual, retreat, and reflection. So I went off the air and did what I needed to do to get centered and calm. There is no grave for my sister, and so when I need to commune with her, I need to go to a still place in my mind where I can sense her quiet presence. Too jangled to sit and meditate, what I need is outdoor exercise. And I need to write.

I have places I go to do this, and they are my places of power. One of my favorites is Great Falls National Park, just 20 minutes from my house. So there I was, on this grey, raw morning, as it spit rain from time to time.  I fled my life and all its complications, needing to just be for a while.

I needed to walk and walk and walk. No facebook, no email, no tunes. Just me and my feet. And the camera.  My thoughts flitted from bad things at work, to the still raw loss of Mary, to current teen angst. Three hours of walking, along the C&O towpath, never far from the roaring hurricane-swollen Potomac. Gradually, the stress in my body and mind began to wear away, as I tired myself out.

I am never away from my camera, and it helps focus me.  Truly, puns aside. I am not seeking the pictures as I walk, but when they find me, I lose myself in the process. Compose, adjust the exposure, recompose, move two steps to the left, change the aperture, hold the camera tilted up, go for a different shutter speed... My camera is a pocket camera easily fitting in one hand, but with total manual control, and I lose myself in it. On my way back, the path over the rapids to overlook the falls themselves had been opened up, and I was totally awestruck. The flow was there, at the end of the walk, as I struggled to capture the force and power of the falls with a still camera. I was finally taken completely out of myself, and was just in that moment.

I picked this place today because it is also connected to Mary.  This is one of her favorite family photos, taken on a great hot summer day in this park.You can't tell, but Mary is pregnant with Clara here (so she is actually in this picture, too!)

I've been here to mourn Mary before as well - this was taken on her birthday in February 2010.

Once I got back to the car, I wrote quite a while, talking things through with her. I was much better equipped to have what was a really crucial conversation about college with my our boy afterwards. It really was all about him, and not about me any more.

And I tracked, too.

Storm Siege

I woke bored and hungry, not a good combination for what's going to be at least 36 hours housebound. I'm starting out trying to counter the boredom with taste.



This is a morning antipasto. Shelf stable hard salami, part of my storm supplies, grape tomatoes, and white Stilton with apricots.

I've been racing to get ready for three days, and now all I can do is wait. I'm about to lose myself in a book for a couple of hours, with the thought I'll probably still have power through today so I can cook meat from the freezer later.

I may try to update during the day. Blog question: if I periodically update in the same post, do the updates go at the top or bottom?

IPhone uPdate

Cook-free day

Yesterday was awfully busy, I was on the go from 6 am. I have set things up to make food convenient without being too terrible. I managed to deal with only feeding myself- not the family- and everything was prepared.




This is MyFitnessPal for yesterday. I got a hit on every barcode- and 100% of yesterday's food was barcoded.

Maybe a fuller review of MFP at another time but a couple of quick impressions: estimating food made from scratch is made more difficult by the very large database because the numbers vary a lot. Also, I think it may be giving me too much credit for the activity transferred from my Bodymedia armband. But MFP sure gets all Trader Joe's codes, most of which Weight Watcher's does not have.

iPhone uPdate

Resolutions, Plans and Strategies

Just a quick update, to fill in status on a few things.

I made a resolution to leave my building at least once a day during the week day, back when school started in September.  I'm doing that pretty well. I've been conscious of only two days when I chose to stay inside to eat my brown bag lunch and just work. My side of the National Mall has many fewer restaurants than the other, including much sparser pickings for sandwich and salad lunch spots.  That has been remedied by food truck heaven. It turns out my corner is the largest concentration of the new food trucks in the city most days.  We get a solid dozen different choices each day.  Net effect on me? I walk less and eat worse. Food trucks have sandwiches, curries and kebabs and stir fries over rice, and cup cakes and frozen yogurt. Sometimes tacos. Almost no-one offers a salad.  Yesterday's butter chicken (with spinach and cauliflower sides) was not the best I'd ever had, but it was darn good and spicy enough I needed the rice.

Running?  Not so much. I tried to motivate myself by signing up for more races, but I went through a spate of feeling truly lousy and feeble. I even tried to run, and just couldn't do it. Maybe it was a mild virus, because the worst has passed and my energy is a bit up and I really want to do it. But the pace at work right now does not permit getting in any extra exercise. So the Dead Man's Run I signed up for? I went to Historic Congressional Cemetery and picked up my t shirt, and walked around a bit, and called it a night.  Very cool T though - I'll be wearing it on Halloween. Perhaps I'll try to shuffle around the block on Sunday.

Snacking at night? Well, after just a few days, I've got a good record. But it may not really count - I leave the kids house each night (earlier than usual this week because I've brought work home every night), brush my teeth and that's that. But it doesn't count because before tonight, there weren't actually any snacks in my house. At least no chocolate ones. But I stopped at Trader Joe's to stock up before the storm, and a significant amount of my favorite junk food found its way into my cart and my house. (All shelf-stable of course, for when the power goes out.) So at this minute, the only thing keeping me from noshing is my minty-fresh breath. So based on a small sample, this strategy is working. I put everything away, out of sight, and none of it is opened.  I know from my reading on willpower, that it definitely saps your reserves to have to see something reminding you, and each time quell the impulse to reach for it. Hopefully, I won't hear it calling me from inside the cupboard.  (Which maybe begs the question, why did I buy it if I don't want to eat it? I'm not sure I'm up to exploring that question at this moment.)

And another new strategy - track and get social! I am currently using MyFitnessPal to track, and I've connected with a couple of friends (hoping to connect with more! let me know if you are in) and I'm liking it. It has a good database, a pretty good interface, it syncs between my iphone, ipad and computer, and it even sucks in my data from my little armband calorie-expenditure device.

Enough for now. I'm up at five to go move my boat before the hurricane gets here.

Night Cravings

I've got a real issue with night cravings. I can be very conscious and eat my vegetables and fruit all day, but my evenings end up home alone, and I snack. Sometimes a snack a lot.  By a lot, I mean I might eat popcorn, followed by a bowl of cereal, followed by a few or more than a few of my favorite Dove Dark Promises.  This much is unusual, luckily, but it happened.  And every single night, there are these kinds of incidents.  The munchies just consume me. If it was a bad day, I'll even eat until its uncomfortable, and get off the couch to search the kitchen for more.

Reviewing various food logs over the past few months makes it clear - this is the danger zone. This is the behavior I need to target.  The other big danger zone is late afternoon at work. I'm more successful at not eating too much then, only because the options are very bad.  But I get restless and want to have something in my mouth. I have been known to visit the vending machines. Pretzels and oreos and chocolate chip cookies, and even fritos, have been known to emerge.

I'm trying to target this behavior and change it for both time zones.  I'm very aware of both, but my strategies will be different.  For work, I should have fancy waters and fruit.  Apples can be my savior there. Maybe even carrots. Something that will enter my mouth and let me know I'm eating something.

But evenings, I think I have to just say no. During the Big Loss fifteen years ago, I was on an eating plan that had a wacky idea - the evening meal could involve any food I wanted, in any quantity I wanted, but it all had to be consumed in one hour. After that, nothing for the rest of the day. This was the original Carbohydrate Addict's diet, and it was based on some fairly dubious theories on managing insulin. The idea was carbs cause you to release insulin, which makes you want more carbs. But there mentioned a second release of insulin if you keep eating for a long time, and that was more damaging. I haven't seen anyone else in the diet world ever think there was anything valid about the one-hour time limit.

On this diet, there was no snacking at all.  And they said it was better to skip breakfast than to eat the wrong foods for breakfast. Starches were restricted to dinner only. Breakfast and lunch needed to be protein focused - small amounts of vegetables but very little fruit was allowed. Dinner was to be divided into thirds - protein, vegetables, and starch (including dessert). You could eat as much as you wanted, but you had to match your carb intake with equal sized portions of meat and veggies and finish in an hour. Fat?  Not an issue.  It just came along for the ride with the meat and vegetables. So a typical day for me could include eggs and bacon for breakfast, chicken caesar salad for lunch (no croutons and dressing checked for carb count), and steak and broccoli with sour cream and parmesan for dinner, with a brownie or cookies for dessert.  Then, the kitchen was shut down.

Even if the insulin release theory is hooey, the fact is I was able to stick to this diet for eighteen months and I lost (peak to valley, even if only for one day on each end) 50 pounds. I went about a year with no plateau, just a steady loss. And today I'm still 35 pounds below that peak.

So I think closing the kitchen is the thing. I should go brush my teeth right after dinner and not allow anything else to pass my lips.  Except for my take-before-bed cholesterol medicine, of course, which will involve a high-risk trip into the kitchen.  I'm going to give this a try for a few days and see how it goes.

I have intermittently been reading The Power of Habit, which I wrote about here.  I have a bad habit in the evenings, and I need to break the habit.  What the book says, is that you cannot actually break a habit.  But you can overlay an old habit with a new habit.  I need a new cue, response, reward cycle to replace the "come home, flop on couch with snack (which is its own reward)" cycle. Come home, brush teeth, and flop on couch to .... watch Dr. Who (my latest streaming video vice)?  Shop on internet? Need to get a reward built into this. Maybe tally my calories and rejoice they are so low, using my fun gadgets.

Hmmm....

Stuck

I've been stuck forever. Maybe I should call it maintenance.

This graph shows 2011 and 2012. The center is 150 pounds, and the red lines show the band from 148 to 152.  I hit 152 pounds on the way down on January 11, 2011, and 150 on February 5. Since then, my body has really settled in at that weight.

First, the perspective. I started this blog, and this weight loss cycle, in January 2010.  My peak was TWENTY-EIGHT POUNDS higher than the 150 plateau. Look at this:

So this is the good news, and it is really good news.  The weight I've been for the past two years is less than the weight I was for a good part of the last twenty-nine years I've been keeping track. I don't hate the way I look, and my wardrobe has also been able to stabilize. I take pleasure in shopping and looking in the mirror. This is the good news - but perhaps being content has caused me to lose motivation to do more.

Look at these patterns again:

There are some conclusions to be gained by studying these patterns, especially when I go back and look at food diaries, etc.

The set point seems to work both up and down - I can lose weight, but it pops back on again. But I can indulge and drift and eat more and exercise less, and the weight only slowly adds up. When I start paying attention, a small amount of weight comes off easily and quickly.


What this looks like to me is I can only lose weight (or start losing weight, at least) by a blitz.  Without a blitz, my weight will gradually drift upwards.  What is a "blitz"?  It is tracking, and cutting back seriously to stay within the limits. And it is exercising.  But I've fallen off the wagon after a couple of weeks of blitz, and inexorably the weight starts to creep back up.

So do I want to pay attention enough to do a blitz? Right now, as we embark on the dark dreary eating season?  When I've not been seriously unhappy about how I look?

This is a question I'm not sure I can answer easily or at once. It will take time to decide, and time to prove it. But drifting upwards without making a decision would be REALLY stupid.  And the fact is I have been feeling very bad recently. Work stress and teen stress is taking a major toll on me. I can't separate out the bad way my body and mind feel as being caused by stress, or by the relatively unhealthy way I've been eating and not exercising. Because of some extraordinary stresses, I've been indulging myself with silly sweets and carbs, and with passing up the need to move. But I need to understand that these things are not indulgences - they are not taking care of myself, they are only making things worse.

If I know its going to be a stressful day at work, I need to understand that it will be better if I get some exercise in first, and better still if I eat well and deliciously.

Today, a sunny warm day, I went for a beginner's interval walk/run. I'm about to head to the grocery store, and I want to make healthy choices for the coming week.  I'm not prepared to take a vow yet, but I am willing to make some baby steps towards getting things back under control.

I am clear on this - I want to at a minimum maintain in this range.  I am NOT going to drift back up. I am NOT.

Let me close with a link to Jeanette Fulda, a blogger I follow who is often an inspiration.  I echo the sentiments in this post of hers:  Thanks for Sticking Around.

My First Marathon

I had a great weekend, with a trip to cheer on my friend's daughter in the Hamptons Marathon.  This was D's second marathon - the previous one was five years ago - and since it was in my old stomping grounds her mother and I decided to go cheer her on.  She had just barely exceeded five hours on the first one, so beating that was her goal.

D was running as part of a team that was raising money for the "B+" (Be Positive) foundation, a charity that supports the families of children with cancer. As part of the team, she had transportation, a place to stay, dinner the night before, and a support group.  Kathy and I were able to feel part of that same team, even joining them all for a lovely dinner the night before the race at Gurney's in Montauk, a legendary spot I had never actually been to before.

It was fun feeling part of the team and cheering her on. This whole scene of athletic folks is not a culture I've traveled in before.  I felt good about my little 5Ks and found this overall very motivating. I still have no desire to run a marathon - its just too much punishment.  But I definitely have the urge to run more and faster and farther than I have been doing.

We had to get up absurdly early to make the 8 am start. But we did.  We saw D who was a bit jittery and connected with her husband, who had gotten a ride from the hotel and thus no transport around the course.

I had studied the map of the circuitous course and had figured out some places we could see D and cheer her on. Of course the road for the start and the finish was closed, but we weren't sure what other roads would be closed.  The mass of runners start out all together, but they split apart after a while and so traffic was allowed to proceed at the same time.

After the start, we set off (via car) for breakfast, and got held up at what turned out to be the five mile mark. We turned off the car and D's husband walked up and saw D and cheered her on, before coming back as the police started to meter cars through.  After breakfast, we drove to the furthest part of the course, where there was one intersection where they passed through three times - between miles 10-11, 12-13, and 14-15.

There were water stations there and we got into handing off cups of water to the runners as they passed by. It was something to do, and the runners seemed to really appreciate it.

This was a relatively small race - "only" 2,500 people (most did the half, not the full marathon) so it was relatively intimate, and we saw the same people over and over.  We saw some of the team members from the B+ group and always cheered loudly for them.

After "our" runner passed the intersection for the second time, she texted back saying her iphone battery was dying, and could her mother please download a certain app so she could have it for when her phone gave out. (Use of the GPS is a well-known iphone battery suck.) As it turns out, I had an iphone booster battery on me which was fully charged, and so when she came back for the third time, between miles 14-15, she chose that instead.  Yay!  I was helping!  I know I can't imagine running without tunes to keep pace to, and she had also a specific app she was using for her pacing and intervals.  I hoped the extra battery would last the remaining time.

We made our way to mile 20, which was near the finish line, and saw the much more sparse and spread-out runners.  The day was grey, and at points a fine drizzle was falling, Some of the runners were clearly really fatigued, but D seemed in great spirits.

So then it was off to the finish line. The announcer was calling off the name of each finisher, often with a little tidbit about them:  "This is his first ever marathon" or "His goal was to beat five hours".  We were so happy when we saw D, and I felt like I been part of something great as she crossed the finish line fifteen minutes faster than her previous time.

After the race, D changed out of wet clothes and headed back to her hotel for a shower. Kathy and I went sightseeing, and then met up for the post race party.  There was free food - four different kinds of pasta! - and sparse drink, but then we had a light early dinner at the bar next door. I marvelled at D's endurance and humor. She said overall she was tired, and a few specific parts hurt, and she needed to keep moving to not stiffen up.  Her husband took her off to the hotel with a stop for some bags of ice and apparently was planning to keep her immersed in ice water.

I have no desire to go the distance, but it still was really motivating and I am looking forward to a bit more of a jog tomorrow.