In it for the T-shirt

I keep reading on various PF (personal finance--I love these!!) blogs about connections between running and PF/ frugality, and similarities between running and professional careers(okay, both of those are talking running as in Ultra running--which I have yet to catapult into. I've done my 26.2 and at the moment I will probably be staying well away from any Ultra events--I've only just gotten my hip to stop screaming at me on a daily basis!). Its interesting to me because I am/ have been a runner for awhile, and I am sort of paranoid about money if not totally frugal.
I don't run much with groups--I am thinking that that might change, there is a local track club that has a meeting once a week about a quarter mile from my house, I would be an idiot to not take advantage of that, but for the time being, I usually just run by myself, occasionally with one or two other people (my little sister and I have been known to buddy up for training runs: where she kicks my ass, and sometimes she will stick with me through the beginning of a race). For me, running isn't necessarily a social activity, but I wonder if I would do it more if it were?
I'm not really uber-social, I like a good book or long weekend totally to myself every now and again, but sometimes having people around can be good(like at the end of that long weekend where you find yourself talking to your cats).
Running appeals to me because it is something you can do alone, and because it is something you can do with very little equipment (sneakers, and if you're a girl, a good bra) and very little training (really, once you learn to walk you're on your way). So the initial costs are very low. Sure, you can buy some really spiffy stuff (that ipod that has the shoe attachment and tells you your mileage) but you really don't need it. So I think that might go a ways toward explaining the PF-running connection, but the professions? The two I've seen mentioned were teaching and programming. Anecdotally, when I was helping with course clean up after my last race, I was doing it with an electrical engineer and a programmer (I'm in education myself). So I guess that could be a pretty true-to-life equation. But I have family members who are runners and belong to other professions (and doing a poll of my extended family the largest running group are those in the medical professions) I think it is maybe a little closer to the truth to say that people who tend to be overachievers/perfectionists/totally and ridiculously passionately involved in their careers are more likely to find running appealing. My youngest sister (@med school currently) has said it best I think: "there is nothing else that makes you feel like you're working quite as hard". Its all about the push I think.
And on that note: I'm hoping to do a timed 5k on my own tonight in preparation for a race I'm running with work folks next week. I want to kick some ass at that one.

what happens if the world is your oyster and you're allergic to shell fish?

Today the world is doing this thing where it is very slowly snowing: those big fat lazy kind of flakes that swirl and dance as they come down, and don't ever seem to amount to much on the ground. Its beautiful and romantic and causes me to gaze longingly out my window rather than doing things like real work or even fake work (hello blog).
I think I am at heart a lazy sort of a creature. Although my laziness is punctuated by periods of actual productivity. Today, however, would appear to be one of the lazier days.
Yeah, not much productivity in sight. But the snow sure is pretty.
Everyone around me seems to have made it a point to grouse about the snow at least a little bit. But come on people--isn't this what you expect of a proper winter? I think people who aren't directly related to snow industries tend to forget that historically March is the biggest snow month here (I dated a guy in college who did ski business--yes it was a real program. and he lived like he had a trust fund coming to him (he didn't, he just liked to pretend) and spent most of his time on a snowboard. --so I know a bit more than I ever wanted to about the back end of such things--but I also got to go to some World Cup events --and see Wu Tang for free once (honestly, if it wasn't free I would have missed that one) --and Vail for a couple of weeks one year. It certainly wasn't all bad:) ) so we should be expecting more of the same, whether we want it or not.
I've always been a fan of snow. I'm not really excited about driving in it all the time (when things go wrong they can go scarily wrong. I have done my share of accidental 360s) but I don't generally mind (driving chant: slow-n-steady-slow-n-steady). On the whole, though I do like having it around. The winter I lived in England I really missed the snow (England's winters are very very damp plenty of rain and mist, only once while I was there did it "snow" --for all of about 20 minutes) although I did run a lot more that winter than any winter lately. When I was in high school I always traded my sneakers in for skis (nordic) for the winter, but lately I don't feel like I have the cash or time to make that kind of trade--I still have my high school race skis, I just don't have all the assorted upkeep-equipment: the wax and scrapers and iron and klister (eeewe klister-- I worked at an XC place one winter that called their snack bar the Klister Kitchen. Klister is extremely sticky gooey stuff that, if someone brought it into your kitchen, you would probably boil them alive for resulting mess--I always thought that was rather ridiculous. Oh the powers of alliteration)--all that good stuff. Which is another way of saying: I am way too lazy to gather all of this miscellaneous equipment that would probably cost me less than $40 to acquire.
Hah. I have just written yet another post about how lame I am. I guess thats sort of what they always boil down too. I should probably change the title up there to "The Lame Adventures of Cait the Mundane" or something. actually I kind of like how that sounds.

in a post-fanatic haze

What is it about winter? I feel sluggish and hungry and lazy. I don't really want to go out and do anything at all. I have no real interest in exercize. I want to watch movies and read books and wear blankets over all my clothes.
It is cold here, around 9 degrees this morning, and I have to go running today. I am going to try and do it during the work day (this is one of those occasionally negotiable things: sometimes my boss will go down to the gym instead of taking a lunch break, sometimes I do the same) because I am hoping that I can be out during the highest temperatures of the day rather than trying to squeeze in six miles between the end of work and the fall of darkness (and with it the falling temperatures). I thought about waiting and trying to do it tomorrow (Saturday) but the weather is supposed to just get colder from here, so best bet would appear to be this afternoon.
Running in the winter can be a hard sell for me. I know I should do it and I will feel better once I have done it, but it isn't quite as pleasurable as it might be . The boy (the one who left, who I've heard from every day since he left--odd huh?) used to say that it was never a bad idea, and that was the main thing to keep in mind: that you might regret not having gone, but you wouldn't regret going, once you got started. I think that is generally true for shorter runs (3-4 miles). I haven't ever regretted a short run that I can remember. Longer stuff is another pot of soup all together. Were I to dole out advise on running (not that I am necessarily qualified: everything I know I learned by trial-and-error--mostly error) I would not recommend anything over 8 miles if you don't know:
1) how hydrated you are ( : did you drink too much last night? then just don't try it, trust me) 2) the temperature outside ( :does the air sting your face and make your eyes water? maybe you should invest in a thermometer before you layer up and go)
3) that you have enough time to not make yourself crazy ( : do you need to be at work in three hours? then trying to run 9 miles and shower is a stupid idea and you know it.)
I have plenty of anecdotal tales I could tell where any one of these things has made me regret a run. The worst is the first: hydration is so important in anything in the middle distances! I think you could probably get away with 6 miles with a hang over and not hurt yourself too badly, but 9 miles? or worse 11 or 12? You're going to want to die if you haven't been drinking enough water and if you aren't either carrying water or stashing it along your route.
The first time I did an 11 mile training run with a bad hang over I ended up just giving up and laying on the side of the road for about a half hour after my second water stop (--somewhere after mile 7 I think--I do bottle drops usually--I don't really like carrying things while I run). It was awful. I thought I was never going to make it back. With a really bad hangover and altitude sickness (getting drunk in Vail first night there and then running the next morning--a bad, bad idea) I even regretted a kicky little 4-miler (Oh that was so terrible--8950 is no joke my friend, it catches you quickly! Especially if there is vodka involved!).
But, doing 6 miles today, during the day, when I at least know there will be some sort of temperature break (though I will be closer to the ocean here than at home) is something I won't regret. At least I don't think so right now.

audio but no video

What is it about pickup trucks?
The seem to be everywhere. I parked in between two of them today, and there are three visible from my office window.
With gas prices the way they are you would think you'd see fewer trucks rather than more. But I guess that isn't necessarily the way the American mindset works. We don't necessarily see prices rising and decide its time to economize, do we?
Listening to the news this morning I heard someone explaining the current finance crunch in terms something like "health care costs and fuel prices have risen sharply and the median income in America has dropped by $1000 in the last year" I don't know who that is from, but I think it was during Marketplace . It made me think about the things I've been reading about financially for over a year now--about how the US has a negative savings rate and the middle class is relying on credit cards to make ends meet these days. Its kind of totally terrifying that our system is so broken (and we're so broke--and not just financially either, some might say morally and culturally bankrupt as well). But even more horrifying than that? The proposed solution is to give every wage earner in the country $300. Sweet dude that should totally fix things, right? (Please note the very heavy sarcasm).
What are you going to do with your $300?
Oh the American Dream.

what if the mice get to it first?

This sums it up perfectly:

LIFE HAS NO PURPOSE, COMMUNICATION IS IMPOSSIBLE, THE EXISTENCE OF MAN IS ABSURD

Man, why can’t I get words like that? That’s exactly it; what I’ve been feeling in the back of my head for days now, but my attempts at expressing it are so much more amorphous, when I really just needed to come out and say that, and then it would all make sense.

I went to a memorial service on Saturday and it was really good, in that way that something sad and terrible can still be good, because it is about a whole lot of people getting together and remembering and loving someone (even if it is, okay, a whole lot too late for that person to get much out of it, it is nice to know that people care) and I enjoy the community feeling and the commiseration that make you feel like you are part of this group instead of all alone (as we all are, inevitably, at death). Of course it did make me ponder the point of continuing to live at all because (as stated so clearly above): LIFE HAS NO PURPOSE, COMMUNICATION IS IMPOSSIBLE, THE EXISTENCE OF MAN IS ABSURD. Yeah. Good times.

I don’t know how many people would come to my memorial service, if there was one. I know my mother pretty much planned one once (I was in a bad accident, and on the way to the hospital apparently my folks had the necessary talk about the necessary arrangements, but she still won’t tell me the details). Which is nice to know, I guess. At least there is a plan.

A plan generally makes things better I think. I get more done with planning and deadlines. I enjoy a certain amount of structure. If it were not, for instance, for the need to get up and go to work on weekdays, I would most likely have spent today laying in bed listening to Nirvana. Usually my laying-in-bed-questioning-the-futility-of-living music of choice is Tool, but something in me really wants to hear In utero back to back to back for a period of eight or nine hours.

But I don’t have a choice in the matter (or at least I tell myself there is no choice in the matter) I need to get up and go go go like an animated doll: get in the car, drive ever so slowly through snow and slush to work, and sit and type-type-type and think-think-think and make little to-do lists of the things I want done by the end of the week. My lists are always a little mixed up: I have a tendency to run together all the things I want done in work and out of work in one non-prioritized list:

• Make new book display,
• eat fruit for breakfast,
• finish CSE citation guidelines page,
• get to the gym at least three times,
• do some actual collection development and get the slush pile off my computer desk,
• make Christmas cards,
• lose five pounds or grow five inches, your choice.
• Write something you might enjoy reading sometime in the future

And honestly this probably does not fulfill that last one, I am just a rambler and do not really merit re-reading truth be told.

down down down into the cake of eternal glory

Doorways archways, openings. These things give an idea of movement, of natural forward progression that I can almost feel. I will move beyond this: I will get out of this room safely and easily and move into the light space outside that opening.

Only not today. There is a drag on my movement today, a mental pause that precludes movement and may in fact make it impossible.

I don’t want to see anyone, talk to anyone, be with anyone.

I don’t want to have to explain.

I feel so unlovable, so bereft, so alone. You would think I had been abandoned already, only it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it is the worse for all that: to see and to know that there is a person who claims to love you, only not enough. Not enough to stay, not enough to even make an attempt at keeping in touch at backing up what he says: if he loves me then how can he just be leaving? He can’t prove he loves me because he doesn’t. it’s the only conclusion I can come to. The only way it makes sense.

How do I prove so unworthy? How can I still be alive and be so unloved? What did I do wrong?

I want to cultivate a broad sense of the ridiculous, if only to attempt to keep a flame of humor alive in my skull. The darkness is blinding, isolating. I don’t want to know or speak to anyone. But maybe I can look, maybe image can sustain me.

There is a man outside striding around in the parking lot wearing a tall chef’s hat. It’s a peculiar thing to see, and he looks quite proud, I imagine him listing his credentials in his head as he walks, shoulders squared to some imagined chef’s convention or get together at 10am on a Friday morning.
And this makes me smile. I personally would love to have the nickname “Tripsy McStumble” for my very own some days.

I am, sadly, coming to the realization that I am rather accident prone. I’ve gone decades without knowing this, but it seems that lately whatever it is that can happen in a bad-news-bears fashion, it happens to me: a broken wrist, a fender-bender, a slip on the stairs, a fractured heart and ego, a spilt bowl of batter for cake or banana bread or pancakes. I don’t know how it happens, or why, but it just seems to keep happening to me.

I’m trying not to dwell on it, I really am, but it keeps coming up.

Despair just keeps finding me--I am trying to see the good, the absurd the life around me, but my mind just wants to go back to bed and listen to Tool for the rest of the day.

I really thought I could be more upbeat than this. This is not really turning out the way I had planned at all.

Such is life, as my father would say