May 16, 2008
~ mountain biking buddies! ~
Took Elizabeth on a mountain bike ride yesterday. As you can see, she had a wonderful time! After putting in a lot of thought about which trail to take her on, I decided to start on the dirt path in the Reserve Area, up the intermediate-level switchback, out and back on Shane's-the-backwards-way, and down Central Ridge. Last year, we did a couple rides on Crestline. However, in my experience, getting up and over the beginner mountain biking hump requires that one develop a true sense of joy from the experience. Crestline is okay, but it's not the most scenic trail, and is so full of runners, hikers, and dogs that one must always hold one's bonzai back a little. I have a big fondness for the Shane's / Central Ridge trails because it was on them that I truly began to LOVE mountain biking. Not only is it more scenic, but there's a lot less foot-traffic and dogs to worry about, and it's got some lovely singletrack that winds around the hills. Thus, I decided to share some of my favorite trails with Elizabeth and I think that was a good move. I made her try to ride the intermediate-level switchback uphill grunt and she successfully rode almost all of it, which I thought was very impressive. I was also impressed at how fast she was riding on the downhill - - for whatever reason, I hadn't thought of Elizabeth as a thrill-seeker, but we had a good time on the cowabunga! down Central Ridge.
May 14, 2008
~ spaetzle ~
Oh, how glorious that it is Wednesday! Last night was officially my last class for the semester. I've been hauling all kinds of bottom trying to finish up my final project, which culminated in a presentation last night. As you all know, I absolutely love public speaking. Me, getting up in front of people, explaining my budget trend analysis of a public agency, talk about a fun time! Yea... Those of you who are not in school, you probably enjoy that aspect of your existence. Those of us who are, what suckers!
This is where I've been spending a lot of time recently. On my computer screen is the concluding slide to my PowerPoint. It reads, "Confidence...in the trend line presupposes confidence in the data." For some time, I have bombarded many of the humans in my life with tales of frustration in my data collection process. Indeed, for two of the years I was analyzing, the data was incomplete and inconsistent. Unfortunately, I did not articulate my data collection frustration to all of the humans in my life, otherwise I could have unearthed the reason and the solution much sooner. On Monday, the day before my project was due, I chose to tell my boss these frustrations, and I discovered that she used to have a connection to the public agency. It was then that I learned of the crazy misuse of public funds scandal that happened during the time frame with inaccurate data. gar! I can't begin to say how many hours I wasted trying to make sense of the budget documents from this era, when there is no sense to be made of them. At any rate, my project is done, my presentation is done (and it went very well, in fact), and I am free to enjoy life again.
Sometime after 9pm last night when I arrived home from class, I cracked open a yummy beer and went bananas making "Wolfgang's Beef Goulash." For some time, as a result of school, I have been neglecting aspects of my personal life. Food is one of them, and boy, do I love me the food! As anyone who has sampled my cooking knows, I am not exactly a gourmet. Josh deserves accolades, not only for his stomach of steel but for his good manners in saying, "Yum" whenever I force him to eat something I made. I must say, I really enjoy the process of cooking even if the end result is questionable...and now that I am reminded, let us take a little stroll down memory lane...
...When my sister and I were kids, one play activity that we regularly engaged at our Grandma's house was 'play cooking.' Doing this, we made a huge mess in the kitchen, pulling out pots and pans and cooking up some horrendous concoction of spices. Thinking back, I have a difficult time understanding why we were allowed to do this. This tradition of improvised cooking remains with me today, as I continue to defy the limits placed on me by recipes.
This is what Josh has to look forward to next. On the right, my first attempt at spaetzle, cute little dumpling-type thingies. Amazingly, I followed the recipe... almost. I had a bit of difficulty following the process to transform the spaetzle goo into dumpling things. I made a ginormous mess, splattered spaetzle goo everywhere, and it was a big freak-show. Out of desperation, I whipped out the potato masher and made do with that. On the right, the goulash with no modifications! At 11:00, the concoction was done and I sat down to enjoy my diner. Yu-MMY!
This is my sad, neglected yarn and knitting projects stash. I am so excited to delve back into this, full force! I've got several projects I'm working on, and several that I've a hankering to begin. I must say, Raverly is distracting me to no end. Recently, I discovered a network to buy and sell out of print books and magazines. I guess it's no different than ebay, but still. What glory! A few days ago, I negotiated my purchase (for $5.00) of an out of print issue of Interweave Knits that I have been lusting after for some time. I am really excited about this.
In mountain biking news, I continue to be an accomplisher! Over the weekend, Josh and I rode the Corrals loop. There were a couple of parts to the loop that I had developed some kind of horrible fear last year when I was crashing all the time. It's crazy how fear can completely distort reality. There's one section coming down Trail 4 where it's particularly choppy and sandy. Even though I've never had a problem riding it, the fear I had built up about crashing caused me to feel irrationally terrified of certain sections of trail, and this one choppy section of Trail 4 I had built up in my mind as being a total death trap. So, riding this loop and coming down Trail 4, I just had to do so that I can eliminate all of the bad feelings that I developed last year. Successfully riding Trail 4 without being terrified was the last mental hurdle in the process. So, on the ride this weekend, as I started my descent down Trail 4, I kept telling myself, "You can do this, you can do this" and taking deep breaths. I was expecting for my knees to get all wobbly on the scary part. But as I started riding the choppy section, the knees never got wobbly. And there was nothing, NOTHING scary about it. I had a great ride.
May 6, 2008
~ Spring Walking ~
This past weekend was quite lovely. On Friday, I had the opportunity to get off work early, and so I forced Joshua to go on a mountain bike ride with me. The purpose of the ride was simply to "mix it up" and ride on whatever trails we fancied. Josh led us through some of the lower Reserve area trails that we don't ride very often, up the switchback trail to Bucks, and up Shane's "backwards." We also rode up Three Bears a bit. I led the way down, taking us on a trail that I've only been on once - - a trail which had a very steep grunt uphill that allowed me to demonstrate to Josh the quick transition from hike-a-bike to jumping-back-on-the-bike that I employed during my race a month ago. After the downhill, we rode a loop of Buck's. I had an incredibly wonderful time on that particular ride. It felt so good and was so much fun.
On Saturday, we did another bike ride. Josh led us through some of the trails off Camel's Back that I've never been on before. On these, I was very proud of myself for not getting freaked out by the drop off right next to my tires. I've decided that this year, I'm going to work dilligently to not be afraid of the drop offs. I've also decided to challenge myself to ride things that I might feel inclined to hesitate on. So, in that vein, I proposed that Josh and I ride this one section of trail off of Red Sands that I tried over and over and over to ride last year, but was way too freaked out by how steeply it plummets down. Also, the downhill bit begins with a tight downward sweeping turn to the right, with the trail sloping off to the left, which combined with the steepness, makes it understandable why a person might prefer to not ride down it. The trail, however, is not all that dissimilar to a section of the Barking Spider course which I recently conquered, and so I decided that I was going to ride it. Not hesitate, unclip, and fall over to the side once I approach the downhill and see how steep it is, but ride it. As we were grunting up Red Sands before that section of trail, I was reminding myself of how terrified I was of the steep bit on Barking Spider, and how now that I've ridden it, it's no big deal - - and is lots of fun. As I came around the tight downhill swooping turn, I resisted all my urges to unclip from my pedals and bail, I kept my hands on my handlebars, and just rode it. And it was great! I rode it pretty slowly, but I had to move my butt way off the end of the saddle to to back of the bike, to keep my weight off the front of the bike. Josh exclaimed more than once that it was the steepest thing I've ever ridden, and I felt like quite the accomplisher. After that, we rode Freeway and came down Hulls. I had a blast. Then we went for beers.
Yesterday, I had to get up at 4:00 a.m. to drive to Twin Falls for work. blech. Normally, it takes 2.5 hours to drive there, but as it was so early in the morning, there was absolutely no traffic and I made it in an hour 45. So, I was very early to my thing. My thing lasted all day and I worked hard for my money. Then I drove back to Boise. The traffic was horrendous and it took me 2.5 hours. By the time that I arrived at my apartment, I was totally exhausted. I fell directly onto my bed with my shoes and my jacket still on, and just laid there for an hour. Then I got up, around 8pm and walked myself downtown for a bite to eat. Once I left my apartment, I was awe-struck by how beautiful the light was on the spring-time tree blossoms. I walked one blocks and decided that it was absolutely necessary for me to turn around to get my camera. In the few minutes that it took me to walk the block to my apartment and get my camera, the light had already become less glorious. I was able to snap these lovely photos of the tree blossoms, but by the time that I had returned, the perfect light had gone behind the buildings, and I had missed them when they were at their peak gloriousness. ...sigh. I took myself to a nearby restaurant where I enjoyed a bowl of amazing clam chowder and a salad, and sat there for a time reading my book. It was very enjoyable and relaxing. Then I walked around by the river for about an hour before returning home.
April 30, 2008
~ planning a trip ~
Not to be a negative nelly, but it's easy to lose the motivation for blogging when I get no love for my amazing posts. Honestly, people, where's the love?!?
What's news in my world?
Some of you may know about Josh's major dental procedure last week. Poor guy, hasn't been feeling well (for various reasons) for almost a month, and he tops it off with teeth extractions and a root canal. *shudder* At any rate, we've been watching a lot of movies lately. Last week we saw Forbidden Kingdom which I would not recommend, mainly because of the awkward teenager cast to play the awkward teenager. blech. Then we saw Jumper at the dollar theater which was decently entertaining but I would not necessarily give a thumbs up.
In the way of school, praise the little baby jesus that this semester's almost over. I've been spending some time at the library working on a final project which I couldn't care less about. This entire semester has been a complete waste of time and I could be bitter about the BS that I've subjected myself to, but instead I've decided to abandon all feeling on the matter and just get through it.
Since you all have expressed such an abundance of interest in my knitting projects, my update there is that I'm almost finished with another project. I've been a busy bee working on something that I'm hoping to get a lot of use from this summer. I'd tell you all what it is, but I think I'll keep you on pins and needles of anticipation before unveiling my amazing creation.
In the way of cycling activities, they have been taking place mostly at the gym instead of outside. The weather has not been cooperating in the way that I would like it, so poop on that! This weekend, I did go on a lovely mountain bike ride and enjoyed the wind in my face and my heart racing. I found myself musing once again at how much I like my new bike, and what a perfect fit for me it is. I've been looking at the schedules for upcoming mountain bike races pretty regularly, trying to decide which one to enter next.
As you all know, my birthday is coming up in about a month and I've decided to take myself on a trip to celebrate. What's mildly amusing is that, because plane ticket prices are a little on the expensive end these days, I've been doing an extensive search of ticket prices to various cities in the region. Yesterday, during my daily internet browsing, I discovered that Dooce will give a reading of her book in Salt Lake City on my birthday! And for a moment, I actually considered going down there for the reading and to get a signed copy of the book. Obviously, I discarded that thought almost before I had it - - after all, toasting one's birthday should involve celebratory libations, which is facilitated by being somewhere that does not have odd liquor laws. As of this writing, I'm pretty close to confirming my plane ticket and hotel. The purpose of the trip is not so much a 'vacation' but rather to live it up and have a crap ton of fun. I'm hoping to spend my trip walking around, having good coffee, shopping, hiking, going to musical concerts, dipping my toes in the ocean, and eating seafood.
April 21, 2008
~ iron loaf ~
One of the many virtues of the internet is its facilitation for an individual (someone with absolutely no medical training or expertise) to engage in self-diagnosis of one illness or another. Such was the case this weekend, when I diagnosed myself with anemia, though it's possible that I simply was pooped after my bike race. At any rate, I had been feeling fine and good until about last Thursday when I suddenly, and rather inexplicably, bonked. It was so bad that I actually had to take off Friday afternoon from work - - my symptoms included total loss of appetite (which for me means that something must be REALLY wrong) and extreme fatigue and lethargy (not just, "oh, I don't have a lot of energy," but "oh lord, just sitting here doing nothing is so taxing that I think I may have to fall onto the floor because it's not possible for me to hold up my own weight"). It pretty much ruined my entire weekend because even though the sun was shining and I was spending the time relaxing and doing things that would normally give me a lot of joy (ie, having coffee and treats with Josh, watching a movie, and knitting), there was no joy in mudville because all of these activities involved me sitting in an upright position, and I didn't have the strength for sitting.
At sometime during Saturday afternoon, I diagnosed myself with anemia and determined that the best treatment regimen would be to eat a lot of red meat. For dinner, I had a large portion of grass fed organic beef and it seemed to be exactly what the "doctor" ordered (at least, despite having no appetite, I was able to wolf it down).
My main difficulty with meat, however, is that I don't know much about how to cook it. Growing up, my exposure to meat was enough to make me give up eating it altogether. Not only did I not approve of the American Meat Industry, but it was always prepared in a manner that either tasted flavorless or really grossed me out. Since being adult enough to prepare my own meals, I have relied heavily on the Moosewood style of vegetarian cooking. Yum! In the past few years, however, I have slowly rediscovered my carnivorous side - - not only for nutrition but also for taste, and have begun pumping my dollars into the local organic ranchers. The only problem with becoming a carnivore (or rather, an omnivore) after years of vegetarianism is that my plethora of vegetarian cookbooks offer no insight into the preparation of meat. Hence, there have been disappointments.
On Saturday, the process of wolfing down a large quantity of red meat took place at Josh's residence while watching an action film. When I arrived, Josh and Eric were enjoying Iron Chef, which I proceeded to enjoy with them while the food was cooking. And, like so many before me, I found it inspiring. And so, I decided right then and there that it was high time for me to develop some meat-preparation skillz. The timing was ripe, as I happened to have a gift card to the ginormous book store, to which I took my person on Sunday to select my very first non-vegetarian cookbook. I spent over an hour on Sunday spilling over cookbooks and I finally chose this one because it contained recipes for meat, meat, poultry, seafood, and more meat. And, it has lots of photos! I've always wanted to be a good person and feel satisfied by all of my veggie cookbooks that are completely devoid of photos, but at the end of the day, I'm a visual person and photos of amazing looking dishes inspire me to make those dishes.
I don't know if this hunk-o-meat looks appetizing to anyone, but it resembles the photo remarkably well! I'm calling it "Iron Loaf" - - not only because it's an Iron Chef recipe, but also because it's full of iron (which is essential for someone like me, suffering from anemia!). I made two modifications to the recipe: (1) utilized buffalo instead of beef, and (2) subsituted brie for one of the cheeses that I was unable to find at any of the three stores that I went to. Yet, this is unlike any meatloaf I have ever before sampled. It contains the following ingredients: buffalo, pork, eggs, bread crumbs, rosemary, salt, pepper, spinach, carrots, brie, romano, and prosciutto. It is delicious! And, as I can attest right at this very moment, it reheats very well.
Incidentally, I woke up this morning with my anemia completely cured! I was able to get up on time, I feel awake and energized - - I feel absolutely wonderful, in fact. Someone had actually suggested that, rather than suffering from anemia, I was suffering from post-bike race bonk. This person, a runner racer, said that the post-race bonk usually hits six days after the race. Whatever it was, it's gone and my Iron Loaf leftovers are great.
April 16, 2008
~ Cozy Sweater ~
I finished my Cozy V-Neck Sweater, from Fitted Knits, over the weekend. To spice up the ridiculous amount of k2p2 ribbing, I added some cabling from the Wheat Ear Cable Yoke. I also knat the neck much lower and wider than the pattern called for, in addition to leaving that gap in the front of the neck (which is similar to other 'fitted knits'). The sweater fits very well and I like it a lot. The yarn is Berocco Ultra Alpaca which is a bit on the itchy side, but quite lovely. I have worn the sweater twice since finishing it and am shocked, SHOCKED! by how much it pills. The Jasper pills excessively, but this yarn, OH MY!, after two wears there were these ginormous accumulations of fuzz along the side. Not impressed!
April 14, 2008
~ passing lots of mofos ~
The Barking Spider race was this weekend. Despite not training as much as I had wanted to, I did pretty well. My race time was 58 minutes, which I felt really good about, especially if you consider that my time was a mere six minutes behind the time of the man who won. Out of about 50 beginners, I came in 9th and was the first female to cross the finish. The results of the race are posted here. Below is a photo of me crossing the finish line, taking first place in my category.
I had actually become quite nervous about the race. I didn't sleep at all the night before and I had lost all of my appetite the morning of the race. The grumbly in my tumbly was unbearable. And then, right when I gathered at the starting line, it was 30 seconds to go, and I suddenly had a very strong urge to pee! Once the race was on and I was riding my bike, trying to navigate myself around all of the mofos in my way, everything felt really good. Below is a photo of me right after we started the race (I'm on the right in the blue jersey, white helmet).
My first strategy once the race started was to quickly get ahead of as many people (aka, "mofos") as I could. Somehow, I wasn't paying attention when I gathered at the starting line, and I ended up way in the back, and I wanted to make sure that I could pass the mofos while I had a good opportunity. Otherwise, I was concerned that some parts of the race would not be conducive to passing the mofos. Below is a photo of me in the process of passing a mofo (behind me, all of the mofos I had managed to pass right at the outset).
Perhaps by now it should be obvious that some kind of competitive beast managed to possess me for the duration of the race, despite my assurances that I am not a competitive person. A strange experience, I must say.
So, the course has lots of ups and downs - - and I tended to shine on the climbs, where everyone else seemed to really slow down. At every hill, there would be a long line of bikers huffing and puffing their way up - - and for me, I found that to be a grand opportunity to pass the lot of them. On the one hand, I have a strength to weight ratio working in my favor, on the other hand, I'm just a good climber. Over the years, Josh has taught me a lot of techniques for climbing that I gathered many of the other racers did not have - - such as, on an extended climb, recovering during the least strenuous point of the pedal stroke.
Of course, as gravity is working in my favor on the climbs, it works against me on the downhills. I passed and repassed a few of the same people over and over. On a number of occasions, there would be a downhill right after I passed someone (say, a dude who weighs 50 pounds more than I) and he would zoom past me going down, and then I would pass him a minute later going up. Eventually, a form of comradery was established and a very brief humorous salutation was exchanged.
About halfway through the course, there was an extended climb with a decently strong headwind, and a very long line of bikers. It was during this climb that I located a dude who was going at a good pace, and so I tucked myself behind him and drafted off of him so that I could get a nice recovery in. He was passing a lot of people, and I was right behind him, passing them. Many of the people that we passed, by this point, were racers in the sport class (who had started a few minutes before us beginners) that we had caught up to. After a while, I passed the dude I was drafting off of, and then he passed me on the downhill, and I believe that he was one of the 8 dudes to finish before me.
When I went through the finish line, I was very excited to learn of my standing in the race. I had a bit of a spectator grouping - - Josh, Elizabeth, and Laura were on hand to watch my first race! We partook of several celebratory beers after I finished and it was a lot of fun. We waited several hours until the awards ceremony, where I scored a water bottle and a huge jersey for a team that I'm not on (how dumb is that?@? - - I'm not going to wear a jersey that's way too big for me for a local team that I don't ride with). Afterwards, we made our way to a Mexican restaurant in Kuna and had enchiladas. Anyway, here's the link to my flickr deal - - you'll note the photo of the nasty sunburn I got on my calves...didn't think to apply sunscreen there.
