Lost & Found/Life in my Camaro

My Earing
I lost one of my favorites a couple weeks ago. Today, when I came home from work, it was sitting on the ledge outside my apartment building by the mailboxes. Someone must have seen it on the ground and placed it there so I'd see it. As I reunited it with its lonely twin, I imagined the two were all giggly and happy to have found each other, but I couldn't actually hear any of the rejoicing, probably because the earings are so small that they giggle at too high a frequency for the human ear (though they dangle from it just fine).

My Good Friend Margaret
...moved from Rockridge back to Knoxville, Tennessee over a couple years ago now. Wow. I can't believe it's been that long. Her husband still has some business ties here, and she let me know that she was coming into San Francisco for a whrlwind trip. The conversation as we were firming up plans to meet for a drink:

Margaret: So where are you living now?
Me: I'm living in Lake Merritt.
Margaret: What? You're living in your Camaro? What are you talking about, man? You don't even have a Camaro. And now you're living in your car? You're a lawyer!

It was great to see her.

Wendy's Gloves
Thought I'd left them on the bar at Trader Vic's last night (I was using them to hold my cold beer), so I went back there tonight after my massage and had them search high and low; turns out Wendy had gotten them back from me somehow (I don't remember handing them to her, only putting them down to eat my ahi tuna/mercury/oil spill sandwich). They say mercury affects brain function....

My Hiking Poles
...are back in my possession, but actually, they were never really lost (though honestly I thought they'd come back to me mangled beyond repair, if at all). I'd lent them to Beckythewonderaccupressurist for her hike up Mt Kilimanjaro over New Years, on the condition that she get a photo of them on the mountain. Becky did in fact summit (she only puked on the way down) and she assures me a photo was taken (hopefully not at that moment).

UPDATE:

She took that shot for me! Thanks Becky! Her 15-hour round-trip climb (a charity mission) raised money, as well as 11 tons of medical supplies and humanitarian aid, all of which went to Africa. Oh, and the climbers went up western breach, the most challenging route up the mountain, which had just opened after having been closed for 2 years due to fatalities. Yikes!

The Switch

I haven't been able to write anything lately because my computer is on the opposite side of the room from the air vent, where I've been spending all my time after getting my first PG&E bill following The Switch from puny space heater (which I'd been spending all my time sitting as close to as possible, switching positions every now and then) to central heat (which I'd been putting off using, knowing all too well how quickly things would spiral out of control). You see, I have central heat abuse issues. It all goes back to when I was a child.

Mom, I'm cold.
PUT ON A SWEATER.
But I can see my breath.
STOP BREATHING.

Plus, there's the issue of the leather couch. But, in the aftermath of The Bill, I've turned down the heat to a level requiring me to wear lots (i.e. more than one) of layers of clothing, and I still have cold feet, unless I'm (a.) wearing my down booties which are all the way down the cold hallway in my bedroom, or (b.) stationed right in front of the air vent, covering it with my feet.

So I'll quickly summarize the week's happenings:
1. I gave a branding presentation at work. I was tres nervous but it went really well. Yay!
2. I found out that my BFF got the job! He's moving to the East Bay! Yay!
3. I had a great ride (fruitstand) on Saturday but I didn't race on Sunday despite getting up early and riding to BART in the freezing cold, because when BART arrived in Fremont (right on time for a change), it had just rained, and the roads were drenched, and I was scared to race on a wet road, and plus it was even more freezing than when I left Oakland, even though Fremont is practically in Southern California! And by the time I got back, I'd missed the Touchstone Runners group run that I actually could have made it to if I hadn't wasted my time BARTing to rainy Fremont. But I went to brunch at Marc's after, which was fun, even though Courtenay wasn't there and she was supposed to be, and I informed Marc and Anita that I'm moving into their house because it's really amazing and I love it (they have leather couches, but I wasn't cold).
4. I saw another tearjerker movie (The Savages) with my BFF, aka movie husband, who says I always drag him to tearjerkers and he ends up watching me cry. Which I found very interesting. Why do I always want to see sad movies? His theory was that I need a release because I'm such a happy person. And he assured me that my nose does not have a bump on it like Laura Linney's and that, in addition, it has a nice ski jump on the end of it. I really liked both of these things that he said, even if he was just saying them because I'd just cried for 2 hours. I lent him my premium copy of Everything is Illuminated.
5. I returned all my David Foster Wallace books to the library, pretty much unread. I'd started The Broom of the System, and it wasn't bad,but suddenly the books were due the next day when I would be at work/unable to return them, and it was a holiday so I couldn't renew them because the library was closed! So I shoved them in the return box. I'll have to get them out again this weekend and actually read them instead of watching TV which happens to be quite viewable from the floor in front of the air vent.
6. I did weights yesterday after a hiatus, and suffered an excruciating pain in my bad knee doing a squat (which of course reminded me why I never ever do squats), which was terrifying because you never know with that bad knee, but it's fine now. I only realized this morning that I also apparently really jacked up my shoulder yesterday too.

OK. My feet are freezing, so that about sums it up. Except that I'd like to mention that I can't wait to see Get Smart when it comes out (definitely not a tearjerker).

NewZworthy?

I survived my first crit!
The weather was nice, so I think there were more than 20 of us? Apparently there were 2 crashes among the cat 4 women, but I only found out after it was all over (and I understand that they were minor). One of them hit a road dot, which sounds kinda funny, I guess, until it happens to you.

Here are a couple I'm-so-happy-not-to-be-dead post-crit photos:


















I'm sitting next to Karla in the first one. Her race wasn't until later, with the pro men. Damn.

In the second photo, I'm between Carol and Mel. Carol (left) took almost all the photos, and got up early to BART/ride to the race with me, which was so cool, because I was tres nervous. Mel's my mentor.

Team Oakland, out in force at the Early Birds:
There was obviously a conversation going on here; I was off in lala land:

Beth (bottom left) races track down in San Jose at the Hellyer Velodrome. She says it's really fun. I'm going to do some Saturday clinics there in February.

What I learned on race day:

1. Helmet visors are totally uncool, and everyone agreed. Sean held onto mine (see bottom left) during my race, then thought he'd lost it, but then it somehow materialized when he flung it at me right before his race. It was great to be reunited. I laughed, I cried. He also held onto my bike bag for me, because, I was told, you don't want anything on your bike that can come off in a race. Thanks Sean!

2. Pull less/draft more. Here I am, out in front, learning the foregoing. But it just feels so much safer in front! Look! I'm smiling! For a few minutes, anyway...


3. Don't try to sprint for an entire half lap to the finish just because the pack is going excruciatingly slowly and it feels safer at the front. I don't have a photo for this one, but imagine the above, only I wasn't out in front when it mattered, and I wasn't smiling.

4. My HR max is actually 3 beats higher than previously thought (see #3).

5. Don't trust Mel's definition of a post-crit "cool down ride". Here I am, learning lesson #5 on Mount Motherfucker:


And here I am blogging about my race, during my race (lap 3).

Kidding! Hullo, I'm not that fast. Actually, during the race sign-in, I was informed that I'd screwed up when I applied online for a racing license (in that I never scrolled down to the way bottom and clicked the microscopic "purchase" button), so the bell-lap announcer guy let me sign into my email, find my password, and finish the online application process on his laptop right before the race instead of doing it by mail (takes much longer to get your card, he said)! How cool is that?! I had the time to do so, because I'd already missed the pre-race clinic (huge delay on BART), so while everyone else was mentally and physically preparing for their first race ever, getting pointers and familiarizing themselves with the course, I was squinting at microscopic letters in bright sunlight on a tiny LCD screen, blind as a bat without my glasses, hoping I hadn't checked the "pro" box. I panicked briefly when I got home and saw that I'm registered for cyclocross, but apparently that's all bundled up with road and track, and I'm good to go.

We rode home from Fremont at breakneck speed (I thought, anyway) through the glass strewn streets of Hayward/San Leandro/East Oakland. No I'm-so-happy-not-to-be-dead photos representing that experience, but I've never been so happy to see Lake Merritt.

Holy crap I'm going to New Zealand!
I leave in a couple months. I'll spend 8 days cycling with a group from Queenstown to the top of the South Island, and then I'll head to the North Island and hang out with brother Bryan, sister-in-law Nancy and niece Abby. Bryan's been there for 4 years, and he's talking about moving back to the US, so it's time. Plus, he'll be on sabbatical. Ah, Bryan, if only you were a cyclist!

Here's the cycling plan:

Day 1: cycle 77 km Queenstown to Wanaka
Day 2: cycle 145 km Wanaka to Haast
Day 3: cycle 142 km Haast to Franz Josef
Day 4: free day in Franz Josef
Day 5: cycle 134 km Franz Josef to Hokitika
Day 6: cycle 140 km Hokitika to Westport
Day 7: cycle 158 km Westport to St. Arnaud
Day 8: cycle 120 km St. Arnaud to Picton

That's a lot of kms. And I don't even know how hilly it will be. But hey, the weather is predictable...in that it's completely unpredictable....

E*Ville

Went to a movie with my Movie Husband yesterday at Bay Street.

We'd planned to meet up an hour early so that we could hang out, but you know how these things go. By the time we actually met up, we only had about 20 minutes before the movie, and we had to make a stop at Sephora, downstairs, because MH's hands were chapped, and he needed to moisturize. It's very bright at Sephora. I'm pretty sure you can damage your retinas if you stay there for too long. At the very least, you can see all your clogged pores as you walk by the mirror (I try to avoid the mirrors, but they're everywhere). So what with the movie, the blindness, and the blackheads, we had a few reasons to:

Get in;
get slathered;
and get out.

I made a beeline for the saleslady, who was giving some woman a makeover:

"Where's the man lotion?" said I.

There was laughter, so I joined in. MH said, "She's spunky, isn't she? She's my wife." It took me a moment to realize we were both talking about semen (my participation was involuntary). Saleslady totally never got it. Makeover lady had really wide eyes, but I think that's because things were beginning to go dark (macular degeneration - God knows how long she'd been in there, but whatever, I'm sure there was a creme for that in aisle 5). Saleslady pointed us in two opposite directions (lots of lightbulbs and mirrors in between). The manly stuff was over there, but the gender-neutrally-packaged stuff was over here! UGH! MH picked up a gazillion bottles, and at my urging, eventually pumped some random goop onto his hands (I'm 99% certain it was face cream). And off we went to the movie.

We saw Juno. It was excellent, honest to blog! The protagonist (Juno) has a hamburger phone. No need to get vegangelical: it was plastic. Oh, and when we were in line getting a drink for MH, I noticed a cute guy in line ahead of us. And then MH noticed the cute woman that Cute Guy was with, and decided that we could split them up, and I could have Cute Guy, and he could have Cute Woman. But then MH noticed Cute Woman's high-heeled fur-lined boots, and asked me if she looked like a hooker! And I'm all, "What?!" ( "yousoundlikeatotalmisogynist" tone) and then he's all, "What what?! That's not necessarily a bad thing. Hookers are attractive. They have to be. That's how they make money."

Way to spin it, counselor....

T is for Tryagainlater

I finished Everything is Illuminated. It made me laugh, it made me cry. It also made me tres confused at times, I have to admit, due to all the time shifts. It's about a young American Jewish guy who goes on a quest in the Ukraine to find the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. In one of my favorite passages in the book, he's explaining to his young (not Jewish) Ukrainian tour guide what a shtetl is:

"A shtetl is like a village."
"Why don't you merely dub it a village?"
"It's a Jewish word."
"A Jewish word?"
"Yiddish. Like schmuck."
"What does it mean schmuck?"
"Someone who does something that you don't agree with is a schmuck."
"Teach me another."
"Putz."
"What does that mean?"
"It's like schmuck."
"Teach me another."
"Shmendrick."
What does that mean?"
"It's also like schmuck."
"Do you know any words that are not like schmuck?"
"Everything I can think of is basically schmuck. The Eskimos have four hundred words for snow, and the Jews have four hundred for schmuck."

So anyway, I'd recommend it. But now I can't see the movie. The movie always sucks after you've read the book. Yes, it does. Name one exception.

I got three David Foster Wallace books out of the library, which pretty much exhausted the David Foster Wallace collection in Alameda County. One of them was *gasp* "upstairs. I usually don't venture out of "Fiction", which is downstairs. I'd been contemplating putting Nikolai Gogol on the reading list too, based on recent events that have come to pass, but it's all getting way too literature-y for me. WHERE DOES IT END?! I haven't read any of the cerebral stuff yet. I think my eyes have gotten bigger than my brain, as the expression goes. But, for now, my decision's been made for me: The book I really wanted at the library, Sue Grafton's latest, has generated a waitlist 41-people long. That's no exaggeration! I need to move to a county that either reads less in general or enjoys "Literature" over "Fiction".

My first bike race was supposed to be this coming Sunday. I even have my race kit. But conditions will be less than optimal. Severe storm warnings (Thursday, Friday, and Sunday), and people tend to crash in crits as it is. Plus, I'm only now coming back from some horrible head plague that's been going around, that lasted days, that filled my head with so much pressure I thought my eyeballs were going to explode, and that did not respond whatsoever to Afrin, by which Mom The Nurse swears. She kept telling me I must be doing it wrong. How hard can it be to take Afrin?! Maybe I should practice with other snortable drugs. Or maybe I should try snorting Smarties candies. Someone once told me they snorted ground-up Smarties when they were sick (makes for a much more enjoyable post nasal drip). I can't remember who it was. Anyway, I think I almost died in my sleep several times over. I kept waking with a start, feeling suffocated. And I haven't exercised in a week. That's 47 decades in "sedentary human" years. So it looks like I'll have to sit this crit out, if it happens at all. Which means I'll have to summon all that courage again! Woe is me!

Woe is me P.S.: I spent exactly 1.5 hours socializing on New Year's Eve before coming home exhausted and head-plaguey at 7:30 pm to watch The Nanny Damned Lame-Ass Diaries.