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Monday, March 15, 2010

[5]

Kristy, it's your birthday! Happy birthday, Kristy!*
So today is my 33rd birthday. Man, that feels old. I was digging around this morning and found some photos from my 23rd birthday back in London, ten years ago today. I was living with the Notre Dame London Program then as an R.A. and working as an HTML developer at Netdecisions. A bunch of my work friends went out with me to Si Senor, the only Mexican restaurant I could find in all of London. (I think it's since closed.)

BJ, me, Alex, and Ferret

BJ, me, Alex, and Ben (aka Ferret)...

Snookums, Eman, and BJ

Snookums (two weeks before we started dating!), Eman, and BJ

Ferret, me, Eman, and Squirrel

Ferret, me, Eman, and Mark (aka Squirrel)

There are more pictures with more folks from that night, including some of the students who joined us later. It was so fun. I can't believe we were so young. I can't believe it's been so long since! (Hm. And I can't believe I didn't have ANY girl friends back then. Did I just hang out with guys? Quite possibly.)

Thank you to everyone who's popped up on email and Facebook and Twitter to say "Happy birthday." I also managed to score two(!) birthday cakes: a Spice Cake with Espresso Icing (courtesy of the Snook), and a "Belle" Barbie cake (courtesy of the amazing Miss Fee). The Snook and I are going out tomorrow night for the Chuck Hahn dinner, and then Thursday we'll be seeing the premiere of KICK-ASS. What a great way to start the week!

* Yeah, the Snook serenaded me with the Michael Jackson birthday song from The Simpsons. Very sweet.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

[4]

RunningBlog: Week 10
I'm still experiencing the after-effects of the Public Nudity Epiphany, I think. For the past 15 months, I've been struggling with the rowing machine at my weekly Spudds session. There's always at least one station on the circuit where you do two 20 second rowing sprints separated by a 10 second rest. The goal is to get 100 meters in 20 seconds. I've done it a few times in the past year, but I've never been able to get two in a row. My form is improving though, and I've been closing in. (Last week I had 101 and 98.) Yesterday I stood before the machine and took a few seconds to visualise myself doing it. Then I sat down and strapped in. The first 20s felt good, and I was well within pace. I got 101m for that one. Spudds came over to congratulate me and told me to "stay loose" during the 10 second rest. "Back yourself!" he yelled. And I was off. My pace was slower, and my technique was definitely sloppier. But he stood over me shouting that I could do it, and I gave it everything I had. As the buzzer sounded, my distance slipped upwards... and stopped on 100m. I gave a shout. It was as satisfying as finishing my first half-marathon. He gave me a high-five and told me that I was the first female to do it. (I'm a little doubtful of that; I'm sure some of the women in his evening classes could do it. Still, it's a big accomplishment.) I tweeted afterwards: "I feel like I can do anything." I really do. This whole "self-confidence" buzz is intoxicating.

But hey, running is what this is all about, right? Because of my continuing issues with my right foot, I've dropped my running back to three days a week (rather than four). With my Sunday distance increasing, I want to give my arch as much rest time as possible.

Mar. 5: 5.27km
Mar. 7: 10.16km
Mar. 9: 5.43km
Total this week: 20.86km
Total in 2010: 191.27km (119.5mi)

To meet my 1000km goal, I should be at 192km. So right on track!

Molasses Coffee Marinated Pork Chops from Alton Brown. Yum. I've got some pork chops in the freezer just begging for this...

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Michael Mobbs has a couple blog posts (and photos) about the failure of the new fancy "rain gardens" in Chippendale. I wondered if they were working. We guessed that they were there more to filter cigarette butts out of the stormwater drain than anything.

RunningBlog: Peter Sagal (of Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me fame) has a column in Runner's World this month and has blogged his "Three G's for Runners". It's got some nice pointers for anybody starting out in running.

Clarification on the tiebreaker
Since someone emailed to ask, I did not include John Hughes in the tiebreaker count for the Oscar Contest. Jenny and I debated it during his tribute, and we hoped the producers would make it easy by including him in the "In Memoriam" reel as well. But they didn't. However, the actual wording on the entry page was: "How many dead people will be featured in the annual Hollywood obituary tribute reel?" I think it's pretty clear that the question is not how many dead people will be honoured at the show, but rather how many people are in the specific tribute montage. So on that basis, we went with the count of 34. Of course, it really sucks for Tom Cassutt, because if they had included Hughes (or Farrah Fawcett! or Bea Arthur!) he would've won the whole shebag. Sorry, Tom!

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welcome

I'm Kris Howard, a thirtyish Hoosier living in Sydney, Australia. I work as a business analyst at an IT company specialising in mobile solutions. I knit and run and have crazy adventures. This is my weblog and personal site.

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