nadj

in 1998 xtie and i ran the very first san diego rock n roll marathon. ok, run is a bit of a stretch, but we finished it. xtie trained and would have done really well, but lucky for me, who did most of my training runs after drinking a beer or two, she got a stress fracture which slowed her down. we were able to do the race together, which was what we wanted to do in the first place. i felt bad that she got the stress fracture since i knew she would have done really well, but at the same time, i was happy to have her to spend those many many hours with me. :)
a few weeks before we left to go to the race i went to seattle humane society in bellevue and picked up a tiny black purr machine. i called her kitty for those first few weeks until i figured a name for her, and she just purred and purred. she was a flea magnet since my capitol hill basement apartment was flea infested and after her arrival, the fleas left me alone. every night i would comb through her hair getting rid of fleas and i gave her bath after bath. i also fea bombed that appartment hundreds of times and finally got some super toxic, super expensive flea spray from the vets and that took care of the situation. totally gross, the whole thing was.
after the race, at the awards or somewhere, they announced the winner of the women's marathon - Nadezhda Ilyina. I thought that was a pretty name and to me it sounded like Nadjalene, so kitty's name became Nadjalene or Nadj for short. i spelled it ending in an E despite the sound being an A because i worked with a girl named Lene which was pronounced Leena. There ya go. Nadj!
this morning while laying in bed, thinking about getting out of bed, nadj jumped in with me. after eric gets out of bed, nadj is there practically instantly. she purrs, she cuddles, she touches my face with her paw, she climbs under the covers. sometimes if i am asleep on my back, she sits on my chest and nearly suffocates me, but sometimes, unfortunately only sometimes, she massages my hamstrings. its so awesome. she's not a light weight cat, but just the perfect weight for when she stands with her front feet right on my hammys and starts kneading, ahhhh, it feels so good. now, only if she could take direction a little better....

again

i got this idea from Steve in a Speedo. now, i totally get that these people are doing crazy things that i can't even begin to understand how they do it since so much of it is pretty amazing, but sometimes, its just funny.

vs

i read this somewhere and liked it:
who would win in a fight between a minotaur with a trident and a centaur with a cross bow?
the answer: when a minotaur and a centaur fight, everyone wins!

love, true love.

ok, so there are many things i love. for instance: daniel craig. I love him. I also love simon baker and eric bana. see for yourself how dreamy they are:

i also have a new love of xterra racer dan hugo. i mean, come on, really???

eric of course knows about all of this, he is a good sport, because if you think about it, all these dudes are really just extensions of him - one is named eric, two kind of look like him and the last one, well, he rides bikes. see???
but i also love LUNA SPORT ELECTROLYTE SPLASH IN PINK GRAPEFRUIT.
I LOVE IT. I used it at every race i did this year. i was dependent on it. a while back i heard that they were discontinuing it. so i went out and bought a bunch. i was at the road runner sports and bought all the ones they had on display. the dude that worked there came up to me and was just like, wow, and i just hissed and swatted him away. i didn't want him to take any away. then i went to REI not too long ago and i bought all the ones they had on display. that was the day before the stinky spoke. the dude there asked if i planned on drinking it all on the ride. no, but i did take some with me! now every time i fill a bottle for a ride, i cry a little but also make sure to drink every last drop of it, because someday there just won't be any left. to my credit though, at least i am using it and not just saving it for something special, ya know. which brings me to when i went to costa rica.
i went to costa rica and ate cookies there. there were some really good coconut ones and then some totally amazing lemon ones. i loved those lemon cookies. when i came home i looked for them online and found them! and ordered 40, yes FORTY boxes of them. why not? i started with maybe only like 5 in my shopping cart, but that seemed silly, so i kept upping the amount until i got to 40 and figured that would be good. well, turns out it was a good thing i ordered those 40 boxes because they stopped making them!!! and that let me keep enjoying my cookies for at least a year or more. they were damn good cookies. i just did a search for them and came accross this terrifying photo from Ads of the World. it really scares me.

transition

i'm in transition! going from base building to getting ready for race training, yikes! the only kind of transition i ever think about is when they talk about when you are in labor and like you are totally dying from the pain of it, then you go into transition to get ready for actually pushing the baby out. i remember when i was in labor with seamus i think, i was in so much pain it was killing me and i asked the nurse - so is this labor? am i doing it now? and she kind of looked at me funny and said, no, not really. she said i was indeed laboring but i wasn't quite in real labor yet. i didn't know what to think about that.
i had an interesting conversation with eric the other day. he has this friend who used to work at a gym, was like the manager or something and he was a body builder and now is a bike racer and the guy when he saw eric commented on how eric is looking pretty fit these days and guessed his weight within a pound. pretty impressive, too since he didn't guess a round number like a 5 or 0, either. real weird. this is the same guy who once at the same guy's house where we were they both ran upstairs to weigh each other. i can't remember what that was about, but it was weird. anyway, apparently eric told them about my recent trip to the dunk tank. the guy totally guessed my BF! he was off by like .3 or something crazy, but still, it was nuts. anyway, so eric went on to tell me about how when we were in hawaii back in 2007 that i looked super model hot. here is photo proof of my alleged super model hottness. i was like - oh! well, thats a nice thing to say until he followed it up with "yeah, but super model hot is hot and all but really its actually not that hot in real life, you're much hotter now." what the hell does that mean? so i have been bugging him non stop about it because its the weirdest thing i think he has ever said to me. anyway, apparently my xtra 8.4 pounds of muscle and 0.9 pounds of fat or whatever it was since then helps me reach a much hotter potential, or something of that sort. i think maybe it has more to do with the fantasy hair than anything. yes, the fantasy hair that when i asked sirus tonight if he thought my hair was pretty, he replied with no. he thinks i should cut my hair like his - it shouldn't cover my ears he says.

rest week

aaah, rest week. although rest week's are tough because i have a hard time scheduling stuff and its all out of routine and oh no, i can't get everything in and i chow down way too much. and then i wind up what seems to be even more tired than anything else.
pawpi seems to be feeling better. she never seemed to feel too bad, she just looked horrible. she did have to go back to the vets two more times to get the grossness out, they had to pop another hole in her cheek and she dripped goop all over the house. but i think she is on the road to recovery.
eric turns old today. i told him when he turns 40 he will get 40 candles since we kind of cheated this year with a 3 and a 6, both of which went on the kids cakes at various times.
i need to get the taxes done. but heck only yesterday did i finally get the insurance thing figured out for sirus's doctor appointment way back in october!
i can't beleive its february. its WARM, ok not really, but SUNNY and today was totally beautiful! i go to the dentist tomorrow morning. its my normal visit but then he is also replacing my one and only filling. i got it back when i was like 7 or 8 or something and finally now its oozing, or leaking, or goodness knows what. also he's been talking for years about how i'm gonna need to have some surgery to get my receeding gums taken care of. the last visit tho he said i'd need to get it done this year sometime. yikes, it sounds terrible, so i will have to see. he doesn't do the surgery but will refer me to somewhere else. hohum....

Olympics

I have a long history with the Olympics. For instance, I have watched them for many years. :) I remember watching Mary Lou Retton get her perfect 10s. I remember hearing about Bruce Jenner way back before he became a reality star - not really understanding why i was hearing about him, but my dad would talk about him, and then there were those speed skaters who weren't they brother and sister or something? and then didn't they become cyclists?
and then after college i went to atlanta and was supposed to have a job at the olympics there. i even went and had my hand scanned and had my totally high tech id and access badge created but then i didn't actually take the job i was supposed to. we arrived in atlanta when they told us to, but once we were there they said they didn't need us for another month. so i got a temp job at AT&T. my bf at the time got a job "jogging" checks. his temp job blew, so he wound up taking the job at the Olympics while I stayed at AT&T since i figured it would be better for my "career". not sure i was missing out too much since he wound up in food service, cooking in the olympic village, which was walking distance away. he got to wear a fancy olympic's chef coat and terrible cooks pants and had to work the night shift. he didn't know how to cook so it was hard for him but he got the hang of it. all the while i was working at AT&T. we had a few visitors while we were there and i was lucky enough to see a few gold medal races at the velodrome, the cycling road races with both Lance Armstrong and Alison Dunlap (not at the same time of course and too bad i didn't know who there were back then) and also the women's soccer match where the USA beat China for the gold medal. i also was able to see olympic basketball and olympic baseball - both terribly not exciting at all. because we were so close to the olympic village we would see the athletes just walking around, buying snacks at the gas station and doing whatever which was pretty cool, and actually, the olympic marathon went right by our apartment building.
also one night when we had some friends in town, bf was working so i took the peeps to Olympic Park. Yes, the night the bomb went off. We were close enough to where it went off that we could see the debris rising into the air. it was so loud and so scary. it was crazy because we started going away from the blast, but it was amazing as to how many people rushed towards it. it was also amazing how the police came out of the woodwork. everywhere you looked there were police all of a sudden directing people and trying to clear out the area. we went straight back to the apartment and turned on the radio (we had no tv, ok that is a lie, we had a tv that we took from the hallway that didn't work). the bf called and said they were on lock down and weren't allowed out.
after the olympics were over we hung out and the paralympics started. we didn't go to any of the events but we went to the closing ceremony. we didn't have tickets but went to hang out anyway. while we were sitting there, someone came up and handed us two tickets. it was an amazing night.
the whole summer was amazing. the olympics are amazing. that was 1996.
in 2001 i was getting ready to get married. i was working a lot, not riding my bike very much any more and planning our wedding for january. at work we had an ad proposal for coca-cola and my boss asked me to do some research, so i did. i stumbled across a contest coke was having where you could nominate someone to carry the olympic torch for the torch relay for the salt lake city 2002 winter olympics. you had to write up a thing saying why you were nominating the person and why they are inspirational. i nominated my mom and xtie, two people who had a huge influence on me and who i had become, two people i looked up to and who i loved. i hit send and then never thought about it again.
months later i got a weird message on my answering machine that went something like "yoohooo..... it got this weird message saying that i need to call some people about salt lake" and something something, i can't remember. so i emailed my mom, and said "ooh! i wondered if anything might come of that!" to which she replied something like "what are you talking about? come of what?" so i picked up the phone and called her, email was getting us no where. i told her how i nominated her and then she started to get stuff in the mail. all kinds of crazy stuff that needed to be notarized and signature guaranteed and it all the deadlines had just passed or something crazy, which didn't make any sense at all. but she got everything shipped off and then we just waited. eventually she got her uniform - white pants and a jacket with the Salt Lake logo and a white hat and gloves. she got information about when and where she would be carrying the torch, when to arrive and what to expect. they even gave her a training plan which was funny since i think each torch bearer only goes two tenths of a mile, or something of that sort.
so she found out that she would be carrying the torch on new years day, 2002, in cleveland. i flew home a few days before then, visited with friends and hung out. on new years day, we woke up super early and drove to where she needed to be. there was a crowd of torch bearers, all getting ready for their turn. they had a meeting where they learned everything that was going to happen and then they all were loaded onto mini buses. i had a map of where she would be carrying the torch later that day - after it was dark! i parked the car and rushed to the intersection where she would receive the flame. also there was my pre-school teacher!!! and my aunt and uncle. we waited and waited. then the lead cars started to come through. there were a ton of them. i think chevy was sponsoring the relay and a bunch of chevy cars and corvettes and trucks drove by and then some wacky other kind of parade like vehicles and then the little bus that was carrying all of the torch bearers came and stopped. out popped mom! she had a few escorts with her, who were wearing blue outfits similar to hers, and then some officials. the person who was to pass her the flame came running up, they passed the flame and then she was off doing her part! she carried her torch and looked so excited but nervous, too. there was a strange dude who was running along, too, with no shirt despite it being below 30 degrees. he was cheering for her the entire way. once she covered her distance, she passed the flame to the next person and a man on a motorcycle extinguished her torch and turned the gas (??) from it off. she could have gotten back onto a new little bus but instead she stayed with us and we drove back to the big party happening, oh gosh i have no idea where it was! there were a ton of people and kids were asking my mom for her autograph and to get their picture taken with her. it was really pretty exciting! not only was she able to keep her outfit but she was able to keep her torch, too, which now hangs on the wall of her house. it is very cool!


Happy Olympics!

these cats

this morning i got up to swimming. i was excited to go because i have new goggles and new goggles are really awesome. so i stumbled out of bed and waddled into the bathroom. i turned on the light and saw a drop of blood on the floor. oh no! what is that? i looked around and saw a few more drops and then i saw IT. a dead mouse laying right there. good gawd. so i went into the bedroom, saw seamus mccat and nadj all perched on the bed looking all proud and i woke eric up and asked him to do something with it. he looked at it, said hmph, got a kleenex, picked it up by the tail and tossed it in the trash can in the bathroom. yeah, not quite what i was thinking.
so pawpi's face was puffing up again. and her eye was getting even more gooey. bad news, i was pretty sure she was miserable but she would just go about her business. so today eric took her back to the vets and they poked another hole in her cheek to get the goo out. they said if she wasn't so old, they would put her under anesthetic and install a drainage tube into her face. i hadn't ever thot of pawpi being too old. i mean, she is almost 13, but she should be good for another 5 or 7 years, at least, i'd like to think.
goodness, i'm not ready to deal with old pets.

crabby patty

seamus said she wanted a sponge bob square pants birthday cake. i said ok, and told her i could make her one, she said no, she wanted the one from the store. so i went to check it out and gasp!!! it was $42. yikes! but she only turns 6 once..... so i sent eric to the store and i guess when they went the display cake was gone and he said they couldn't find it in the book, so they got the smaller one that looked like crabby patty. i was waiting anxiously for it to arrive because i was wondering if it might turn out as a cake wreck. he didn't order any writing on it, so that was one way to avoid at least a partial wreck, but still i was wondering what it might look like.
once i found out that the cake was going to be a crabby patty i instantly wanted to make the little hamburger cupcakes i saw a while back. i had thot about making them for sirus's birthday but he wanted a cookie cake so we passed and i figured i make them some other time. so it turned out i had 50 mile bike ride to get in this morning so eric was so awesome and cleaned the house, decorated and made the mini brownie burgers! they looked awesome and tasted great!!! none of the kids wanted them though even when we told them they were cake and brownies. that's ok because all the adults wanted them!
Happy Birthday Seamus!!

today

today seamus turned 6. that is crazy to me. we will have a little party for her tomorrow, but today we all went to her school so we could participate in her classroom birthday festivities. they sat in a circle and went around the room and each of the kids said something nice about her. i almost cried. for her birthday dinner she wanted to go to the redmond pancake house and then we went to coldstone creamery. yes, they had gone twice this week, but oh well. i asked her if she would like to open one of her birthday presents today or if she would like to wait for her party. she said she wanted to wait, which i thought showed a lot of self restraint for a 6 year old! uh, so i was going to make a collage just now of photos from every year but i have none of those photos on this computer.. so that will be a project for another day.
a few weeks ago i hurt my wrist. i was doing pushups and just pushing up through the pain when i realized my wrist really hurt, so i stopped. but my wrist never got better. the other day at the pt i asked her to take a look at it. ok, so one of those little bones in there is all stuck. she did some moving of stuff around and it was all better, just like that. she said no more push ups and that i should keep doing the stretches she gave me, and that it should be ok. apparently i have a lot of bones all over the place that are stuck, but the wrist thing was funny because she made the comment, hmm, yeah, your wrist really doesn't bend.... its just stuck. whatever.
the other day we noticed that pawpi didn't look so good. her eye was all goopy and her face looked swollen. we gave it a day and decided yeah, she did not look good at all. eric and the kids took her to the vet today. they say that it looks as though one of the other cats must have hooked their claw in her eyelid, poked a hole in it and sratched her eyeball. then the whole shebang got infected. eric said they pinched her cheek and all kind of nasty squished out her eyeball. groooooosssss!! so they took her in back, shaved her cheek and lanced the grodyness. now she is on eye goop antibiotics, some oral antibiotics and some pain medicine, too. she is just chilling out and seems in good spirits, but then again that could be the pain medicine. she however, does not look good but will get better soon.

tomorrow before seamus's bday party i am meeting some of the girls for a 3:15 bike ride. sunday is a 1:30 run, that will be fun... and i am working on breaking in my new orthotics. the verdict is still out on them, but they do make me go faster, i can tell it already.

good times in the dunk tank

since all my friends have been going in for hydrostatic body fat testing lately, and since i have been curious as to what has been going on with my body composition, i made a spur of the moment trip to have the test done.
the guy and i chatted a while, he asked me why i was testing again. my real reason is that i've put on some pounds since i did the test back in january 2008. i have also been training waaaay more than i had been prior to that test. for instance, in january 2010 i swam more than i did in all of 2007. although i did a 1/2 iron man in 2007, i wasn't doing a ton of training. i was running, but not a super ton, but it was about all i was doing.
i got in, held my nose, went underwater and blew out all the air. then i did it again. apparently i did a better job with the air the 2nd time so he had me do it a 3rd time. the 3rd time was identical to the 2nd, so that was my average. the guy was funny, it was like he was trying to build up the anticipation of my numbers. he wouldn't tell me, he just kept asking what i was thinking my numbers would be, and whatever. anyway. so, i had gained 9.4 pounds since the test in 2008. i knew that much before going into the test. the good news is that of the 9.4 pounds, 8.5 of them is (are???) lean muscle, and 0.9 is fatty fatfatfat. my overall % though is down by 0.2%. so all in all thats good i think. i have to take those 9.4 pounds up hill with me, but at least most of them are helping me get up the hill, right?
we did talk about how he is going to take a truck to LA and call it the Phat test.
but good grief, after work the kids and i made a quick stop at cold stone creamery and then i topped of the night with some peanut butter captain crunch. that box is almost done and that cereal won't be making another appearance in a long long time.
onto other things, i ordered another splish suit. they are having a $20 grab bag sale so i risked it and ordered one. the one i received is good! nothing crazy, just green with a bunch of shamrocks on it with one giant one on the butt. i would have been totally happy with this suit had i not known about the fabulous suits my friends received! they each got ones with random writing like Big Mo, VC, and Merry Christmas Kelly. i might need to take a sharpie marker to mine!