Monthly Archives: January 2012

January 10, 2012 · 3:30 pm

getting the groove back

It’s probably good that I’m not embarking on a new year’s resolution sort of fitness plan right now.  At least I already know that I’m capable of committing for big long stretches and that I will still be struggling with and whining about this in July. Instead of starting something all shiny and new, I’ve just got to get myself rolling back into the groove I had deeply ingrained before the Christmas sloth took over.

I’m not a fitness expert, so I don’t know exactly how to plan for a groove getting back.  Should I try to run a 5k in the same time that I did a few weeks ago?  Or how much slower?  Should I lift the same weights and potentially do fewer?  Or lower the weight?  Shorter intervals?  Slower intervals?  Or fewer intervals?  Oh, what to do… what to do….

The groove is not literally engraved in stone. I know the answer is to just give it a whirl and see how it goes, but I’m really neurotic, you see.  I like to know exactly what I’m doing at the gym before I go, so that I can flagellate myself afterwards as appropriate.  And if I go in there with a lackadaisical I’ll-just-do-what-I-feel-like attitude, chances are good I will feel like watching old reruns of Charmed while loafing on the recumbent bike, followed by some active sitting and staring.

So, here we are:  week 2 of being back to normal, trying to be in the groove, ordinary life again and I’m still kinda floundering.  The plan (in my head) for this morning was to do 4 5 minute intervals with 2 minutes in between on the treadmill.  How fast?  I dunno.  Fast.  But not sprinting.

But I had to stop and retie a shoe in the middle of the 3rd interval.  And then I just crapped out and walked the final 2 minutes of the last one.

Resulting in a sum total of about 2.7 miles in 31 minutes and some choice thoughts of criticism.  Not a great workout in terms of distance, duration, or feel-goodery.

The best thing I’ve done in the past 2 weeks was to get myself up and on a bike at my gym’s Monday 6 am spin class.  My spin attendance is a little sporadic most of the time, since I feel like if I’m gonna do cardio it should just be running.  But at least in the class, I know I’m getting in a solid hour of committed exercise.  Which suggests that maybe I should just start going to spin 3 mornings a week, but there is that half marathon on March 25 breathing down the back of my neck….

Sigh.

And then there’s the part of me that gains some perspective from trying to explain and write about all the deliberating and agonizing (which only represents about 2/7th of actual experienced agonizing).  That part takes a breath and says “Margaret.  You funny, yet tightly wound, little bundle of wack.  Settle yourself down.  There is a glut of half marathon training plans cavorting amongst the interwebs.  Look one up now and you will do whatever it tells you to do tomorrow.  Whatever other sorts of goals you have right now will have to be secondary.  13.1 miles of running is no joke and you are only 10 weeks away from it now, so stop with the pussyfooting around.”

The other parts agree.  There’s a coordinated effort, a training plan is printed out.  I’m only a week behind really.  A 3 mile tempo run is totally acceptable for tomorrow.  The 6 mile long run prescribed for this weekend is not *too* long.  I can do that.

And the groove… it stretches as far as the eye can see.

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Filed under Running, the bitch goddess

January 6, 2012 · 1:07 pm

lasik

The David is getting his eyes lasered today.  I can hardly believe that such a technology even exists.  I don’t like to think about eyeballs in the best of circumstances.  Contemplating the process of cutting a flap in the eye and then zapping around in there with a laser beam… well, just.  Shock.  Horror.  Yuckeroni.

Even though I know it will be fine and that lots of people have done it, it’s still rather terrifying.

The fear aside, I also feel rather strangely about how he just won’t have glasses anymore.  He really can’t see at all without glasses, so they are a real part of his face and I can’t believe that he just won’t have them any more.  This is a face that I’m so used to, a face that I love, and it’s about to change.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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January 4, 2012 · 3:52 pm

how else are you gonna wear a slip dress in January?

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January 3, 2012 · 9:55 pm

give me a year or five. i succumb to trends.

Skinny jeans came on the scene (again) in 2006.

First I chalked them up as absurd and heinous.

Then I disdained of them.

Then I wondered at their prevalence.

Then they seemed normal.

Then I shrugged them off as being only-for-skinny-people.

And then, five years later, I wanted some.

The first pair I tried on made me laugh out loud at myself in the dressing room.

But I tried on more, with varying degrees of distress.

And then I got these, two sizes larger than I would normally wear, from the Gap.

i sure love having my picture taken

So even though I’m a little sheepish about how long it took me to come around to this trend, I admit it:  I love them.

And the moral of this story is:  you can try to retain your own fashion aesthetic, but eventually, whatever it is that the tweens on The Disney Channel are wearing will eventually worm its way under your skin.  In the mean time, try to keep all that judgmental shunning to yourself.

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Filed under Maggie's closet

January 2, 2012 · 6:06 pm

a glut of young adult novels

It wasn’t just toffee that I gorged on in this epic time of 11 days off.

My ladyfriend, Caroline, posted NPR’s list of the best Young Adult novels of 2011 on Facebook and it spurred a glorious frenzy of book readery.  And oh, wasn’t it the best thing ever?  I had a bounty of quick, engaging material and no other constraints on my time.  Except for the toffee.  In both cases, it’s all chomp, swallow, mmm, next!

Anna Dressed in Blood is about Cas, a kid who kills ghosts with a magic knife.  He lives a nomadic life with his good-witch mom, tracking down one ghost after another and sending them off into the nether world.  He follows a tip to Canada to find Anna, the scariest ghost of all time.  And she is pretty feckin scary.  There are quite a few gruesome murdery scenes.  Despite her propensity for violence and her dress that is perpetually doused in and dripping blood, Cas falls for Anna, and teenage romance ensues.  The story behind Anna’s death is harrowing and the climax is full of supernaturally suspense.  Reminded me a lot of I am Number Four.

 

Eyes Like Stars was my least favorite of this batch of reading.  The NPR recommendation was actually So Silver Bright, but that was the third in a trilogy called Théâtre Illuminata so I opted to read the first one instead.  The main character is Bertie, a girl who lives in a theater that is magically populated by the characters from every play written.  Bertie isn’t a character in a play; she was dropped off at the the theater as a baby and her story is unknown.  She’s constantly accompanied by the fairies from a Midsummer’s Night Dream and she can’t decide if she’s in love with a pirate (who talks in swashbuckle) and an air spirit (whose clothes and hair are always ruffled by wind and who has butterfly familiars.)  Due to best intentions gone awry, all sorts of chaos ensues and the fate of the theater is threatened.  It’s up to Bertie to save the day and figure out who she is along the way.  Too twee for me.  Also, that’s not how you spell Theater.  Someone should tell that lady.

Puck lives on Thisby, a teeny fictional island of the Irish persuasion.  Every November in Thisby, monster flesh eating horses emerge from the sea.  The men of the island then manfully go catch these horses, train them up for a few weeks, and then race them in a big-deal race that results in a cash money prize and fame.  Cue the age old plight of small-town-ism.  Puck needs the money and she decides to enter the race and along the way, falls for Sean, a 4 year champ of the race.  Sean is very quiet and still.  Where’s Sean?  Look for the still part of the room and there he is.  People get chomped on by horses.  Puck and Sean are very still together.  There’s a race at the end.  Despite the premise of the mythical creatures, most of the story line was pretty ordinary.  Almost Maeve Binchy-esque, what with the Irish small town character stereotypes.  I give this one a pleasant shrug.

Man, do I love a post-apocalypse story.  This one tells about the kerplosian of the volcano in Yellowstone and the ensuing ash, darkness, early winter, and violent yokels that ensue.  Alex is a big nerd-o who was 130 miles away from his family when shit got real and then has to find his way to them.  Society has pretty much gone to hell:  no electricity, phones or radio.  FEMA, rather than being helpful, sets up concentration camps of sort that keep refugees locked up with minimal food and shelter where they slowly freeze or starve to death.  It wouldn’t be Great Expectations without an escaped convict, so there’s one of those, too.  Alex has a handful of run ins with violent types who want to steal his food, but he also meets Darla, who’s much savvier than Alex.  As such things are wont to do, Alex grows up a lot along the way and what says “I’m grown-up” more than a savvy girlfriend?
Definitely a fun read.

I liked this one a lot.  It had a lot of similarities to The Hunger Games:  a dystopian government born out of a people who want to recover from too much war, with a heroine full of butt-kickery.  This society is broken out into 5 factions, the Dauntless, Abnegation, Amity, Erudite and Candor.  Beatrice is born into the Amish-like Abnegation, but struggles with their extreme culture of selflessness and on Choosing Day, she chooses the Dauntless instead and changes her name to Tris.  The Dauntless are all about bravery, signified by wearing all black and having tattoos and piercings.  They also really like to jump off of stuff, like buildings and moving trains.  Tris learns, though, that she’s not really just Dauntless, or just Abnegation, she’s got varying amounts of everything, and this makes her dangerous to her government.   She has to keep her “divergence” a secret to keep the government from being out to get her, but in the mean time, she’s busy falling for her mentor in the Dauntless lifestyle.  And it turns out that this plan to keep people strictly in the lifestyles of these five factions is not working out, thus things start to crumble.
There’s a sequel to this book that I wanted to start reading immediately, but it turns out that it won’t really exist until the future and that I could only *pre* order it.  Which is malarky.  Who wants to preorder something?  Just give it to me!
Anyway.
Divergent was good enough that I definitely wanted to read more if I could have.

And finally, this book wasn’t really on NPR’s list, but it was a runner-up on Amanda’s 12 Favorite Books of the Year, and that was plenty of reason.
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was neato.  There’s a cast of X-men like characters, who are trapped in time, trying to stay safe from the muggles and other more evil predators.  The story is illustrated with creepy vintage photos.  We learn about the peculiar children through Jacob, another dorky teenager, who has a special relationship with his grandfather.  Grandpa dies a grisly and inexplicable death, which sends Jacob into a bit of a spiral of crazy and on a trip to a tiny island off of Wales to get to the bottom of stuff.
I’d definitely recommend this one.

 

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