December 27, 2009

Day After Christmas Run

So many things to love about the day after Christmas, and none of them have anything to do with shopping!  I love the fact that the insane feelings of stress are over.  No more shopping, baking, malls, crowds, or guilt-ridden desserts to consume and then fret over.  There’s a sense of relief in the air… “we made it”… and just like that, peace enters the house.

 The OTHER thing that I love about the day after Christmas is that THIS year, the next day is a SATURDAY!!  That means that we had a run planned and because I’m finally getting over my cold, I got to go run with my friends!  I know I’m old because presents have so little to do with my happiness anymore.  For me, the best part of Christmas is being with people I love, doing something I adore. 

 We met at the trailhead on 63rd, near the Boulder Reservoir.  Kathy, Marcia and Beth were cozy in Kathy’s heated minivan, waiting for me to arrive.  I joined them while I put on my YakTrax and we waited to see if any more brave souls would show for our 7 AM start time.  By 7:10 we were ready to go, and Sarah had just pulled into the parking lot.  The five of us gathered ourselves and decided to just do the 6 mile loop instead of the longer nine miler.  The trail was snowy with a layer of ice underneath, and we were pretty sure that running 6 miles in the snow with YakTrax would be a darn good workout.

 The wind was pelting snow as we started out, and the right side of my face became numb in a matter of minutes.  My hands were icy in my SmartWool liners and I did a lot of finger-flexing as I tried to get blood into my extremities.  I can tell that I’m getting older, because the fingers and toes are feeling the cold more than they did even a year ago.  I’m buying new gloves this weekend with some of my Christmas money.  Merry Christmas little fingers, I love you!

 Thank God for Kathy; within minutes she steered us onto the fork in the trail.  She was the only one who could see it in the fresh snow!  Beth and I had totally overshot it.  Left to my own devices, it’s a crapshoot where I would have ended up.  Most likely it would have been a 10-miler or a 1-miler, because I either would have gone away from the Rez and done a hellacious loop on the Diagonal Highway, or I would have looped around the parking lot and ended up back at the car in 5 minutes.  God only knows, because I couldn’t see where we were going.

 After about 15 minutes either the wind died down or the temperature rose, because I wasn’t freezing cold anymore.  I could tell that my feet were a little damp in my sneakers, but they weren’t COLD per se, so all was well.  Sarah regaled us with tales of her Christmas cooking exploits of Julia Child’s Boeuf Bourguignon recipe (it went really well!).  I mentioned that Bill and I got brand-new Schwinn bikes for the kids this year, hid them in a neighbor’s garage for four days, and brought them into the house and parked them near the tree in the living room.  The kids came downstairs and saw the bikes.  The response?  “Oh, thanks Mom”, as they headed to the presents to rip off wrapping paper.  Sarah LAUGHED at this, because apparently her 5-year-old twins did the same thing.  Maybe it’s a thing of getting a bike at Christmas when there’s 6 inches of snow on the ground.  Kids can’t imagine riding them right away, so it’s a boring present.  Is that it?  I dunno.  I think if I saw a shiny new bike sitting in the living room waiting for me I’d be jumping up and down, squealing and clapping my hands.  I would LOVE to get a new bike for Christmas.  And that, my friends, is the difference between me and kids.  About 25 years.

 At the entrance to the Reservoir we came across a group of runners, and a cheer went up from both camps.  “Yay, women!”  We kind of wondered where the guys were this morning.  Are they all at home with the kids?  Is it too cold out there for them?  The other women warned us about the ice on the road; apparently one of them wiped out pretty bad.  I noticed that none of them had YakTrax on, and hoped that our party was better prepared.

 It seems that chains on your shoes make all the difference.  We all did great, gripped the road just fine, and made it through without incident.  Yay!

 Heading back around the Rez Kathy steered us onto the correct fork after Sarah and I blithely took the one less traveled.  (oops)  We finished the 5.4 mile run in about an hour, giving us a pace of 11 minutes per mile.  Nothing to write home about in terms of speed, but BOY did we work for it!  I was plenty sweaty and odiferous climbing into my car as we caravanned to the coffee shop.

 Thanks to my 4-wheel drive and YakTrax, I was safe on the snow and ice.  The only excitement came when I was ready to head home from the coffee shop.  The rubber of the windshield wiper on the driver’s side had totally broken off the wiper, rendering the thing completely useless.  It took Kathy and me about 10 minutes of freezing our fingers on the cold metal to switch the wipers (we put the useful right wiper on the driver’s side) because the metal was frozen in place.  Yikes!  I made it home safely, Bill went out later to buy new wipers for the car, the snow stopped falling and the sun even peeked out for a few hours this afternoon.

 I’m SOOOOO glad I got out today!  I’ve been fighting a cold this past week and nursing sick family members as well, so this is the first group run I’ve managed in two weeks.  We’re going to do another group run on New Year’s Eve (in the morning, not after we’ve been celebrating) and I’ll be sure to let you all know how it goes.  What an awesome way to say goodbye to the year, hanging out with a bunch of awesome, strong, fascinating women on a trail somewhere.  I can’t wait!

Filed Under: Seasons Tagged: , , , ,
December 24, 2009

Books on my Shelf

Bill and I were in Las Vegas recently for the Rock n Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon (read my Race Report). While walking around the Strip and taking in the sights we ran across Bauman’s Rare Bookstore in the Palazzo. As bibliophiles, this store was the epitome of “awesome”. We saw First Editions of Huckleberry Finn ($12,000), M*A*S*H ($1,250), The Hobbit ($75,000), and my personal favorite, The Outsiders ($3,800). The Outsiders is my very favorite book, ever.  I read it in 5th grade and felt an irrational affinity to Pony Boy and Johnny.  If you feel like buying ”The Outsiders” for me, ask me for my address and I’ll send it to you, no questions asked.

There’s never enough time to read. I can walk into any good bookstore and find about six books that I want to read. An Amazon gift card is a perfect present, an ideal present. Be sure there’s about $200 on the card, if you will. I’ll have it spent in no time.

I have a stack of books that are just waiting to be read. And I’ll get to them ALL, it’s just a matter of “when. Here’s what’s on the shelf, in no particular order.

What I'm reading now

Between Me and the River, by Carrie Host. She’s a Boulder, CO author writing a memoir about living through cancer. She uses the metaphor of the river throughout her book in a way that is accurate, intense, and brutally honest. I’m half-way down at this point, and am plowing through this.

Precious, Based on the Novel Push, by Sapphire. This has been made into a movie, which I really want to see, but I want to read it first. The paperback is available at Costco right now for $8.49.

The Disciple, by Stephen Coonts. This is his latest book, and looks like a great thriller. I haven’t read much by him, but all accounts say this is worth it.

Stones into Schools; promoting peace with books, not bombs, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, by Greg Mortenson. This book is by the author of “Three Cups of Tea”, one of my favorite books of all time. This topic is near and dear to my heart, and I applaud the fact that he realizes that education girls is the way to peace. I would love to work with this project, I believe in it that much.

The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver. I have no idea what this is about. I bought it because I loved “The Prodigal Summer” and “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”. She’s an author at the top of her game and I’ll read anything she writes.

Ceremony, by Leslie Marmom Silko. The back of the book says “Ceremony is the greatest novel in Native American literature. It is one of the greatest novels of any time and place. I have read this book so many times that I probably have it memorized. I teach it and I learn from it and I am continually in awe of its power, beauty, rage, vision and violence.” – Sherman Alexie. Do you know Sherman Alexie? Brilliant author in his own right. Check him out.

Lost Horizon, by James Hilton. This is the first paperback ever published. The author had an idea and got an advance, then spent the advance and had nothing to show for it. So he holed himself up in a hotel room and wrote this in a week. It’s now heralded as a classic!

Reconciliation; Islam, Democracy, and the West, by Benazir Bhutto. This is not her biography, but the book she wrote shortly before her assassination. My book club is reading this for our February book. Bill read this about a year ago and raves about it, and it’s been on my “to-read” list ever since. Thank God we’re reading it in Book Club, so I can finally get to it!

The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. This is what the movie “The Hours” is based on. I haven’t seen it and nope, haven’t read the book either. Seems strange, doesn’t it? Anyway, it’s on the list and I’ll get to it very soon, I promise.

Gourmet Rhapsody, by Muriel Barberry. This is the second book by Ms. Barberry; her first is called “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” which is a brilliant novel told from the perspective of the concierge. I adored “The Elegance of the Hedgehog” because of the sheer intelligence of the prose. I had to keep a dictionary close by, and that is NOT usual.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. A Young-Adult novel, this was reviewed in Time magazine recently. The reviewer says that this book explores the effects of war and violence on those who are coming of age in a way that doesn’t flinch from the very human desire to participate in those activities. I was completely intrigued by the review and rushed out to buy this book. I didn’t buy the sequel, Catching Fire, as I wanted to read the first one before I committed to reading the second.

The Assassin, by Stephen Coonts. Another great thriller, which is what I need to mix up my reading material.

Not pictured:

The Tale of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski . We’re reading this for our December/January book in Book Club. It’s fabulous, and I’m about half-way through it right now, though set it aside to read “Between Me and the River”. I’ll get back to it shortly, as I’m cruising through the memoir.

Fool, by Christopher Moore.  I’m a theatre geek and this is theatre prose.  Bill’s reading it right now.  We’re a sight to see at night when we’re settled into bed with our books; he’s laughing out loud at “Fool”, and I’m sniffing and tearing up at “Between Me and the River”.  When we’re done, we’ll trade.

They say it’s good to have diversity in your portfolio; I think that’s true across the board in just about every aspect of life. Friends? Don’t have friends in only one group, because you’ll slowly outgrow them. Flowers? Too much of one kind gets boring, even though they’re beautiful by themselves. Clothes? Imagine having twenty pairs of jeans and twenty white t-shirts. Bored yet? Yup. And this is why I have a lot of different things to read.

Filed Under: Books Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,
December 21, 2009

Chocolate, a Food Group

Chocolate is a food group, I don’t care what any nutritionist tells you.  I know this because I’m one of those people that EATS, and this is something my body tells me it needs.

I usually have a stash of Chocolove Dark Chocolate in the house.  My favorite is the Raspberries in Dark Chocolate.  This is a high quality but mildly affordable chocolate, and it’s really cool that it’s made locally, right here in Boulder, CO.  I’ll buy a chocolate bar from Vitamin Cottage and make it last for three or four days by eating a square or two every so often. 

The horrible, rotten, tragic news is that I haven’t been to the store in a week and I ate up the last of my chocolate a few days ago.  I complained about this to Bill; he turned right around and walked away, telling me to come with him into the garage.  I figured he was getting me out of the house to lock me outside so he wouldn’t hear me whining about chocolate.  But NO.  He was getting a gift bag off the top shelf in the garage.  Check out what he gave me!!!  All gifts from the Peppercorn in Boulder, one of his clients.

Chocolove, Seth Ellis Chocolatier, Vosges, and Fran's Chocolates

Chocolove, Seth Ellis Chocolatier, Vosges, and Fran's Chocolates

In case you can’t see the picture very well, here’s what there is:  Chocolove‘s Almonds and Sea Salt in Dark Chocolate (not listed on their website), Seth Ellis Chocolatier (a Boulder company) Dark Chocolate Truffles, Fran’s Chocolates Gray Salt Caramels, and a bar of Vosges.

Note the Vosges bar of chocolate.  It’s called “Mo’s Bacon Bar”.  Uhhh, seriously?  I’m not sure about this one.  I saw this brand of chocolate yesterday on a specialty end-cap at the Boulder Book Store, and prices were in the $7 range.  Yup, you read that right.  $7.50 for a bar of CHOCOLATE???  How long do you think it’s going to last?  And BACON FLAVOR??  Okay, that’s just weird.  I’ll try it and give a review on it.  For now, I’m going to try the Frans Gray Salt Caramels.

Thank you, Bill!!  You truly, truly know how to make this girl happy. 
Chocolate, I adore you.  And you too, Bill.  You both hold a special place in my heart.  Just not the SAME place.  :-)

Filed Under: Seasons Tagged: , , , , ,
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