Wondrous Things from The Land Down Under

Posted on January 9, 2008 by 21cm

Today was a gloomy day. A gray and cold and wet day. The kind of day where even going out to get the mail takes energy but I’m a mail junkie so out I went. When I opened the box what, to my great surprise should I find but this:

It was a package from Down Under bearing a very formidable ID RECORDED sticker.

Whoa! I thought. Do I have a drug dealer I didn’t know about? But then I remembered that Katy the Greaty had said she was going to send me something and squealing with delight I fairly skipped back into the house to see what wondrous thing was tucked into the unassuming but duly noted package (they’ve got your number, girl!)

Fingers trembling with anticipation, I tore open the package to discover this:

SUSHI TAPE!!!!!
(click for a bigger view. Go on! It’s totally worth it!)

I got very verklempt and had to actively engage in full restraint to keep from wrapping my body in that tape and heading for the nicest restaurant in town with my sushi hat on me ‘ead (that’s Aussie for ‘on my head’) and a sushi tape dress on me bod.


That’s DPR and me in our sushi hats

Refrain I did, though because I think that sushi tape is destined for better things.

Katy- you are just the bestest! You’ve made my holiday season complete.

Posted in Fun in a tub | 9 Comments

Somethings Coming, Something Good ……

Posted on January 3, 2008 by 21cm

Check out the new Garmin 405. I knew there was a reason I was waiting to upgrade my 201

You can read about it here

Posted in training | 17 Comments

Change

Posted on January 1, 2008 by 21cm

The beautiful thing about getting to the end of one year and living in a culture that celebrates the beginning of a new year is that it gives us pause to stop and reflect on things past and on what we want for the future for ourselves. Most of our lives are wrapped up in thinking about other things and people – our jobs, our homes, our families, our community. All too often we barely squeeze ourselves in to the mix of what is important and when we make ourselves a priority we suffer guilt and then we suffer guilt when we don’t make ourselves a priority and fail to meet our goals. Oh geez – must life be so difficult?

New Year’s Day is all about the goodness that is “me”. It is about assessing the year gone by for its highs and lows and deciding how this year can be better, richer, more fulfilling, and both more self absorbed and more selfless. It is about finding ways to be more dedicated to what is really important in life which requires us to think about what is most important in life and how we can, i n the words of my all time favorite insect, accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. .

My goal for 2008 is to do just that – be more positive. Most of you don’t know this but I’m a bit of a cranky pants. I’m pretty quick to focus on the negative get all worked up about perceived injustice and then act on that and when I say “act” I mean “lash out”. And then I get a grip, stop and cover and apologize and smooth things over. I’d like to improve on that and really focus on seeing that glass half full so I don’t go through the cranky pants routine.

Another tendancy I have is toward self-sabotage so I want to start honoring my intentions instead of blowing them off with cheap excuses. I want to toss myself out the door for a swim or a run or a ride knowing that whatever reason I have to avoid it isn’t worthy of derailing my plans. I want to spend less time surifing the web and more time indulging my interests. I want to push for a strong finish in whatever I am doing be it a race or creating a report for work and not give up with that cheapest of all cheap excuses “it doesn’t really matter, anyhow”. In short I want to stay on top of things instead of putting myself in react mode and then pushing the rock up the hill against the added weight of self generated defeat. I want to march forward with a sense of purpose and optimism calling out “Feets don’t fail me now!” with no particular reason to think they will.

All of this reminded me of my favorite Tracy Chapman song – Change.

This song asks the question ‘how bad does it have to get before you’ll change”. The beauty of New Year’s is that the intention to assess and change isn’t motivated by fear or sadness or problems – it is motivated by hope and the promise of new beginnings and New Year that is as bright and shiny and unsullied as a newly minted penny. So here’s to everyone’s shiny bright New Year. May you realize your goals and may your penny be as bright and shiny at the end of December as it is today.

Posted in community, Family, Health, motivation, Music Video, True Love | 15 Comments

Nothing Lasts Forever

Posted on December 28, 2007 by 21cm

Pretty much everything in life that isn’t a piece of artwork has to come and go on some sort of schedule. For example, the Holiday season, lovely as it is must come to an end. That means no more this:

or this:

or this:

And lot more of this:

and this:

It was fun while it lasted and I really did enjoy this:

and this:

but enough is enough. Time to get back to work and QUIT EATING SO MUCH! ooph!

And another thing that will change, starting tomorrow is my profile. No more “52 year old” for tomorrow I become another year better than I was before.

Happy New Year to All!

Posted in motivation | 21 Comments

Present 2 – New Slots for IM North America

Posted on December 23, 2007 by 21cm

Boulder, CO – North America Sports is pleased to announce that additional Ironman Community Fund slots will be made available for several of their 2008 races. All North America Sports full Ironman races for 2008 are closed to general entry.

A total of three hundred ICF spots will be offered for each 2008 North America Sports full Ironman races. Therefore, for the April 13th Ford Ironman Arizona will have another 139 available slots, Ford Ironman Coeur d’Alene an additional 135 slots, Ford Ironman USA Lake Placid an additional 37 slots and the new November 23rd Ford Ironman Arizona will offer 300 slots through the ICF.

These slots will be available commencing 9 AM ET, Monday December 17th through the respective race websites under the entry tab. For further information log onto http://www.nasports. com

One of the major goals of North America Sports is to contribute to the communities that host an Ironman event. To that end, the Ironman Community Fund was created in 2001; this fund allows Ironman to generate funds for community groups and non-profit organizations in each community that hosts an Ironman. The Ironman Community Fund contributes between $25,000 and $50,000 yearly to each race community to local non-profit groups with a focus of the grants being directed towards youth and sports. For a complete list of groups and organizations supported through the Ironman Community Fund, please go to http://www.nasports. com/commfund

Posted in Ironman | 4 Comments

A Holiday Musical Interlude

Posted on December 23, 2007 by 21cm

To those of you who celebrate Christmas I wish you a very Merry Christmas filled with love and joy and happiness and may all your days follow suit.

For those of you who don’t I wish you the same today, tomorrow and every day.

My little bit of Christmas Cheer can be found over here at Completerunning.com (thanks to the first person who pointed the way – I’ve forgotten who it was)

Posted in Fun in a tub | 8 Comments

My Christmas Present to You – PSA

Posted on December 20, 2007 by 21cm

**update*** Humbly Anne’s computer is fine – it was just a loose connection. Hooray for Christmas Miracles!
Now if you haven’t read this post and/or haven’t figured out your backup strategy get going! In fact, it’s not too late to ask Santa for a large external hard drive for Christmas.

I was going to write a post about my crazy anxiety dream about the Escape from Alcatraz and I was going to tell you about how I didn’t get a job I really wanted and about how part of that dream was emblematic of how I am feeling about life right now but I just wasn’t feeling it. Then, this morning my sweet Humbly Anne called in tears to tell me that her computer – the one that was working fine last night when she turned it off, the one that is holding all of the files she needs to finish her graduate school applications, the one she was planning on working on all day today, wouldn’t start. The power came on but the disk didn’t spin and the Operating System never came up.

That reminded me that I have been meaning to admonish the whole blogosphere to back up your computers and to tell you how to do it. It’s really easy and the pain of losing a hard drive or a computer can be really severe. Just ask my daughter.

How you back stuff up is a function of how much stuff you have. If you have a lot of digital photos on your machine you probably want to burn those to a CD or a DVD for safe keeping. Many of us have lots of photos stored on-line at sites like Flickr and Photobucket but I know I still have a ton of stuff on my hard drive so I back it up to physical media because there are so many gigabytes and getting stuff off the CDs is faster than downloading it from the internet where I back up everything else.

There are a number of sites where you can easily back up all of your documents and it will run every day, automatically. I like these sites because:
1). They are very easy to set up. You download and install a small program and then use the easy, intuitive interface to point and click or drag and drop the folders you want backed up.
2). They run automatically every day to backup any new or changed files. The first time it runs takes a while but after that it is very quick and painless.
3). They are encrypted and very secure. In fact, if you lose your password you are hosed because the service doesn’t store it and it is used as your encryption key.
4). They keep your files in the same structure as on your hard drive (same folders and sub folder)
5). They compress your files so that 2 GB of storage space holds more than 2 GB of your data
6). If you use a laptop and it isn’t connected to the internet for the scheduled backup time or if your desktop machine is not turned on, the backup will run immediately the next time your computer has an internet connection.
7). Peace of mind is knowing that nothing will ever be lost.

Here are some sites:

eDrive – you can backup 2 GB for free or, for $4.95/mo have unlimited space on their servers.
Mozy – same as iDrive
iBackup – $9.95/mo for 5 GB. This is a little fancier in that it saves entire backups from earlier dates so you can restore from a point back in time. Not probably necessary for home use but nice.

I have used iDrive and iBackup and they are both super easy. I suspect Mozy is the same.

What should you back up?
Photos
Documents
Spreadsheets
Presentations
Databases
Graphics files
Financial data (Quicken, Quickbooks, MS-Money)
eMail stored in Outlook or another desktop client
Music folders
Anything else that is important to you

What shouldn’t you back up?
Software. You cannot restore software the way you can restore files – it has to be loaded. There are programs that can restore an entire drive, software and all but you don’t need that for home use. What you need are legal, legitimate copies of all of your software so that if you lose a drive or a computer you can load it again.

Another thing you can do to be double safe if you are working on something important right now is to save your document to an email on your internet email account. In fact, you can store lots of stuff in email but that isn’t reliable. If you use one of these backup programs it will run automatically every day and store any files that are new or have changed if they are in a folder that you specified should be backed up.

If using the internet and having your files on some strange server gives you the creeps then buy a large, external hard drive and learn how to use the software that comes with it. I suspect they all come with some sort of backup software that will run automatically but I don’t know. I prefer the on-line solution.

Another thing you must do is make sure you have legal, current copy of a virus scanner on your machine. The $40 you spend is well worth it because you can pick up a virus anywhere and a nasty virus can bring your system to its knees. McAfee , Symantec (Norton) and Avast are all fine

Please don’t ever find yourself wailing “My whole life was on that computer!” because it’s gone or dead. Practice safe computing by backing your stuff up and running a virus scanner so that you can dream dreams and not live a nightmare.

Posted in Technology | 13 Comments

No Escape

Posted on December 16, 2007 by 21cm

Yesterday I eagerly checked the results of the random drawing for an entry into the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon hoping against odds that I would get in. I did not – wah! And that’s after having a completely loony dream about the race days ago. I could still get in on the February 15th drawing so I’ll be asking for a universe of crossed fingers near that date.

All was not lost on the day, though. My race club had its annual Holiday party which included a dessert contest. I didn’t really care about winning but I have had a hankering for pecan pie ever since Thanksgiving. We had pumpkin pie and we had apple pie but we did not have pecan pie, the absence of which left a burning hole of desire in my psyche. I wasn’t about to make a pie just for me, though. Oh no – I had done that earlier in the fall with some apples I’d picked and the results took weeks to remove from my already ample hindquarter. There would be no pecan pie in my house. This contest gave me the perfect opportunity to get my mouth around a mere sliver of pecan pie so I was happy to enter.

I won! I was so excited. The glory and the $25 gift certificate to Target didn’t quite make up for not getting into Escape from Alcatraz but it helped – it really did. The pie was so delicious that I am sharing the recipe with all of you. I highly recommend it for your Holiday gatherings. I also recommend you NOT make this pie if you don’t have enough people around to eat the whole thing or you will certainly find yourself having to work off a few extra pounds.

I did have to make a modification to the recipe due to lack of ingredients. Instead of using corn syrup I used ‘fake’ Maple syrup (Log Cabin) which is pretty much corn syrup with some maple flavoring. I also didn’t bother with the fancy crust – who needs more egg yolks than are in the filling? Not me. Enjoy!

Posted in triathlon | 7 Comments

Hibernating?

Posted on December 9, 2007 by 21cm

<img src=”http://s36.photobucket.com/albums/e45/21stCenturyMom/Racing%20Pics/th_2007Composite_sm.jpg” I’ve probably lost all my readers by now while you gave up on me ever posting again. Maybe you thought I decided to hibernate for the winter. It feels a little like I am hibernating but I’m not. I just got blogged out during NaBloPoMo and my life has been a little…how shall we say.. quiet for the last 10 days. I decided that it was time for the year in review.

This was my first real triathlon season. Prior to this year I did the Tri for Real sprint distance triathlon (700 yard swim, 18-ish mile bike, 4 mile run) in 2000 and then again last year. I PR’d last year by 23 minutes and by then had started reading triathlon blogs so that was the race that gave me the bug.

This year I raced 6 triathlons, 3 half marathons, 2 bay swims, 1 5K, 1 12K and one 4 mile run. That is more racing than I have done in my entire life before 2007 combined. So how did it go? You can find the boring old numbers after the jump if you are interested. They don’t really tell the story, though. That part takes words.

The best part about this season is that I had one. I did it. I toed the line time and time again and raced and of that I am proud.

The not so good part about this season is that time and time again I let my self doubt and a lot of low self esteem and internal self deprecating dialog hold me back. I didn’t really train because I figured ‘why bother – you suck any how’. I learned a lot about the depths of my image issues and managed, finally, to realize that toeing the line counts and that just having enough faith to make the effort is laudable so yay me! This is a first.

I also learned that if I put my mind, heart soul and body to this and really try I could be somewhat competitive. That’s how I took 2nd at Bethel Island. I raced. I could at least give the women in my age group vying for middle of the pack slots a run for their entry fee and next year I intend to do just that. I have a lot more ability and drive than I have ever tapped in to so next year my goal is to really train and to race hard – to give myself some credit to succeed and to train to that end. That will be another first.

Right now I have only 2 events locked in for the season – The Sharkfest Swim (currently sold out!) and Vineman 70.3 (about half sold out so if you want to do it get on it!). I also expect to do the Bay to Breakers, hopefully with a bunch of bloggers in Tutus. I am currently awaiting for the Dec 15 Escape from Alcatraz random drawing. I SO hope I get in. If I don’t get in to Alcatraz (and perhaps even if I do) I may very well do Wildflower Short Course again just to transcend my horrible experience from last year. I won’t go down until Saturday, though because that camping was kind of awful. 1 night of that is quite enough, thank-you-very-much. I will also do the Tri for Real because that is my “A” race where it all started.

I want to thank each and every person who has encouraged me and told me I rock and reminded me that just showing up not only counts – it’s HUGE! It has taken me quite some time to get the message but I think I’m there!!

To the extent that I have been hibernating I am going to do it for a few more weeks. I’ve been swimming 3 days a week and I’ve done a bit of running. I’ve gotten on my bike exactly once since SOMA. I did not go for a ride this morning with my favorite person to ride with because it was cold and I just don’t feel like it. I feel sort of bad about that but oh well. I did not do the Bah Humbug 5K last weekend which was a mistake because I could have placed really well and a lot of people from Forward Motion were there and it would have been fun but I’m broke so oh well again. There’s always next year and next year is going to be great!

Continue reading →

Posted in community, Events, Running, Swimming, triathlon, Tribute | 23 Comments

Duuuude… I just moisturized and like, wow

Posted on December 1, 2007 by 21cm

There’s a new product on the market I learned about from an email I got from a beauty company. I think it has potential beyond its intended use. Like, wow… who, knew?


Hempz Herbal Moisturizer
Enriched with Natural Cannabis Sativa Hemp Seed Extract

The copy from a page advertising it says:
Hempz Herbal Moisturizer is an all-day herbal body lotion providing dramatic skin moisturization to improve the health of skin through the use of pure Hemp Seed Oil and Extract.

I think what they meant was

Whoa – Duuuude…. I moisturized and like wow. I’m having a really good day. I’m watching cartoons and eating some awesome cereal – the kind with little colored marshmallows in it. Dude, have you ever really looked at those things. Whoa – so trippy. And when you put them in your mouth if you just let them sit on your tongue they kind of just collapse into a pile of pastel sugary goodness – NIRVANA, MAN! Love my moisturizer, man. So cool. An my skin is like – so soft. Like you know, man – my face feels like a baby’s butt, man. Fuckin’ A, man. Hempz rooolz

Posted in say what? | 10 Comments