Properly Chastened
Mood:  lazy
Topic: Daily Eruptions
Six days after my post about the other shoe dropping, Daily Om sent this to my inbox. Of course, I didn't read it until today.

Peace.

Back in the Saddle
Mood:  energetic
Topic: Marathon
Without meaning to, I took the month of July off from training. As long as I was living at the old place, I continued walking and running, but as soon as I started spending most of my nights here, the workouts ended. For the past five weeks, I have been trying to work full time and be at two houses at once and have had no extra energy or time for anything but dealing with my life.

But today is the first day of August, I'm moved completely out of the old place, the new place is coming together, at the moment Hans and I have found a way to live together in a tentative peace, and I got up at 5:00 and walked for an hour. My right arch was a little surprised and cranky, but the movement felt good. Almost as good as pedaling. I have three months of training left before the marathon, and there's no more wiggle room left in the schedule. I have to be serious from here on in.

I have a weightlifting workout scheduled for this afternoon and my first run tomorrow morning at 5:00. I'll probably post after each workout for awhile just to give myself incentive to stick to the schedule. Positive reinforcement and all that....

Sewer Saves Emperor's Head
Mood:  mischievious
Topic: Daily Eruptions
How's that for a headline? I probably won't get any paying gigs writing headlines any time soon, but you have to admit, that caught your attention.

Here's the AP story: http://enews.earthlink.net/article/ent?guid=20050728/42e85840_3ca6_1552620050728550293876.

Cool, eh?

All About the Bike
Mood:  caffeinated
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I took a "vacation" day yesterday to finish getting the leftover packing boxes and the six 30 gallon trash bags of packing peanuts out of the townhouse in Wake Forest and to get the place cleaned up for the new tenants. I am exhausted. My right hand scrubbed every surface in the place and today will hardly move!

The weird thing is that, despite the soreness in my upper body and the lethargy everywhere else, the thing I really wish I could do today is jump on the Stellar for a ninety-mile solo ride. I can almost feel the need to pedal in my legs! Maybe the overall tiredness I feel reminds my body of what it felt like to ride the bike across country, and somehow my body has decided that's what I'm doing and is sending my brain signals to go air up the tires and get out on the road.

Ninety miles in Idaho or Minnesota or Wisconsin or Michigan's Upper Peninsula would be so perfect today. Along one of the Great Lakes, or the Mississippi River, or along a coast... But I would settle for just being on the bike alone anywhere (except maybe Illinois around Chicago or that really busy stretch along that highway in Pennsylvania the Big Ride attempted).

I promised myself this morning that if I live through the marathon in October, next fall I'll do the week-long Cycle North Carolina event that goes from the mountains to the coast. I miss eating breakfast outdoors with hundreds of people dressed in Spandex and CoolMax!

Cool Coverage of Lance's Tour History
Mood:  cheeky
Here's a nice, celebratory story of Lance's Tour de France history: msn.foxsports.com/cycling/story/3823868

It's okay for a liberal to read Fox's sports coverage, right??

Scary
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Daily Eruptions
When I was editing my Tripod website this morning, there was a banner ad across the top of the page offering me a free, online journal to track my moods to help treat my bipolar mania! Wow! All I can hope is that this was not one of the targeted ads that Tripod hosts--like, on this page, heart rate monitor ads appear because I have mentioned in my blog that I wear a heart rate monitor--because that would just be too scary. I have never taken medication to treat bipolor disorder, so why would they target me? And, if it's not a targeted ad, that's just as scary, because that means the drug company is just offering its services to anyone, regardless of medical history. It advertised a medication called Seroquel which is used in the treatment of bipolar mania and schizophrenia and the ad promises to help readers celebrate life and find balance. And the name--Seroquel: who wants to take anything with a derivative of the word "quell" (to put down by force; pacify) in it?

So here's a test: I've used the word "bipolar" and the drug name "Seroquel" in this post--how long will it take before the Seroquel ad shows up in the targeted banners that appear atop my (free) blog page??

Woo-hoo!
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Daily Eruptions


Way to go, Lance!!!!!!!!!!

Ecomobile?!
Mood:  cool
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I was passed by one of these on the freeway this morning! www.ecomobile.com I was going much faster than I should have been, and this guy went by me like I was standing still. Unfortunately, a slower moving pickup truck pulled out in front of me just as the ecomobile pulled up beside me and I had to divert my attention to keep from rear-ending said slow moving truck, so I didn't get the best look. The one that passed me looked like it really was just an enclosed motorcycle, not large enough for more than the driver and one passenger seated behind. The website was painted over the portion that covered the rear wheel and I think the driver's intention was just to go out and pass as many cars on the freeway this morning as he could.

I don't know why I keep calling the driver "he," because I couldn't see the driver's face. It could have been a woman. Afterall, women speed (ahem), drive motorcycles, are concerned about gas mileage and environmental issues, and like cool, new technology, too. So, sorry if my falling into easy stereotypes in my assumptions offended anyone. The thing looked like fun to drive, I just worry about its safety in a collision with another moving vehicle. (You probably just have to assume you have no more protection than if you were riding a traditional motorcycle, and hope that being trapped inside the enclosure doesn't somehow increase your chances of injury--oh, sorry, I mean death.) If I'm reading the pricing information correctly and interpreting the first decimal point correctly as a comma, then the ones advertised on the website are well out of my price range, so I guess I don't really need to worry about whether I'd feel safe enough.

Compassion
Mood:  cheeky
Topic: Daily Eruptions
Since I've been working with Sudie, my work involves interacting with goddesses--their stories and myths, Sudie's drawings of them, and even my own interpretation of them as I try to condense their meanings and messages into ideas for meditation for the divination card project I'm helping to write. Kuan Yin is the goddess of compassion and the first I chose to write about because on the first morning I had set aside for writing, it was the quality of compassion with which I felt I most needed to make contact (yes, of course, because of something I was going through with Hans). And so the writing has become an exercise in immersion; I attempt to absorb the goddess and cultivate her message in my own person while I try to write about her.

Sudie had already drawn Kuan Yin years ago and planned to include her in the divination card project. Then a poet whose book she is illustrating asked her to draw Kuan Yin again. And this morning, Kuan Yin showed up again--this time in my personal email box in a message from Daily OM. She's really trying to get my attention!

You can read the Daily OM and what they had to say about Kuan Yin here: www.dailyom.com.

The sound of the other shoe dropping
Mood:  down
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I knew June went too smoothly! For Hans to get the final go ahead for the job and for us to find the house, get approved for a mortgage, buy a second car, and close on the house in three weeks' time and all before Hans left for training in Seattle was amazing. We had a great month! We were loving toward each other and communicated well, and were really in sync. We were back to being a great team. I kept wondering what I'd done in this lifetime to deserve so many blessings. Gretchen, Hans's mom, admitted to me that she kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, too.

And now I know what the Universe was up to. There was a catch. The catch is that Hans and I have to live together in the house we bought while he works the great new job he got.... The minute he started training in Seattle, he stopped being civil to me. I considered at one point--after meeting my neighbor who is in the middle of a divorce and after hearing a radio story about a Washington state man who was arrested at his wedding because the bride forgot to remove the restraining order she had against him--not picking Hans up from the airport when he returned. I had his keys as well as my keys to both houses and both cars, and I indulged in a little fantasy of what it might be like if I didn't answer my phone when he landed and wasn't waiting outside baggage claim. But, of course, I picked him up, and I've been attempting to find a way to live with him ever since.

We "started from scratch" on Monday after a bad end to a rocky day on Sunday, but still ended up going to bed mad at each other Monday night; started from scratch again Tuesday and made it through the day being sweet to each other--aided by the fact that we were only in the same room for about 30 minutes--which brings us to today, when the best I can do is consider him a very bad roommate and try to ignore the fact that he is supposed to be my husband and in love with me. I think this is somebody's way of turning up the heat and making me, or us, make some decisions about the relationship. Sure, you can have a house! Go live in it! And under her breath, this oughtta' be fun!

Our wedding anniversary is Friday and I can feel the love already.