Thank You, Spellcheck

A little afternoon pick-me-up, courtesy of our friend, Spellcheck.

Having mistyped "Shari," I was given the suggestions of Sahib, Sahara and Safari, among others.

Suddenly, there I was in the desert with none other than the smoldering Ralph Fiennes. Well, I guess in this case, the PRE-smoldering Ralph Fiennes. Heh. Sorry.

The mind is a strange thing.

ACK! I've Been Tagged

Thanks, Lifebikin', for tagging me, therefore saving me from the funk I was in over failing to get a particularly interesting Spycam photo I was after last night. Here goes:

If you could have any one — and only one — bike in the world, what would it be? Cervelo P3C. I’ve been in lust ever since Chrissie Wellington won IM Kona on hers.

Do you already have that coveted dream bike? If so, is it everything you hoped it would be? If not, are you working toward getting it? If you’re not working toward getting it, why not? Ha! I wish!!! I’m totally not worthy of a P3C, but still enjoy coveting it. I have started to save my pennies for a Cervelo P2, however. Probably still not worthy, but they don’t call pride stupid for nuttin’. I won’t let it totally get in the way of buying lotsa bike. P2SL or P2C. I’m saving my overtime $$, gathering stuff to sell on Ebay, buying Powerball tickets, crossing my fingers. I’d get a second job, but what with the new additional demands on my time, forget it. I’ll err on the side of sanity - or something like it.

If you had to choose one — and only one — bike route to do every day for the rest of your life, what would it be, and why? What? This question verges on the sadistic. Hmmmm. I guess that would be the “Wine and Number 9” route of Texas Hellweek, which rambles through scenic Hillcountry and includes an evil climb to a bat cave and stunning overlook. Locally, if I had - HAD - to choose one route, it’d be a rolling to hilly, scenic one I like to do in spring and fall out a bit east of my area. It goes from White Bear Lake, up northward then over east to Withrow, keeps going to Square Lake (stop for a swim if it’s nice), over to Marine-on-St.-Croix (stop for a cuppa excellent French Roast and a scone at Roberta’s (which in looking for a link I just learned has closed. Sob!)), up the nasty hill to Copas, over to Scandia, then back around south again. Both rides have plenty of terrain variety, are beautiful AND great workouts.

What kind of sick person would force another person to ride one and only one bike ride for the rest of her / his life? This guy or this guy. ("It seems that you’ve been riding TWO rides . . ..”)

Do you ride both road and mountain bikes? If both, which do you prefer and why? If only one or the other, why are you so narrowminded? Well, I ride a road bike and cyclocross bike. So get off my back, wheelsuckah! Heh. I prefer my road bike because of the zippiness factor. Plus, I gawk at the scenery even more if I'm offroad and, well, yipes - TREES!

Have you ever ridden a recumbent? If so, why? If not, describe the circumstances under which you would ride a recumbent? Heavens, no. Watching people on those things, I still can’t work out how they find their center of balance. The only circumstances under which I would ride a recumbent would be if I were suffering some terribly debilitating illness/injury and that was the absolute ONLY way I could ride. Again, stupid pride vs. riding? Riding wins.

Have you ever raced a triathlon? If so, have you also ever tried strangling yourself with dental floss? Well, yesssss, of course. Lots. That is, in answer to the first half of the question. As to the second, no - but I’d be happy to try strangling YOU with it, Mr. Questionnaire-writer.

Suppose you were forced to either give up ice cream or bicycles for the rest of your life. Which would you give up, and why? Ice cream, of course. Without a second thought. I’m totally an eat to live gal, so no contest there. A more relevant question would be if I were forced to give up COFFEE or bicycles . . . nah, still no contest. Bubbye, coffee. But only if I were really, deadly-force forced.

What is a question you think this questionnaire should have asked, but has not? Also, answer it. Why do some people wear underwear under their bike shorts? I seriously haven’t a clue. Maybe because they LIKE panty lines, the heat and slippy-chafe-factor of an extra layer of clothing AND how painful the seams feel ‘twixt their bum and saddle.

You’re riding your bike in the wilderness (if you’re a roadie, you’re on a road, but otherwise the surroundings are quite wilderness-like) and you see a bear. The bear sees you. What do you do? Give it all of my Clif bars, Clif Bloks, etc., and worry about the resultant and inevitable bonk later.

I tag: Mud Sweat and Gears, 3 Speed Blog, and Struggling to Find my Form.

Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock

“When you do things without thinking, you ain’t making the choice – the choice is making you.”

Ghost Rider (2007)
Barton Blaze (Brett Cullen)

Well, I suppose . . . but -

Click click
scrolllll
chew nails
click
stop
scritch scritch
tick tick tick

grooooan
click click
scrooollllll
type type type
breathe
scritch scratch
sigh
oof

That was the sound of me mucking around at my college website, trying to decide what to do about the impending tuition “pay up or forfeit your spot” date. I have to make a 20% down payment on my fall class or the claim I've staked to a seat in biology goes to some other happy pioneer. Deadline: Midnight, July 28, 2008. Just days away.

What’s cooler than cool? ICE COLD. What’s ice cold? My own feet over going back to school.

6-9 months ago, those same feet were burning hot and just itching to take me on a running leap into a better future. I had done my thinking and was thrilled by the idea of jumping back onto the school wagon. But due to obligatory hoops, red tape and resultant waiting, I’ve had hours, days, weeks, months - TOO MUCH TIME to think about what a huge impact a return to higher learning will have on life as I know it. Even more, it’s become clearer just how dang LONG it all will take.

Hmmmm.

I’m 99% sure I’m going to go ahead and do it. Dip one icy toe in. Take on one class on for fall semester and see how school fits. But have I taken those assessment tests? But have I made my payment yet? Nooooooo. I will though. Really, I will. Just got to get my feet back up to room temperature. After all - the drop date is a good month from now. Not that I’ll need to know that date. Right? Um, right.

Words of wisdom from a rat:

“Change is nature, the part that we can influence, and it starts when we decide.”

Ratatouille (2007)
Remy (Patton Oswalt)

Looking for Something to Do? How 'bout a Fish Pedicure?

I scoff at pedicures and like my au naturale feet just fine, thanks. But, ooooo, I bet this would feel really neat! This Pisces is ready to dive in - so long as it's not harmful to the fishies.

Fish Pedicures: Carp Rid Human Feet Of Scaly Skin

ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Ready for the latest in spa pampering? Prepare to dunk your tootsies in a tank of water and let tiny carp nibble away.

Fish pedicures are creating something of a splash in the D.C. area, where a northern Virginia spa has been offering them for the past four months. John Ho, who runs the Yvonne Hair and Nails salon with his wife, Yvonne Le, said 5,000 people have taken the plunge so far.

"This is a good treatment for everyone who likes to have nice feet," Ho said.

He said he wanted to come up with something unique while finding a replacement for pedicures that use razors to scrape off dead skin. The razors have fallen out of favor with state regulators because of concerns about whether they're sanitary.

Ho was skeptical at first about the fish, which are called garra rufa but typically known as doctor fish. They were first used in Turkey and have become popular in some Asian countries.

Ho believes his is the only salon in the country to offer the treatment, which costs $35 for 15 minutes and $50 for 30 minutes. The spa has more than 1,000 fish, with about 100 in each individual pedicure tank at any given time.

Ho said the hot water in which the fish thrive doesn't support much plant or aquatic life, so they learned to feed on whatever food sources were available -- including dead, flaking skin. They leave live skin alone because, without teeth, they can't bite it off.

State regulations make no provision for regulating fish pedicures. But the county health department -- which does regulate pools -- required the salon to switch from a shallow, tiled communal pool that served as many as eight people to individual tanks in which the water is changed for each customer.

The communal pool also presented its own problem: At times the fish would flock to the feet of an individual with a surplus of dead skin, leaving others with a dearth of fish.

"It would sometimes be embarrassing for them but it was also really hilarious," Ho said.

For the whole story - click here.

"So Terrible, It's Actually Brilliant"

"Somehow what happens is the cumulative weight of this terribleness coming off the screen and these indestructible songs - which are, I mean they - it's in their genetic code, you can do what you want with them, you can set off small thermonuclear explosions, it doesn't make any difference, the songs survive - and suddenly you're going, 'I've gone with this, I've gone all pink, I've come over completely, you know, cuddly . . . the next thing I know, I'm welling up ."

Dr. Mark Kermode on "Mamma Mia"

Early last week, my mum said she wanted to get together and do something on the weekend. We left it open 'til later in the week to decide what this togetherness would entail. When I realized the film version of "Mamma Mia" was opening that very week, my figurative skies clouded over and all I could do was hope mom wouldn't hear about it. I didn't get that lucky. Sure enough, that is precisely what she chose as our motherdaughter activity for Sunday.

"Mary asked me if I'd go see it with her, but I said no. I'd much rather see it with my daughter!"

Oh, woe is me.

Mom saw this mess at least twice onstage. Eventually, and with great glee she dragged my dad, and the hubby and I (admitted stage and film snobs extraordinaire) to see it one long ago Thanksgiving. We played nice and went along with it, kicking and screaming all the way. Very nearly literally. It lived down to our expectations.

So, back to my movie experience. I'm in utter agreement (per usual) with my man, Dr. Mark Kermode. See/hear his fantastically entertaining singing, dancing review HERE on BBC Radio 5 Live.

I laughed, I cried, I sat jaw gaping and agog in horror. But ultimately, I have to admit I had a darned good time. Even worse, I later downloaded some Abba onto my iPod. Can it get any worse?

Later this week, going in for palate cleansers in the form of "The Dark Knight" and (Sheer heaven! I can't believe it's finally here!) the real attraction, "The X-Files: I Want to Believe."

Some Kermodian highlights:

"The closest you're ever going to get to seeing A-list stars basically doing, you know, drunken karoake."

"Is that the QE2 docking or is that Pierce looking for a C?"

"The most brilliant thing about Meryl Streep - this is fantastic, right - Meryl Streep approaches the songs of Abba like they are a Shakespearean text." [EC: She is freaking brilliant singing "The Winner Takes it All" - Here comes the Oscar nom.]

"I'm not being funny about this. Mamma Mia is terrible, and yet it's one of the very few movies that passes right through the wall in the Star Trek way that they reverse the polarities . . . you come out the other side and you go, 'It's strangely wonderful."

Spycam Spots COLBERT at Local Grocery Store!!

Well, what did you THINK I meant? Heh heh.








Dr. Horrible: "Didn't you have a double date with Bait and Switch?"
Moist: "Yeah. I kinda thought I was going to end up with Bait, but ..."

Dr. Horrible, Act I

I was actually looking for this ------>

But perhaps it already went here.

Rats.

Spycam as Crime Spotter!

Crime against coffee, that is. AND coffee drinkers. One shouldn't even have to endure the suggestion of such an atrocity. It is, in a word, offensive!

This highly repugnant item was spotted in our office lounge. "Please take." Yeah, you wish.

Whose wacky idea was this? Surely not an actual drinker, admirer or connoisseur of the brown elixir known as coffee.

More likely an evil ENEMY of coffee beans everywhere. An arch nemesis of coffee! (<--- hmm, has someone been hitting the sci-fi a little too heavily of late?)

I rate this up there - or rather, down there - with other such abominations as raspberry coffee, apple coffee, etc. ACK!

Hear this - while coffee and fruit desserts can definitely be said to have a symbiotic relationship - Fruit flavoring and coffee are not - NOT - mixey things!!

Word.

Horrible-y Excited

Less than 24 hours away from a Whedon fix!!!


I'm gonna be getting up Horrible-y early tomorrow. Doctor Horrible (first installment) premieres HERE tomorrow 2:01 a.m. CST. (You can also watch the trailer at that link.)

Who is Dr. Horrible?
WHAT is Dr. Horrible?? Find out here.

Next on the sodarnedfabulousIcanhardlystandit horizon, THE X-FILES!!!!! If you haven't seen the newer trailer, it's heeeeeeere.

Oh, to be 10 Again

Ahhh, youth.

I love the kid, Colin Duffy, profiled in Susan Orlean's, "The American Man, Age Ten." It'd be incredibly fun to hang out with him for a day. Probably an impossibility tho, as at this point in time, he and his friends think girls are "stupid and weird." Oh well.

Here's an excerpt; the closing paragraphs of this wonderful essay:

Most days, he spends his hours in the backyard building an Evil Spider-Web Trap. This entails running a spool of Jim's fishing line from every surface in the yard until it forms a huge web. Once a garbageman picking up the Duffys' trash got caught in the trap. Otherwise, the Evil Spider-Web Trap mostly has a deterrent effect, because the kids in the neighborhood who might roam over know that Colin builds it back there. "I do it all the time," he says. "First I plan who I'd like to catch in it, and then we get started. Trespassers have to beware."

One afternoon when I came over, after a few rounds of Street Fighter at Danny's, Colin started building a trap. He selected a victim for inspiration - a boy in his class who had been pestering him - and began wrapping. He was entirely absorbed. He moved from tree to tree, wrapping; he laced fishing line through the railng of the deck and then back to the shed; he circled an old jungle gym, something he'd outgrown and abandoned a few years ago, and then crossed over to a bush at the back of the yard. Briefly, he contemplated making his dog, Sally, part of the web. Dusk fell. He kept wrapping, paying out fishing line an inch at a time. We could hear mothers up and down the block hooting for their kids; two tiny children from next door stood transfixed at the edge of the yard, uncertain whether they would end up inside or outside the web. After a while, the spool spun around in Colin's hands one more time and then stopped; he was out of line.

It was almost too dark to see much of anything, although now and again the light from the deck would glance off a length of line, and it would glint and sparkle. "That's the point," he said. "You could do it with thread, but the fishing line is invisible. Now I have this perfect thing and the only one who knows about it is me." With that, he dropped the spool, skipped up the stairs of the deck, threw open the screen door, and then bounded into the house, leaving me and Sally the dog trapped in his web.

Basking

A little while ago, a coworker up and told me I look 21-years old today. Huh?

Whoa. The lighting must have been particularly dim in that section of hallway.

Addled tho the speaker be, I'm gonna hang onto that one for awhile.

“No matter how cleverly you sneak up on a mirror, your reflection always looks you straight in the eye.”

Angel Heart (1987)
Louis Syphre (Robert DeNiro)

Waving the White Flag

Alright! Alright, already! I'm surrendering to my doctor's wishes and am going into recovery mode. I've given this the definition of: no focused training nor training schedule, and absolutely no racing for the month of July. My hope is that this 4 weeks of penance will get me to my goal of a pain-free, pelvis/spine-stable state, with the added carrot of enjoying the fall running season.

I'd like to at least participate at Turtleman in early August - BUT am making sure that goal stays very liquid. AND if things aren't better in a month, I'll add another month to the recovery cycle. *Gulp!*

It took a long time (and I know this seems obvious to the casual, non-athlete onlooker), but I finally came to grips with how backward it is to put training and getting to start lines ahead of recovery from injury. For example, not doing PT exercises A and B because they might cause me to drop workout C and D is not a brainiac choice. In the end, logic has finally won out. I don't like having to step down, but decided I would rather get over this sooner than later. My nightmare is to still be nursing this over the winter when I should be XC skiing. It seems unreal, but given SI joint dysfunction's recalcitrant nature is still a real possibility.

Sooo, this month's programme is cycling and swimming as much as I want. But the focus will be on FUN and I'll be keeping a detailed log to track what makes things worse, with a solemn pledge to cut back on volume/intensity as necessary - erring on the side of caution. AND only one day of low mileage on-land running per week, plus 2 days of water running, that is, unless I die of boredom first. The on-land day goes if I even get a whiff of suspicion it is sabotaging my recovery.

I don't know if you've tried it, but water running is definitely THE #1 most boring exercise ever invented. Hopefully adding in some intervals, plus doing it outside and at various lakes will help - and I'm ordering up a cheap, waterproof radio thingie. (Note to self: Don't forget to order this!)

Recovery, here I come! But first - a cortisone injection in my hip bursa tomorrow. YIPES.

Masters Athletes Redefined in One Fell Swoop!!!

Or maybe that was two fell swoops.

Freakin' awesome!!!! Even more exciting than the Federer/Nadal marathon at Wimbledon yesterday. Well, for us over-40's anyhow.

"American swimmer Dara Torres has opted to drop one of two individual events she won while making a splash at the U.S. Olympic trials this past week.

Torres won't be competing in the 100-metre freestyle, USA Swimming announced on Monday. With the possibility of swimming in two relay events, it was decided the toll of four events in eight days would be too taxing.

Torres, 41, managed to grab some of the spotlight from powerhouses Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff at the Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb., qualifying for her fifth Olympics.

She won the 50-metre freestyle, setting an American record three times over two days in the event. Her winning time in the final was 24.25 seconds. Lacey Nymeyer now takes the second Olympic berth, with five-time Olympic medallist Natalie Coughlin already qualifying.

Her winning time in the 100 was 53.78, 0.5 seconds faster than Coughlin. Torres had
hinted during the trials she might ultimately drop the event from her Olympic
schedule.

Torres has won four gold medals, one silver and four bronze at Olympics dating back to the 1984 Los Angeles Games. She also competed in Seoul, Barcelona and Sydney.

She is competing just two years after giving birth to a daughter. "

More about the amazing Dara Torres - and how she has hung tough enuf to beat the younger fishies, here.

From a Wild and Crazy Guy -

Really good quotage for when you find yourself wedged into a tight corner:

"Through the years I've realized there's no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration."

"Born Standing Up"
Steve Martin