Getting in a Few Miles

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So the deal is this.  I would like to run the Vermont 50 in September.  That’s 50 miles.  I’ve done it before.  I wanted to do it this past fall.  That was not in the cards.  I have plenty of time to make it happen.  I’ll tell you, though, it isn’t easy to get the miles in during the winter.  It is cold, it is slippery, I have to wear lots of clothing, I get sweaty, the roads are narrower, I use more energy, yada yada yada.

My schedule needs to match well in the winter, too.  Getting up early is fine when the sun gets up early, but these days I need to be long home by the time the sun gets to rising.  I do love to run early, but when it is 1 degree, like this morning, and dark and breezy and slippery…  You see where I’m headed.

This is why people don’t do things like this, I realize.  It is easy to make excuses.  It is easy to make other things a priority.  It is the accumulation of runs that makes it attractive to me.  Any given run might be a drag, or it might be amazing, but piling them all up makes for some feel-good stuff.  So I need to make it happen.

It will take time, I know that.  I will do a couple more short weeks of twenty miles or so.  Then I need to start getting in some longer runs.  By the time spring comes, I will hopefully be in the position to take advantage of the warmer weather right away.  When I ran the marathon in Burlington every year, I was always amazed at how many people I would see running once it got warm out.  I would have the roads to myself, as I do now, until the fair weather runners came out.

Already I feel pretty good.  Today was 10 degrees but I felt fine.  I got in a few miles before I had to meet my daughter getting off the bus.  I will run again this weekend, both Saturday and Sunday if all goes well.  I won’t get in that many miles for the week, but enough for now.  Once I get into it, I look forward to the next run.  I am starting to feel that way now.  My run today was too short.  I can’t wait until I can take the time to run the eleven mile loop.

That will feel like I am getting in the miles.  Then maybe 50 miles will seem within reach.

Facebook

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I finally created a Facebook page today.  I had been holding off on doing so because A, I didn’t need yet another thing to clutter up my spare time and B, I don’t need anything else in my life that might lead to unnecessary junk mail, e or otherwise.  However, I connected with a friend through Skype (an underutilized source of free awesomeness if there ever was one) who encouraged me to sign up.  Her key words were “You should definitely join Facebook; I think you would enjoy it.”

Another friend was visiting recently who uses Facebook a lot.  She, too, encouraged me to sign up.  So while she was here I went on in and tried to do that.  My name was apparently not worthy of instant approval.  Or maybe they recognized my name and thought “What?  That guy?  Could it really be him?”  And so they vetted me to be sure that I was the real deal.  This afternoon I finally got an email that said my account was activated.

Unfortunately, I only had a few minutes to sign in before I had to head out for an evening presentation.  I signed in to find another friend of mine had already requested me as a Facebook friend.  He beat me to my own account.  I checked to see where my security settings were and off I went.  I am curious now to check this thing out that is such a phenomenon.  I have wanted to see pages on Facebook (such as the one for Postsecret) but have been unable to do so.  I suppose now I have a ticket to see the show.

When I get the chance I will mess around with things.  I can hardly wait to see how much time gets sucked away while I try to learn where my high school friends ended up.  But then again, maybe they will find me first.

Home With the Kid

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My daughter was up most of the night with a fever and a cough.  I stayed home with her today.  That wasn’t too big a deal, in regard to my other obligations.  I managed to reschedule some meetings and I got some of my tasks completed.  It wasn’t bad spending some time with the kid, however.

We watched Shrek the Third, which my wife had rented on a whim yesterday.  That timing worked out well.  We played out in the snow in the afternoon, when she felt better (my daughter, not my wife), we ate lunch together, I helped her with some word activities that she brought home from school.  It was some quality time.

She doesn’t have a cough anymore.  Her fever is gone.  She fell asleep fast.  She was tuckered after little sleep last night.  She considered taking a nap but just couldn’t fall asleep this afternoon.  Who could blame her?  Think of all the daylight she might miss.  She came with me to pick up her brother and was the helpful sister, carrying all his things for him and greeting him with a grin.  Those two love each other.  I am fortunate there.

Tomorrow she will be fine and I will be back to working a full day, rather than piecing together what I can while tending to a not quite healthy child.  Hopefully the cough will pass me by.  She won’t be taking care of me if I crash.  She’ll be off to school whatever happens to me.  If I get sick I will sit home and try to work but get little done and feel bad about that as well as feel bad physically.  That would pretty much suck.

So no sickness for me.  I’ve got my wolf bane and my vitamin C and my early to bed.  I’m off to work in the morning.

Solar Class

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I went to part one of a three part evening class tonight, an Access class at Champlain Valley Union High School.  It was presented by Gary Becker of the Solar Bus.  The idea is to get some information about photovoltaics.  Everyone there has some desire to use the sun for electricity generation, including me.  This first class was pretty basic.  We got some general ideas about how things work.  It got me more curious.

Some key points:

Enough sunlight hits the earth every minute to supply all the electricty demand of everyone in the world for a year.

The United States could generate all of its electricity demand from solar power from an area about 45 miles square.

Vermont could generate all of its electricity demand from solar power from an area about 4.2 miles square.

Questions I need answered:

How much electricity would a 1-kilowatt system produce?  What would I need?  And what would it cost?

Those are questions for the next class, when we will get more into the details of how systems work.  We’ll see if I get my 40 bucks worth.

Seventeen Miles and a Friendly Copper

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Halfway through the Superbowl and I watch the fuzzy television, tuckered out.  I wish I had run seventeen miles today.  No way.  I ran seventeen miles this week, but that still is pretty good.  At least I am up to that.  They were tiring runs this week, all three of them–slippery, cold, windy and hilly.  When every step slips backward on a long steep hil, it makes one tired.

Plus last night I spent a few hours are Waterbury Wings to see my friend Skip play with his band, Generous Thieves.  They were pretty great.  I had not seen them yet and I danced with the rest of them.  This meant I was out late, and so got to bed late.  My children don’t sleep in.  Ever.  Therefore I do not sleep in.

Driving down Route 116 at 12:30 last night, I got pulled over.  The blue lights flashed in the mirror and I pulled to the snow bank.  I haven’t gotten pulled over in over a decade.  I knew I wasn’t speeding but my adreniline was pumping.  This Williston police officer was pretty dang nice.  “On your way home?” he asks me.  I told him I was coming from Waterbury and he asked “Off skiing?”  He gave me a warning for having a headlight out.  I felt like he stopped me to do me a favor, as if he just wanted me to be safe.  The guy had a huge grin.

I still have to get the headlight replaced and send in the ticket with a signature on it.  From some certified repair guy.  That will still cost me, I suppose.  I do need to replace it.  Too bad I just noticed it a couple of days ago.  Anyway, I have some new respect for Williston police.  At least I wasn’t speeding.  Or drunk.

The ticket was dated February 1.  See you later, January.  Maybe this week I will get up to twenty miles.  I don’t plan to drive to Waterbury any day soon.  Or anywhere at midnight for that matter.  Now I just need to get that damn headlight replaced.  Tomorrow.  The copper may have been nice, but he didn’t give me much time to deal with the problem.  At least I will be taking the day off from running tomorrow.  That should give me a little time to deal.

Coffee Cake and Two Days of Running

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Kid Pic of Morning Goodies

Kid Pic of Morning Goodie

(Originally posted 1/25/2009)

I rose early to rekindle the fire in the stove, to get coffee started for my beautiful wife, and to bake something. I had purchased sour cream yesterday and dumped into the cake above. The photo was taken by my daughter, who ran upstairs to tell me she took a photo of the coffee cake.

It was fairly tasty, although I left off the icing and did not add lemon, which I prefer, since my spouse does not prefer. All in all, however, a fine breakfast food item. It was my first item of the day, the other major kitchen project being the tofu pot pie, which is hard to beat on a cold day.

I ran again today. I have not run two days in a row for quite a while. Leavensworth Road is perfect at the moment, the right combination of temperature, snow and traffic making even the class four section runnable. It was not as cold as yesterday, but cold enough. It was below zero last night but got into the teens by this afternoon.

Since I pulled a muscle at the end of the summer, I have had to take it easy as I slowly recover. I figure I need to keep it down to 20 miles per week for another month. By spring I should be able to turn it up, as long as I take it easy. By the time it gets warm, and running is easier, I am hoping I can get in some long runs. We’ll see.

We have plenty of coffee cake left, and some pie, and even some bread from yesterday. I have an easy breakfast and an easy lunch. Which is a good thing, since I need to be out of here early, and I need to work late. It will be a long day. A long week, even. But I have a new soup recipe I’d like to try. I made some stock today and I have a lot of celery left. That will be a good project for maybe Tuesday. Since my wife works late that day, I won’t be able to run anyway. Might’s well make up some soup.

The Merry Ferry

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This morning I read this article in the Burlington Free Press that informs me this:

A Lake Champlain Transportation ferry struck pilings at the Grand Isle dock Friday night, sending four people to the hospital with minor injuries.

Apparently it hit the pilings so it would “avoid crashing into the dock.”  The pilings, of course, are there to keep the ferry from hitting the dock.  This ferry, however, must have been going too fast.  Not only did four people get injured, but one car was damaged and “the pilings were knocked over.”

Whoa there, Captain, hit the breaks.  I found this to be a strangely curious and, I admit, amusing, local story.  But then I saw this ad in Seven Days, our local weekly:

Breaking Through Indeed

Breaking Through Indeed

This was far more amusing that the story itself.  Who knew they meant it literally?

What’s for Dinner

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Last night I had the time to make a good dinner.  I whipped up cream of celery soup and fresh dinner rolls.  With fresh pears on the side.  It was wholesome and tasty.  The kids hated the soup, of course.  “This looks like throwup,” says the boy of joy.  He was serious.

OK, it did look a little like throwup, but only some kinds of throwup, not the gross kind.  Well, not the grossest kind.  But it did taste good–salty and fresh and creamy.  I guess you can’t have everything in a soup.  Especially one that your kids think looks like something your body already rejected.

At least the rolls were good.  They ate plenty of those.  So tonight I wondered what to make.  I had a lot less time.  The rest of the fam was off to the library where my daughter met a friend from school for some friend time.  It was me deciding and me making and I had had a long day.  I didn’t feel like making anything complicated at that point.  I just wanted to eat it.

But of course I wanted my family to have a quality dinner.  I had to make something fast that had no resemblance to bodily fluids.  So I made spaghetti.  We don’t have that all that often.  It is easy and we all like it but I tend to make things that are fresher if I can, or that are just more fun to make.  Spaghetti is just too easy.

My savior was the table.  Instead of the easy pour it into bowls at the stove approach, I set places and we had some spot lighting and we sat together and talked about our day.  I love that.  I remember eating spahetti as a child but more than that I remember eating together as a family.  I want my kids to remember that.

The bummer is that I had really been looking forward to making the soup yesterday.  I had never made cream of celery soup before.  Mostly because, well, it’s celery for god’s sake.  But I had all this celery since you can’t buy just what you need and I needed to make something with it.  I’m thinking next time I toss in a few carrots.  It will give it a little sweetness but, more importantly, some color.

But then again, do I want to hear my boy of joy say “This looks like…?”

Deep Enough Snow

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Snow After a Storm

Snow After a Storm

This morning we woke to the effects of yesterday’s storm.  We have several inches of snow on the ground.  It was deep and fluffy.  The sun rose to a clear sky and the world was aglow.  The low light slanted against the whitened firs, that air was still, our feet crunched as we walked.

When I was in high school I headed from my home in Connecticut to rural Vermont for a semester.  That was on this date a whole passel of years ago.  The experience had such an impact on me that not only did I end up living in Vermont, but I remember the day I started that semester.

I arrived with my parents in Vershire on a day much like this one.  The snow was deep, the world was quiet.  It was beautiful.  After my parents got a chance to see the place and get oriented, and to offer me a solid goodbye, I began my four months in a new place–a school on a working farm.

I dug it.  I learned a lot about myself.  I made good friends.  I came to love the world.  I still do.  And I came to ask lots of questions.  I still do that as well.

I mentioned the place, the Mountain School, to a couple of students with whom I now work.  I told them they might think about applying.  It would do them some good.  I suppose it isn’t for everyone, living in a small community and working hard and being pushed to learn, but, frankly, I think more of that would do all of us some good.