In My Copious Free Time

Why are there so many songs about rainbows?

I've been doing a lot of iTunes clean-up lately. Serious cleaning - I've deleted about 600 songs and I've done a lot of editing of poorly named or untitled tracks. (Several years ago someone gave me CDs of the Billboard Top 100 for the years 1960-2001, so needless to say I had a HUGE amount of music just from those CDs, which included a lot of stuff I just didn't care about.)

Anyhow, in the clean-up I discovered I have "The Rainbow Connection," so I loaded it onto my iPod that I keep in the car. I played it last night for Alex and he really enjoyed it. When I told him it was Kermit the Frog singing he thought a moment and said, "He's not bad for a frog."

Personally, I think his singing is just average for frogs. His banjo playing, however, is second-to-none in the amphibian world.

I'm Gonna Be (13 Miles)

First of all, how awesome is MTV Music? So what if they don't play videos on MTV anymore - they play them whenever I want, on demand, on my computer. Sweetness.

The Proclaimers |MTV Music

Because the new iPhone has built-in Nike + AND I had to get a new sensor since the old one finally died, I decided to start anew on the Nike + website, which syncs run information directly from the phone. Innocuous enough, right? Well, I started playing around on the site, something I'd never done since I never really used it consistently in the first place. I noticed the training programs link and once on that page, there it was, staring me in the face:

HALF MARATHON

In all honestly, it looked more like this:

HALF MARATHON

Imagine that in some spiky font with little heat lines coming off of it, as if it just rose up out of the bowels of hell. Also, imagine it flashing.

It looked big. It looked scary. (I know you're thinking it - "that's what she said.") It looked impossible.*

So naturally, I signed right the hell up.



I usually run 2 miles a day, sometimes 2.5 miles. On a good day, I'll run 5k, but let's face it, I'm not a distance runner. I've run a 10k. Once. So I'm really not sure what I'm thinking or doing**, but it just seems like the thing to try. Or do. Just do it. Do or do not, there is no try. 

I'm going to go lace up my shoes and see if I can come up with more hackneyed motivational expressions. In the meantime, if you all never hear from me again, it's because running the first 4 miles was the end of me.

*Actually, it looked like a little, robin's egg blue square. I exaggerate.
**I suspect that a tiny part of this is being inspired as all get-out by Donna Downey's story of becoming a runner (in the midst of losing something like 50 pounds). I used to think I couldn't be a runner, like Donna thought. But now I am. I used to think I couldn't run very far or run something as big as a half-marathon. I want to prove myself wrong.

I want to be just like Cathy Z

That's what you'd think, anyway since I'm shamelessly stealing her blog post idea. It's okay though, since she shamelessly stole it from Ali Edwards. And if you don't know who these women are, you should check out their blogs. Both are very talented visual designers and artists.

On with the larceny...

Outside my window... the treetop is swaying in the breeze

I am thinking... about a conversation I had with my boss yesterday and about the housework I need to do tonight.

I am thankful for... Google Reader.

From the kitchen... this is so not applicable to my life, but I will say that the kitchen still smells like the pizza we had for dinner last night.

I am wearing...olive linen pants and a gauzy black top and black flip flops.

I am creating... plans in my head for the scrapbook pages I won't have time to work on tonight.

I am going... to finish this client contract revision today.

I am reading... well, at the moment I'm reading a data report for a client, but the book I'm in process of reading is  I Was Told There Would be Cake

I am hoping... that I get everything done that needs to get done before I leave for vacation.

I am hearing... the sound of the a/c.

Around the house... I dunno - it's there and I'm here.

One of my favorite things... cashews.

A few plans for the rest of the week... finish up the work on my desk, get a pedicure, cut Alex's hair (or take him to get it cut), clean house, pack, fly to Alabama to visit my family on Thursday.

Second best check memo ever

In David Sedaris's story "Youth in Asia," he relays the story of how his mother sent him a check to cover the cost of having his cat cremated. He writes:

In the left-hand corner, on the line marked MEMO, she'd written, "Pet burning."

Tonight, I got a check of my own.

It's no secret I'm a big fan of David Sedaris. (I'm just going to skip over the not one, not two, but THREE different random lists I've posted that mention him.) Tonight he was at Borders and since Joe left for Minneapolis to visit his brother today, I took Alex with me to the mall for the reading. He started with a new story (one he said he'd never read) about the preponderance of public making-out in Paris. (Aside 1: I really wanted to say "necking" there because "public making-out" seems awkward, but who on earth says "necking" anymore? Aside 2: I thought I'd turned into a prude when I saw all the public making-out in Paris in March, so it was a relief to know that it isn't just me.) He went on to read a fable about a cat who visits a baboon for some grooming before attending a party and then read a bunch of entries from his diary.

The normal Q&A followed and I asked if he had any good books to recommend, and he did, joking that this was going to seem like a set-up since we were in a bookstore and I went along, laughing and saying I'd pick up my check after the reading. During the Q&A, however, he said he had a project that maybe we could help with. "I need a nerd," he proclaimed. He was going to pick someone and then suggested someone in the crowd might be a better nerd-spotter, but then people wanted clarification. What would this nerd need to do? A job description was in order. Sedaris revealed that someone had said they saw him on Twitter ("Tweeter" he called it), but he is not, in fact, on Twitter. He was disturbed that he had an impostor and needed help putting a stop to this and would pay someone $50 for this service. Being a long-time Twitter-er and having one of its founders as a friend (meaning I can send him a direct message), I immediately piped up "Oh, I can take care of that!"

Brash? Probably. But what the hell - I wasn't positive I could fix it, but I was damn sure I could come closer than anyone else there! Sedaris told me to come up and see him after the reading, so Alex and I marched over and waited in the priority line to talk to him.

And yes, my seven-year-old knows who David Sedaris is. He pronounced the whole event "cool" and said, "As far as I know, I'm the first kid in my whole second grade that has gotten to meet David Sedaris." No offense to Sedaris, but I assured him he's probably the only kid in his whole second grade who even knows who David Sedaris is. Sedaris also seemed impressed when he offered Alex some candy and Alex politely answered, "No, thank you." I'm not sure what was more remarkable to him - the manners or the fact that he turned down chocolate.

Anyhow, we had a short conversation about Twitter and what I would do to help him out and suddenly he pulls out his checkbook. I insisted he didn't need to pay me and he insisted that he did, and then Alex chimed in saying, "Let him pay you, Mommy!" So I let David Sedaris write me a check for $50. Then he pulled out a little note pad from a Ritz-Carlton and wrote his email address on it and gave it to me. It wasn't until after I'd left the bookstore that I noticed the memo line he wrote:

Twitter end

Some people would be most excited about the check. Some would be most thrilled over the email address. (Not that I'm not.) Perhaps I'm easily amused, but it's the check memo that does it for me.