20 miles!

Here is what I did on Saturday:


Truly hard to believe. Went from Chastain to Vinings and back again. Yoipes!

Not sure how I'll do another six miles on top of that, but I guess I'll find out on March 21!

Looking forward to pouring 20 pounds of ice on myself tomorrow.

Running my first 20-miler tomorrow. Woohoo!

Would like to share some of the things I have going for me that make me feel confident:

• Ate a hammock of pasta tonight.


• Will be running with a great training buddy.


• Last weekend's 18 was good. Great, in fact. Ran each 6-mile portion faster than my Peachtree Road Race time. What what?!


• Heard a familiar voice of encouragement on the phone, earlier today. Sometimes hearing his voice saying, "Proud of you, sweetie!" is all that keeps me going.


• The promise of 20 pounds of ice on me after I get home. It works, I swear! (But I may have a glass of wine instead of a cuppa tea. Just putting that out there.)

Update tomorrow!

Career definintion.

My job description, duties, hell, even my company, have changed radically over the last year.

How do you strive to keep yourself and your goals in your work, when your job path might be changing before your very eyes?

I think you have to do just that: keep yourself in it. Know what you're ultimately going after, weigh your current options, and make the best decisions you can using the information you have.

Why architects blow my mind.

I have probably given you my speech about how architects are truly the smartest people out there, because they are math geeks and artists, at the same time, for a living. This blows my mind. How can you be a mathlete one minute and a painter the next? I don't know. There are two architects in my extended family and I think they are both brilliant. Both are math nerds and incredible artists. I love that.

So I am not sure how I came across this tonight, and because I'm not an architect and/or don't live in New York, this post was written two years ago and hasn't hit my radar yet, but look at this "black and bendy" building planned (as of April 2008) to go in Tribeca.

Designed by Dutch architect Ben van Berkel of UNStudio, who also did the Möbius House in Amsterdam (as in The Möbius loop, which also blows the mind), the black bands twist and turn to become balconies for this high-rise of condos and apartments. Form + function.

I just think this building is incredible. How can you do something this radical? Even for NYC it's pretty out there. Squished between your average blocky buildings it will look even more unreal. Urban architecture especially is fascinating to me. It's one thing to build something funky out in the middle of nowhere, but let's see what you can do in a city block, constrained by the buildings right beside you, oh, and that pesky street. It's all about doing what you can in the space, and for architects like this, "doing what you can" becomes pretty much anything.

Oh, in case you're wondering, the cheapest available home is listed for just under $1 mil. Goes up to $16 mil.

Sprezzatura

I know, I know, I quote Seth Godin too much. But he's so smart! I can't help it!

Today he wrote about sprezzatura, the Italian word for effortless work, which is kind of an oxymoron.

I'm interested in getting to the point of sprezzatura in my work. And actually, now that I think about it, the most influential and successful people I've known in my career have exhibited sprezzatura. It makes me want to have their job (ah, look how easy she makes it look) but it's the making it look easy part that I don't get yet. Some kind of emotional maturity I don't have yet. Every thought I have gets telegraphed across my face. I'm like the Jim Carrey of project management.

The other day in another post, Godin said, "Do the work. Ignore the feelings part and the work will follow." Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something here.

Fog Lamp. (Different than Fog Hat.)

I have about 15 minutes until a meeting (yes, at 5 PM--my secretary has fallen down on the job!) but I wanted to record something that happened...

Something shook loose for me this weekend and today I am out of the fog I've been in for the past couple of months. I was able to concentrate during a work meeting this morning and actually focus on something further out than five minutes. It really felt like a fog lamp illuminating my path. Woohoo! Maybe it was the 18-miler on Saturday, or the nice catch-up webcam chat with My Favorite on Saturday night, or who knows what. But I'm glad.

Got some plans to watch The Bachelor finale tonight at Running Buddy's house. I'm responsible for dessert. I'm thinking big, giant, cookies.

"The Dickens out of people? Nobody gets me."

I just spent a quiet, sobering afternoon, alone with my budget.

In a spreadsheet, I projected out all income and bills for 12 months. Two goals are at work here: I will pay off all credit card debt by December 31 and save enough money for a down payment on a new (to me) car around that same time (which uncovered another necessary expenditure for which I'll be stashing cash: engine repairs for my baby, the Silver Sofa On Wheels, to keep it running and emissions-compliant until the end of the year when I can pass it down to my brother). Whew.

Results? Gotta save more. I called the cable company to get rid of my expensive cable. I am now investing less for retirement, just for the short-term to get this done, as much as that hurts. I will be taking out a certain amount of cash from the ATM each paycheck, and that's it for groceries, going out, and miscellaneous items, no exceptions. After all bills are paid, the amount in my checking account will be pushed to my savings account, which is connected to my checking account so no excuses (I even added a line item on the spreadsheet for each monthly budget that reads: "$XXX: due to savings account on 3/31/10.") Holding myself accountable. (Accountable. Accountable?! NObody gets me!)

I may be good with organization but up til now, I have not been great with my personal finances.

Replacing my old mantra: I have no money!! What am I going to do?!

My new mantra is: I have a lot of money. I need to protect it.

Fooie ; You’re terrific!

I found some old WWII letters to home here.

Here is an exerpt from my favorite one, from George "Dad" Rarey, which is the letter he wrote back to his wife upon learning she had given birth to their son:

....I think that I’ve had just about the easiest time of it that any father has had ; I was just getting down to the really serious part of the floor pacing ; When whamie! I find that Old Junie has done the whole thing without the unnecessary moaning and hollering from the Old Man ; And they say the Woman is the weaker of the sexes ; Fooie ; You’re terrific! Golly I’m anxious to know all the details ; I figure Damon was born on the 19th ; I wonder what he weighs and all about him. Tell him that he has the proudest, happiest and luckiest Pop in the whole world. Junie if this letter makes no sense forget it- I’m sort of delirious- Today everything is special ; This iron hut looks like a castle ; The low hanging overcast outside is the most beautiful hue of blue I’ve ever seen ; I’m a father ; I have a son! My darling wife has had a fine boy and I’m a king....

This pilot was a terrific artist, and he would sketch out the events he described in his letters home--here. Toward the end of the slideshow you'll see that he commemorated his friends who died in war with custom nose art, trying to incorporate their characteristics into the drawings, often with their nickname. He died in combat over France.

This blog's namesake.

My favorite beast in all the land.

Half cat, half dog, he plays fetch and destroys my furniture. He greets me at the door (almost) every day when I get home. It warms my icy, black heart.

That's nice and all, but it's even better when my favorite person greets me at the door.

What a difference a day makes.

I am training for the ING GA marathon.

It is in less than a month.

I am in full-on freakout mode.

I have never done this before and I'm beginning to doubt that I can. Especially on bad days.

Bad like yesterday. It started out promising. Once freed from work (an epically boring day, at that...BORing. REALLY boring...I'm talking: stab-yourself-in-the-eyeballs, I-have-reached-the-end-of-the-internet, WHAT-AM-I-DOING-WITH-MY-LIFE boring), I bounced out the door to run a six-mile out-and-back. Considering I had finished a fairly successful 15- or 16-miler on this past Sunday, I thought: six! piece of cake! It was not a piece of cake. I quit after about 20 minutes of running, and headed home. I maybe went four miles...and walked half of it.

It was just one of those bad days, one of those bad runs. I ate barely anything for lunch, and five hours later was utterly exhausted after running five minutes.

This afternoon I decided I'd regroup and attempt another four-miler, or more if I could. Four is on my schedule for today--but I wanted to make up for yesterday. Driving home, I nearly talked myself out of it. Running in the windy coldness was flat-out the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to get a burrito and watch Real Housewives for three hours. But I got home, fed Marco, got dressed (and looked goob-tastic BTW...covered head-to-toe), put my watch on my wrist (over my outer-most layer!) and headed out.

It was a Forrest Gump run. One of those runs you don't want to end. I could see my breath and little else in the darkness, but it might as well have been 60 degrees and sunny. Ran up and down these Atlanta hills.

I can do this.

My new favorite website.

Thanks to following PBS NewsHour on Twitter (@newshour, and how many Stuff White People Like points does THAT get, by the way?! BOOyeah!), I found out that the Pew Research Center is doing a video conference today on Millenials.

Valuable info for me, you'd say? As one who markets to Millenials? Well, unfortunately, I can't access the video from work.

[sad trombone]

However! I can access the Pew Research Center website, and it is as fat as a Christmas piggy with information:


How did I not know this existed?

Look at all these facts! Numbers! Research!

An oh, the quizzes. Quiz to measure "How Millenial Are You?" (I'm 82 out of 100!) and quizzes to compare your news IQ against others' public knowledge (I answered 7 of 12 correct, which I panicked about, because I wanted to be valedictorian of this test, but apparently my score is above 66% of the other quiz-takers so I had to feel OK about it).

Ah...knowledge. Now please excuse me as I retire to my study with a snifter of brandy.

That's when I knew to turn and run.

As part of my ongoing "work-related research," (wink wink) I read a blog called "The Choice" on the NY Times website. "The Choice" is about the college admissions process, and features stories from students, parents, admissions officers, and other experts on how students and colleges intersect.

(OMG BTW, I would have eaten this up as a high schooler, I was such a freak about applying to college. I would have killed for ANY "insider" information. I remember how I'd search out news articles about admissions offices then read and re-read them until practically committing them to memory, eagerly awaiting those yearly college ranking lists with highlighter in hand, and creating a filing system by school name with all due dates listed out. God, I was such a NERD.)

Today's post recounted "College Night" at the author's daughter's high school, specifically an "advice" panel comprised of high school seniors in various stages of the college admissions process.

Oh, and it contains a gem so sparkly, throwing its oddness around the room like a diamond would light, I couldn't let it go:

For Emily, spending an overnight at each of her top three choices enabled her to decide that Wesleyan was the school she would apply to early decision. “I was looking for a certain environment, one with individuality and learning for the sake of learning,” she said. While walking back from a concert at 2 a.m., Emily came across a male student playing his saxophone in the middle of an open field. “That’s when I knew this was the school for me,” she said.

Now, I might have liked an illustration of this event, but frankly, what exists in my mind's eye is probably better. But what might compel a youngster to go out into an open field to play a saxophone at 2 in the morning? Could be that he wanted to express the newfound creative and academic energy he felt as he was released into Wesleyan, a campus just teeming with brilliance. Could be that his roommate had finally had enough and kicked him and his horn out into the quad to "rehearse." All valid guesses, but in my experience the simplest explanation usually tends to be the truth: Drugs.

Celebrator mascot has found a home...

Celebrator mascot is a Mac!

So that's a no, then?

No jellybeans?


















I send anyway?