In case you hadn’t heard, this week is Leslie Lee Appreciation Week 2008!

Friends, 

It has finally come again, the time each 486 years that we take one week to fully honor Leslie for no reason other than that she is awesome.

The aztec had a name for Leslie, it was Quaxiquatiataltaxabelgle. Unfortunately the modern attempts at translation have only come up with something close to “Have you seen my red feathers? I need them for my ass fan.” But I am sure it has lost something over the millennia and once meant something far more grand… I mean they had a friggin NAME for her! They just don’t do that for anyone… do they?

So come join in the supergoodness! Check out the photos, leave some comments for Leslie, and post some photos of your own! Come on, she’s so photogenic, you KNOW you have some pictures lying around somewhere you want to contribute! (To post your own, you gotta make a Flickr account if you don’t already have one…but it’s EASY and FREE!! Or, if you are resistant to moving into the 21st century, send your photos to me and I will post them for you.)

Show Leslie some love!!!

I have been on VACATION!

Yay, vacation!!

Doc and I flew to San Jose, where we stayed with Arushi and Shyamal for a few days at their place in Mountain View. The fires in Big Sur were still burning and there was a lot of smoke in the air. It hung like a pink-brown cloud over everything, and made our eyes sting. We visited the redwood forest in Big Basin State Park in the Santa Cruz Mountains, went into San Francisco one afternoon, swam in her pool, did a little shopping, and went out to Napa County and ate at a fantastic place called Greystone Restaurant, run by the Culinary Institute of America, where i had the best piece of fish I have ever eaten in my entire life. It was halibut, pan-fried in olive oil with just a bit of salt and pepper, and probably caught mere hours prior. It was the most amazingly perfect texture all the way through, and served on a bed of morel mushrooms and tiny baby squash, sauteed in butter.

The weather in northern California is fantastic in the summer. I’m afraid that I underpacked for this trip, bringing along mostly tank tops and capri pants, when what I apparently really needed was long pants and sweatshirts!

We hopped aboard an Amtrak train, the “Coast Starlight,” to head up north to Seattle. Train travel is quite enjoyable. It takes longer to get to your destination, but is cheaper and much more scenic, relaxed, roomy, and social than flying. Doc and I rented a small sleeper cabin instead of coach seats, and it was a huge improvement over our last train trip ten years ago, when Doc had a severe case of the flu in coach. The room was tiny, barely wider than the width of a seat, but we could shut the doors and fold down two beds and the privacy was worth every penny. Plus, all meals are included in the price of the room, and although the food was not awful (certainly better than you might expect on a train), the a la carte meal prices were quite inflated. We would have easily spent more than the cost of the room upgrade on meals alone, had we traveled in coach!

The route along the coast is very scenic and beautiful, especially through Oregon. The train huffs and puffs its way along the side of mountains through all this gorgeous countryside. You really can’t beat morning sunlight sparkling down on a glittering mountain stream hundreds of yards below, and rocky rapids surrounded by tall fir trees.

The train was three hours late getting into the station in Seattle (11:30 at night!) because, sadly, someone had a heart attack on board the night before and the train had to stop in the middle of nowhere in California to wait for the Careflight helicopters to arrive. We also had numerous electrical problems onboard that resulted in the lights going out every now and again — this is especially inconvenient when you are using the tiny airplane-style bathroom, which has no windows.

A late train wouldn’t normally be that big of a problem, except that my mom and dad had arranged to pick us up at the station and drive us back to their house… two and a half hours away. By the time we got to their place it was nearly 2 a.m. I was so tired from having barely slept on the train the night before, I just fell right into bed and don’t even remember my head hitting the pillow.

I’m really tired now, in fact… I’m going to post some photos and then write more about the vacation later!

Trivia at the Trinity again last night. Doc and Brittney and Chris and I had our own team. We didn’t do too badly, all told… 52 out of 73 points. Rich’s team ended with 59, and I was imagining they’d sweep the floor with us.

I didn’t realize that there were modest cash prizes for first through fourth places! I’m hoping that my brother Bob, when he’s in town over Thanksgiving, will join us. He can be our secret weapon. They even asked a math question last night! (None of us got it… something about reflex angles. I’m pretty sure I’ve never even heard of that.)

Here’s something that will show you just how completely late to the party I am (and always have been): I was being hit on, fairly aggressively, by a drunk loud co-worker of Rich’s, and I was completely oblivious to it. I’m sure that everyone else at the table was watching this train wreck happening and wondering why I didn’t shut this guy down. Doc, especially, was mighty uncomfortable, but I honestly had no idea that he was focusing on me. I thought he was just being kind of a loud jerk in general, and trying to include me in the general conversation (which included the line that I’ve heard a million times before, and that always pisses me off… “Why aren’t you talking? You should talk more! You’re too quiet!” or, conversely, the sarcastically delivered “Katy, shut up! Quit hogging the conversation!” Kiss. My. Ass.)

And for my part, I was making a conscious attempt to NOT stay in my shell around people I don’t know, like I usually do, and was trying to make friendly conversation with everyone, including Mr. Hit Man. I guess Mr. Hit Man saw this as an open invitation to increase the level of obnoxiousness/hitting-on-ness. It didn’t occur to me that he wouldn’t realize that Doc and I were together. Eventually it dawned on me what was going on, and I informed him that I was happily married for eight years, thank you very much, and Doc finally was able to elbow his way past this dickhole, put his arm around me, and said “SHE’S MARRIED TO ME.”

So, I’m a total idiot. I felt really embarrassed. But then again, I’ve never EVER clued in as to when people were interested in me. I wish I’d been a little quicker on the uptake and had time to figure out a great way to verbally crush this jerk like he deserved.

My friend Stacey lives in Minneapolis and luckily was not on the bridge over the river at the time of its collapse.

Which reminded me of the footage I’ve seen of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (also known, ominously, considering its fate, as “Galloping Gertie”) tearing itself to pieces in a high wind in 1940.

I just wanted to take a minute to thank all of our wonderful friends — especially Kathryn, Arushi, Britt, Bob, Joel, everyone who has left comments here, listened to us bitch, let me cry on the phone, drove me places. Knowing you care is a huge comfort.

I don’t take y’all for granted, even if I’m not always that good at expressing myself.

I love you guys.

Yvonne didn’t come to work this morning because she is IN LABOR! Way to go, Yvonne!! We’ll be thinking about you today!

(Also, we are eating iced sugar cookies this afternoon as a pre-baby celebration :)

Tres Smith, a photographer that sometimes worked freelance for my office, died on April 19 after a years-long fight against cancer. He was 41. While I didn’t know him as well as some, he never failed to be friendly, sweet, kind, and generous to me whenever we met. He had a fantastic sense of humor and piercing blue eyes.

The last time I saw him he was taking pictures of me and Brittney eating chocolate cake at the Dairyette, laughing it up.

We will all miss you, Tres. Rest in peace.

Yes, I know, Thursday came and went without an update. I have an excuse though: I was too tired. Wednesday night Brittney came over and we went walking for an hour around the neighborhood (I missed my yoga class because I was in a job interview). I realized how much I miss walking with Britt. We have good conversations.

I did manage to pry myself out of bed at 5:15 a.m. on Thursday morning, and I met Yvonne at the Bath House at 5:45. Thinking I might need a little something in my stomach for energy, I made half a peanut butter sandwich and tried to eat it when I got to the park while waiting for Yvonne to arrive. I only managed two bites. My tummy doesn’t like to eat that early in the morning.

The mileage markers around the lake leave a lot to be desired, so we’re not sure how far we went, but we ran for 37 minutes total, so we think that was about 3.5 miles. It was just undarkening outside when we started to run, and still rather cool out — low 70s. We were both pretty out of it and I don’t remember too much of the specifics of our conversation, but thinking back later that afternoon, it seemed like it was so far away and like maybe it was this long strange dream that I had.

We saw downtown all lit up and reflecting off the lake in the gray-blue dawn light. The sun came up and I have to begrudgingly say that it was very pretty, which is a tough thing for me to admit — I’ll tell the story of why below. I was home by 7, which gave me ample time to shower and wash my hair and dress and I even had time to stop for breakfast before work. Most weekdays I’m not even out of bed until 7:30.

I am not necessarily opposed to doing an early morning run again. Not every day and maybe not every week even, but it wasn’t as godawful as I was imagining it might be. I was pretty tired all day and took a nap when I got home, but it was really nice to get the run out of the way early in the day.

I may have mentioned this before, but I’ve always hated seeing the sun rise. I’m definitely a night person by nature, and seeing the sun come up somehow breaks whatever magic the night holds, cheesy as that may sound. Like, “it’s over, the day’s started, time to do normal everyday things now along with the rest of the world.”

I remember very clearly when this thought first crystallized and clarified in my head — January 21, 1990. I was at a party at Bonnie’s house and we had stayed up all night. She and Ginger and Ian and I were laying on her front lawn in a square, each of our heads on someone else’s stomach, and we’d been laying there for hours in the cold talking and laughing and singing and saying crazy things because we were 17 year olds flying high on sugar and caffeine and we were all so in love with ourselves and each other. It was probably one of the highlights of my life up to that point, largely because super-hot, massively charming (but invariably fickle) red-haired Ian was lying on top of me. And then the sky started to lighten, and everything changed. It was like reality suddenly whacked us in the face with a cold wet dishtowel. The crazy intense lovefriendship we had going on (typical teens!) changed. It was time to get up, go home, and face whatever normal mundane things the next day would hold.

Maybe now it’s more that sunrise equates to only a little bit of time left to sleep; soon it will be time to peel myself out of bed and go to work or do chores or pay bills or whatever other soul-deadening adult tasks need to be done. I don’t want to see that from the back side.

Saturday I ran about 3 miles at the lake. I’m never quite sure how far I’m going because the mileage markers leave something to be desired. So I just run it by time, which isn’t of course as accurate. But then again, accuracy is not really my goal. It was very humid Saturday morning so I heated up really fast and had a tough time cooling down, and I had to walk some. Tonight I ran a very easy 3 miles (or so — we lost track and I think we probably went a few extra laps) at the gym. Man, I tell you, air conditioning makes all the difference.

Saturday night we went to Yvonne’s birthday party at her house. She and Nate cooked dinner (grilled stuff and salads — she makes a mean peanut noodle salad) and made the most massive vat of sangria I’ve ever seen in my life. Seriously, there was probably 10 gallons of the stuff in a huge octagonal glass jar that sat on ice in their sink. It was Yvonne’s Magical Mystery Sangria. It sneaks up on you! I even ate sangria-soaked watermelon. It wasn’t bad! Walker was freaked out at the sight of me again, but I bribed him with a milk-bone and then we were best friends. I think he must have had a bad experience with a tall or curly-haired woman in his former life as a street puppy.

Mom and Dad were in town Saturday night but left early Sunday morning, so we didn’t get to see much of them this time. We’re going to Lubbock in August to see Bob graduate and we might go to Houston for a couple of days afterwards just to spend some time with them. This is (knock on wood) their last summer in Houston.

I feel really bloated and piggy lately. My eating habits have gotten shitty again. Let me rephrase that to take proper personal responsibility: I’ve been shoving lots of bad-for-me food into my cakehole, and I need to do something about it. All this running isn’t going to do me a bit of good if I don’t trim down so I’m not lugging around 30 extra pounds on the marathon.

Yesterday I went through my desks and threw away a bunch of stuff that I didn’t need anymore. I’m trying to change my packrat tendencies (”but I might need that some day!”) and I tossed out/recycled stuff that I hadn’t used in a few years. I am having severe minimalistic urges lately that directly conflict with my need to save stuff. I’m not sure where this is going to take me.

Last night was the season premiere of the Venture Brothers (season two). I was dreading that it wouldn’t hold up to the quality of the first season, but it’s looking good so far. Holy shit, it’s Dean Fucking Venture!

I just rode my bike from the house down to the lake, around, and back; probably about 15 miles total. It took me about an hour and a half. Not bad! Especially considering that for most of the 3 mile (each way) journey to the lake, I ride on the sidewalks because the streets are a little bit too busy/too major for me to feel comfortable riding a bike on. Proving that point, I had two separate people honk at me as they drove past. I cannot understand why people in cars feel the need to honk at cyclists. Assholes. Do they think it’s funny? It can startle us and can cause us to lose control of our bicycles. And if you ride on the street, drivers often don’t change lanes to pass you — they’ll drive by within a foot or two of you on your bike.

The closer you get to the lake, the more understanding the drivers seem to be; I guess because it’s more common to see cyclists on the roads near the lake. Once I got to Northcliff I started riding on the street, both because it is a smaller quieter street, and it is closer to the lake and has more of the bicycle-friendly atmosphere.

The other thing about riding on the sidewalks is that not all the curbs have ramps. I’m not the kind of gal who feels comfortable popping a wheelie to get up onto the sidewalk from the street, so I have to stop and manually do it. That is kind of a pain.

I could probably have made better time if not for the lack of curb ramps. I don’t even know if that’s what they’re called but you know what I mean.

I didn’t know this was going to become a rant about automobile/cyclist etiquette. I really was just going to say that I rode 15 miles today, and ran about 2.5 - 3 miles at the lake yesterday morning.

Also, in case you were wondering, I’m not operating under any illusions that my mileage and workout results are of any interest to anyone but myself. I do want to keep track of it, though, so this is as good a place as any to write it down.

Time to go make dinner. I made asiago cheese buns this afternoon, as well as some pasta salad to use up some leftover veggies and pasta. I think we’re having sloppy joes for dinner, and I’m taking pasta for lunch tomorrow.

I think I’m going to run at lunch on Tuesday instead of after work, because I want to come straight home so I can start working on dinner. I’m cooking for Kathryn and Brett as a birthday gift to her.

Tomorrow is Yvonne’s birthday. Her party is Saturday, but maybe she’ll want to celebrate one night this week at Times Ten Cellars — I have free drink tickets to use up!

Yvonne’s book is really good. It’s a very compelling story and I’m having a hard time putting it down. I’m on page 226. I’ll probably get to 300 tonight before making myself go to bed.

I don’t fully understand a lot of the Spanish, which she sprinkles throughout, but I’m not sure that I need to. I kind of get it through context alone.

Usually I only read one book at a time, but I abandoned David Brin’s “Brightness Reef” right in the middle to read this one.

I am so excited! I get to read a new book before it’s published!! Yvonne is letting me read her novel. Can’t type now, have to go get started on it!