You ready for a little art?

In a very, very old book, Mitralis de officiis, Mr. Sicard of Cremona (1155-1215) traces the symbolic significance of the architectural elements of Christian churches. Windows, for examples, are the "Doctors of the Church," enabling the divine light to the reach the faithful. A little farther down, Sicard also compares the windows to the five senses, which "facilitate the understanding of the Holy Word. [...] The building's walls represent the religious, whose prayer and faith constitute the unity of Christians." (From Eric Palazzo's "Relics, Liturgical Space, and the Theology of the Church," in Treasures of Heaven, Yale University Press, 2010.)

I know this quote refers to the symbolism of infamous medieval windows and walls like these:

Abbey Church of St. Madeline, Vezelay, FR. Built in 1104 A.D.

Stained glass apse in the Basilica of St. Denis, Paris, FR. Built 1135ish.

But as I read I kept thinking of these:

Palmyra LDS Temple.

Doctors of the Church? The five senses helping us understand the Word? I can see it... 

And what about the walls, symbolizing the faithful, the members, united in prayer?

Yes.

Absolutely, wonderfully yes.

I am loving my medieval relics class. I wriggle inside during each seminar with the inner joy of knowing I also believe, like those who lived 1,000 years ago, that Heavenly Father is available to reach and to talk to, as we come to him in certain sacred stone edifices (albeit without a lot of the complicated liturgical elements like saints and relics). I don't know if my professor is religious or not, at this point in my studies I simply assume my professors are agnostic and work backwards from there. At any rate, he teaches about the beauty of reliquaries and basilicas with the gravitas, the reverence, and the awe that such creations deserve. As one who proudly holds a recommend to enter the House of the Lord, the temple of the Latter-Day Saints, I find the serious discussion of architectural and artistic effort, planning, and careful design in worship of God extremely fascinating and, in a way, familiar. To be continued...

Bob Marley, on good men.

Fall always puts me in a lovey mood, reminds me how fun it is to hold hands and take jacket-covered walks together. Here's a few things I've liked about love lately:

“He’s not perfect. You aren’t either, and the two of you will never be perfect. But if he can make you laugh at least once, causes you to think twice, and if he admits to being human and making mistakes, hold onto him and give him the most you can. He isn’t going to quote poetry, he’s not thinking about you every moment, but he will give you a part of him that he knows you could break. Don’t hurt him, don’t change him, and don’t expect for more than he can give. Don’t analyze. Smile when he makes you happy, yell when he makes you mad, and miss him when he’s not there. Love hard when there is love to be had. Because perfect guys don’t exist, but there’s always one guy that is perfect for you.”

― Bob Marley

Click here for a beautifully illustrated essay about the infamous love affair between photographer Alfred Stieglitz and the visionary painter Georgia O'Keeffe.

 

Speaking of love, guess who turns 3 this week??

Tiny boyfriend!! I've been watching him for more than half his life! It's still strikes me as so random that the thing that will get me through the last year and a half of my master's degree is a little boy I'm unrelated to, whom I'd never have met any other way. I'm sure in ten years this job will seem like a blip on my career radar, but I am grateful for this blip because it has brought so much love into my life, at a time when I really needed it. 

Hooray for tiny boyfriends! And boys that bring you ice cream in the middle of the night when they find out you're neck deep in homework! And boys that will forgo analyzing the minutae of football games to ask you deep questions! (although this weekend it wasn't hard to turn away from our school's craptacular showing at the annual Holy War). Hooray for dancing boys and the blogging boys that bring them to you (Aaron!)

Hooray for boys everywhere!

Dusk of Summer

It's official. In the last 48 hours I have donned a sweater, found my favorite apple pie recipe, AND kicked up leaves. IT IS FALL.

Time to take a break from The Challenge to record some of my summer adventures for posterity (/do a little bit of blogbragging, let's be honest). I thought last week that I had had a very dull summer... then I remembered a dinner party on a houseboat in Baltimore Harbor, complete with vuvuzelas, and, tracing forwards from that effulgent evening, I discovered a wild array of glorious, summery good times. In no particular order, here are a few of my favorites:

Jess and I using Olivia like a hot water bottle at the 9/11 memorial one unseasonably frigid afternoon (she makes such a cuddly warm little boo).

Having all of Corolla Beach to myself during a brilliant red sunrise run. Never seen a sea so peaceful.

Teaching my marvelous Relief Society (with crazy visual aids). Always an enormous pleasure (because of the girls, not the visual aids. Although those are a nice creative outlet).

Walking across the majestic Brooklyn Bridge with the family in tow 

Finally finding the gorgeous white sundress, in my size, on a killer sale, in the third Anthropologie I tried- that my friends is what we call #WINNING

Creative 3 point contest in the pool at Duck Beach house #1

Reading the delicious Cutting for Stone while “watching” the boys play volleyball at Duck Beach house #2

The craptacular 88 degree long run Jillian and I hustled through. So happy to be alive after!

Shoe contest with Rich which I lost, badly. That boy loves his Adidas not too little but too well.

Gypsy living for five days while our power was out; thanks bishop of the Crystal City ward, our neighbors, and the Burtons for giving us air-conditioned places to lay our sleepy heads. And for Oliver’s pool for giving us a place to cannonball our overheated bodies.

Doing the tight pants dance after every Heat win and eventually their national championship.

My birthday burger  bar + Brave!

Lovely, fascinating architectural tour of U Street even while miserably sick and snot-nosed

Learning how to snap the football on the field at T. C. Williams High School. Yea, the Remember the Titans school!

Yoga on a stage during the middle of the Hunger Games

Spencer moving into my ward and making all of my favorite girl friends smile.

Tonight, my last roommate dinner with Kelly. She deserves a post of her own, so I will conclude with that one. Curry, roses, laughter, and memories. Me, Kelly, and Kathryn. It's been a wonderful two years with these two women.

{Round 4} Shuffling through my Social Networks.

My task for this post is to take two social networks, bounce them together, and then assign numerical order to them. Faced with the seemingly polarized worlds of Twitter and blogs, which shall I tackle first: the importance of blogs in a twitter world or the importance of twitter in a blog world?

... Neither. I decided that I view both of these social networks as the austere and verbose ends of the same sparkling spectrum of internet self-expression. And ultimately, I characterize Twitter and blogging as two squabbling kids in the middle of a playground presided over by a much more powerful toddler: Facebook.com.

I'm gonna write something about my year-in, year-out experience with social networks tonday. Because here's the thing: by now they have impacted lives, both mine and yours, in meaningful ways, even though, quixotically, they still seem new enough that any attempt to respond to them and their overall emotional impact on our lives in any way that's not ironic seems ostensibly fun-sucking and way too serious. In fact, I feel like a hyperventilating nerd just for starting this conversation. *pushes glasses back up her nose, undeterred, and digs in*

I realized something last night: I associate Facebook with pain. Yes, that is right, pain. I think you're lying if you say you can't relate to this. I log on not out of joy, but out of routine, even after the many "ouch" moment(s) in the past when that person(s) you spent weeks trying to forget popped up unexpectedly one day on the screen, smiling, happy, and in the company of some never-before-seen LDS dating villain(ess) who proves to be much more cunning and virulent at the game than yourself. (Yay for the improved ability to hide old flames' posts!) And what about the recent "ouchie" sensation of jealousy at seeing the pics of freaking spectacular trips taken by my fun and fancy-free friends (Hope you're all having fun in Florida! Say hi to Romney/Ryan for me!)? And of course, this:

Amen.

I joined Facebook in 2005, back when it was still thefacebook.com. That was a long time ago :) I changed my relationship status a few times since then, exchanged some daring messages, put up some hilarious photos with the besties and untagged myself in a few less-than-flattering-but-still-hilarious pics by others. And tonight, settled in on the couch, tromping through the various articles proffered to me by my interesting array of facebook friends during commercial breaks in So You Think You Can Dance, I realized I have almost totally stopped putting anything of value, of myself, on Facebook. I have stopped playing the game.  Facebook has become for me like the dorms in college: fun while it lasted, but after a few mishaps, fights, and flubs, you are ready to move on.

So where to? I have no definitive answer, although I LOVE twitter and blogging. There, I feel free to publish my thoughts, long or short, to an unknown audience without fear of having my freshman year fremeny's perfect life slingshot immediately back at me in lovely Instagram shades of ombre blue and pink.

Why am I writing all of this? There is a happy point, I promise (and maybe I want to sell a few more of you onto Twitter). No. More important: I write to tell you that my retreat from facebook, the conscious disuse of my voice therein for anything of importance, is in itself a message:

I am more than my page. 

1,000 times more. And so are you. We should get together and figure that out in real time.

PS Though probably not coming close, I was hoping for the tone of this post to be similar to that found in the following trailer, which I'm obsessed with for several reasons, not the least of which is the Imagine Dragons song that closes it out.



Here's something I wrote to Michelle-the Bestie about it a while back:

So, Imagine Dragons' single "It's Time" plays at the end of a trailer which I've now watched like 20 times. My favorite line in the trailer is when Emma Watson is wondering why she and all the people she loves choose people who make them feel like crap, and then the main guy says back to her, "We accept the love we think we deserve." The first time I heard it I thought he said, "We expect the love we think we deserve." and I think both statements are true. I started telling myself this week, "Ok. You have kind of been feeling like crap because you accepted half-hearted attention from ____ and told yourself that's all you wanted. This next time around, you are going to expect and hopefully accept someone who treats you as well as you have always dreamed of." It just makes me feel good to have that kind of goal." 

Real time, flesh-and-blood connections and interactions. Much higher stakes, greater falls, funnier flubs, and happier successes. That's what I'm shooting for. *pushes her glasses back up her nose again and hits "publish," which is probably not the best start*

PPS There are probably thirty or so FB friends on my network who GREATLY enhance my daily learning and enjoyment via their routine curation of links, statii, and videos. These will probably keep me coming back to FB for years to come. Fabulous work, SK, BG, JS, CD, BH, MP, JGE, and also to LA, LC, and AM for your eternally refreshing photographs. (You're just the first ones to come to mind, there are others. I do, after all, have a lot of smart friends :).

(11 of 13. So... close...)

{Round 3} Odds and ends of a Jurassic nature...

Topic: Dinosaur Olympics. Now wouldn't that be a sight to behold? I have in my head the fantastical image of a T-Rex arm-wrestling a stegosaurus, losing, and then biting the stegosaurus in half. I would pay good money to see that!! But I wouldn't want to be the one to give the T-Rex his medal.

r

There is a gold mine of T-Rex related sports memes out there, who knew? Here are a few.
This one^ was my favorite because tetherball defeated me too, many times. I feel your pain, big guy.

Did you know Michael Phelps wrote a book? But not just any book. A DINOSAUR OLYMPIC BOOK. Someone buy me this please:

Per the Amazon summary, here is what we learn from Phelps' book:

A champion at the 2008 Beijing Olympics explains the training schedule that allowed him to accomplish the first-of-its-kind feat of winning eight Olympic gold medals. For example, the author states, "I got so strong from training that my legs could press 300 pounds 60 times in one workout. That's 18,000 pounds total, or nine tons! I could leg-press a Tyrannosaurus Rex and 10 velociraptors!" Providing an overview of an Olympian's rigorous preparations, this picture book may be useful for parents or coaches attempting to inspire children.

I already love Phelps, but creating a child's book to motivate young athletes puts him in the same lovable category as athletes from small countries, i.e. Guor Marial, who requested and was granted approval to run the Olympic marathon without a country. He is from the brand-spanking-newly-created country of South Sudan (which had no Olympic committee) and he refused to run for Sudan. Read this summary of his incredible, determined journey for inspiration. I will definitely dedicate a mile or two of my marathon to him. (Personal update: half-way through marathon training! 148 miles run so far! Definitely feeling it in my feet, they've never been pounded this consistently. Oh, another personal update: school starts tomorrow. LAST SEMESTER OF GRAD SCHOOL. Eep. Wish me luck!)

(9 out of 13. BOOM. These are getting harder. But Jordan, a magnificent and kindly writer himself, deserves after-work dessert, and I need a challenge! To be continued...)

Update: I ran around a few museum websites looking for dinosaurs. I ended up learning a little bit about the history of film! From MOMA's website:

Did you know that the first animated film began as a bet between two newspaper cartoonists? Winsor McCay was inspired to create Gertie the Dinosaur by studying the Apatosaurus at New York City’s American Museum of Natural History. He and his assistant drew ten thousand sketches on rice paper, including backgrounds on every page. It premiered in 1914 in Chicago at a dinner party for McCay and his friends—which was the prize for winning the bet!

Here is the film, a whole 8 minutes long. Adorable. 1915. That was almost 100 years ago. Enjoy watching history:

{Round 2} People are Crazy/How to Be a Villainess.

God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy.

I LOVE that Billy Currington country song, don't care what anyone says. Although I might sub in "Klondike Bars" for beer. The truthiness of the chorus still hits me forcefully every time: People. Are. Freaking. CRAZY!

Decathletes= CRAZYTOWN.
Ashton Eaton, current WR holder AND an Oregon Ducks runner. Woo!

How many examples have we had lately of people shoving right past the edge of possible into the realm of crazy? Australian eccentric attempting Jurassic Park, USA proving its dominance over the rest of the human race by landing on Mars, and of course, Michael Phelps making 22 Olympic medals look easy. Oh, and the constant rumbling undercurrent of our current and future presidents acting like vengeful cartoon villains on a nation-wide stage (Romney responsible for someone's death? Obama, I hold you in utter contempt).

I kind of want to try on being a vengeful cartoon villian(ess) for a day, see how I fare. Hmm, but what venue? I need a small stage, but one where I could really get dirty... I got it! The Mormon Bachelor! The Olympics of singles ward fishbowl dating games! (7 of 13, to be continued...)


.....................

So I've never actually watched the Mormon Bachelor... do they even HAVE villians? Or is everybody just sweet, good-hearted girls, looking to see if their assortment of quirks correspond to the hero's? That's what I imagine. Even better for me if that is the case. The perfect place for a villainess to make waves!

My hero.

Give me a second to channel the evil powers of my freshman year frenemy and that girl who recently blocked my shot at church. You know who she is. She's in your ward, too, with her stupid laugh and inane conversation topics. Ok. Mormon Villainess mindset perfected.

You can almost hear my evil cackle.

How to be a Mormon Dating Villainess (Note: many of these work equally well for a Mormon Dating Villain)

- Never have any friends of your same gender (unless they are your minions and you send them out to spread malicious rumors).

- Wear the same dress to church that the heroine just bought, but yours is two sizes smaller, tighter, and shorter.

- Answer the door when your roommate has a date. Flatter and flirt with him in the front hall til he can't remember his date's name.

- Upon hearing that someone has had a successful DTR, seduce them into making out with you.

- Conversely, throw a wrench in your current relationship and go make out with someone else. Inform the second party several weeks later that you're kinda sorta almost engaged to someone in Utah/New York/DC 2nd.

-Every boy must take you out somewhere fancy at least 8 times before you let him know it's not going to work out (That is, IF you let him know!).

- Have at least 8 boys cycling through this process at all times.

- Never, ever call back.

- Go out with someone once, inform him suddenly that you're just not feeling it, and make everything AWKWARD!!! EVERY TIME YOU SEE HIM!!! TIL HE MOVES OUT!!!

- Rock out to Glee soundtracks.

- Three words: skimpy. profile. photo.

It's just so cute when they cry!

- Say I love you. Dump him two days later. Take him back. Then do it again! Remember what Bain said: "There can be no true despair without hope."

- Go after the EQP because of all his POWER!

-Dump the sweet EQP and immediately start dating the ward meathead. When asked, assiduously argue that, "He really is nice when you get to know him!"

- Date roommates or best friends at the same time. Get them to duel for you.

- Passive aggression. Employ it in every conversation that don't correspond to your master plan.

- Move into a new ward and steal ALL attention!!

- What's the feminine equivalent of the humblebrag? Oh yea. The complimentfish.

- Testimonies that double as personal advertisements.

- Reveal your beau's very personal secrets or trials to the whole Relief Society!

- When the heroine tells you her Prince Charming finally asked her out, give him a backscratch in church. And your phone number.

- Dump someone at the altar (worth 1,000 Villainess points). 100 extra points if you keep the ring.

-----------------------------------
Any others I might add? And yes, I have actually witnessed every single one of these tactics before (except the altar dumping. PS did you know Neal Maxwell was once left at the altar? I bet she regrets it now!!! I like knowing our apostles were similarly stricken with obnoxious, all-too-human trials a few times in their exemplary lives). Like Billy Currington wisely observed, "People are crazy!"

The first installment in a series of answers to a challenge set by a Jordan named Guy...

In one episode of How I Met Your Mother they jibe at each other for having hilarious gaps in their collection of common knowledge: Robin didn't know the North Pole was a real place, Ted had the wrong idea about the pronunciation of the word "chameleon," and Lily never learned how to aim when throwing things. What's yours?

Mine is: I have never seen The Three Amigos. I feel like I miss stuff all the time because of this flaw. That thing you do where you cross your arms over your chests several times and grunt, "Huh!"... it means nothing to me. Is it supposed to be funny or heartwarming when you do that? Never once has it seemed funny to me, especially because I think you're supposed to be wearing a sombrero when you do it. And so, the final analysis is: just don't do it. (1 out of 13, to be continued...)

Tangent: does everyone else know the greatness of Steve Martin's banjo music already, or am I ahead of the curve in loving this?



Tangent to my tangent:

Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Banjo Lesson.

Tanner is an artistic hero of mine. Here's the opening paragraph to a paper I wrote long ago about his paintings, just to give you an idea why he's so cool:


The African-American artist Henry Ossawa Tanner took three things with him as he set out for Paris in 1891: the academic training of Thomas Eakins, his mentor in Philadelphia; a devout belief in Christianity from his father, the passionate Reverend Benjamin Tanner; and a sharp distaste for the status of the art world in America, stemming from the hardships he had endured unfairly as a black artist of talent. Research has generally focused on this last area of intrigue in Henry Tanner’s life. However, in reading the artist’s own reflections on his life and times, I have found his race to be an insufficient place to stop the learning. After all, Tanner himself seemed to find attempts to classify his work for the sake of this group or that group’s ideals extremely upsetting. His is a remarkable story of determination to ignore the many assumptions of others in order to discover and develop a personal, artistic, and moral balance according to his own conscience.

In his years of training at the Academie Julien in Paris, he got his first chance to develop his talents in a culture free from stigma. The neighboring Paris Salon, the ultimate destination for any Parisian art student with talent or ambition, became a great challenge to Tanner. Reflecting back on his first encounter with the Salon art, he said, “[The Salon paintings were] much more to my taste than were the old masters in the Louvre… [The Salon] now furnished a definite impetus to my work in Paris- to be able to make a picture that should be admitted here- could I do it?”

With the goal of getting a picture into the Salon in the back of his mind, Henry Ossawa Tanner gradually abandoned what had been his previous focus, African-American genre paintings. Although he had met with some success in this category—after all, his first accepted painting in the Salon was The Banjo Lesson (1893), which portrays an older black gentleman lovingly teaching a youth to play— it was to be his last major work with such a subject. It was “skied,” or put so high up on the walls that it was barely visible.

After The Banjo Lesson, Tanner pursued the typical French artist’s career trajectory, in pursuit of a more successful form of expression, one that was more to his own liking and one that was more in demand at the Salon. He vacationed at Pont-Aven in the French seaside, where the circle of Gauguin also summered, and he began to cultivate friendships with prominent patrons who encouraged and financed his works, the most influential of these being his friend Rodman Wanamaker. Throughout this time period it is understood that he did not pick up very much from the other teachers and artists that surrounded him. His works are not marked by any permanent change in style, unusual for one located in Paris during Impressionism’s heyday.

This is Spencer.

He is my brother. He followed me out to DC seven months ago. He is one of my best friends. Spencer makes really great funny faces and is one of the best listeners (for a boy) I've ever met. Recently a friend was a little upset upon realizing I was not, in fact, dating this tall blonde guy he'd seen me hanging around with. Meep. This was a funny/weird moment. 99% of the time, as soon as people are told we are siblings, they exclaim, "Oh my gosh! You guys look so much alike!" And yet... 30 seconds ago you assumed we were dating. Weird how that works. Anywho, here is a blog to set the record straight. Spencer is my brother, and he is neat. That is all.

Yesterday he had a bad day so I packed up Cobb and some chicken and veggies and we made lunch in his beautiful skylit house and watched the 'Lympics. And threw a volleyball down the hall about 1,000 times for Cobb to chase. My gosh kids are easily entertained. Cobb adores Spencer, reaches up to hold his finger whenever we're touring around. Today Spencer had another bad day, so he came over to my house... and we watched the 'Lympics. We're really creative in this family, I know. And we're really REALLY good at yelling at the tv.

I've had some requests recently for a renaissance of art posts on my blog, and so ye shall receive. If Spencer were an artwork this is what he'd be:



The Truant, by Roger Randolph (American). SAAM. Marble. 1853.

The reasons why this one popped into my mind are convoluted and personalized, but here's a rough sketch:

1. "The Truant." The kid is skipping school to go skating. Now, Spencer doesn't skate, but once upon a time he used to ditch school often with his band buddies and go ghostriding the van around Summerlin, hurling water cups at passersby. Troublemaker!! Those were his younger, foolish days, though, rest assured...

2. "The Truant" is clearly a thoughtful young man, as evidenced by the careful step the statue takes out onto the ice. Spencer is likewise thoughtful in all his friendships and actions. I like that about him. It's not like he's indecisive (in fact, he RARELY solicits my advice when making decisions, which is annoying, since I frequently hit him up to "translate" boy-speak to me and advise me, and I would love to return the favor). He takes a lot of things into consideration when making a decision and then moves forward, simply, straightforwardly. This is an excellent way to be.

3. Curly nice hair. Spencer has always had GNARLY hair, even when he was a bebe (he is two years my junior, and I still vividly remember baby Spence's tiny, awesome mane). Fro-able, buzz-able, he looks pretty good in all styles. And he's not going bald. Way to be, dude!

4. Whenever I take Cobb to visit SAAM he LOOOOVES to stop and look at this statue. "Baby!" he cries out (Cobb is very attenuated to babies right now). Cobb loves statue, Cobb loves Spencer. That's the end of that nuanced connection.

5. Marble. Aligned with the straighfoward/thoughtful facet of Spencer's personality is a little bit of a hard-nosed, argumentative block of stone. Meaning, once he has thought through an issue or an opinion, there ain't nothing in this universe gonna convince him otherwise. Which can be good, because I like a good intellectual sparring partner, but it definitely has its downsides too (the ongoing stalemate over whether or not girls should be able to buy and enjoy the use of beach cruisers is a perfect example. Don't get him started on this subject. Snooty roadbike guy!).

Spencer asked for a blog about himself today. I realized it was about his turn, having lavished e-praise on mom, dad, Marcus, and Katie already (Marie's day is also yet to come. BUT. It is coming). What else can I say about this young man? I brag about this a lot to friends, but I guess it can go on the interweb as well: Spencer is a FANTASTIC dater, I admire that about him. He sees a girl who seems interesting, chats her up, gets number, takes her out until he or she not longer wants to go out, starts process over again with minimal moping. In our little LDS bubble where dating, marriage, and love remain the ultimate topic of conversation and personal challenge, I like knowing and seeing that my brother has his shiz together. And I like that he's in DC so I can send him gently in the way of all my favorite girls.

Best publishable example of the weird faces o' Spencer.

Spencer lets me take him shopping, and for the most part allows me to dress him (YAY!). Spencer has a rather high-pitched little boy giggle that he lets loose whenever he's talking to people he thinks are SUPER funny. My roomie Kelly and I can really get him going, and it is a GREAT sound.

Spencer gives great hugs and, if you can't tell by now, is a total lover boy who really cares about the people around him. He has this MARVELOUS ability to get people talking about sensitive subjects. I can not do that very well and I admire his magical powers. Spencer has an easy-going, approachable manner that makes everyone around them tell him about their deepest thoughts. He's well suited for the profession he's getting ready for, Industrial Business Psychology (aka therapy for CEO's who don't want to admit they need therapy). I'm so happy to have him around. Thanks for being you, Spence. You rule.

Catch up

NOT the look on my face. This chick's a LIAR!

So, last night I'm laying face-down on a table at my physical therapy place, trying to suppress the yelps that nevertheless WILL emerge from my throat as Christina the fabulous sports therapist dry-needles my hamstring (do I need to go into greater description of the technique known as dry-needling for you? I didn't think so). It's week 5 of my biweekly acupuncture-on-steroids-followed-by-80-squats therapy sessions, but I'm getting used to them. I'm even kind of liking the sensation of needles getting thrust in between muscle layers until something twitches. And do you know why?

Because it is also week 1 of marathon training. I am absolutely giddy to be back in a training schedule. Training keeps you motivated. Training gives you endorphins. Training allows you to have Reese's Puffs for dinner three days in a row because you can say, "Meh! I ran 4 miles this morning and even ate asparagus for lunch." (Training also contributes to you forgetting to go to the grocery store three nights in a row, but who cares about that when there are cereal boxes to spare on top of your fridge?)

So, last night during PT and on my run this morning, I was just... stoked. I haven't run pain-free since February and I'm almost-- ALMOST-- there! And my long runs are still short enough that I don't curse the foolhardy whims that got me signed up for this race. Christina gave me a swell pointer last night (run with my head held back, like, give myself double chins I'm holding it so far back), which I implemented this morning and the effect was instantaneous. Pain-free run, and a headache-free day afterwards. MIRACLE! 


...

I became A Runner during my junior year of college. 2005: seven years ago. Half the reason was because I noticed the steady diet of cereal wasn't too good for me, half because my roommate Claire was an intense soccer player and my competitive side couldn't stand getting winded by her whenever we'd go out and play. As the years continued, I fell in love with the way running allows the words in your head to just... stop. I fell in love with the excursions out amongst the hidden architectural gems of south Provo. I fell in love with new tan lines, and new cut muscles on the sides of my thighs.

The game changed when I moved to Washington. I continued to run, leaning on the hobby more than I had even in Provo just for the sake of stress relief. Then I entered my first 5k, and I was introduced to the marvelous racing culture. If you know me, you know I love me some cultural studies. Running comes with a FABULOUSLY fascinating culture: its own heroes, folklore, cliques, language, uniform, hot spots, psychology, everything. It made me so happy to start knocking down races amongst these strange monsters, these racers with compression socks who scoff at me when I mention my 11 minute mile pace. I was--and am-- happy to adventure out into a sport in which I compete with no one but my past self, and can people-watch to my heart's content throughout the process. It makes me happy to feel my body switch from craving sugar to craving veggies (for the running skeptics out there: that really happens! Magical!) I'm in the middle of  making that transition now, again. The summer's onslaught of hamburgers, cookies, and ice cream (and the heat wave) have knocked me more than a little off my spring healthy-diet high horse.

High horse. Isn't he cute??

I have no profound words of wisdom tonight, just these thoughts. And my excitement for a new adventure. My excitement to train with some seriously talented women. My excitement to push the boundaries of how far I can go, mile by mile, week after week, til October.

I'm sorry I haven't written about art in forever. Art is stressing me out right now. The need for some solid, permanent career choices looms on the horizon and I have no clear answers, no one direction in mind. Hopefully I will pick those things up, maybe even be aided in my quest by achieving my running goals.

Story of my life.

This:



to this:



Every 3 weeks or so.

"But if an explanation is where the mind comes to rest, the mind that stopped at 'lucky' when it sought to explain the Oakland A's recent pitching success bordered on narcoleptic."

-Michael Lewis, Moneyball, pg. 222

Please, Heavenly Father, if I could someday publish just one sentence that reads half as well as one of Michael Lewis', I will feel I have achieved career success.

Swoon-worthy Swimming Video

I particularly appreciated THIS  little bday
note from JBro. Seriously. I love my people.

I had a FANTASTIC birthday yesterday (pics to follow shortly thanks to the talented Ashley Crist who flew out and surprised me this week!). Thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday through texts, emails, FB, calls, flowers, cards, and attendance at my burger bar + brave party last night! I am rich with friends!

So, I am catching up on my tv during Cobb's nap right now and caught this surprise on the USA Swim trials last night. ADORABLE. Way to snag a winner, Annie!





PS I LOVE watching swim, the sport I lettered in, in high school. Only in swim do I know more about what's happening technically on the screen than any other sports fan watching with me (apart from Kathy and Kim Gardner, my two East Coast swim buddies).

Happy Friday, everyone!