Wishlist Blast from the Past

So I have this wishlist on amazon.com, right? And even though hardly anyone ever uses it to buy me something, it's a great list to remind myself of things I want (I can look at it when I'm browsing in a used bookstore, for example). I try to keep it updated, so every once in a while I'll look through it and remove a few books that I have acquired since adding them to the list or, more rarely but still sometimes, I'll remove something I no longer want.

Just now, I removed a VHS tape I had on there. I mean, I still wouldn't mind owning a copy of Casablanca, but on VHS??!! Ha!! I apparently added that to the list in 1999. Maybe I should have left it on there for posterity.

Ah, the good ole days. And ten years - see what a dedicated Amazon user I am?!

The Irresistible Henry House

I sometimes get advance copies of books to review, through the Early Reviewers program over at LibraryThing.

The books I've received this way were all pretty good and pretty much my style, but the one I read most recently was way beyond that - it was terrific. The Irresistible Henry House, by Lisa Grunwald and scheduled to be published in March, is a fantastic story that would appear to be totally whimsical and yet is based on a true practice: Henry is a "practice baby" supplied to a college home economics class by a local orphanage and raised by seven or so different "mothers" who are students in the course. As it turns out, the story is indeed irresistible - Henry is compelling, his life story is fascinating, and the historical background of the 1940s-1970s in which the book takes place is brightly illuminated. Many small differences between daily life then and now added a fascinating sepia-tint to the landscape of the story, and the novelty of now-common icons of popular culture (some new thing Disney is working on down in Florida? some movie that new band the Beatles are making?) brought the era to life in a wonderful way, especially to someone who didn't live through it. (And I'm pretty sure anyone who did live through it will love the nostalgia of this recent history also.)

I recommend it.

JogBlog 4... and FOURTEEEEEEEEN

Well, I ran 12 miles a couple of weeks ago, and it was brutal. I mean, it felt fantastic to have done TWELVE MILES, but it was on a very hilly course (by design) and it was haaaaard. Took us 2 hours and 15 minutes.

And then I didn't do squat, running-wise, for nearly two weeks.
On Thursday I did four miles on my own, around my neighborhood. Here's the playlist:
NPR: 10-17-2009 Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!

And then this morning, I ran...
wait for it...

FOURTEEN MILES!!! Yeah, baby, 14. For cancer research. 2 hours 25 minutes!!! Oh, that's more than a half-marathon? No sweat!

(Ok, lots of sweat. It was HOT today! I love L.A. I definitely needed that dose of Vitamin D or whatever Vitamin Sunlight is.)

Aaaaaaaand I forgot my knee brace at home, so I ran without it, and it didn't hurt at all! Until I stopped running. Then I was in screaming pain. Literally. Ouch.

But it's ok now. Oh, I have a show tomorrow? I'm sure I'll be able to walk by then :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

A Life in Books

I just finished reading the fantastic Marathon Man by William Goldman (no relation) (that I know of), and this being the last day of the year, quickly wrote it down on my list of books-read-in-2009. And this being that sort of a time, I counted how many books I read this year and the number seems to be 38, which is a lot lower than I would have guessed; I thought I read about 50 books a year, but it appears that over the 8 years I have been keeping track (which is to say, the 8 years since I was bored at work and decided to learn some html to pass the time and keep the list online), my average is 42 per year. And this being that sort of end-of-decade looking-back tallying-up kind of day, (and also because I should be getting ready to go to a New Years party but we all know how terrible at going to parties I am so - hey, look, I better wash those dishes before I leave!) I went back and made you this little neat summary of the highlights of the books I've read since I started keeping online-nerdy-html track.

IMPORTANT NOTE: CLICK ON ANY OF THESE LINKS AND YOU WILL GET TO AMAZON.COM AND THEN EVEN IF YOU GO BUY SOME OTHER BOOK, EVEN *NOT THE ONE I'VE LINKED TO*, I WILL GET A SMALL MONETARY KICK-BACK FROM YOUR PURCHASE. Which is to say: PLEASE CLICK THROUGH! I haven't gotten a referral-bonus in ages :)

2009	38 books read	This was the year I read all four of the Twilight series books. Not sure if I even get credit for the good stuff, considering. (WHY DID IT END? GIVE ME MORE!) (Just kidding.) (Sorta.) (And I'm not alone, even at my age: this article claims to get it.)
2008	44 books read	I loved Eat, Pray, Love so just shut up. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and The Pillars of the Earth.
2007	55 books read	LOTS of great stuff, including A Tale of Two Cities, The Moon and Sixpence, The Corrections, and The History of Love.
2006	39 books read	notably The Princess Bride, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Frankenstein, and The Satanic Verses
2005	40 books read	A year of beautiful books: Truth & Beauty and The Time Traveler's Wife, and Everything is Illuminated
2004	38 books read	Only War and Peace. Only not really only. Also Unintended Consequences and Madame Bovary, for two.
2003	40 books read	The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and this was the year I really read the Bible, one parsha every Friday night.
2002	43 books read	Anna Karenina! and The Brothers Karamazov! and Of Mice and Men! AND Infinite Jest. What a year.

Happy New Year.

JogBlog2 (and 3, let's say)

I couldn't go to my mid-week team run on Wednesday, so I ran on my own on Thursday, around my neighborhood. In keeping with RDB's patented method of not-boring-your-socks-off, here's the playlist. I did not choose this in advance; apparently my iPod wanted me to have a very mellow chick-singer run:

Somedays / 3:22 / Regina Spektor
Crucify / 4:59 / Tori Amos
Silent All These Years / 4:12/ Tori Amos
Happy Phantom / 3:17 / Tori Amos
Me And A Gun / 3:45 / Tori Amos
Work Your Way Out / 3:41 / Ani DiFranco
Tom's Diner / 3:47 / DNA feat. Suzanne Vega
Days Go By / 7:08 / Dirty Vegas
Bittersweet / 6:13 / Big Head Todd and The Monsters
Blues Pt2 - crazy extendo-version / 11:46 / Blood Sweat & Tears
(but I only got about halfway through that song.) I ran about 4.5 miles in about 49 minutes. My mom was visiting from Florida this week, so we went out together, I to run and she to walk. I was criss-crossing my neighborhood and she was walking up a street, so there were a few minutes in the middle there where we met up and stopped to chat, so I wasn't exactly worrying about my pace. It was a lovely morning.

AND THEN WHAT DID I DO YESTERDAY? WHAT DID I DO FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE?

I. Ran. 10. Miles.

TEN MILES.

in 95 minutes. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Have you contributed to my fundraiser yet? Like, the whole reason I'm doing this? Thank you so much to those of you who have!!!!

The solution to your holiday gift-giving quandaries

This post was going to be about the Dizzy Feet gala, the most amazing dance show ever, which show I saw at the Kodak Theatre on Sunday afternoon (in basically the best seats in the house), but instead it's going to be about a scarf.

No really.

Guys, check this out:


And yeah it's cool, and yeah the fashion buzz catalog-copy accompanying the pictures on the website is all very designer/fashion/taking-itself-seriously stuff, but really what I love so very much about the whole thing is this comment by some random guy:

'We can watch movies on a device the size of a credit card. Why did it take us so long to come up with “pockets scarf?”'




Nice. Reminds me of how I used to point out that we put a man on the moon years before we could figure out how to make Pong.

(That was an Atari game, young'uns. An Atari game THAT I OWNED AND USED TO PLAY IN THE BASEMENT. Ah, the good old days.)

The Santa Monica Gobble Wobble

I did it! I ran a race! I ran the 10K in the Santa Monica Gobble Wobble and it was fantastic!

I said before it began that if I finished in under 65 minutes, I'd be happy. In the end, my official time was 59:59!! (The top three female times were 37:43, 39:28, and 42:38). The first two miles were KILLER and I thought I might not finish at all; turns out they were a slow and steady incline. Ouch. Miles 3 and 4 were a breeze and as I was getting tired at the end of mile 5, some guy ran up behind me and kept pace with me all the way to the finish line, so I didn't slow or stop when I would have on my own. Thanks, bib #172, for bringing me in!!

An ex-boyfriend (whose father is one of the people in whose memory and honor I'm doing my marathon as a fundraiser for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society) used to say that EVERY name could be found by Googling on SOME page SOME where... if only a race result page. At the very least, there's a race result page. I have officially come of age, I officially exist, my name is officially listed on my very own race result page.

Waking up to run Saturday morning was especially hard, what with having gone to a party at a friend's the night before and not having gotten a lot of sleep and having been too nervous to sleep well, but I had extra inspiration. The father of another ex-boyfriend passed away from leukemia on Friday night. Please consider making a donation to LLS.

LOOK! I added a widget for that too!! ---------------->>>>

"I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street."

Do we really believe that Neil Armstrong said that?

I haven't actually been running up and down a *street*; I've mostly been training in the park. Yesterday, that was to the tune of EIGHT MILES, which is by far the farthest I've ever run. It was awesome, and I had a show afterward and I didn't even fall down once.

Now we know this running thing has gotten really crazy: next Saturday, instead of training with the Team, I'm going to run in a RACE! My first ever and I have no idea what it's going to be like, but everyone says it's a really good idea to experience that organized-race thing before the actual marathon, the crowds and the starting gun and the whole different atmosphere, so I'm doing it. I still don't care about *racing* per se, in terms of being faster than anyone else (as long as I'm not last) but I think it'll be fun. I'll be running in the Santa Monica Gobble Wobble and I would LOVE it if you want to come cheer me on!!

Jesus, I've been blogging a lot about running lately, huh? I swear, there are other things going on in my life... like... for example... hey, look over there!

Walking is so... pedestrian.

In a funny coincidence, the two tabs of my browser are currently open to these two pages:

On the left:

The Great LA Walk, a 13+ mile stroll around town (that I WISH I could do, but I'm busy running on Saturday!)




and on the right:

an article entitled You Walk Wrong from New York Magazine.

RunBlog1

Look, I added a widget! ------------------------->

Somewhere over there on the right is a new box that says "Running:" and it's a little script that keeps track of how far I've run this week/month/year and I love it! Mike has one on his Marathon Blog and I'm very excited to be just like him :)

So I still think my plan to blog my run by way of iTunes playlist is brilliant, but I forgot the part where I'm not allowed to use an iPod during official training runs with the group, and most of my runs are with the group (I'm not so self-motivated, much to my chagrin). So that's not going to work out so well.

But here's the quick version of my last two runs: Saturdays are always the official Biggest Run I've Ever Done Ever days, with the team. Last week we ran FIVE miles and I was very proud of myself for doing that. Wednesdays we have a less-official mid-week group run, and even though I tried to go to that last week even though it was canceled and embarrassed myself truly, I went back this week anyway. And it turned out to be a 40-minute run, which still sounds like a whole f'n lot to me, and it was cold out, and I still don't really know anybody, and I didn't have an interval watch yet, and I immediately lost track of the people who I was going to run with who *did* have an interval watch and...
and I ended up having an AWESOME run because the only people who were going at the initial pace I was comfortable with were the two men, and somehow the three of us ended up doing the whole thing together and it was GREAT because I could keep up with them and we ran for more than 20 minutes before I needed a walking break and we did something like 4.5ish miles in something like 40 minutes and YAY ME!! I had no idea I could do that... but being distracted by conversation and having the challenge of keeping up with the boys made it just fabulous for me and it kind of flew by. AND it was my first day wearing my new sneakers (Asics) that I got THAT DAY at Road Runner Sports after doing their Shoe Dog analyzer thing which of course I loved also.

So that's my breathless update for today, except to also tell you this:
I JUST REACHED 10% OF MY FUNDRAISING REQUIREMENT FOR THE MARATHON!!
which is both super-duper exciting and kind of scary, because of the glass-is-90%-empty perspective that likes to visit me sometimes. SUPPORT ME PLEASE!

Okloveyoubye.