Ramp up to Christmas

We managed several Christmas milestones in the last seven days, including at least these.

1. First big snow (a foot last night, which doesn't stop runners or bikers)
2. First Yankee swap (aka White elephant) party with friends last night
3. First Christmas card received (grandma and grandpa Prudhon from Janesville, WI)
4. First desserts made (bread pudding using homemade corn bread)
5. First church party (a charity donation gathering on Wednesday with our fellow First Church Cambridge youth)
6. First seasonal decorations (Advent calendar and Menorah party last weekend)
7. Finished shopping, save stuff for local friends
8. Watched a movie planned for Christmas release (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, shh, sneak preview)

The snow's still coming down and we're ready to enjoy breakfast while the dulcet tones of snowblowers rumble from the street. We hope everything's equally festive where you are and that all your stockings get filled with fresh fruit!

Thanksgiving day 4-mile road race

We do a local run each Thanksgiving that starts from Davis Square, a lively nexus of college students close to our North Cambridge abode. Sunny's old running club, the Somerville Road Runners, puts on the event and the course (all city streets) measures about 4 miles (4.2, according to the MyMapRun tracker below).



No problems with the weather this year, as the high-30s chill didn't include wind or rain. Our friend Rosanna joined us with her dog Luna, who exuberantly dragged her up and down the course without minding the throngs a-clogging the roadways.

The clock read about 35:30 at the finish line, a healthy 8:24 mile time! Not bad for a race we didn't really train for.

Tales from the Bread Machine: Corn Bread

Hillbilly Housewife Corn Bread! Who on earth could be more credible for corn bread excellence?

This recipe closely followed the Challah as we prepared for Thanksgiving. The kitchen felt hot and in full swing, as we also turned out mesquite chicken, shepherd's pie, three dozen fig cookies, cranberry relish, apple compote, mashed potatoes, candied sweet potato pie, baked spiced pears, and apple & cherry jelly. Some of it went into our own bellies, but the cookies went out to a larger audience at a friend's dinner.

This loaf used the recipe as written and turned out fairly firm. Pan-made corn bread often fluffs up or feels spongy, but this came out much denser. On the up side, that makes it suitable for sandwiches or other weight-bearing tasks.

We used the bread machine's WHITE flour and MEDIUM crust cooking settings this time. Honoring a personal tradition, I ate one heel of the bread right out of the oven (NOM NOM NOM). The crust crunched more than expected, which calls for a LIGHT exterior next time around.

Look: Nice corn-color top with slight dark edges from the medium crust setting

Cut: Dense, no problems with a bread knife

Taste: Wholesome, not too buttery. Better with butter than fruit jelly.

Tales from the Bread Machine: Challah (Egg Bread)

A friend-of-a-friend moved recently and we ended up with a free bread machine. (They never used it, it looks better on our wall anyway, etc.) This machine included a couple of recipe books, about twenty different breads total. The machine's capabilities go beyond bread, a surprise to me. Its other settings include jams and jellies, cake, and pizza dough, a pretty good profile of modern carb cravings.

I understand that some people really like their roombas. We're not going to make a little hutch for our bread machine anytime soon, but the whole process goes quite smoothly and produces some nice loaves.

Thanksgiving comes TOMORROW (zounds!) and our plans include seeing three different groups of friends. Giving some bread to each of them would be an appropriate gift, so the work started early today with this Challah recipe. It takes but a few minutes to pile the ingredients into the pan (always in the proper order!) and get the process underway. The 1.5lb ball of dough's kneading away as I type.

We learned a few things about baking with our machine over the last two months. First, bread quality follows the water balance closely. Too much means a soggy interior, an under-baked result, and trouble with slicing. Too little means a stiff and crumbly exterior. The difference between those two seems very small, perhaps a tablespoon or so on either side. It's possible to correct (somewhat) by checking the dough a few times during kneading and sprinkling more water, a very small amount at a time. It would really help for recipes to describe things look at different stages in the process. A few do, but most let you learn what small touches to make on your own.

OK, the bread's done now and smells excellent. (Never ignore the nostril impact of baking in your kitchen!) Today's loaf settings were WHITE flour and MEDIUM crust. The recipe called for two eggs; we used one real and one "fake" (non-fat). Everything else went in as listed. To the ratings!

Look: Nice even color, no burned areas
Cut: Crust crunchy but yields easily to bread knife
Taste: Eggs! I'd like a little more depth to the flavor. Add an extra tsp of honey next time?

Boston half-marathon wrap-up!

Last weekend, Sunny and I took on another half-marathon, the second tandem run of the year after January's trip to Miami. Boston's version nicely tracks the Emerald Necklace, a shouldn't-miss part of any trip to the area.

Over 5000 people took part this year, a mighty motley crew of people waiting for registration, port-a-lets, and the starting line. We lucked (?) into excellent weather, with a couple hours' worth of low-wind, high-sun running. The route heads south down the Riverway, a road that twists through Boston's suburb of Jamaica Plain. You reach the Franklin Park Zoo at mile 6, do a couple of small loops, and then return on roughly the same route (but using a parallel road).

The winners break tape in just over an hour and keep a 13 MPH pace, almost all-out effort for many people. Sunny and I set personal records at about 2:01, largely because we didn't stop and walk anywhere. Miami included a few of those and led to a 2:15 time.

Our friend Rosanna joined in for the last few miles, which includes a final loop around the Fens prior to the finish. You can hear the announcer between 11 and 12 before losing him for most of 13, which feels a little discouraging. Sounds of the other runners wrapping up make for good motivation, so you want that crescendo-and-celebrate feeling.

I have to be honest and say that Sunny's enthusiasm gets me onto the course for 13.1 miles. That's a lot of leg work! At least it feels really good when you stop...

Review add-on

To Matthew's review I replied: "Precisely. I felt let-down by the flimsy introduction of characters that never seemed genuinely motivated to accomplish their supposed goals. They were mired in frustration and entirely unclear on their best, or even easiest, course of action:

• Tilda Swinton's character seemed to want someone to dominate, so why would she listen to a buffoon lawyer and file for divorce to take on training Clooney when she already had Malkovich right where she wanted him. If it was money she was after, then why wasn't that made clear. She was a powerful woman putting on the show of power with the divorce, but without any real aim to it.

• Brad Pitt's character seemed to want to money, but got more adventure than he bargained for along the way, becoming the sacrificed dope. But his motivations for money were as thin and flimsy as McDormand's interest in cosmetic surgery. Had she been an aspiring bodybuilder it'd make sense -- but her low self-esteem wasn't keeping her from dating or getting laid by Clooney! Then suddenly, and oddly, her attention seemed to shift to the self-help "lose the negativity within/project a positive person on the outside". Where did that came from when she'd been so hell bent on her body issues earlier? Was she trying to channel Pitt's blithe silliness in his memory? (And did she ever even learn that he'd been killed, not just gone missing? I wanted that resolution but never got it.)

• Gym Mgr's ability to put aside his logic and responsibility by jumping into the danger and drama with petty theft was the ultimate "weak character move" for no apparent reason. God only knows how Malkovich channelled all of his anger into that face-off and the axe-down scene, but it was brutal, and I don't think that the viewers really understood what could motivate either player on that scene to end up as they did. It was baffling and should have been revealing.
  

I guess all of that just supports your thesis: the characters we like and understand, or even loathe but understand, have to be played in a way that keeps consistent with their own logic and revealed character. Actors can be typecast and writers can be expected to write a certain kind of dark comedy, but it's only dark and funny when we really know why they're doing what they're doing -- because they can't stop. Then you can watch the train wreck and laugh at how silly and strange we all are. But at least we make sense, if only to ourselves.

Review of "Burn After Reading"

We caught the Coen brothers' latest film last night, a star-laden farce of violent intentions called Burn After Reading. If you've already seen their Oscar-winners No Country for Old Men or Fargo, rejoice! This also contains odd characters who have just enough information about their situation to do real damage. If you've already seen their excellent comedies Raising Arizona and O Brother, Where Are Thou?, be unhappy! Most laughs in the movie come from the release of nervous tension, not actual hi-jinx or excellent physical humor. (Minor exception for Brad Pitt, who hams it up successfully as a low-brained physical trainer.)

The Coen brothers draw most viewers into their films with strength of character, a sense of constancy that explains and links seemingly unbelievable behavior across varied scenes. The stoic killer in No Country for Old Men held a strict code of conduct that made his otherwise repellant and psychotic actions somewhat sympathetic. Unfortunately, character's the primary failure in Burn After Reading. Most of the story takes small-scale mistakes and blows them out of proportion so quickly, we lose the power to judge. (Wait, is that believable? Could I get a time out to think about this?) By the end, all the characters with inner demons exorcise them by killing the people who seemed happy to start with.

The film's poster design hearkens back to Hitchcock films and the marquee design for Anatomy of a Murder, both excellent sources for life-or-death material frequently plumbed by the Coen brothers. (For example, this movie's MacGuffin is a single CD-ROM of memoirs and financial data whose contents become quickly irrelevant.)

In my opinion, they leaned too heavily on the story's comedic aspects. Fargo seemed rightly concerned with how poor choices lead to terrible outcomes--and was incidentally funny. They inject more humor here, but sacrifice how we regard the characters. Rather than communicating intelligence and an ability to cope with the world around them, everyone seems stubbornly stuck in a single-rail existence. Once it's over, did any of the characters actually learn anything? Do the viewers?

The month of football and dirty streets

There's no avoiding it now, we're in football season. We threw a perfect spiral of a Patriots birthday party for our friend Josh last week to celebrate. One of the attendees chipped in with an amazing pigskin-shaped cake. (Our fine triathlon filly Sunessa enjoys one end of it in today's picture.) Unfortunately, the Patriots forgot to join the party festivities, losing at home to the Dolphins. @#($@#*@$(!

We've attended a fair amount of live music lately. Perhaps it's the spirit of Rock Band growing within us! Leading up to November's election, politicos focus on talking points. We use ROCKING POINTS.

Point 1: The Cult - "She Sells Sanctuary." We caught these guys at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel in Providence, RI. The lead singer tossed four different tambourines into the audience during the show. (Less dangerous that it sounds, as he gave them some height and people caught them easily.)

Point 2: Lifestyle - "Everyone's in Love with You." They're connected to the Boston synthpop band Freezepop via the lead singer and drummer. Lifestyle headlined a night of 80s-style pop-rock music at the restaurant & club called Church. Their next show will be an all-New Order cover gig at local club TT the Bear's on November 1.

Point 3: Dear Leader - "Everyone Looks Better in the Dark." Another (sort of) derivative band, as the former lead singer of The Sheila Divine (Aaron Perrino) moved on to this new project a few years back. Their "shiny guitars and swooping vocals" sound is remarkably consistent--for lack of a better word. If you like it, no question that you'd really like it. We think of them as biggest in Boston, but they're also very popular in Belgium. No kidding.

Point 4: Freezepop - "Brainpower." The video gaming show Mega64 made this video for Freezepop's first Rock Band song. It's incredibly silly, as everyone raised on video games should be. We caught them most recently playing a huge (5000+ people) stage show at PAX in Seattle.

Oh, and don't forget about October's dirty streets. Tree leaves are everywhere right now, sidewalks get slick with a damp brown carpet, and we await the chance to see colors change away from town. (The ones in our neighborhood go right from green to blech.) We'll drive up to Ogunquit, Maine, in a few weeks--expect some nice photos from the drive!

Yellowstone 2008 Video add-ons

We took some videos of the amazing geysers, goofing off moments, and our lake hike 'interviews' while at Yellowstone. I'm testing the video posting options by adding them here now. A photo from a geyser is below for comparison on clarity/content.

Some videos have loud/poor audio due to wind noise. There is no external microphone to use. Others are just shaky from my lack of steady-cam hands.

Each takes minutes to upload, so this video addition may be a rarity. More photos are in our Flickr sets as Matthew noted in his previous post.

Yellowstone wrap-up and headed to Seattle

We spent almost a week in the Yellowstone area, taking in the natural sights and generally enjoying ourselves. This photo captures a sunset just before a full moon evening and is reflected off the top of the car for good measure.

As good the trip out to Yellowstone, so did the return go badly. A mechanical problem delayed the takeoff from Jackson, WY, and prevented us from making the connection flight. They rebooked us to another Boston flight, which promptly got canceled. The last flight of the evening was waaaaay overbooked, which meant staying a hotel night in Dallas. (Boooo!) Upon return, the extra day meant more lost time at work AND my car was towed to clear the way for street cleaning. I don't think there's a lesson in it all, unfortunately--just lameness.

Interested in seeing more Yellowstone photos? That's a service we happily provide.

-- Yellowstone Flickr Collection

Not content with merely getting out-of-state once this month, we're headed to Seattle tonight for PAX and games, games, games. It's also Labor Day weekend, so who knows what'll happen out there? At least the extra vacation day means some time to recover from the red-eye flight Sunday night.

Setting down in Yellowstone

We swept into Jackson Hole, Wyoming yesterday to join Matt's family for several days of geysers and awesome outdoor views. Got up at 2:30 AM local time for a quick series of flights, crashed in the afternoon, and are about to leave for the Mammoth Hot Springs on this Sunday morning. Vacations move quicker than one expects! Pictures to come as available...

Summer Olympics...Live from Beijing

We've seen a lot of great performances so far in this 29th (modern) Olympiad. Graceful and powerful gymnasts sailing through the air and landing without a bobble. Nice work, China! Long and sleek swimmers driving their bodies through the water to break world records, and their competition (sorry Team France). Go Team USA!!! But all of this insomnia from us late night spectators is a bit much...

When will it end? How can I make sure I don't miss my favorite events before it does end?
Well, the NY Times has a new tool to help you!
Their 2008_OLYMPICS_TRACKER.html

In my tracker, I've moved the rows for Triathlon, Beach Volleyball, and Cycling to the top of my list. I clicked into each sport and chose the specific rounds and events I wanted to add to My Favorites. (No more boring pre-qualifying rounds to keep me up late at night!) Then I went back to a few events I'd already missed and read the news about what made them great.

For example, the story about women's cycling Time Trials Gold medal winner Kristin (not Lance!) Armstrong's unexpected win. She had been training roads in Idaho that mirrored the course elevation profile in Beijing according to her GPS, and clearly, it worked. Or cyclist George Hincapie's long and storied career of professional cycling which has lasted over 15 years, many of those in Lance's shadow earning him the nickname Grandpa.

These are the stories worth reading in the Olympics, not the faux-drama about cyclists wearing face masks (that were given to the athletes by the IOC organizers) and then apologizing for insulting the host city. The air quality is clearly an issue, but it's the athletes I care about, not the gossip. Save that stuff, keep showing the good, hard competition. May the best athletes win and a great Olympics be had by all!

Brooklyn and NYC with Chelsea

More photos from our visit to Chelsea, Prospect Park, and the New Museum of art in NYC are in the Brooklyn, July 2008 photo set on flickr. Captions and stories behind each photo are in flickr -- run the slideshow or click through the set!

Mass State Triathlon

Last Sunday, just after returning from Brooklyn on Saturday, Matthew and I went out to Winchendon, Mass, for a triathlon. It was the Olympic Distance Mass State Triathlon and I raced in the Athena Division against only 5 others. Turns out that in spite of early rain, cloudy skies, and blistered feet (from bad sandals walking 3-4 miles in Brooklyn), I had a great race! I passed lots of people on the bike and run, making up 8 minutes on the first Athena exiting the swim. Here are some photos -- the complete set is on flickr:

from before the race, checking out the lake

from mid-race taking off on the bike

and from after the race with my first place Athena goods -- a new tech t-shirt!

Lastly, our team's president and other teammates cheer the Wheelworks Multsport team as we won our fifth consecutive USA Triathlon team champions in Massachusetts.

Coney Island's Wonder Wheel and Thunder Bolt

Coney Island's Wonder Wheel and Thunder Bolt
Originally uploaded by matthewsunessa

I'd never been to Coney Island until this weekend's trip to visit Chelsea in Brooklyn. For people who don't know, you get there by riding the Q train to the southern end of the borough. (Given my lack of knowledge outside Manhattan, you could've made me believe it was on Staten Island...or even New Jersey.)

Just up from the entrance, these two rides beckon like giant neon bugzappers. Chelsea doesn't like ferris wheels and I'm not crazy about electrical shocks, so we passed them both by. Just walking down the boardwalk proved entertaining enough, with all the people around killing a Friday night or playing midway games. I'm sure the history is there and it has the hot dogs, but give me a couple hours walking around Soho or Greenwich Village over Coney Island any day.

Summer time!

HPIM0939
Originally uploaded by matthewsunessa

from the beach at Provincetown weekend, all smiles!

Ajuga in bloom

DSCN6498.JPG
Originally uploaded by matthewsunessa

This picture from May shows the vibrant purple flowers ajuga kicks up when it gets good light and ample water. (The pipe in the background is a downspout, which the flowers are happy to live near.)

All of this ajuga came from an original group of plants that Katy sent from St. Louis. Less than two years later, we're moving offshoots to other spots in the yard. We didn't expect the excellent flowering, a very pleasant side effect of copious spring rain.

Garden progress!

This year saw leap-and-bounding changes to the garden "space" (not much) that surrounds our house. Although the house reaches almost the boundary of the property, the trained eye can detect patches on non-house that I believe gardeners call "dirt." Naturally, the largest amount of this growth-enabling substance is right where the sun doesn't shine, along our house's eastern side and in shade of the neighbors and two trees. Here's how that area looked in April of 2006.

To improve the space in general, we added a gravel path to the side yard in 2007. This meant pulling up the bony bricks, lining the path with something practical, and adding an initial line of plants to the front sidewalk, which runs along the top edge of this photo. In went a pair of rhododendrons, some pachysandras, and a couple of other flowering plants. That helped, but looks even better this year after the new terracing and a half-dozen flora species.

Of all the flowers, I look forward to the lilies the most. They come in a beautiful orange-red, as seen below. If only they stuck around more than a couple of weeks! Maybe a complement of long-bloomers will add some balance to their burn-out-young mentality. 

Our best shot of this year's lilies, which bloom a gorgeous deep red.

April came and went so fast

We barely had time to blog...Birthday his (Apirl 3), Mom visit (both of ours in St. Louis April 9-14), Tax day (April 15, and predictably we mailed our taxes on April 13), Boston Marathon (April 21, and Sunny didn't run, but instead worked the LUNA bar booth for the Marathon Expo), and Birthday hers (April 28).

Oh, and our virtual garage band on RockBand has earned the adoration of over 700,000 "fans". We rock the songs on drum and guitar on the Hard level now. How's that for quality time spent, eh? Busy month!

But here are some of our favorite memory photos, in no particular order.

Everyone at Lewis & Clark's restaurant for the "Meeting of the Moms" (and Bill, and Barbara, and Steve, more of our extended family).

I spent a little time at Bradley's (Bill's son's place) while Matthew returned from a brief visit to his Grandma Thomas in Kentucky. While I waited with Brad, I noticed that he had some video games, which I knew Matthew would hone in on like a bee to honey when he finally arrived. So here's Mom grooving out to Matthew's skills on Guitar Hero, highly transferable from RockBand!

Matthew finding that safety triggers actually are a laughing matter while at the Gun Club with Bill. Everyone got in on the skeet shooting that day, including Mom and me who took turns firing shots and launching skeet from various points on the range.




click on the flickr animator on the left to see more!

They prefer the term "little filmstrips"

We caught a great series of short films tonight at the Museum of Fine Arts. The Asbury Shorts of New York group tours films every so often and this was the first gig in Boston.

http://www.mfa.org/calendar/event.asp?eventkey=32394&date=3/22/2008

The time ranged from ninety seconds to 18 minutes and included three by Jason Reitman, recently Oscar-nominated for Juno (though I liked Thank You for Smoking better, perhaps thanks to its contrarian style). Mr. Reitman became known through his short films, a common "resume" for filmmakers. If the program comes to your town (or you head to NYC), they're definitely worth a look.

The next 48-hour film project looms and though the team situation is unsettled, the producers and I have hatched a few story and shooting ideas. I hope we don't steal anything too obviously from the ones shown tonight!

Lately we've been...

Too busy to post notes to this blog, or so it seems. You may notice some recent photo updates in the flickr sidebar, but we haven't written anything about them. I won't make excuses; we have been busy and yet not too busy to post. In recent weeks we have been to:

1. One BU women's hockey game (they won!)
2. Church gatherings for brunch with our young adult friends, executive council meetings, various committee meetings, an all day leadership retreat (Sunessa took photos which will probably go on the First Church Cambridge UCC website fairly soon), and our own game night which ended up with guests in our loft space
   
3. And then of course there's work...and more work

But really, our number one diversions of late are Facebook.com and RockBand on Xbox. It seems that Facebook is no longer simply the crazy domain of 20-somethings that MySpace became. Now it's a popular networking website among our peers, and we have some pretty interesting peers! We play scrabulous (scrabble+fabulousness) with friends from near and far. We exchange comments on what our friends from high school have said about their recent trip to the grocery store. It's just so, you know, addictive...to reconnect easily and quickly with people you are (or at least once were) very fond of is a real treat in this rather disconnected world. For example,

Name:

Sunessa Schettler

Network:

Boston, MA

Here are some of Sunessa's friends on Facebook...

Liza Ryan Wozniak

Jessica Grass

Christine Claypoole

Elizabeth Wagner

Eric DeWitt

But enough about Facebook, our real, dirty little secret is that we are both pretty obsessed with RockBand. What is RockBand? Well, living room karaoke + drums + clicking plastic guitars + excellent animated characters that are "you" on your band's own "world tour" = RockBand, the game. It's a riot, seriously. I can't stop drumming to old Bon Jovi and new Freezepop tunes without wanting to perfect my score and get new gigs. Ever since Matthew bought it, we've spent at least an hour each night (three or more or weekends!) rockin' out together. He's mastering song on the Hard guitar level while I'm most comfortable on the Medium level drums. Seriously, it's teaching me valuable life skills...like how to drum drum drum until I want to run off and open that nightclub in Stockholm. Matthew really wants us to break through to that level, and with his mad guitar skillz, we just might get there

Should we keep our day jobs? Wait and see...

Sunny's Mid-week Training

Mid-week means a fair amount of training for me (Sunessa). While Matthew takes mid-day breaks for soccer several times each week (Tu, Th, Fr?), I usually workout in the mornings or evenings. It gets predictable after a while, so I've changed up my routine lately. For example, instead of just cycling/spinning at 6am on Wednesday mornings, I've started going swimming for 45 min and then doing the 7am spin instead, so I get a swim-bike combo. Three other days I'm in the gym between 6:30-8am lifting or running or taking a personal training client. One evening I go for my own workout, usually following an Intro to PT session for a client.

Yesterday, however, was different. I slept in and skipped my Wednesday morning routine because I knew that I had a mid-day instruction session on how to instruct special cardio/strength combo classes called BURN. What I didn't know is that this would be a participatory class and I would get sweaty, big-time. The instructor was Tina DeMarco, a master trainer, and she almost let me "just watch" but then I saw that two other trainers, Tom and Lesley, would be taking the class AND participating. I couldn't just sit on the sidelines in my office clothes! So I got changed into workout duds and laced up my shoes...

• First running interval: 10 mins total - 2 min warmup jogging, 1 min incline running followed by 1 min recovery for 4 repeats. The catch...a 3% incline raise on each run segment. Start with 3%, 6%, 9%, and finally 12% incline. "Slow your run speed if you need to" Tina said, but us trainers were too competitive for that.
  
• Strength interval #1: Lunges, Bicep curls, Shoulder presses, and more Lunges. After the hill running, those Lunges got the quads tired quickly. Now I see why they call this BURN...
• Second running interval: 10 mins total - speed over hills with a sprint at the end. This time Tina pushed the hills up to "only" 6% and told us about shin splints. Lots of her new clients in the BURN sessions had really sore shins from the hills. More stretching was needed, but she admitted that stretching is the first thing to get cut from these short, jam-packed 55 minute workouts. Go figure!
  
• Strength interval #2: Wide squats with more curls and presses, plus Pushups. Using the back of the treadmill for our hands, we did these on a slight incline. But still, pushups are hard, really hard when the instructor says "Down and hold for 10 seconds hovering 2" from the ground". More BURNing going on, this time in the chest.
• Third running interval: 10 mins total - speed, Speed and more SPEED. We cranked it up with each 30 second that passed, taking only one break to a jog in the middle of the set. This was not easy, but it was fun, and again we (the trainers) got a little competitive. I could see double digits on Lesley's 10+ mph pace, but I held back at 9mph while Tom probably hit 11 mph. I just did not want to get thrown off the back! Oh, and I'd have to go back to the office in less than 15 mins so I wanted to not sweat too much more. Ha.
• Strength interval #3: Abs on the BoSu - I love ab/core work, so this was no problem. I got to ask questions about success and challenges with offering these BURN courses. Tina told me that she gets lots of "regular" clients for these, and that she has a reputation for being tough (I can see why!). She pushes her clients a lot, and it made me realize that I should push mine harder, too. I'm too nice sometimes. I should really toughen up. BURN will help.
  

So that was how I spent my mid-afternoon break yesterday. Although it made me work later in the evening, it was worth the chance to try something different and learn about another training technique. I really enjoy this kind of athletic challenge, and being able to share it with others (and get paid for it!) is really great. I guess that's why I keep up with my Personal Training certifications and keep working (and working out) at Healthworks. It's good fun.

Wintertime geocaches

Sunny and I headed for natural surroundings today after a week of rain and varying temperatures played havoc with our attempts to get out and around. The blue skies meant easy times for geocaching and we picked out a likely suspect in the nearby Middlesex Fells, a large natural area north of Boston.

Friday's chilly weather preserved a snow cover and iced over most of the ponds. Much of the path featured frozen patches, some thin enough to see the water slowly circulating underneath.

It took an hour or so to reach the geocache site and poke around. It featured great views of the adjacent towns, as does about any hill in Boston. We watched the moon move across the afternoon sky and eventually found the cache, a Rubbermaid container secured under the edge of a boulder. (As with most places called "fells," rocks are plentiful.) After failing to find one in our neighborhood this morning, it was nice to succeed on a larger scale.

Sunny attended a social event hosted by the magazine Science tonight, while Matthew organized the new closet setup and watched Saturday Night at the Fights between our kitties. (They scrap a lot, with no actual harm to report.) Weather.com foretells similar weather tomorrow, so perhaps another geocache will turn up...

Urban turkey

I (Matthew) work in Kendall Square, a nexus of MIT people, biopharm companies, and other big calculator types. My morning walk from the subway takes me through Cambridge Center, a set of commercial buildings that run along Broadway and Main St. Everything meets at the Kendall Square fountain, a golden sphere of spigots that's wisely off during the winter.

Kendall Square has one resident turkey, dubbed "Mr. Gobbles." The real thing, strutting and clucking, not a guy who just takes too long at the supermarket checkout or occupies the whole sidewalk. For the second day running, I passed our turkey sunning itself next to the Biogen building next door to EMC. A couple of its features sat askew, possibly from scrapping with other local animals.

I've seen the turkey about a half-dozen times over the last few years and other bloggers saw him back in 2003 and probably earlier. They wonder enough about him to ask questions we'd rather not consider too deeply. He does seem to take care of himself, given the many opportunities around here to get hit by cars or even subway trams. Given the turnover typical of software and scientific businesses, perhaps Mr. Gobbles has even outlasted many companies.

Run to infinity--and beyond

We just returned from a weekend in Miami that included Sunny's first successful marathon and my second successful run at the half-distance, both at the ING Miami Marathon Sunday morning. Woot!

A field of thousands of runners helped the organizers commandeer much of the downtown area. The starting line stood right in front of the American Airlines Arena, where the Miami Heat play basketball. (They just endured a 15-game losing streak, but it's for the love of the game, right?)

Speaking as a companion runner more than a serious runner, the outlandish elements of big events stick out to me. Wake up at 4am to catch the shuttle! Wait in a 10-deep line to use port-a-potties! Dawdle in stockyard "grouped time" pens and wait ten minutes after the gun to cross the starting line! Such are the eccentricities of running folk.

On the plus side, you get to run the bridge from Miami to South Beach, watch the sun come up over the beach, and see a variety of town areas. Finishing the 13.1 miles took right around 2:16, slightly more than the first time (but I also wasn't sick then). Sunny, benefiting from an actual training plan, finished the whole nine yards in 4:45, just what she'd targeted at race sign-up months earlier.

It was great to see the spectator turnout distributed across the city. Anytime I passed musicians, the music blew away thoughts of slowing down or quitting, easy temptations in the normal fugue of lactic acid and brain drain. Some spots had high school drum corps and others were proper guitar, bass, and drum combos. One stage featured three guys playing Rock Band on a Playstation 3. (They were blasting through Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper"--unfortunately, it lacked cowbell.)

Sunny will follow with her own report, a more satisfying blow-by-blow for fans of the racing forum. We were happy to make it through, start to finish! Now back to winter, cold and icy, Boston-style.

Marathon training updates

Sunny just returned from her second 3+ hour training run in two weeks, the last runs over 20 miles before the ING Miami marathon at the end of the month. I'll be running the half-marathon and unfortunately sprained my ankle during soccer on Friday, so limited my weekend workouts. Fortunately, the foot still works OK in straight lines, which means more running later this week.

The cats are very entertained by a new fishing-pole type of toy and even the mom cat almost gets off the ground for the green heart-shaped mouse attached to it. Watching the kitten bound back-and-forth in crazy springing fashion entertains us to no end.

Today also marked the 12th day of Christmas, so the tree looks a little peaked, if still well-coiffed with lights and bangles. We're happy to report the kitties did very little damage to anything connected to the tree.



That is not our kitty.

New Year's Night

We ended 2007 in the company of friends, Vlad and Vanessa, who hosted a small gathering at their place. Having arrived too late for the potluck because of our own little surf-n'-turf meal, we got only nibbles of the "meals that represented my 2007":

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Sharon-iO's, suitable for taking her into the wild on numerous roadtrips

and the Gingerbread House lacking a structural support wall
(like our friend Dave Shi's "This Old House" candidate)

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Having eating just a few nibbles of tasty, tasty cheese and other goodies, we proceed to play an odd little parlor game called "the oracle". Everyone takes paper and pen. The first thing each person writes is a question, starting with "Dear Oracle..." Everyone passes the paper to the right and then writes a response to the he/she received and then folds the paper to cover the original question, leaving only the answer visible. Everyone then receives an answer and must write a question that it could be answering, and folds the original answer. And so the papers get passed and marked up by a different person responding to each question with an answer and each answer with a question. It gets a little goofy and finally when the paper is filled the answers are read.

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Matthew got to read the results of the Dear Oracle series, aka Telephone Pictionary. Hillarity ensued. Sam demonstrated his bag pick-up skills by balancing on one foot, picking it up with his teeth and then getting the bag onto his head.

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Sam the bag man, victorious.

Drinks were re-filled and the New Year 2008 was welcomed warmly.