So I finally caved and joined Twitter. Please come follow me!!
Click on that Follow Me tag over there on the edge —–> and press the Twitter button to find me.
I’m not sure what I’ll have to tweet about, but it’s been fun playing around on there so far. 🙂
Thanks!
To Starbucks, that is. I always hated Starbucks for its big name, invasive presence, high price, corporate crap branding, but dudes, if I haven’t had a complete change of heart.
I was standing in the little Starbucks near my office this morning, waiting for my usual iced venti nonfat light-ice chai latte, and I realized that I just love the place. There’s something comforting about the warm coffee house feeling in there. It’s like each one is a little community in its own right, inviting and welcoming to all. You have the newspapers for perusal, corner tables and couches to snuggle into for reading or computing, larger seating areas to meet and chat with friends… It just feels good being in there. And even though I hate the taste of coffee, I do love the smell of it.
As much as I’ve been sucked into the Starbucks mega-opoly (a new word i just created, feel free to use it ), I do like to try to take my patronage to local coffee houses and test out their chais when possible. And I have done this often near my office – there’s a little coffee house about a block away from where I work that I used to frequent much more often than the Starbucks. However, they have raised their prices to almost match Starbucks’ now, and the quality of their drinks really isn’t all that great either. I used to think they were far superior, but they’ve changed some of their ingredients, which, coupled with the increased pricing, really doesn’t pull me in as much over Starbucks as it used to. So to the famous green lady logo I usually head now.
Now I’m not one with a daily Starbucks habit; I can’t afford that. But rarely a week passes where I don’t pop in at least once or twice on my way into work. And it’s not all that uncommon to find me stopping by the one near our house if I’m out and about on a weekend either. I’ve mentioned before that I started walking up to the Starbucks in our neighborhood with D after she was born last summer for a little exercise, and that is where I got hooked on these chais. Before then I would have it as a Friday morning treat at the office with a group of girls, but never otherwise. But now I seem to get my morning caffeine hankerings pretty regularly.
Ah well, I guess there are much worse things that I could be addicted to. Am I right? Thought so.
p.s. run stats for the week… so i ran tuesday and thursday nights this week, and i really need to go more than just a day in between runs when i haven’t run for a while. last week i didn’t get any in with the wedding travel and all, so hitting the pavement this week felt a little rough. my times were pretty good though, so i was happy. tuesday i ran 3.23 miles in 28:32, for an 8:49 pace. last night i ran 3.24 miles in 28:19, for an 8:44 pace. i was especially pleased with last night’s run, because i pushed d in our bike trailer that converts to a jogging stroller for the first time, and holy shit was that hard! i had no idea how taxing pushing something while running would be, but i was completely out of breath after 2 blocks, and still had the whole 5k route left to go (i did the same route as the 5k i ran in our neighborhood back in may). i thought for sure i wasn’t going to be able to finish, but surprisingly i made the whole thing. and i was less than a minute and a half off my time from the actual race earlier this spring, which blew me away.
So first of all, Colorado was awesome. D did absolutely splendidly on the planes, much better than I even expected. On the flight out she was a little fussy and squirmy after we boarded, but drank almost 2 bottles of milk right away, was asleep before takeoff, and slept the entire flight. Coming home she was awake for takeoff but fell asleep shortly after then woke up probably about 3/4 of the way through the flight, but barely made a peep once she did wake up.
The wedding was amazingly beautiful, I could not be happier for my sister and new brother-in-law, and it was wonderful to spend time with family.
However…
I started getting a stye on my upper right eyelid on Wednesday of last week, the day we flew out there. Seriously? A stye? I thought only kids got those, since the only people I ever remember seeing with them were those in my grade and high school classes.
I’d never had one until then, and man was it a bitch. It made my whole eye socket area feel like I’d been punched, it felt like I had a piece of sand under my eyelid, and I had to wear my stupid glasses for 2 days. I hate wearing my glasses. Fortunately it cleared up enough by Friday to wear my contacts again, and by wedding day Saturday it was basically gone. Thank heavens! I read they can last up to a week or 2. Gross!
Also…
D got sick this weekend. Really sick.
She had the makings of a cold and a little bit of a cough before we left, but Saturday the full brunt of the illness hit her. Just in time to perform her flower girl duties, poor little thing. But, being the sweet little trooper she is, she didn’t let it stop her and was, what I believe to be, the cutest flower girl in the history of flower girls. She made it all the way down the aisle to me like a pro, with just a minor detour back to Daddy and a chat with a couple of the guests.
So anyway, I stayed home with her yesterday and got in to see her doctor because she just kept getting worse. Turns out she has croup and a double ear infection. Fabulous! I actually suspected the ear infections (i didn’t realize it’d be a double one again, i thought 1 would be plenty) because the first one she had came with the gagging cough, but I certainly didn’t expect croup.
I didn’t really even know what it was, but once I looked up the symptoms it sounded exactly like lil’ Miss D – harsh cough that can sound like a barking seal and comes with sharp intakes of breath. Bingo. She would take these hoarse, rasping breaths and then cough so hard she’d gag, often barf, and start crying. You could just hear how painful it was for her, and with all the barfing she really hasn’t eaten a meal since Friday.
So they gave her an oral dose of a 3-day steroid at the doctor’s office yesterday, then put her on amoxicillin again, which we started last night. They said she could go back to daycare today as long as her fever was gone, which it was this morning, but she was in no shape for school. Still coughing like a little seal and could barely keep her eyes open. So today’s another sick day for the babe.
I will have plenty of pics from the weekend soon, once I get them all uploaded, but here is a little teaser of our wedding travels.
Today is the 10 year anniversary of the tragedies that occurred on September 11, 2001, and I thought I’d share with you my journal entry from that time (which, as it happens, was my very first journal entry ever). I had just moved out to Jersey City, NJ, in July of that year to start working in Manhattan, so you can imagine what was going through my head after that day – I was 1,000 miles away from my friends and family, I was living alone in a huge new city, and then terror struck. To say I wanted to go home was an understatement. Fortunately I did, for a bit. The week after 9/11 I was able to drive back, since our office building in lower Manhattan was uninhabitable at that point – I made a brief pit stop at home in Peoria, then headed to Madison to spend 3 weeks with R. 3 glorious weeks. I was in heaven. But anyway, here was my take on that fateful day…
***
Written on October 25, 2001, at 12:30am (my current added notations are in italics)
OK, I’m finally starting to write this stuff down, b/c right now I feel like it’s the only way I can get everything out.
Continue reading “10 years ago today”
For those of you who don’t know me irl, I’m tall. Some would even say really tall. I’m 5′ 11.5″, so just a shade under 6′. And I love it. I wouldn’t trade being tall for being short for anything. I can reach stuff easily, I don’t have to stand on a chair to get something from the back/top of cabinets, I can quickly scan most crowds when necessary, I can hold stuff out of my toddler’s reach with incredible ease, and it’s just less crowded up here.
Buying pants sucks, though, as I have a pretty normal-sized torso with really long legs. Tops can get tricky as well, as I have to find length to cover my pterodactyl-like wingspan while not ending up with enough material in the body to look like a tent.
However, there is 1 thing that has always bothered me about being an above-average height. And that is the incredibly common exclamation, often from complete strangers, of, “You’re so TALL!!”
Um, no shit. This is undoubtedly the first thing people notice when they see me, so why do you feel the need to proclaim it like you’re having an epiphany? And I’ve never been able to figure out what people expect me to respond when they say that. “What? I am??” Or maybe, “For serious??” What about, “Get out!” (with a corresponding shove to the chest like elaine did in that one seinfeld episode) I have never once responded, “Thank you,” because is it really a compliment? Am I supposed to be flattered at your incredulity when you stare at me with your mouth agape and comment on the utter obviousness that is my height?
You have no idea how many times I’ve gotten that comment, either. It’s probably verging on a million by now. It’s like some people have never seen tall humans before. Like I came straight out of the zoo or circus and just appeared in front of them. I didn’t think being tall was such an oddity, but to some I’m quite the side show attraction. This was pretty funny, though – one Halloween a few years ago we were at one of the bars downtown and someone gave me a card to join the Milwaukee Tall Club, or something like that. No joke. That really does exist. And this guy had a good foot on me, so the number of times he’s been gawked at has to put mine to shame.
These comments don’t make me mad really, just more annoyed. Like that’s just a dumb thing to say. And why do people think that’s a normal thing to say? I’ve never felt the urge to walk up to someone and comment on their height. But maybe that makes me the weird one? Maybe next time I’ll just respond with, “No, you’re just really short.”
When D woke me up 20 minutes before my alarm this morning I was having my first 9/11 nightmare in a long time, if ever. I’m guessing it stemmed from all of the current publicity surrounding the 10 year anniversary of it that is approaching.
In my dream I was down in the subways under the World Trade Center as I was that morning, but this time I knew everything that was going to happen. It was like I was the only one who knew what the next few minutes held, so I was trying to get up and outside to where I had been that day. I kept warning people to get out of there and take cover, but no one paid me any attention. Just another crazy New Yorker running around. I finally wound my way around to the outer perimeter of the WTC, and watched, plain as day, the first plane crash right into the north tower. It was weird, though, because from my vantage point in the dream the towers were a fraction as tall as they really had been, so everything was magnified since it was so close to the ground. A piece of glass from the explosion fell into my eye.
After witnessing that first crash (i’m still in the dream here), I ran around to another side of the shortened tower, where I began seeing people jumping from the windows to get out. Thank god I never saw that in real life. I think it would have caused many, many more nightmares before now. But this morning I was frozen in place, watching people throw themselves out of the towers in droves; some peaceful-looking, resigned to their fate below, some screaming in sheer terror. I couldn’t believe it.
Then at the end of the dream I found myself over on the very lower eastern tip of Manhattan, where a huge tidal wave was crashing in to destroy that part of the city. I have no idea where that one came from, since there were no tidal waves occurring in NYC on 9/11. That would have been really unfair.
Whew. That was one of those dreams where you are just so thankful to be able to wake up and walk away from the shadows.
You guys, I don’t brag about myself much at all, but I just have to let you know about this one. Tonight, to begin my workout with my trainer, I did 5 pull ups. I repeat – 5 pull ups!! I haven’t done pull ups since before I was pregnant, let alone 5 in a row. And these were full on, from a dead hang, no leg swinging to cheat pull ups. Yes, I did do them underhand grip instead of overhand, which is harder, but still. I was aiming for 3 (but I really was only expecting 2) and my trainer was aiming for 2, so we were both pretty stoked.
The last time I did 5 pull ups was on my 30th birthday, a little over 2 years ago. So there’s my personal pat on the back for tonight. I’d better get it in now, because I have a feeling I won’t be able to reach around and touch my back through the pain I’ll most likely be feeling in a matter of hours.
