voter registration

It seems to be happening again. The most active "scrubbing" of voter registration rolls is going on in states where Barack Obama has made significant inroads into traditionally Republican territory. And what do you know? A majority of those being "scrubbed" are registered Democrats.

These kinds of shenanigans shake my faith in democracy and humanity. For a reminder of the voter registration roll "scrubbing" that went on in Florida in 2000 - and likely cost Al Gore the Presidency - click here. For a really interesting interactive feature from the New York Times about the Florida recount in general click here. (The Florida recount was not related to the "scrubbing" issue, but is dispiriting in and of itself. The main takeaway: if a statewide recount had been conducted, according to the existing rules, Gore would've won.)

This image is also from the New York Times, in an article detailing the most recent shady scrubbing activities:

meet my new friend

I did something decisive recently. Really! It's true! I'm taking Chemistry I at the University of Maryland on Monday and Wednesday nights. This constitutes an official toe-in-the-waters of a possible future vet school application. And so far, it's been really fun and energizing to be back in school.

heaven

KK and I went hiking on the Appalachian Trail in Massachusetts this week. Just four days in the middle of a week we're spending up here visiting her crazy family. It was a great hike. The first night it rained incessantly, though we stayed nice and dry inside our trusty tent. Even inside the tent, though, everthing gets moist, and it was a good 24 hours before we really dried out. The weather didn't clear up til about noon the following day, so we had a soggy seven mile hike to the next campsite. But the rain made everything feel lush and verdant under the tree canopy, as though if I just reached out with my senses, I'd be able to feel the forest growing around me.



In Massachusetts, you can only camp in designated areas, so we had the company of other hikers most nights. Our second night, we met some extremely entertaining thru-hikers. They were doing 20-plus mile days, and smelled like they hadn't showered in a month (which they hadn't). One was a 60-something year-old guy who was 100 miles from being done. He walked from Georgia to New York, and then took a bus up to Maine and was walking South back to where he left off in New York. He was skinny with a long white beard, and he walked around camp like he felt every one of those two-thousand plus miles in his bones, bent crab-like over his battered feet, wincing. He was travelling with a tall seventeen-year old kid who went by the trail-name of Stretch. Stretch had just graduated from high school, and when he talked to you he peered out from under a thick greasy curtain of curly blond hair. The two had met on a bus on the way to Maine, and they had now walked 600 miles together. They cooked and ate 10 hot dogs for dinner, complete with buns and a ziploc baggie of ketchup that they had bought in the last town they walked through.

On our third day we walked ten miles to a campsite that we had all to ourselves. We passed through Cheshire, a little New England town surrounded by small farms where we got lunch at a sandwich shop. On our way out of town, the trail passed through a cornfield, where we stole three ears of corn to cook for dinner that night. When we arrived at camp, Kati made up a fire while I went and fetched water from the stream nearby. We cooked our stolen corn in the coals, and watched the light fade through the trees.



I love backpacking because it reduces my needs and wants to their most elemental levels. If I don't need something, I don't bring it, because everything has to be carried on your back. In fact, a good chunk of our conversation as we walk is usually about what we brought that we could leave behind next time (you'd be amazed at what starts to look expendable by mile ten under a heavy pack). And I think some of the most satisfying meals I've ever had have been ones that I carried out of civilization to eat. My friend JJ posted recently about the concept of "enoughness". Backpacking feels like an active exercise in enoughness to me. Being out in nature is one of the simplest pleasures I can think of, and also one of the most satisfying. And it feels like a relief to shuck the burden of things I hadn't realized I didn't need. At a stream-crossing on our last day, we passed this on a collapsed stone bridge - it's a nice reminder:

Ocean Therapy

KK and I spent a fantastic weekend in Emerald Isle, NC with nine other crazies, mostly friends of mine from college, and a few new additions. There were several birthdays nearby, so we made and ate desserts like you wouldn't believe. They were delicious. Though the house was nearly overflowing with food, we had so much of it. Here are some of the cast of characters:







The weather was fantastic - and it's always so great to get out in the waves. Since I don't spend a lot of time at the shore, I often forget how powerful the ocean feels. I like the sense of smallness it gives me: it reduces my worries and preoccupations to their correct proportion -- which is infinitesimal. Thanks, Ocean.

Smartbike Sighting!

I ran into these little beauties on my way to work today:



DC's bike sharing program is underway! You pay $40 a year for a Smartbike card, which will unlock one of these sweet rides. You can ride it around for 3 hours, and return it to any of the ten Smartbike stations around the city.

I'm not sure how much use I'll have for this program in its current form - usually I have my own bike, and even if I didn't, the three hour window is limiting. I couldn't fit in dinner and a movie in three hours. But I'm still incredibly excited to see these. It feels like a sign of an increasing enthusiasm -- in DC and elsewhere -- for changing the way we get around. I posted previously about the effect that high oil prices are having in the auto industry, where suddenly gas mileage and alternative fuels are all the rage, even in Detroit. Bike sharing programs, and bike-friendly city life in general, have become more popular recently for partly the same reasons. But apart from their earth-saving qualities, there is something about bicycles that make a city seem like a nicer place to live. I'm so glad that I'll be seeing these cheerful little critters around town.

"No End In Sight"

In the opening scene of Charles Ferguson's documentary No End In Sight Donald Rumsfeld stands behind a podium and opines that only history will be the judge of the war in Iraq. This movie is one of a bevy of recent documentaries that constitute the first draft of that history, and the early word is about as bad as you can imagine. Fueled by his own outrage, political scientist and first-time director Chris Ferguson winds fact-wise through the invasion and the early days of the occupation. He treats us to a side-by-side comparison of two startlingly different versions of events: the official line, as dispensed from press-briefing podiums by the president and Donald Rumsfeld; and the damning testimony given by the people who were actually in Iraq. Just about every frame adds a new and ever more sick-making revelation of the arrogance and incompetence with which we have conducted this war. Worse, it didn't have to be this way.

Of course all hindsight is 20-20, and Ferguson's movie has been justifiably accused of tendentiousness. Even so, it's hard not to be swayed. Ferguson traces the administration's narrative using archival news footage; in and of itself, the cocksure-ness on display is startling. He then contrasts this version of events with dozens of interviews he conducted with current and former civil servants, journalists, soldiers, and Iraqis, including Richard Armitage, Barbara Bodine, Jay Garner, Paul Hughes, Walter Slocombe, and George Packer. Most heartbreaking are the stories told by Garner, Hughes, and Bodine, who were all but helpless witnesses to the destructive decisions handed down from Washington. During these early days, the Iraqi people were willing to wait and see: they had not yet turned against our presence there. It's difficult to remember from this far distance, but No End in Sight reminds us that regardless of whether we should have gone to Iraq in the first place, there just might have been a right way to conduct this war once we started it.

The entire movie is posted on Google Video. I embedded it above, though if you don't see it, your browser might not have the latest version of Flash Player. Click on the lower right of the video to watch it in full screen, or click here to go to Google Video. If you're having trouble, try switching to another browser, too. Enjoy.

Green Car Insurgency!

High oil prices are tough on consumers who might already be struggling, but I for one am just brimming with excitement over the effects $4 per gallon gasoline is having on the automobile industry. Last week, GM announced that it's closing 4 SUV manufacturing plants, and said in its press release that it believes cheap gasoline to be a thing of the past. GM, Ford, and Chrysler are fundamentally changing their businesses as a result. Apart from the potential demise of the Hummer brand (which I would find very satisfying), Ford is retooling F-150 producing plants to switch to small car manufacturing, and Chrysler is getting into the hybrid market. Their ridiculously large hybrid SUVs are not the answer to the climate problem (and in fact big, expensive hybrids with infinitesimal fuel efficiency gains are selling abysmally), but these signs of change are really, really exciting. A couple years ago the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" portrayed GM as a wicked corporate giant quashing the plucky little EV-1, in spite of its possible commercial feasibility (or maybe more accurately, in spite of the possible value of heading in that strategic direction - imagine if GM had beat Toyota's Prius to the gas-mileage punch?). Now, the giant is staggering under rapid changes in consumer behavior that it evidently thought impossible, and it's falling all over itself trying to beat Toyota to the market with a plug-in hybrid in 2010.

Just as exciting to me is the proliferation of impatient entrepreneurs trying to concoct plug-in electric MPG improvements (which may or may not result in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, depending on the upstream energy source of your wall outlet). Hybrids-Plus, an outfit in Boulder, CO, is one of a handful of companies offering plug-in conversions on the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape hybrids. They are prohibitively expensive - upwards of $30,000 not including the car - but the mere fact that these companies exist is evidence of a market not being supplied by the major auto manufacturers. On a smaller scale, a guy named David Taylor in Lee County, NC seems to have converted his 2005 Dodge Ram pickup into a plug-in hybrid in his shop. From his video, it seems like he's ready to start converting cars for us, too. And there are other entrepreneurs who are innovating their way towards higher MPG's: Aptera is a California-based car company set to start selling their first vehicle in 2009, and it gets 300 MILES PER GALLON:



Cars are not the biggest producers of greenhouse gases in the world - according to Environmental Defense, they account for about 10% of global emissions - but as developing countries like China and India become wealthier, their new middle classes are buying cars, which will exacerbate the problem of tailpipe emissions. Plug-ins are far from 'clean', but moving the pollution from millions of tailpipes to a handful of power plants seems like a step in the right direction.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

Grand Canyon 2008!

KK and I are headed to the Grand Canyon in just a few short days -- I absolutely can't wait. We went in 2006 and did a rim-to-rim hike with the Grand Canyon Field Institute, which was an absolute blast. I wasn't sure I'd like travelling with a group, and I couldn't decide if it was lame or wimpy to go with a guide, but both things turned out to be great. We had a funny, diverse group of 10 (plus our guide, Ryanne Sebern, made 11). We all became fast friends, and had a great experience in the Canyon together. The reason we decided to go with a group in the first place was that we weren't sure we'd know enough to plan safely for desert hiking. But we learned the ropes (albeit, on well-travelled trails with water sources every day) from Ryanne, who was a fantastic guide. Her style was very anti-gear, which was refreshing and suits my tastes -- who wants to spend a zillion dollars on a bunch of fancy gear that you probably don't need? The forced minimalism of backpacking is one of the primary appeals for me. This year, we're taking a cue from her and not bringing a tent (unless there's rain in the forecast, that is), and bringing mostly cheap, easy, but delicious food. Ramen noodles have about 300% your daily allowance of salt--a good thing in the desert-- cost $0.10, and weigh almost nothing.

Ryanne was pretty hard-core: she practiced a pretty stringent form of the 'leave-no-trace' ethic, which included drinking her cooking wash water. I'm not sure I'm up for swilling down water clouded with oatmeal bits all day long, but I admire her for her low-key, no-nonsense attitude about it. It definitely wasn't an attention-getting device with her, which it can sometimes be.

We decided to go back to GC this year with the same outfit -- Grand Canyon Field Institute -- since we had such a great time on the first trip. Our guide on this upcoming trip is a fellow named Brian Gootee, who, from his emails, seems like he'll be a very likeable weirdo. This past weekend, we started organizing our gear, which was much more fun than studying for the GRE's.
Maybe I'll post a picture of our gear layout when it's all together. I've been a little anxious about my footwear situation -- last time, I ditched my boots on the first day, and hiked the rest of the way in my Keene sandals. They were comfortable, but not that supportive, and they do tend to aggravate my old foot injury. However, almost all other shoes aggravate it more, so I was just planning on hiking in them again this year. As the trip got closer and closer, though, I started worrying more about my poor abused feet. I finally decided it was time to try -AGAIN - to find a comfortable pair of hiking shoes.

And lo and behold! After about an hour trying on shoes at the mad-house REI in College Park, I found what I think are a great pair. They're trail runners -- as opposed to heavier hiking shoes. Being running shoes, they have a nice wedged sole, which lifts your heel higher than the ball of your foot. They're light, relatively flexible, but they feel nice and supportive around my ankles. Best of all, I've been wearing them around for about 24 hours now (with orthotics in), and I am having NO foot pain. I can hardly wait to scamper down those 10 steep miles to the bottom of Grand Canyon!

Here a picture of my new infatuation. I feel like I've just met a life partner or something. To discover that Vasque trail runners are comfortable! I'm already planning our life together:

"Shine A Light"

Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones movie Shine a Light is the best concert I've ever been to. It was only playing at one place here in DC, so I biked up to the Uptown on the 3400 block of Connecticut Avenue -- way outside my usual range -- for an 8:00 show on Wednesday night. The Uptown is a one-screen movie palace in upper Northwest that's been continuously operating since 1936. It's more than a little frayed around the edges, but the threadbare Art-Deco opulence only heightens the sense of stepping out of time and reality as you enter. Ensconced in my seat, fifteen rows back from the largest screen in town, I was ready to be carried off by this movie. And boy was I ever.

Shine a Light is a concert movie of the Rolling Stones at New York's Beacon Theater in 2006. The first ten minutes of the movie show grainy hand-held footage of both the Stones and Scorsese preparing for the show, and the contrast gets some laughs. Scorsese, playing the caricature that is himself, is about as un-rock-and-roll as they come in his minute and obsessive preparation. The band, in the meantime, are touring and generally having a good time, not showing the least amount of interest in the high-stress logistical machinations going on around them. By the time the lights go down and the audience surges in anticipation, the feeling is that the whole thing could go off the rails at any moment.

But it doesn't. Far from it: it's sheer joy to watch. First there is the unbelievable energy of the band, in particular Mick Jagger, who nearly never stands still, literally running around the stage, dancing, hopping, shimmying, shouting, and exhorting the crowd to do the same. The deep lines on his face tell his age, but in spite of them he looks for all the world like a willowy, androgynous 18 year-old. Rock and roll must be the elixir of life. Or so this movie allows us believe. Scorsese's cameras are everywhere at all times, capturing every nuance of what's happening on the stage: the small shared glances, the unguarded expressions, the shows of affection between the band-members, and in a rock-god moment backlit by the klieg lights, Keith Richards expelling a cigarette from his mouth in a bright corona of ash and spittle. The cameras swoop around the stage, creep in front of it, impinge on its boundaries, and find dynamic, engaging shots that make every other concert movie I've ever seen look like home movies shot from a tripod at the back of a school auditorium. These cameras are alive and they rove around the stage the way we wish we could.

Another refreshing difference from standard fare concert movies is the lack of slavish close-ups of guitar players' fingers during signature hot licks. As one kind of music fan, I can appreciate those shots: they allow us to revel in our rock star's virtuosity as players. But most of the people in the audience at a Rolling Stones show aren't there to get a firsthand look at Ronnie Wood's technique: they're there to be transported by the alchemy that occurs when you stir together charisma, sweat, righteousness, and deep bass beats. Scorsese and his fleet of hot-rod cinematographers get this, and give us the mythic characters, not the geeky details.

Shine a Light is about the Rolling Stones, and it's about rock and roll, but it's also about the movies. The show is framed on either end by the "making-of" meta-narrative. And throughout the footage of the concert, the cameras constantly find one another, so that among the thronging audience is the bright eye of a camera lens, spectating, helping to ignite the alchemy. But movies have alchemical properties of their own: the close-up on-stage nuances Scorsese captures -- the half-smiles, the grimaces, the pause to light a cigarette -- those shots become iconic on a forty-foot tall screen. In turning his cameras on themselves, Scorsese ends up making a movie about not one but two of the great cultural myth-makers of our times: rock and roll and moving pictures. And by hitching the movie-making story to a high-energy rock show, Scorses can also borrow some of rock and roll's performativity, literally performing his feat of movie-making for us on the stage of the Beacon Theater. The two genres bleed into one another and augment one another's powers, and it's magical to watch.

Survived!

I survived. And I didn't embarrass myself. Neither of which I was at all confident would be the case...

I posted earlier about my dreadful lack of preparation for this race. I basically had six weeks to go from complete and utter un-fitness, with a nice winter layer of about 6-8 extra pounds, to being ready to run a 10-mile race at some kind of respectable pace. Pride dictated that a "respectable pace" meant "not slower than the 10-miler I ran last year". Before which I had worked my keister off for 18 weeks. Bad idea. I overdid it so badly in the first two weeks of my training this time that I had to cut back to two or three days a week only. I did one ten mile run a few weeks ago, and then only a handful of three mile runs before race-day. I had no idea what to expect from myself...

This weekend was a busy one. On Friday Kati and I trekked down to Fredericksburg for Crown Vic's CD release party (my friend Tim's band). We had a delicious meal at Bistro Bethem, and I generally enjoyed wandering through downtown Fburg. I miss living in a small, walkable town. We got home after 1 AM and crashed into bed. The next morning, I had to be up at 7:30 to get out the door and get down to Southeast to volunteer for a financial literacy fair put on by DCSaves, a coalition of government agencies and nonprofits dedicated to helping individuals and families save and build wealth. It was a lot of fun, and the nonprofit putting it on, Capital Area Asset Builders, seems great. But I was on my feet all day, and already tired.

At around 3:00 I metro-ed down to Crystal City to pick up my race packet. The Marriot where they were holding the race expo was absolutely buzzing with energy. Fit looking runners everywhere -- thousands of them -- were rifling through racks of discounted running clothes and swapping race stories. People were speculating about the race-day weather forecast, and soliciting one another's opinions about layering strategies. The actual content of these conversations is incredibly repetitive: all runners tell the same race stories over and over, fret about the same sore knee, and talk incessantly about their pre- and post- race meals (the former strategized to optimize stored energy without sitting in your gut like a brick, and the latter remembered with excessive gusto in proportion to the excessive energy expended to earn it). But I never get tired of these conversations. Banal as they are, they are a way of dialing into the heightened sense of being--the sense of being more fully human--that I get from running.

Paradoxically, running makes me feel more fully human by reducing me to an elemental reptile-brain self. Running hurts; running is grinding my joints to powder; running requires pushing beyond logical limits; no one should run. Except that it's so much fun. Or maybe more accurately sometimes, it's so much fun to have done it. At mile 16 of the relay I did last year, I was not having fun. At all. But I survived it: I won. I won against the heat; the the lack of sleep over a 25-hour race; the distance; my own uncooperative body. So maybe it's not quite right to say that it reduces me to a reptile-brain self: maybe it's more accurate to say that it reduces each of my two thinking halves -- the reptile brain and the human, reasoning brain -- to their barest elements. Pain reflexes are hard-wired in the reptile brain. And will belongs to the reasoning brain. Running at the limits of your ability brings the reptile brain thrillingly close to the surface, but pushing to those limits is an act of sheer will whose victory is in the mere doing of it.

Today's victory was one of these. I almost didn't go to the race at all: my legs were sore, I was not remotely prepared to run as fast as I wanted to; I was (am) still carrying around 6 extra pounds; I was dead tired from a few days of too much to do with too little sleep; I hadn't hydrated well; and my stomach was a little upset. But when the alarm went off at 6:15, when I told myself I would decide whether or not I was going, I knew immediately that I had to. If I didn't, I'd just lay awake, hating myself for being afraid of pain and failure. So I ate half a granola bar, drank a few swallows of tea, and headed out into the dark drizzle to go join 12,000 other people at the start. I met my friends Alan and Michael and we queued up in the "red bin", where runners who were projecting between a 7:30 to 8:30 pace were grouped, and we set off together at 7:52. Alan and Michael left me in the dust immediately (which they would no matter how fit I was). Against my better judgment, I ran hard for the first few miles, a little slower than an 8:00 pace (8 min/mile, that is). At the five mile mark, I was still trucking along like this, but with five more to go, I had virtually nothing left in the gas tank. I was breathing hard, an old injury in my foot was hurting in a new and scary way, and my arms were cramping (which they do when I'm running way too hard). I backed off for the next mile or so, during which I started thinking about dropping out: pushing myself into a new injury would not be worth it. And it had started raining again. But when I slowed down, the pain in my foot subsided somewhat. I decided it couldn't be that serious, and around the same time finished mile 7. I cheered up considerably then: I can run 3 miles in my sleep. I was almost home. I was considerably slower now than in the first five miles, but I roused myself into a sort of labored race pace for a few hundred yards at a time. And when I finally rounded the last corner I managed a feeble hundred yard sprint to the finish. My final time: 1:23:30. Only one minute slower than my pace last year. Victory.

Happy birthday, Gampy

I spent this weekend at my grandparents' house in southeastern VA, helping to celebrate my grandfather's birthday -- his 86th! My mom and one of my aunts were there as well. We ate typical Gammy and Gampy fare: a very well done pot roast with some boiled potatoes and carrots. Mom spiced things up a little by bringing along some green beans. She seasoned them with a little dill and butter, which was very nice. Alas, no garlic to be had in the house. Mom also brought along a lentil casserole so that I'd have something to eat (not being of the pot-roast eating persuasion).

We all collaborated at the last minute in making Gampy a birthday gift of an enormous photo album, containing photos taken on our recent grandparent-sponsored trip to Tahiti. Everyone contributed their photos, so we had quite a lot. It was a big hit. I think Gammy and Gampy really like to be able to be so generous. I hope we thank them enough for it.

Finally, while there, I got a chance to check in on a new favorite of mine: a crazy and inspired project being undertaken by some local boaty types in Deltaville, VA. A wealthy woman bequeathed some land to Middlesex County not too long ago, and some of the locals saw an opportunity to make a museum of local boatbuilding on it. The Delaville Maritime Museum was born. It's a small place, in what must formerly have been someone's very ordinary little house. But the people curating the exhibits clearly care a lot about it. The best part by far for me, though, is the F.D. Crockett.

The F.D. Crockett is an old "buyboat" or "deadrise" boat, built in the area in 1924 for Ferdinand Desoto Crockett. It was one of the last and also one of the largest of these utilitarian, flat-bottomed wooden boats built for power before fiberglass came into common use. These so-called "deadrise" boats are regional specialists - built with their flat bottoms to be able to navigate the shallower waters of the Chesapeake and her tributaries. The F.D. Crockett herself was put into service first ferrying goods around the region; she had pigpens built onto her deck at one point. Here's a picture of her when she was still in service (likely as a pleasure boat by the time this photo was taken):



She was donated to the Deltaville Maritime Museum a couple years ago. She still floated, but about the best that could be said of her seaworthiness was that "she tows real good." Since then, four or five regulars have been working to restore her to working order. All of her decking and planking (siding) will need replacing. The deckhouse was un-salvageable. And the ribbing -- the skeleton inside that wide body -- needed complete replacing, too. So really, there won't be a whole lot that's original to this boat when the restoration is complete. Except for her log bottom, which is one of the features that make these boats so unique. They were built more like dugout canoes than modern boats. No plans would have been used; boatbuilders just knew how to build a boat. They started with a log bottom -- in the F.D. Crockett's case, the bottom is made up of nine logs side-by-side. One of the fellows working on the boat told me the technique then was the "mostly mulch" approach, meaning that from those nine logs, probably about half the wood would have been chopped and carved away to get the shape of the hull you see above. The rest of the boat they just built up from those logs.

I am totally taken with this project. With the dedication of the men spending their time lovingly restoring this boat. With the quirky history of regional boatbuilding that the F.D. Crockett represents. Here are a couple pictures I took this weekend, at the Chesapeake Maritime Railroad, where the F.D. Crockett is wintering.


This is a photo of the stern (back) of the Crockett sticking out of the shed where the guys work on her. You can see the old log bottom, and the partially replaced planking, as well as the new ribs. The canopy and the vertical planks holding it up is just to keep the rain off while they work. Ultimately, a new deck will be laid down, and a new deckhouse put back on.

Below is another photograph taken from the stern. I love that wide, flat belly curving out so extravagantly from the vertical rudder.





Work is continuing over this winter. When I asked the guys how much longer they thought it'd take to finish, the one who likes to call himself Krunch (as in Kaptain...) said "We're going boatin' this summer!".

how to cure torpor

... make a to-do list!

I'm finding events fast overtaking me. My two-year position at the Fed is nearly up, and suddenly I'm obliged to be making decisions about the future. As anyone who's talked with me more than once about the subject knows, I change my mind about what I should do next just about every time I think about it.

Since procrastinating will soon no longer be an option, I'm suddenly feeling very motivated to figure things the hell out.

• Step #1: I signed up to take the GRE's in five weeks, and went out to get myself a prep book. Vocabulary flashcards on the metro turns out to be sort of fun! And amazingly, I'm encountering more than a few words that I've never even seen before, let alone know the definitions of. April 2nd is test day. Hopefully I can re-learn geometry by then. Why take the GRE's? Apart from various practical reasons, it's symbolic of moving forward - of doing something. It signifies to myself, if no one else, that I intend to make some kind of decision some day. Possibly. Maybe.

• Step #2: Casually search for jobs to take post-Fed. I'm only planning on applying to jobs that seem absolutely great. If something comes of it, great. And secretly,if nothing turns up, I'm planning on interpreting it as a sign that I should cut loose and plunge wildly away from the practicalities of good salaries, respectable institutions, and competitive striving. I could move to Knoxville and sell home-made ice cream with my sister. Maybe the air on Gay Street will give me a little bit of what it gave Cormac McCarthy.

• Step #3: Don't injure myself trying to get fit for this race in April... seriously, my legs are in agony.

• Step #4: Show up at a practice LSAT in April, just to see what the test is like, and whether I do reasonably well. This is a bit of a hedge against the "cut loose and plunge" option above. It makes doing something heedless like spending a year reading my brains out and writing short stories -- or trying to -- seem less frightening. Because I could always high-tail it back to those practicalities - the ones that feel so constraining right now.

• Step #5: TBD. I guess this one depends on what happens -- a new, practical job, or a heedless plunge. I'm on the edge of my seat...

this might be a terrible idea....

For the first time ever yesterday, I had such bad cramps in my calves that I had to stop running.
Actually, I could hardly walk, they were so seized. I must have looked quite the sight, crossing the intersection by the Georgetown boathouse in my running clothes, limping dramatically.

So this crash start in running training might not be the best idea ever. I'm hoping that my body will remember that it once was extremely fit (I'm only just now beginning to appreciate how fit I really was last summer...) and that if I just endure the suffering for a couple weeks, I'll hit a turning point.

In the meantime, here is a graphical depiction of what all this running feels like to my poor shocked leg muscles:

Back at it

Ok, so I haven't exactly been a fervent poster on this blog... two posts in 6 months is not very good.

But after a long hiatus, I'm running again (practically against my will) which seemed like a good opportunity to try again!

Here's the deal: since the race in August I've been running about three times -- once with my funny brother, who has only recently taken it up, and who wiped the floor with me on the hills at home. As a way to inspire myself to get back into it, I signed up for the 2008 Cherry Blossom ten miler (April 6th). Or, sort of signed up: I got on the wait list for the Fed's Credit Union team, and then didn't think much more about it. Apparently wait lists are not good at inspiring me to run....

But last week, when down at the credit union to do a deposit, I was informed that a spot had opened up. So now I have six weeks to shed about 7 or 8 winter pounds, and go from no running to running 10 fast miles... (because of course I can't resign myself to just finishing - no, I want to finish fast...)

Last week I ran five days in a row, finishing the week with a six or so mile "long" run. My legs are in shock: they thought we were retired. They hurt like hell this week - yesterday my first run for this week was more like a shuffle.