Well, it’s been almost two months since I started my running routine.  I’ve tried to run at least three times a week, but have been occasionally thrown off course by a cold, a busy social schedule and Galen introducing me to LOST.  Did you know there were 25 episodes in just the first season?  And there are SIX SEASONS?!?!

But I digress.  The 8k race I’ve been planning to run is on April 18th.  I decided I needed a warm up race between now and then, so I signed up for a 5k on this coming Sunday.     My ONLY goal for Sunday is to run the whole time.  It may take me an hour, but I’m going to try my hardest never to walk, even though my “tired run” is slower than my walking pace.

So I thought this would be a good time to update you, Internet, on the things that I’ve learned.  In case anyone else is thinking about taking up running because they hate it and they want to be overly prepared before embarking on such an adventure.  (A.K.A. The list I Wish I’d Had Two Months Ago):

Gear:

• Shoes.  I’ve learned these are very important.  I spent $100 on my running shoes, which is about $80 more than I wanted to spend, but it was totally worth it.  I went to Portland Running Company, where the sales guy watched me run up and down the block in various shoes until we were both comfortable and happy with the result.  (I actually left the place horribly embarrassed not only by the size of my feet, as usual, but by the way he said, “Oh interesting.  Usually people with flat feet pronate, but since you’re also pigeon-toed, it looks like you actually supinate.”  It may be interesting to you, sir.  To me, it just makes my feet more freakish.)  Anyway, I’m very, very happy with my shoes and the sales people were super nice and helpful.  It’s not their fault I have a foot complex.
• Long sleeved Nike Dri-Fit under shirt.  I know there are millions of brands that make these moisture-wicking shirts, but I happen to live closer to a Nike outlet than a grocery store, so it’s the easiest place for me to shop.  I love running outside even when it’s chilly and/or raining, so this is a must.  Although, if you’re like me and do laundry rather infrequently due to inconvenient laundromat hours, I might recommend buying a few of these shirts.  The smell after a use or two is downright foul.
• iPod shuffle.  Perfect little thing for listening to those Couch to 5k podcasts I was telling you about.  I have a big iPod, too, but bought a shuffle for running.  You can get them pretty cheap on the refurbished Apple website.  They’re so light and easy to run with and mine even clips to my clothes.
• Nike running watch.  Galen got me this for my birthday and it’s great.  It has tons of features I haven’t even figured out yet.  Plus it’s so sleek and cute.

Tools:

• In addition to the Couch to 5k Podcasts, I’d highly recommend checking out MapMyRun.com and FavoriteRun.com.  They’re both websites created to help people find good running routes in their areas.  In my opinion, MapMyRun is easier to use when you want to figure out how long your run was or if you want to make up your own route.  FavoriteRun is easier to navigate, however, if you’re looking for run routes that someone else suggested.  Either way, they’re good tools.

So, armed with this gear and these tools, I head into the world of 5k races.  Wish me luck.  And if you see a tall, awkward girl running like Phoebe from Friends in downtown Portland on Sunday morning (or afternoon, for that matter), please don’t tell her how unnaturally large her feet are.

In general, there are “dog” people and there are “cat” people. Of course, there are a few who are both and a few who are neither, but most people are one or the other. I think it’s the same with wine and beer. I am a dog and beer person.

I think there are three main reasons beer people (like myself) have a hard time drinking wine: quantity, thirst and bubbles.

1. Quantity

When I order a beer at a bar, I get a pint glass. A full one. For twice as much money, I could get a wine glass that’s about half full. When I take a drink of beer, I can take a big one, even two in a row, and it’s delicious. If I try to drink wine the same way (and, unfortunately, I have) it is not at all enjoyable. Which leads to my next point.

2. Thirst

Wine does not quench your thirst. Beer does. I realize beer dehydrates you, but it still quenches your thirst. I don’t like drinking water (which is a completely different rant), so if I’m going to order a drink, I’d like it to be one that actually does what a drink is supposed to do. If I order a glass of wine, I need an additional something to drink, which is even more expensive (but hopefully the second drink will come in a full glass).

3. Bubbles

Beer has bubbles and wine (with the exception of sparkling wine) does not.  Bubbles make everything better. Point: beer.

But recently I’ve been wishing I knew how to appreciate wine, so my friend Julia and I took a wine class yesterday. The class is called “Wine 101: Head First into Wine” and was taught at The Wine Cellar. We found out about it through Groupon and ended up getting a sweet deal.

There were about 16 people in the class, and at the beginning the instructor told us that he encouraged audience participation.  He had a basket full of wine corks.  Whenever someone in the class asked a legitimate, wine-related question, he would give them a cork.  At the end of the class, the person with the most corks got a $10 certificate for the wine shop.  I didn’t realize it at the time, but to Julia (my mild-mannered, incredibly sweet, gentle and somewhat shy friend) the gauntlet had been thrown.

While Julia asked lots of very good questions and collected her corks, I learned the following things, among others:

• what decanting wine does, and why you do it.  I also learned that only red wine is decanted.
• what tannens are.  And what to do (decant!) when a wine tastes too tannic.
• (thanks to one of Julia’s questions!) what “legs” are.  Also: our instructor told us that people who discuss the legs of wine are similar to people who use acronyms excessively – they just want to sound like they know what they’re talking about.  But in reality, the information is useless.
• if you open a bottle of wine and leave it open overnight, it’s like aging it 5 years.  If you leave it open another day, that’s like 10 years.  If you leave it open overnight a third time, it’s disgusting.
• wine was originally supposed to be consumed alongside food to enhance the taste.  However, Americans have begun drinking it like a cocktail, so much heavier, full-bodied wines have become popular.
• wine from a specific region tends to go very well with the food from that region.
• why 3-buck Chuck is so cheap.  Basically, if there was such thing as “Big Lots” in the wine industry, it’d be called Charles Shaw.
• many more interesting things that I can’t think of at the moment.

Also, I had wine I liked!  And it wasn’t too expensive, either!  He told us the prices of all the wines we tried and they were all relatively inexpensive.  At the end of the 90-minute class, Julia had 8 corks in front of her.  One of her questions was so good that a fellow student lobbied for her to get two corks for that question.  Needless to say, she won the competition and took home a great Tempranillo that we tasted for $2 out-of-pocket.  She graciously offered to share it with me.

So, wine may still not compare to beer in the areas of quantity, thirst and bubbles; but I have learned to enjoy it and learned enough about it that I won’t be totally embarrassed when Galen and I go wine tasting.  I kind of wish I could go back to France and tell my host parents that I’m not as much of an American idiot as they thought I was!

Today’s quote comes from a really cute birthday card I got today in the mail from my friend Abby. (I know, I opened it a day early, but it’s so exciting to get something fun in the mail!)

“We don’t stop playing
Because we grow old;
We grow old because
We stop playing.”

- George Bernard Shaw

For my birthday, I decided I wanted a hammock. My apartment complex has a HUGE deck/patio area on two different levels, which was part of the reason I wanted to live there. Since we actually had sun last week (!) I realized that I’m going to want to spend pretty much all my time outdoors here pretty soon, and a hammock would increase my enjoyment of that time exponentially.

The only problem is that there aren’t any trees on the deck, so I’d either need to tie the hammock to the railing, which would mean it would have to be in one of the corners… or I’d need a hammock stand.

Okay, so after I find some good cheap hammocks online, I search Craigslist for a hammock stand. No luck. I turn to Google products… Lots of results. When I sort them based on price, the cheapest one is this (click on the image to enlarge it):

Which is exactly what I was looking for, obviously.

This commercial cracks me up every time.

I’ve recently started following this blog, and have decided that if my blog ever goes through some sort of reincarnation or my life changes in some huge way (or if I just feel like it), I might make this blog more like that blog. ‘Cause it’s a really neat idea.

Editor’s note: If you are cranky right now and/or don’t want to hear me gush about my fabulous boyfriend and wonderful life, do not read on. Go here instead. (Not that I’m judging you. I’ve totally been there. I just wanted to give you a snarkier option). You’ve been warned.

Last weekend, my cousin Kevin, his wife Jen and their daughter Molly were in town (blog post coming soon). At dinner Saturday night, Kev said that he and Jen like to play this game where they imagine what they would do if they won $50 million (or some other astronomical amount of money). He asked me what I would do. I said I would buy a house in Missoula, buy a cabin at Flathead Lake, buy (or build) a house at Waterton big enough for my whole extended family to stay in, and quit my job. Not because I don’t want to work, but because I’d like to do something different and work less but pesky things like rent, bills, car payments, and health insurance keep me working full time.

Later on, after dinner, I asked Galen what he would do. And you know what he said? He wouldn’t really change a thing. How awesome is that? He is actually so happy with his life that he wouldn’t change anything if he had all the money in the world.

And although I am totally happy with my life, too, and wouldn’t change anything (unless I won $50 million), I still like to dream. So I said, “You wouldn’t even buy a jet to fly back and forth between Umatilla and Portland?” And he smiled.

You know that feeling you get when you go home? Not the anxiety or the worry that some of us feel, but the warm part. You know, when your heart swells and every fiber of your being relaxes and you know you can just be yourself, because these people know you as yourself. And they love you for it.

I realized last month that that feeling is not limited to the house you grew up in or the place where your family lives.

Over the long weekend in January, Galen and I flew down to the Bay Area to visit his family and some friends of mine. Ben and Amanda moved last fall to a town about ten minutes from Galen’s parents’ house. My good friend Bean from Chicago was also going to be staying with them that weekend, so it was perfect timing.

As soon as Galen and I saw Ben, Amanda and Bean, I got that “home” feeling. These people know me. They may not know the intricacies of my daily life, but they know all the important things. And they are important to me. These are my people, and there is nothing like the feeling of being home with them.

So, to Ben, Amanda and Bean: Thank you for making me feel at home. I am so lucky to have you.

Seems natural, right?

No seriously, I hate running. Not just like I don’t enjoy it, but while I’m running, I just hate everything. I can’t say the word “hate” enough.

But after watching all my friends run races and triathlons, I decided I should give running another try. So I looked up races in the Portland area and found one that sounded fun (a run over the Fremont Bridge with free beer at the end for all participants – right up my alley). The only problem was that it’s 8k instead of 5, which is what I had planned to do. But it’s in April, so hopefully I have enough time to gear up.

Anyway, the reason I’m telling you all this, Internet, is because I found this really cool program that I’m sure everyone knew about except me… It’s called Couch to 5k. The best way I can describe it is using the metaphor of lifting weights. If I wanted to bench press 100 pounds by April, it would be stupid for me to just go to the gym every day and max out on the bench. I would probably hurt myself, first of all, and if I didn’t I would most certainly not look forward to the ritual. The best way to do it would be to do 10-20 reps of a lighter weight (say… the bar?) and increase the weight gradually over time. That way I would get stronger every day and in the end bench pressing 100 pounds wouldn’t make me feel like I want to die. And maybe along the way I would start to enjoy the feeling I got from the weight lifting, since it was challenging but not impossibly difficult.

Same thing here. I run 3 times a week for a half hour. Each run is broken up into running and walking intervals. In the beginning, It was one minute running, one walking, one running, etc. Then each week the running periods get longer and the walking intervals get shorter. Pretty soon (from what I’m told), I’ll be running 5k without even realizing it. Okay, that might be a stretch.

But it’s great. And there’s a bunch of different podcasts you can download to make it super easy. I’m into Podrunner Intervals, because they include music with BPMs that speed up when you’re supposed to be running and because they have a training system for an 8k, too. But there’s a whole bunch of Couch to 5k podcasts available if you want something different.

Anyway, after 4 weeks, I’m still enthusiastic. I would highly recommend it. And that means a lot coming from someone who hates running.

Yep. Those are a dozen roses. They were delivered to my office today and I took them home because we have a staff retreat tomorrow. I couldn’t stand the idea that they would be at my desk without me there to admire them. The seatbelt worked quite well, I must add.

I was totally blown away by this. Galen and I had talked on the phone last night about how gloomy the weather is these days and how I’ve been feeling a little seasonally-affected. He was very sweet and understanding, as usual. We made plans for this weekend (I’m headed to Umatilla in search of sun and boyfriend) and then we hung up. I never expected anything as amazing as flowers delivered to the office.

After they arrived at my desk, the sun came out.

I have a thing for evening photos of skylines. I love them. Portland and Missoula are both great places for such photos, since they have a river going right through downtown that reflects all the lights. But Portland has WAY more lights, obviously.

The other night I was driving home from Book Club, going over the Morrison Bridge (the best one for views of the city), when I realized it was the perfect night for photos. It was clear; no clouds, no haze, no nothing.

I don’t have a fancy camera at all, but I drove down to the waterfront and took a few photos. It’s nights like this one that make me wish I had more reasons to own a nice camera.