Lifestyles of the Young and Renting

I’ve lost someone today. Not someone I’ve gotten to know well, but someone who inspired me greatly. Melanie Fastrup was my Honored Teammate through Team in Training. She’s one I was racing for. Today, she lost her battle with Waldenstrom’s Macroglobulinemia (a form on non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma) which has no cure. Please pray for her husband, Dan, my teammate, and her daughters.

 

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-m 

I cannot explain it, but I have come to deeply depend upon www.cuteoverload.com.

I have tried to share my enthusiasm for the site with my friends, but once I tell them it is a website devoted to pictures of cute animals, they seem to lose their interest. And if I were in their shoes, I would have lost mine, too. 

However, in my defense, there is plenty of real and anectdotal evidence that pets make people live longer. They aid in the healing process, and they fight off depression…which is probably why every nursing home I have ever visited has some version of an obese orange cat wandering the halls, looking for oatmeal leftovers.

At any rate, if routinely looking at pictures of cute and amusing animals, whether they are doing "people things," wearing costumes, sleeping in contorted positions, or performing gymnastics, helps me to keep at least one foot in the realm of sanity, so help me Jesus I will do it.

I just might not tell you about it again.

-l

Acording to the website www.globalrichlist.com, I’m the 55,146,441st richest person in the world.

However, even though there are more than 55 million people richer than I, I’m still in the top .91% of the whole world. 

From the website:

"Three billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of those living on less than $1 per day are women."

Food for though.

-m 

You’ve just got to watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0uEQZDHiaM

No words.

This next thought is wholly unrelated to what I will write after it, but I thought I would tell everyone that I have decided that after graduation, I will not give myself a busy life. I am going to engage in activities that require minimal deadlines and am going to hopefully reduce all opportunities for double-booking. I am going to have a schedule that allows me to go to the gym at times other than 5am, and one that makes me available to have lunch with my husband. I will not choose a job in which I commute oppressive distances.

That being said, I will now tell you about our trip to "The City."

On Saturday morning, Matt ran his first half-marathon in Santa Barbara! Although he was in considerable pain in mile four, he made it all the way through.

To congratulate his sweaty self, I surprised him with an early birthday present: two tickets to see the Vikings play the 49ers in San Francisco the next day. After having lunch with friends, we hopped in the car and continued up the coast. I had planned this for months…even charged things on a credit card we hardly use and pulled the statement out of the mail before he even saw it (as an aside, I have now found a fool-proof way to fund my shopping addiction, should I choose to develop one). His parents and sister were in on it, and sent cards ahead of time. I was a master of secrecy and planning.

So, off we go, past the cows, past the grapes, past the lettuce farms, and into the Bay Area. We stayed at a very charming hotel that was downtown…one of many in a row of tall, narrow historical buildings restored for urban life. We had to open the door to the elevator ourselves, pushing back the spring loaded gate long enough to squeeze both of us into the tiny box. Definitely a two-person elevator. Our room wasn’t much bigger, but it was very clean and well-decorated, and right where we wanted to be.

The game started at 1pm, so I didn’t expect we would get to see much of the city, but we didn’t do too badly for ourselves: 

The Trolleys were about four blocks from our hotel…we had enough time to see them, but unfortunately, not ride on them…

 

 

Ah, Ghiradelli Square….chocolate was eaten here…

 

 

 

 

 

Good seats, good weather, happy birthday! 

Lately when running, I’ll get about 3 miles and I’ll start to have some discomfort in my knee. Around mile 4 or 5 it gets real sharp. Today (Wednesday, Nov, 1st) I just had my first cortisone shot to take care of the inflammation and pain. My doctor said it should take 2 or 3 days to take affect. Saturday, November 4th, I’ve got a half-marathon in Santa Barbara and we’ll see how 13.1 miles feels.

I’ve always heard of athletes getting cortisone shots in shoulders, knees, etc. to ease swelling and pain so they can play. Does that make me a real athlete? Time will tell.

-m