I, along with 20,999 of my fellow Portlanders, participated in the city’s annual Shamrock Run yesterday. I thought the 8k run would serve as a good check point for my 1/2 marathon training.

These are the take-aways that should have come from the event:

1. I need to run more than 1 day a week if I plan to make it through a half marathon
2. Running on a track does nothing to prepare me for uneven surfaces, large crowds of people, or even the tiniest of inclines
3. One should stretch before a race, and maybe drink a glass of water or two in the days leading up to a run

These are the actual take-aways:

1. My new running hat is ok, but the one Riley ate was way better
2. I don’t want to do a half marathon

Hopefully I’ll get over point #2. Once the race was over and I was back home in my warm house drinking coffee in bed, I was happy that I did the Shamrock run. And my time was about 3.5 minutes faster than last year, which is encouraging. At the end of the day, though, I am probably just not cut out to be a runner. Ms O’Rourke, my elementary school principal, always told me I walked like duck. Which probably means I run like a duck. Which probably explains why I think this sport, in general, kind of sucks. But that is ok. It’s just a few short months of misery and then when it’s over, if I pull it off, I can gloat. And gloating rules.

Tags: shamrock run

Kabluey has had a stressful few weeks. She’s had to lie (well, fib) and sneak around (often in the pouring rain). She’s been built up, and torn down. Masterful interrogation techniques have been used to pry information from her that she swore she’d never divulge. She’s delivered bad news to people who like her. She’s delivered good news to people who will realize very soon just how awesome she is. There have been many late night discussions over beer, and early morning discussions over tea (unfortunately, most of those discussion were with me, and my ability to give cogent advice is on par with a 6-year-old. My attention span is fine for a little while, but inevitably I get distracted or mad or hungry and then wander off to rearrange my stuffed animal collection).

If the above description sounds familiar, it is probably because you, too, have gone through the process of interviewing for, and negotiating, a new job. This painful process reached its conclusion yesterday when Kabluey accepted an offer. Of course, even that was somewhat distressing as she opted for a “death by a thousand paper cuts” approach to putting in her notice at her current job.

At any rate, it is done and I can already tell the difference in Kabluey’s mood. See for yourself:

An amazing transformation! We have been doing mini-celebrations along the way (which maybe is just a fun, though unnecessary, excuse to drink), but we plan to fully celebrate this weekend. Kabluey is happy. And I am happy, too, because I think this new job means she has to buy me diamonds. Sparkly, shiny diamonds. Because according to this article, written by someone who clearly has a lot of time on his/her hands, this will please me.

Tags: diamonds, job negotiation stress

As I typed the title of this post, it occurred to me that it could actually be the name of an ongoing series. I’m somewhat shameless when it comes to leaving the house in my PJs. This basic lack of dignity hit an all-time low during the year-and-a-half that I worked from home, when it eventually deteriorated to Things I’ll Do Without Pants On. But this entry isn’t about my long history of public pajama wearing. It’s about one specific incident that occurred tonight.

I had just settled down on the couch with my laptop and opened up my email. My co-worker had sent me an instructional document that was going to teach me how to program iPhone Apps. It seems a little far-fetched, but in the absence of anything else even remotely meaningful on the employment horizon, we suddenly felt mobile application development was our best bet for new careers. Clearly, I can be talked into anything at this point. But in addition to the message from my co-worker, I also received an email with the following subject: Important Draft Beer Notice.

Obviously, I opened the beer email immediately and that is when I found out that Belmont Station had announced a special event featuring two Russian River Brewing Company beers- Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger. Pliny the Elder is one of my very favorite beers. It’s available on draft and in 22oz bottles in Portland, but it can be hard to find regularly. Pliny the Younger is a limited release beer that is distributed in small batches in February and early March. I have been waiting over a year to try it, and next Tuesday, Kabluey and I will get our chance.

There was a keg of Pliny the Younger available at the Horse Brass over the weekend, and it ran out in 25 minutes. Belmont Station is getting a keg next Tuesday, and in order to allow as many people as possible to try it, they are pre-selling tickets to a special tasting. I was in my car within 15 seconds of reading the email, sporting pajama bottoms, a dog-fur-covered bright green fleece, and my slippers. I suppose I could have taken two minutes to throw on a pair of jeans and some sneakers, but at the time I really felt like I couldn’t take any chances. There was a brief moment in the bier cafe at Belmont Station when I was surrounded by people who apparently don’t get ready for bed at 8:30pm and I felt a little sheepish. But, I got my tickets, and I know it will be worth it.

Tags: Belmont Station, Pliny the Younger

The main bathroom of my house has had issues for months. I had a window taken out of the shower in September, which left a giant wood-framed gap in the interior wall. Then about a month later I discovered a leaky pipe. I had a plumber take a look, and he was able to confidently identify the part of the shower pipe that was leaking. He quoted me a price of $700 to make the repair, so I thanked him for his time and have been showering in the basement ever since.

With my tax refund and home refinance money, I am finally ready to fix the bathroom. Still, the $700 plumbing repair was a bit out of my budget, so I asked my very handy uncle if he could help me out with that part of the project. Because he is a glutton for punishment, he said yes.

I spent a few nights last week chiseling tile off the walls and inhaling toxic grout/cement dust in preparation for my uncle’s arrival. When he got to the house, I took him into the bathroom and explained to him where the plumber said the leak most likely was. He carefully cut a small section out of the drywall and we ran the water to see if we could identify the leak. Nothing. So then he removed a whole panel of drywall to expose the entire pipe and again we ran water. Still nothing.

It turns out, I do not have a leaky pipe. In fact, all I evidently needed to do was re-caulk the bathtub. Pity, since instead of that simple fix, I did this:

In some ways, the fact that I didn’t have to do a major plumbing repair is good news. But in other ways, like the ways involving wasting the most beautiful Saturday we’ve had in months laboring in a 3×5 foot bathroom, and creating (then patching) unnecessary holes in the wall, and driving to various hardware stores with my uncle, who prides himself on knowing many gas and time saving “short cuts”, this development can pretty much be classified as rage-inducing waste of time.

Tags: bathroom remodel, home improvement sucks

It was brought to my attention recently that the end of February marked my 5 year anniversary of moving to Oregon. To commemorate this occasion, I thought I’d list out a few of my very favorite things about Portland.

The assortment of beer that is available in this town is amazing. Oregon has some of the best microbreweries (Hopworks, Ninkasi, Double Mountain), some of the best stores for buying beer (Belmont Station, Hawthorne Fred Meyer <-- weird but true), and some of the best bars with rotating taps (Horse Brass, Concordia Ale House). It also has some great home brew supply stores, which is awesome because brewing beer is one of my very favorite things to do (except of course for drinking beer, which trumps pretty much everything).

Stumptown Coffee makes some of my favorite coffee. Their beans can be found all over town, but there is no better place to enjoy it than First Cup Coffeehouse. It’s close to my house, so Riley and I walk there most mornings. In fact, if Ry ever escaped from the house (which would require an uncharacteristic display of effort), I am 95% sure he would walk himself down to First Cup and wait on the side deck until someone came out and gave him a dog biscuit.

The cherry blossom trees were one of the first things I noticed upon moving here. The trees lined NW Lovejoy St., where I briefly lived before buying my house, and every year when they bloom they remind me of my first weeks in Portland.

In many ways, the weather in Portland completely blows. I do try to be accepting of this because I think anything that isn’t 75 degrees and sunny blows, and I realize that may not be entirely fair. There are good things about rain, and clouds, and sub-freezing weather. At least, I assume there must be even though at this precise moment I can’t think of a single benefit. What I do like about Portland weather, though, is the one random snow storm that we seem to get each year. The city shuts down, so I don’t have to go to work and can instead spend time with Kabluey and the pups, which automatically puts those days in a magical category along with unicorns and rainbows and Pat Benatar. Riley loves it too. He fights me tooth and nail when he has to go outside in the rain (making for a rather annoying 9.5 months a year), but at the first sign of snow he begs to go outside and frolic in the yard. He also likes when I make tiny snow men, which he later eats when I am not looking.

I should state for the record that I do miss things about San Francisco (good Mexican food, living near my brother and sister, going to Giants games, and… wait, that might be it), but moving up to Portland was definitely one of my better life decisions.

Tags: beer, PDX

I had been making progress with my half marathon training. At least it felt like I was making progress. Kabluey is playing in an outdoor soccer tournament near PGE Park, so I have been going to her weekly games and running at the track. As of Sunday, I am up to five miles. I’m happy about this because it’s about two miles more than I typically run at any one time, and it also puts me in good shape to do the 8k course at the Shamrock Run in two weeks (which I am doing primarily because the t-shirt is cool).

On Monday, however, my sense of satisfaction took a couple of hits. During a routinely boring morning meeting I asked my co-worker, who is doing her first half marathon around the same time as me, how far she has been running. She told me that she is up to nine miles. Fine. She is an over-achiever. I, quite possibly, am not. I can accept this. But then she said that according the training schedule, I should be up to seven miles for my long run.

A couple things jumped out at me in that statement, starting with “training schedule”. I know that there are a ton of training schedules out there, but I consciously decided I didn’t need one since it seems to be pretty obvious that in order to finish the race I just need to keep running more and more each week. It’s not exactly rocket science. But if I did have a training schedule, evidently I would know about things like “long runs”. Notice the use of the plural form of “run”. This implies that I should be running more than one day a week. Hmmm. As of right now, I execute one lone run a week. This got me thinking that I need to retool my regimen. Maybe there is something to these training schedules after all.

Unfortunately, any new-found enthusiasm for an increase in weekly running was immediately squashed upon entering the house on Monday night. I opened the front door and instantly my eyes were drawn to the living room floor, where I found this:

My sister gave me that hat not long after I moved to Oregon. It’s a great hat- nice long bill to keep the sun off my skin-cancer-prone face, mesh back so my head doesn’t get too hot, and it’s made up of my favorite orange and gray color combination. I’ve left that hat lying around for years, and never once has Riley even noticed it (I know it was Riley that did this. He of course has a long history of destroying my personal belongings. Plus, had Sigh done it, she would have meticulously chewed the hat into identically sized symmetrical pieces, then placed them all in a neat pile on my side of the bed with a handwritten note next to them that said “Give me back my mom or there will be others”). I can only assume that the reason Riley went for the hat on this particular day is because he overheard me the night before going on at some length about how much I loved wearing that hat while I run, and he thought to himself, if my mom loves it so much, it must be delicious.

So to sum up my Monday, I learned that I need to run longer, and more often, and with a sub-standard hat. This may be more than I can bear, but I will do my best to soldier on.

Tags: bad dog, half marathon

I took the bus to work this morning because Kabluey needed the car and I had to leave earlier than usual to attend a breakfast meeting with three other members of my department. Unlike driving in the car, where we have learned I have to sacrifice my text messaging abilities in the name of safety and/or obeying the law, the bus allows me plenty of time to rattle off messages to my co-workers. And when I have to wait for the bus for twenty-two minutes in the freezing cold, those messages go something like this:

Shit-bag bus finally came. Will be late. Start without me and brace yourselves because I am about to come fucking unhinged.

It may be hard to tell from the above passage, but I actually really like taking the bus to work. I find the total lack of control over my commute relaxing. And I think it’s beneficial for my body to be exposed to so many different kinds of germs all in one confined space. It keeps my immune system in peak condition. Traveling on the bus is adding years to my life, I just know it. But best of all, the people that ride the bus with me are generally amazing.

Take the middle-aged lesbian couple that was sitting across the aisle and a few rows up from me. They were a spiky-haired, multi-hoop-ear-ringed, corduroy-clad sight to behold, and the closer they got to down town, the more in love with each other they fell. By the time one of the women arrived at her stop they couldn’t even get their I love you’s out without kissing between each word. Then there was the soft stroking of cheeks and the affectionate gazing into each others eyes.

I was convinced that I was witnessing a grand farewell. Surely this woman was departing on a long journey to some remote destination far removed from phones and computers and other modes of communication. Only, she didn’t have a suitcase of any kind (wait, does a fanny-pack count as luggage?), and I noticed that there was a lanyard around her neck holding what appeared to be a form of employee identification. No, this woman was not leaving her lover behind while embarking on an extended adventure. She was merely going to her desk job at Standard Insurance. And I got to witness what is probably their daily goodbye routine. That is why the bus is, at times, quite magical.

Really, the only issue I have with taking the bus to work is the same one I have with driving to work- both rides end with me at my job for at least 9 hours. Though maybe that isn’t the bus’ fault. Perhaps there is something that could be done to make my employment destination less miserable. Maybe the problem is me.

Nah, that can’t be it.

Tags: bad lesbian fashion, Trimet

“Blurf”. That was the text message I sent to Kabluey when I was on my way to pick her up after work. It was supposed to say “close”, as in short-hand for “I am close to your office”. But for various reasons, including traffic laws and chronic fatigue, my communication was reduced to “blurf”.

I know that texting while driving is a dangerous and stupid thing to do. I whole-heartedly agree with the new law that went into effect on January 1 that prohibits this behavior. I agree with it, but I don’t always follow it. Now when I have a need to send a text message while in my car, I implement a few new techniques and precautionary measures:

1. Look for cops
2. Hold the phone down near my knees in case there is a nearby cop that I somehow didn’t notice
3. Type super fast and don’t bother re-reading before hitting the send button

Add to the above circumstances a case of extreme exhaustion caused almost entirely by a need to put in ridiculously long hours at work in order to give the consumer world one more way to buy glucosamine supplements online, and you end up with nonsense text messages that say “blurf” and a Kabluey who will never let you live it down.

Of general interest (or not): spell check indicated that the word “glucosamine” in the above paragraph was misspelled. When I clicked on it to see what my options were, one of the words spell check offered as a suggestion was “Gewurztraminer”. Admittedly I had no idea what that word meant, so I looked it up. Turns out, it is an aromatic wine grape. If I was tasked with selling these delightful grapes online, I would surely have a much greater sense of job satisfaction. If you are interested, you can learn more about Gewurztraminer here.