Screwing with my inner obsessive-compulsive. OH NOES! HALP ME!!!!

It’s all pretty depressing to contemplate though, since the Tier 1 General Migrant visa program(me) is closed and so, even if I do finish my degree at last, there’s no avenue for me to move absent an employer sponsoring it. I understand unemployment politics and immigration politics and blah blah blah, but seriously, I know enough Brits who want to come here, can’t we just arrange a one-for-one trade? I promise I’m a really productive person! And it’s not like I won’t be paying taxes in both nations anyways!

But I’m over at least the initial shock and bereavement, I guess. The first few days were pretty bad. The day I got the news, ironically, I had tickets to go see Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me — because it had been on my “things to do before I flee the country” list. I made it to the show, but I don’t remember much about it other than Peter Sagal had a bad head cold he heroically powered through, and Paula Poundstone cracked kleenex jokes at him. I know I made it home before I started crying again, but it was a pretty narrow miss.

I had started to seriously move on getting rid of stuff, of course. I mean, I started getting rid of the easy stuff to get rid of — sorting through my clothes more viciously to donate, selling books — after I got the “it’s really happening” in January. (On my birthday. Oh, the irony, it is thick on the ground in this tale.) I was pretty upset about the gaps on my bookshelves, after it all fell through. Not so much because the stuff was gone for no reason, so much as because the space where the stuff used to be is a constant reminder of what could have been. But, after a lot of sulking and thought, I think I’m going to continue getting rid of stuff. I had been planning to move with nothing more than my checked baggage, my two kitties in their carriers, my spinning wheel, and my bike… and if I’m prepared to do that, that means I’m prepared to live without all this stuff. A sewing machine I use once a year, that’s just not a significant need in my life… all the yarn that had been in my stash for a few years, I wasn’t going to use it any time soon anyways. It’s fine. It’s all fine. Stuff is just baggage. I don’t need stuff to be happy. I need space more than I need stuff. So, I keep on sorting through my stuff and dragging it off to the Brown Elephant to donate. May it serve someone else well.

That said… once it all fell through, I did go buy a new bed. I’ve been putting that off for years, literally, partly because I always felt like I was on the cusp of moving (even though I’ve been in this apartment for five years; I’d moved about every two years for the past decade before that), and partly because I have this sort of ingrained middle-class resistance to buying anything that I don’t absolutely need. And my futon is, technically, fine. I mean, it’s not broken. I can sleep on it. I don’t sleep well on it, I have insomnia problems and I remember distinctly last summer just feeling like I could never sleep off my tri training aches and pains. Well, fuck it. I’m not doing another summer of tri training aching like hell because I sleep on a (now) 19 year old shitty futon. I’m not a kid, and I have the money, so I bought a new damn bed like a grown-ass adult. I just went in to Macy’s, kicked off my shoes, curled up on a bunch of display models, and bought the one I almost fell asleep on.

It’s not England, but it’ll do for now…because what else have I got?

I’m currently trying to get a position in London through work. If it works out, it will literally be a dream come true. Maybe not necessarily the job (my dream job is, after all, driving a train for the Underground. I don’t think they sponsor visas, though), but certainly the location, and I do like what I do for a living (even though it’s not driving a train. I mean, trains! Best ever!). We’ll see how it goes. I’m admittedly a little afraid to say anything publicly in case I jinx it. Nothing is certain until the paperwork is signed, of course. But I’ve gotten the cats microchipped, and I’ve started selling off my stuff, Just In Case the stars align. Y’all know how it goes.

It’s a little peculiar how this feels though. On the verge of, as I said, having a dream come true — comes tension. It’s all the stupidest of things. Should I sell xyzpdq? What if I don’t get the job and want my xyzpdq? I had that happen with my drum carder. For those of you who aren’t yarn spinners, a drum carder is a rather pricey gadget that you use to prepare fiber for spinning. I bought mine a couple of years ago, and I loved it… I used it to prep art yarn batts, or prep fleece, or just generally make fiber for yarns for fun. I saved up for it, $25 a month for quite a while, to be able to buy a KitchenAid, and in the end I decided I would get more use from a carder than a KitchenAid, and I finally got it and I loved it… and a few weeks ago, I sold it. Because it wasn’t important enough to make the cut. If I pull this off, I want to pull it off in the least baggagey way possible, and that means not carting around boxes of shit I’ve carried with me since forever. I sold it to two friends, who are actually the fine ladies behind YarnCon (which, if you are a Chicagoan and a knitter or a spinner, you should certainly be familiar with!), and when Natalia picked it up from me she was practically rubbing her hands in glee at getting to process a particular fleece she had. But, all the same, there’s no amount of sending something you love on to a new home where it will be loved that cancels out the sense of pre-emptive regret, the “what if this doesn’t happen, and I’ve sold my drum carder for no good reason.” The price isn’t the most major factor (though it was definitely a sale at a loss) so much as it is, in economic terms, the opportunity cost. The “what-if” cost, the hedge against failure. The things that I have, I bought for a reason; if I sell them off and I wind up losing out on the London opportunity, I’ve not only lost out on my dream but also on the things I had before I was tempted at all.

I suppose it’s a lesson in materiality. I try not to be overly attached to material goods. I live in a small apartment, and I don’t have a lot of stuff in general. I had a CD collection which I did prize, and quite a lot of vinyl for a dilettante, and a fair number of books. Those are mostly gone now. The CDs are nearly all gone, but for one last box that I’ll haul off to sell; and the books are down to about one shelf on a bookcase, which — the more that I think about it — can be cut down even further; and the vinyl, well, maybe I’ll bequeath that to Michael. The more I think about things, I really think I can move with just a couple bags of clothing, my spinning wheel (only that because a Lendrum is pretty expensive in the UK), and my bike (because I love Ella Mae so, and she’s all tricked out with perfectly fitted aerobars and fancy waterproof German saddlebags and everything, these days). But it’s still a little confounding to try and balance the desire to get rid of extraneous stuff against the desire to have all of said extraneous stuff until the last possible minute because, after all, everything could always fall through.

I really, really hope everything doesn’t fall through. For so many reasons, and the stuff is the least of them.

the rules are now posted outside my office door.

1. Always observe the Friday Afternoon Rule.
2. Tuesdays suck.
3. Never talk smack about the servers where they can hear you.
4. Never say “no mail will be lost.”
5. Never, for the love of god and all that is holy, say “this is the worst day of my life.”
6. Never say anything at all, actually.
7. It is broken. We are all doomed.

Overpaying for wine: we’ve all done it. You know what else we’ve all done? Picked a bottle out of desperation, noticing it was on sale, because it had a funny label, because the clerk told you to, or because you were sick of trying to figure out which one to get. Now, here’s your chance to overpay for a bottle that someone else is going to tell you to get, for a good cause!

This year, I have again chosen to train with and fundraise for Team To End AIDS (T2), the charity training program for the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. I’m training this summer with T2 to complete the Whirlpool Ironman 70.3 Steelhead race, in Benton Harbor, MI on Sunday, 19 Aug 2012. This race consists of a 1.2 mile swim in Lake Michigan — a swim that is so rough it has actually been canceled in two out of the past four Steelhead races (and I really hope it doesn’t get canceled this year, because honestly the swim is the only part I’m really good at) — followed by a 56 mile bike ride, finishing up with a 13.1 mile half marathon run. All in all, it’s 70.3 miles. When was the last time you woke up on the weekend and said, “Hey, self, you know what I really want to do? Go take eight hours and self-propel three different ways for over 70 miles, with no rest breaks?” In August, when it’s like 90 degrees with a billion percent humidity? And you know I’m going to forget the sunscreen! This race is really super hard…but it’s still easier than living with HIV/AIDS. Which is why I’m doing it.

But what does that have to do with wine, you ask? Well, I like wine, but I don’t know a lot about it. When I go to the store, I usually wind up buying whatever has an appealing description on the little index card taped to the shelf, what the clerk tells me to buy, the one that has a funny label, or if all that fails, whichever one is on sale. So I decided a while ago to join a wine club, so someone who actually knows what the heck they are doing would do all the shopping for me, and then one day there would be a box of wine at my door, and all the heavy lifting would be done for me, except for the literal heavy lifting. Except, as it turns out, I cannot be trusted with a wine club any more than I can be trusted with the BMG Music Club, as I never remember to tell them “please skip next shipment” in time, and so here I am with all this wine I can’t possibly drink because, oh yeah, with all this running and biking and swimming and whatnot, getting ready for my crazypants 70.3 race, I just don’t have the time to sit down and kill a bottle of syrah like I used to. Or, in the case of my current personal wine inventory, courtesy of the Virgin Wine Explorers Club, 22 bottles.

That’s where you come in!

(If you can believe it, that is not even all of it. I still have more. I just ran out of room on the tiny table.)

I have all these bottles of wine, and they need to find new homes. Homes where they can be loved, or at least drunk. Homes … elsewhere, not in my home. Because if I don’t have time to drink wine, I sure don’t have time to dust the dang bottles.

So, if you would like to adopt a bottle, take it home, hug it and squeeze it and name it George, or just drink it all down, here’s what to do: Go to my Team To End AIDS fundraising page, and make a donation of $35 or more.

You can come by to pick up from my home in the South Loop, or I can deliver it to you at work in the Loop or to your home in Chicago or nearby. If you’re in Central IL and don’t mind a delay, we can work something out. (Absence makes the wine grow deliciouser, or so I hear.) Varietals I have are Bordeaux, Syrah, Merlot, Zinfandel, Pinotage, Malbec … and other things of the red variety. They’re all delicious, or at least somebody at Virgin Wines thinks so. And, you know, it’s scientifically proven that we enjoy wine more when it’s expensive — so, maximize your enjoyment and donate today! The bigger your donation, the better the wine! IT’S SCIENCE! And also tax-deductible!

Donate here!

The AIDS Foundation of Chicago is a 501(c)3 organization, and they work to secure healthcare, housing, and help for those affected by the epidemic and to prevent the further spread of HIV/AIDS, in Chicago, the state of Illinois, and beyond. You should check them out at http://aidschicago.org/

First, I picked up Swim, Bike, Run, Laugh!: A Lighthearted Look at the Serious Sport of Triathlon and the Ironman Experience, by Dan Madson. This is a short one, and it only took me maybe an hour to read. It’s not the sort of laugh-out-loud comedy of something like Trizophrenia: Inside the Minds of a Triathlete (which I highly recommend, and quote the line about five-to-ten minute socks from regularly), but it’s more along the lines of a gently humorous memoir. So, from the title, the “lighthearted” bit is more correct than the “laugh” bit — it had a few laugh out loud moments, but mostly it was the sort of smile-to-yourself kind. It was a slightly less manic volume of the “humorous Ironman experience” than How Triathlon Ruined My Life. Not bad, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to read it.

The second read of the night was a 1985 book called Triathlon, Lifestyle of Fitness: Swim! Bike! Run! and billing itself as “A Complete Training Guide to the Sports Phenomenon of the 80s!” So obviously it’s 25 years out of date, but I was curious to see how things had changed — what sort of anecdotes about the sport there’d be, or how training advice would have changed, over that time and especially after the popularization of the sport.

It’s actually not all that bad, as it turns out, in terms of training advice — with at least one major exception — and it’s kind of fun to read the anecdotes and especially the section about bikes — probably the only book I’ve read that talks about sew-up tires at all, and definitely the only one to baffle me by talking about clincher tires as “wired on” (I kept picturing wire wrapped around the tire holding it to the wheel).

Some of the photos are really great. From the photos you’d think that, in the 80s, all races were sponsored by either Crystal Light or Bud Light (wonder if they still handed out cola at the aid stations?). The author talks about having a special, custom one-piece suit made because he had a theory that having a single outfit to wear and not having to take “pit time” to change from a swimming outfit to a biking one could make the difference between winning or not — and mentions that the other athletes treated that idea with skepticism. So that’s kind of an interesting throwback if you’ve only ever competed in recent tris: imagine people actually wholesale changing clothes in transition! That no-nudity rule becomes even funnier.

Most of the training advice seems usable, actually, which surprised me. (I guess that’s the problem with making assumptions about old books.) There was some flat-out bad advice about hydration — “Water: You Can Never Get Enough,” discouraging athletes from drinking sports drinks because he says it’s impossible to sweat out the micronutrients that they claim to replace, and pooh-poohing salt tablets as unnecessary. Maybe hyponatremia hadn’t been discovered to be a real problem in endurance athletics then, because it was still an emerging and relatively unpopular sport? — and the food stuff was out-of-date with regard to modern endurance nutrition products (though it’s understandable why he’d advise you to keep bananas and other actual food handy, since there was no gel and he wasn’t drinking Gatorade).

But apart from that, there is a lot of decent stuff. He talks about the importance of cadence on the bike, especially spinning at high RPMs even though it feels weird (and the importance of not mashing because of the ineffectiveness and potential for injury), and how to use the entire pedal stroke to generate power (using clips rather than clipless pedals, of course, but the principle still applies). Some of the swim stroke advice is outdated (e.g., the S-shaped stroke is out of vogue these days, though I personally am still trying to break the 20-year habit), but who learns to swim from a book anyways? And he does advise people to find a coach or join a masters team to get real guidance. The running section explicitly advises a midfoot or heel strike, so at least that’s half correct by modern (fore- or midfoot strike) standards, and for whatever it’s worth, the reasons he advises against a forefoot strike are the same injury factors (Achilles, calves) that people caution you about when you start out a barefoot/natural/good form running program. And quite a bit of the advice is word-for-word still applicable, especially the parts about having all your stuff organized for transition so you don’t forget your shoes and have to run barefoot (oops), and not overtraining to burnout. Plus, the author talks about washing out of multiple Ironman races, so that goes a ways toward humanizing him and not making you think you’re reading something For The Serious Athlete Only™.

So, my honest assessment of this out of print, out of date training book? You could do worse. Seriously, if you’re a new triathlete on a budget, for about two bucks for a used copy, this isn’t a bad book (if you ignore the part about drinking endless gallons of plain water and never taking in any electrolytes). And the pictures are pretty good too.

Grocery Shopping:

• Lifehacker: How To Ditch your Junk Food-Filled Pantry, and Reboot Your Diet
• Grocery List Templates for Healthy People
• Whole Foods Market: Health Starts Here

Accountability:

• FitDay food/diet journaling online
• Weight Watchers
• MyNetDiary smartphone apps

Set Goals:

• Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals
• 43things

Charity Training Programs:

• Team To End AIDS – marathon, half-marathon, cycling, triathlon
• Team In Training – marathon, half-marathon, triathlon
• Team PAWS – marathon, half-marathon, triathlon
• Team World Vision – marathon
• American Cancer Society DetermiNation – Shamrock Shuffle, marathon, half-marathon

Events:

• Shamrock Shuffle – 8k (5 mile) run, March
• Avon Walk – Walk a marathon (26.2 miles), or a marathon and a half (39.3 miles) in 2 days, June.
• Bike the Drive – Bike 15 or 30 miles on Lake Shore Drive, May.
• RAGBRAI – Cycle 470 miles across Iowa in 7 days, July.
• Illinois Tour de Donut – Cycle 30ish miles in Staunton, IL (near St Louis), July.
• Chicago Triathlon – Swim/Bike/Run .5 mi/13 mi/3.1 mi or .9 mi/25 mi/6.2 mi, August.
• Apple Cider Century – Cycle 5, 25, 37, 50, 62, 75 or 100 miles in Michigan, September.
• Chicago Marathon – Run 26.2 miles in under 7 hours, October.

Books:

• Slow Fat Triathlete: Live Your Athletic Dreams in the Body You Have Now, by Jayne Williams
• The Non-Runner’s Marathon Trainer, by David A. Whitsett, Forrest A. Dolgener, and Tanjala Mabol Kole
• Ride Your Way Lean: The Ultimate Plan for Burning Fat and Getting Fit on a Bike, by Selene Yeager

Online Resources:

• Active.com – Articles and signups for races and team sports nationwide
• Chicago Park District – sign up for classes and sports programs
• Chicago Area Runners Association – learn to run and take training programs, city and suburbs
• Beginner Triathlete
• The Couch to 5k Running Plan – go from not running at all to running a 5k with this complete plan
• Mayo Clinic: 5 Steps to Getting Started

]]> http://ziggurat.org/blog/?feed=rss2&p=2615 0 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=2613 http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=2613#comments Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:42:13 +0000 sabrina http://ziggurat.org/blog/?p=2613 Had a conversation last week with my team lead about something that’s been annoying me lately, my increasing need to clean up after others before I can do my own work (or, on occasion, for me to clean up after others before different-others can do their work, because what’s even better than someone wasting one person’s time is when someone can waste two people’s time, plus the time of the dev teams waiting for us to do our actual work rather than do clean up). I sent an email as an example of what I was annoyed about. This morning, my team lead followed up and said, “Ok, I think I see. He doesn’t mind the hiccups because he just sees the progress.”

My response:

Whereas I feel like I’m going through life as an endless repetition of what happened to me just now when I went to go get coffee: I showed up at the coffee station, then realized someone had dumped water all over the floor, so before I got my coffee, I got a pile of paper towels and mopped up the giant puddle so no one slipped and fell, and meanwhile, someone I don’t even know came up and laughed at me for making a mess.

Happy Monday.