Why Hosts are Like Fish and Other Things I Learned this Christmas

Posted on December 27, 2011 by KO

Apparently, three days and three nights is the maximum amount of time I am able to spend with my family in Tennessee without committing any violent crimes. Therefore, as a pacifist, I was ethically obligated to leave without spending any more time there. I did manage to spend the holiday up there and have a fairly peaceful time, but only thanks to the magic of Twitter, which allowed me to air my every grievance without having to actually argue with my family. If you don’t follow me on there, you missed out on some gems, such as the fact that my increasingly conservative father tried to make the claim that “leftists” are all “eugenicists,” as evidenced by the existence of Planned Parenthood, which apparently exists so that poor people can be made to have abortions. Well. The more you know.

No, sadly I am not kidding. I won’t go into the rest of the nonsense, but take that one point above and multiply it by three days and three nights and there you have it.

[357/365] I only turned around where the trail was flooded.

Funny signage from the Greenbelt in my hometown, where I ran this morning.

Nonetheless, I managed to have some fun while there. I went for a wonderful run on the Kingsport Greenbelt, a paved trail in my hometown that connects different parks and neighborhoods, and is long and flat and pretty. It’s one of the few flat places to run there, actually, as my town is in a very hilly/mountainous part of Tennessee. It had been so rainy that the creek was really high and parts of the trail were flooded out, but I managed to see some lovely sights, meet a family of geese, discover an abandoned putt-putt course, and enjoy the signage that reminded me distinctly of something you’d see in the parks of Pawnee, Indiana. (Seriously, if you’re not watching Parks and Rec, get on that now.)

I also left on a good note after Christmas dinner, which my brother and I cooked and which came out wonderfully if I do say so myself. I forgot until after eating that marshmallows are not vegetarian (they contain gelatin) and I should have skipped them, but I guess I am not perfect. The gift exchange went well and I think everybody was happy with what I chose for them.

I had been planning to stay over until Monday morning and then drive home in the daylight, but I decided to leave after dinner on Sunday. I still made it back home by 10:30 pm even though I left right as the sun was sinking low. A road trip in the dark is not my favorite, but I tried to enjoy the quiet roads and the prospect of my own couch and bed awaiting me.

It was much better than the trip up there a few days before, which had involved over three hours of driving through a blinding, furious, torrential downpour that actually followed me northeast on interstates 40 and 81. How rude.

Egon and I were both pretty exhausted after the stresses of travel and family drama, and we slept in until almost 11:00 yesterday morning. It was glorious, as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you. Today has felt pretty self-indulgent, too: I started out with Body Pump class at the gym and then a quick run. Nothing better than doing something good for yourself first thing in the morning, whether that’s much needed sleep or a workout: each one has its own time. Body Pump, if you don’t know, is a group strength training class where you do a routine of weight-lifting moves set to music. Normally I love this because the music, instructor, and other people in class are all very motivating. I don’t need much motivation to do cardio as I just plain love running and biking — but when it comes to weights, I need all the help I can get, so this is a great option for me. But can I just mention that it drives me absolutely insane when the instructor and/or the other class members can’t keep time with the beat correctly? As a former marching band nerd, I take offense at any human’s inability to work within a 4/4 time signature. BUT ANYWAY.

Continuing my self-indulgent day, I watched some Vampire Diaries (I’m just getting started with season three), read a bit, and then went TV shopping. I’m buying a flat screen HDTV after getting to use W’s for a long time and seeing how much better it is than my old, crappy, 19″ tube. It is seriously nice, y’all. He’s been generous enough to leave his TV over at my place since Egon came home from the hospital and had to be crated 24/7 — we just stayed here all the time and it was better to have the nicer TV for a lot of reasons. The ability to play BluRays and stream Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon is, in a word, awesome. But I need to give it back to him soon, so I’ve been shopping around for my own smaller version. Thanks to a couple of gift cards and some money I received, I was able to get a 37″ model (which I got a great deal on because I ordered it online). It feels quite silly and materialistic indeed to be getting myself something so, well, excessive, but I think the enjoyment will be entirely worth it. It should arrive the week of January 2. Hooray!

So how was your Holiday weekend? Do you have any incredibly indulgent gifts about which to boast? Shocking tales of family conflict? Please do tell!

Happy Holidays

Posted on December 21, 2011 by KO

Greetings, friends! Christmas is almost here — are you ready, if you celebrate it? I am ready! The one thing I haven’t done yet is mail out holiday cards, which are I guess going to turn into New Year’s cards instead this year as I am so hopelessly tardy on that. On the bright side, this means that if you’d like to be on my card mailing list, there’s STILL TIME! Because I am SO BEHIND! So just email me your mailing address (kateoblog at gmail) and I’ll send you a little how-do-you-do.

In all other respects, though, I am ready to Initiate Holiday Action Sequence. I’ve got gifts for my family all figured out and bought and wrapped. Oh yes indeed! I spent last night wrapping gifts and drinking some (wait for it) pink champagne. It was doing business as “sparkling rosé,” but come on now. I was feeling silly and festive and that just happened to be what went down at Kroger as I was faced with the selection of sparkling wines. That pink bottle made its merry way into my basket. Don’t judge.

Anyway, I have the guy’s present worked out, too — despite the cruel fact that some certain retailers to remain nameless had a great sale going on and then ENDED the sale the week before Christmas just to prey upon the desperate last minute shoppers who’d be willing to pay full price. Well, they didn’t get me! I found a competitor stocking a similar product at a much better price. Look, I’d tell you all about it but he 1) hasn’t opened the gift yet, and 2) knows about this blog, so you’ll just have to remain ignorant for now.

Anyway. I’ve got a table full of festive presents that, sadly, can’t be placed under my pretty tree because, let’s face it, that’s just dog entrapment right there. My suitcase is also packed and ready to go. What’s that? Yeah, I’m fixin’ to head out of town tomorrow morning, up to East Tennessee to visit my family. I’ll be up there until just after Christmas, and then back here in time to decompress, celebrate New Year’s Eve, and then recover in time for the new semester.

Christmas 2010

I normally look forward to snow in Tennessee at Christmas, as it happens almost every year. Last year, in fact, it started to snow while we were at Midnight Mass, and when we came out of the church it was all drifting down beautifully and magically and it was perfection, I tell you. This year, I don’t expect to get my snowy wish granted — the forecast is showing temperatures in the 50s and 60s, only slightly cooler than the 60s and 70s we’ve been seeing here in Alabama. In December. I tell you what: I do not approve of this bullshit. It is supposed to be winter, you know, and not only winter but Christmas! Well, you can’t win them all, can you?

I hope you all have just a wonderful Christmas (and/or a great weekend)! Eat good food, sleep in, hug your friends and snorgle your pets. Happy holidays!

On Drinking Champagne and Other Important Commitments

Posted on December 16, 2011 by KO

I have decided to commit to drinking more champagne. Yes, that’s right. More champagne. I feel that this promise I have made to myself is important enough that I should announce it here on my very own website. Here’s the thing: I like wine, I really, really do. I like red wine, and white wine, and I really love champagne — but I ike champagne about 40x more than I like other white wine. And why shouldn’t I? It’s bubbly and delicious and like a fancy, black-tie party in your mouth. Champagne is awesome.

So why not drink it all the time? I think there is some commonly held cultural assumption that champagne is for special occasions only — birthdays and job promotions and weddings and such — and is not appropriate for everyday, with dinner, less special drinking. (Not that I’d drink it literally every DAY, but you know what I mean.) Why should that be the case? If I can buy a good bottle of champagne for about the same amount of money as I’d spend on a good bottle of pinot grigio or sauvignon blanc, why shouldn’t I? Expecially if I like it approximately 40x better?

So there you have it. More champagne, less pinot grigio. Boom. Instant quality-of-life improvement.

In Other Important Commitments News, I have decided to re-attempt to learn knitting. Well, I do already know how to knit, sort of. I can cast on and knit and purl and make little rows of stitches and whatnot. I’ve never yet gotten to the point of casting off, however, as I’ve never completed a project. Once I tried to make a Gryffindor scarf, only I got started wrong (fine yarn, skinny needles, and a project that was taking far too long to complete due to the insane number of stitches required to grow it in length at all). I never finished that scarf, and I think it eventually became a casualty of my pre-cross-country-move purge.

Yesterday I started a new project. While I was stuck in the Wal-Mart waiting for my car to be finished, I found myself staring down the wall of yarn and deciding to try again. I found a very thick (“super bulky”) yarn that advertised itself as one that helped “projects come together quickly” and was “easy care.” This time I tried to get larger needles (though I think I could have gone even bigger with the gauge) and I have started once again on a scarf. This time, no ambitious stripes or anything, just solid color, easy peasy. I hope.

If this one works out well enough, though, I may have bigger projects in mind.

We’ll see. If it turns into a huge, frustrating, yarn-based debacle, however, at least I’ll still have my champagne.

Treat Yourself 2011

Posted on December 14, 2011 by KO

Fall semester is finally over! I have given and graded exams and fielded a few grade complaints and attempts at negotation, as is typical. One person actually wrote asking if there was “anything we could work out.” Let me just answer that with a resounding NO. But let’s move on.

I am so happy that winter break is here! It’s really become my favorite time of year since I’ve been teaching full time. It’s the only break I have from classes (I teach all summer); the weather is finally cool; my birthday and Christmas and New Year’s are all right in a jolly, festive row. What’s not to love?

Even my Rosemary bush has gotten into the spirit.

I started the break off right with a great birthday date with the guy and then a small get-together at my house the next night. It was great knowing that all of my work-friends were done for the semester as well, and we could all relax. I do love to have a house full of people and food and happy chatter, and so much the better if there are christmas lights, cupcakes, and glasses of champagne and bourbon-spiked nog.

Today was just as festive: I spent the day buying the most luxurous, self-indulgent gift I could think of: two new tires, two new windshield wipers, an oil change, and a wheel alignment. As Donnatella and T-Mobile would say, “TREAT YO SELF.”

I apologize if I already subjected you to that joke on Facebook earlier today. To make up for repeating the same content here, I present you with the TREAT YO SELF video:

Aren’t you glad you saw that? I thought you would be. Honestly, I just completely adore Parks and Rec. It is hands down my favorite comedy right now. I often watch the episodes again during the week while I’m waiting for the new one to come out! My favorites are “The Fight” and “Pawnee Rangers” (the latter of which is the source of “TREAT YO SELF”) (yes, you have to write it in all caps).

And here’s one more little thing for you: while I was stuck in Wal-Mart waiting for them to finish working on my car, I had the time to browse around and inspect pretty much every single item available for sale. While I restrained myself and did not purchase any nail polishes, Justin Bieber posters (seriously, they had like ten versions), or cheaply made granny panties, I couldn’t pass this up:

Yes, a dog sweater for my little Eegs. His fur still hasn’t grown back yet and it’s winter, dammit. Dude needs a sweater; I’m sure you will agree.

UPDATE: As I went to publish this I made the biggest rookie blogging mistake ever! I clicked “update” on the new version of the theme without saving my custom CSS, so now my design is busted. I’d previously widened both the main content column and sidebar, and now when I tried to do that again in the new version, it bumped the sidebar down to the bottom. You can view this problem in action if you look at the main page (individual post pages don’t use the sidebar). I think it’s a margin or padding problem, but I’ve monkeyed with the numbers as much as possible and can’t fix it. I’ll take another look tomorrow, but in the meanwhile, if you have any CSS suggestions, I would be super thankful! CSS is here.

UPDATE AGAIN: I think I (mostly) fixed it! Whew. Google led me to a blog with a tutorial on widening the sidebar, which explained some of the relative width/percentages to me. I’m used to working* in pixels, so percentages threw me off.

*HAHAHAHA, as if I do this often or have any idea what I’m doing at all. So not the case.

Toys for Tots 10K Race Report

Posted on December 9, 2011 by KO

Last weekend I ran another local race with two of my running buddies, Brunbec and Jenniac (whom you might remember from such races as the Skirt Chaser 5K back in October). Here’s an old photo of us from that race:

This event was a rather hilly 10K race at 8:00 on a Saturday morning (a much better time for me to be running than a 5:00pm race like the last one was). In spite of the better timing, my stomach was still feeling a little iffy. It was probably an unfortunate combination of 2-3 glasses of wine the night before and general nerves. I didn’t feel like I could really race for a new PR this time, so I declared I would just see how I felt when I started running and take it easy if my stomach ordered me to.

It was a Toys for Tots race, meaning we all had to contribute a toy to give to a child at Christmas — I like racing for a good cause. After we handed in our toys and picked up our race bibs, we loitered around in the cold for a while waiting for the race to start.

(All photos are from the local running club’s Facebook group, since none of us took pictures and there were no official race photos taken — Thanks AORTA for sharing your photos online! I hope it’s okay that I’m using a few here!)

Aubie (our school mascot, for those of you not in the know) got the race started with a big “War Eagle” and we were off. As soon as I started moving, I started to feel so much better. I don’t know what it was, but all my stomach discomfort seemed to vanish. Thank goodness! The first mile of the race was entirely downhill (meaning the last mile would be entirely uphill), and I got it done in a blazing time of 8:32. Yeah, that’s not normal for me :)

I slowed down a bit as the rolling hills part of the course crept up on me, and even had to stop to tie my shoe sometime in mile two. The next two miles clocked in at 8:59 and 9:08. With each mile getting slower, I was not exactly negative splitting this race, but I almost believe that would have been impossible, given the downhill start and uphill finish.

As we were getting through the third mile I was running right next to a little girl who couldn’t have been more than seven or eight years old — she was teeny-tiny, and her little blonde ponytail bobbed up and down as she, very seriously, kept up her 9:00/mile pace toward the finish of her 5K (it was a combined 5K/10K race). She was all decked out in a tech shirt, track shorts, and Adidas trainers, and had her dad riding beside her on a bike. She must have finished her 5K in around 27:xx. Insane, and adorable.

Miles four and five kind of ran together for me — by this point, my iPod Shuffle had died (forgot to charge it), so I was running without music and just trying to say hello to all the runners I met along the way. The course doubled back on itself, so there were plenty of people to see. The positive energy must have buoyed me a bit, because despite the hills, these miles went by in 8:53 and 8:51.

Mile six took us back up the long hill that had flown by so fast in mile one. I was tired and ready to be done, and my stomach was bothering me a bit again, for the first time since we’d started running. I took my mind off it by chatting with a little boy I passed (smoking his 10K; couldn’t have been older than ten or eleven and easily running a 9:30-ish pace) and a woman about my own age who confessed to me that she’d gone out the night before and was not really loving the uphill finish. I could identify, and was by this point cursing the last night’s pinot grigio!

I could see the finish line coming up faster than expected — as my watch neared 6.0 miles, we made the turn back into the parking lot and crossed the line, finishing mile six in 9:11. The course turned out to be a bit short, so I wondered briefly if my finish time of 53:34 counted as a new PR or not (my old time was 55:47). I decided I didn’t really care and just celebrated a good race and a strong finish. And not puking.

After all three of us were done (Brunbec hit a new PR and Jenniac met her time goal, too!), we went out for pancakes and celebrated our stellar athleticism with overly indulgent breakfast food. Of course.

I later compared the average pace from this race (8:55) with my old 10K (9:00) and determined that I will count this as a pace PR at least, even though the course was short. So…yay! Another fun and successful race in the books!

Time: 53:34
Overall Place: 65/150
Gender Place: 16/72 (approx)

Effing the Ineffable

kateo dot org

Why Hosts are Like Fish and Other Things I Learned this Christmas

Happy Holidays

On Drinking Champagne and Other Important Commitments

Treat Yourself 2011

Toys for Tots 10K Race Report