Art on the town

Tonight was First Thursday at the Seattle Art Museum (a.k.a. SAM) and since M & I had been planning to go see their Alexander Calder exhibit, it seemed like the perfect excuse to go. (The only thing better than art is free art… ) I caught the bus from work to meet M & T who drove over together. While I was waiting, I snapped a picture of these cool car sculptures they had hanging over the lobby:

On the same floor as our Calder exhibit, there was a Michelangelo exhibit. The ticket taker helpfully informed us of what rooms contained which artist. I found this amusing because it’s hard to imagine two artists that would be easier to tell apart, but whatever. I also loved the sign above the entrance, which I tried to photograph (and promptly learned there was no photography of any kind) so you’ll have to settle for this “artsy” one:

(A quick rant here: I understand why photography isn’t allowed for some artists/exhibits – i.e. watercolors, older works, etc. where even the 10% of flashes that go off would definitely damage the work, but metal sculpture? Really? I love photographing works to inspire me later, so it was most annoying not to be able to take NON-FLASH pictures. GRRRRRR!!!)

Anyhoo, the Calder exhibit was wonderful. I wished it was twice as big, but wonderful nonetheless. It was fun to watch people watch his sculptures. Everyone just sort of slows down in the presence of a giant floating mobile. It’s awesome. Particularly enjoyable was a little baby who was mesmerized and stared at the sculptures, completely enraptured. They had a nice range of his work and displayed them really well – a number of pieces had strong front lighting that would cast shadows onto the floor and wall behind the piece, which really added to their impact. Two thumbs up, even with the large crowds.

Less wonderful and far more head-scratch inducing was the Michelangelo exhibit. According to the bus ads and billboards around town, it was supposed to be an exhibit highlighting 12 extant sketches that the artist had intended to destroy. Unfortunately, these particularly sketches really should have been destroyed or at the very least not had an exhibit built around them. They were basically drawings of a hand/a foot/a femur of a minor figure in the far upper left hand corner of a panel on the Sistene chapel. But the best part was to pad the exhibit, they had these completely random/vaguely Michelangelo-related objects. For example, an entire room of pictures and pieces of the house his great-grandnephew remodeled 100 years after the artists death. (???!!!)

My favorite was a model of the cart they used to move David into the Academia, complete with scale model of David in the cart (and next to a large poster of David, lest you not realize that’s just a model… ) The little plaque accompanying the cart was written in the craziest style I’ve ever seen. Allow me to paraphrase: “Here we see a scale model of the cart that was used to move the statue of David from the Pitti Palace to the Academia. How did they get the statue into the cart? (Using ropes and pulleys) Was it heavy? (Yes, it took a long time) What is the statue made of? (Marble quarried from NameOfPlace) Wasn’t that dangerous? (Yes, many people were killed or maimed.)” and so on… The whole thing reminded me of one of those weird museums they have in small towns where something of interest happened or someone famous lived once upon a time.

We also wandered around the contemporary pieces and saw an exhibit of Imogen Cunningham’s photography, which was cool — especially since she’s one of M’s favorite photographers. I was really sad I couldn’t take pictures of the contemporary work, since there were a few awesome pieces (awesome in their hilarious absurdity for the most part… ) So, I scoured the internet and found my two favorites. First up is an unfortunately tiny picture of Jeff Koons’ St. John the Baptist:

For those who aren’t up on their art history, this is a gaudy gold-plated ceramic statue based on Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting:

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

(No, I have no idea why the Koons’ statue is holding a pig and a penguin. I’m sure there’s a reason… ) My other favorite was surreptitiously photographed by someone on Flickr and is Maus and Mann by Katharina Fritsch:

(Yes, that’s a giant mouse/rat on top of a pillow and a mannequin… ) Behind this piece was this amazing robe made out of thousands of military dog tags, but I remember neither the artist nor the name, so you’ll have to visit the museum to check that out for yourself. Or maybe google “Giant robe made of dog tags.” That might be fun regardless…

Afterward, we headed for the exit. While we were waiting for the elevator, I snapped this cute picture of T:

And this little detail of the mural above the elevator (words to live by, no?):

Filled with cultury goodness, we headed over to J’s office to pick him up and then over to Brouwers for some beer and moule-frites. MMMMMMM! Good food, lots of laughing with friends. Not bad for a Thursday!

Happy Halloween!

We were pretty lazy with Halloween this year, but here are some odds and ends from our Halloween weekend. On Saturday, T came up with this amusing costume for work (yes, he had to work on Halloween.) I give you Coffee Man:

He also brought home some Halloween candy, which Wally thought was his:

Then today while walking to lunch, I passed this awesome house

with the following sign:

I particularly like the eyes:

 

Not so common sense, apparently

I came across this sign in the ladies room today at a local eating establishment. Now, we’re all familiar with the “Wash your hands” sign, but this one seems unnecessarily thorough – leaving me wondering who exactly needs to be told to wash their hands after they take out the garbage or after they use chemicals that “might affect the safety of food.” I also really like the title. Enjoy! (Sorry for the abundance of flash in the photo – my camera would not cooperate… )

Lemonade run

I’m not one of those “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade” people. (I know, hard to believe, right?) But every now and then, that phrase is somewhat appropriate for my life. Today I had a longer run on my schedule, so I arranged to run from my ‘hood to meet up with M and then run together so that I could have some company for the second half of my run. I timed it so that I would get there at a certain time if I started running at the start of the bridge. But when I arrived at the bridge, I first had to walk because there was an older couple on the narrow walkway and then just after I passed them and started running, the red light on the bridge turned on, indicating that it was about to go up.

So, since I happened to have my camera with me, I decided to make the best of it and take some pictures of the Ballard Bridge going up from a vantage point I very rarely have. So here are some pretty pictures of the Ballard bridge and it’s surroundings on a pretty fall day. Enjoy!

If you squint in the above shot, you’d be able to see this guy stand-up paddleboarding, but here’s a better shot:

I’m also a big fan of the old pick-up truck parked on the pier… I love Seattle and all of it’s little quirks. Soon the bridge came back down and I could run again. It was a pretty day and the run felt pretty good. I met up with M with no troubles and we had a good run up to the Sculpture Garden and back to her car. We’re not going to have too many more sunny days ahead, so I feel like I really maximized my enjoyment of this weekend’s pretty weather.

Couples day out

If you’re married then you know that there comes a time in every couple’s life when you have to take the boy shopping. M & I had both reached that point, so we decided to bite the bullet and take a trip to the outlet mall. (The same outlet mall long time readers might remember from last year’s shenanigans.) Initially, it was just going to be M, T and I because J hates shopping, but to everyone’s surprise he volunteered to come along. T was nice enough to make bagels for us for breakfast, as it’s very important to fuel up. We also made sure to hit the Starbucks as our first stop upon arrival so that no one would be under-caffeinated and cranky.

I didn’t take too many pictures in the flurry of shopping, but had to grab this one of the hilariously named Fudgery:

Sigh. If you could see the people at the outlet mall, you would know exactly how unnecessary this establishment truly is… Anyhoo, we did pretty well for T, scoring him some new pants and shirts to replace the unwearable things he has now. M didn’t do as well for J, but managed to pick up a few things for herself as did I. She also taught T the right way to say that things look like crap on the wife: “I just don’t care for it.” as opposed to “That makes you look really boyish and flat-chested.” Very valuable skillset.

After all of the shopping, we were hungry and faced with the excellent nutritional options of crappy food court or McDonalds. Sadly, McDonalds was the healthier option of the two. (I know, let that roll around your brain for a moment… ) While waiting for our food, I snapped this forlorn picture of M:

Followed by one when her food arrived:

I’d taken a wider shot than normal, with the intention of cropping it as you see above, but didn’t notice when I took it the hilarious expression on the woman behind M. So, mystery woman who is so irritated by my taking a picture in a McDonalds, smile – you are on my blog:

And just for the record, I think the “Ironic trucker hat” look is way out of fashion, just sayin’… We had a good laugh at the unfortunate line break in the Big Mac container “100% Beef mingles” which led to some very hilarious guesses as to what constitutes a “beef mingle” and that we were probably better off not knowing, etc. (Well done, McDonalds package designer, well done!) Afterward, we headed home, where M & I watched the live stream of the Hawaii Ironman on my laptop and J took a nap. Luckily, he had evil Georgie looking over his shoulder. (You are getting sleepy… )

T decided that the dogs deserved a little treat, so he broke out the Frosty Paws (a special brand of ice cream for dogs) He has to hold it for them so that they don’t swallow it whole, container and all:

They are pretty cute eating it, so it sort of assuages the yuppie guilt of buying ice cream for dogs:

We had a great evening filled with wine, yummy dinner, (roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans – cooked by yours truly) some Rock Band and lots and lots of laughing. It was a great day and more than made up for the stressful week that preceded it. Thanks, M & J – you guys rock!

Girls night!

It has been a hell-acious week at work and the boy is working a night shift, so what better time to grab your best girl friend and go see that movie your husband has absolutely no desire to see? In my case, that movie is The September Issue (and of course the girl friend is M!) I showed up at her place grumpy and bedraggled from putting out the day’s forty-seventh fire but was immediately cheered by her offer to open one of the bottles of “good wine.” (In our world, “good wine” is any bottle that didn’t cost ~5 dollars from Trader Joes.)

M was nice enough to let me bitch about my day and invited me into her office to see how cute Mushroom is in his new catbed:

And no, it is not an accident that the cat bed matches the rug, M is in the process of re-doing her office with the help of T. Pictures will be posted of the grand unveiling, (assuming I can score an invite – tee hee!)

We left for the theatre early so we could find a parking spot and be leisurely. Sure enough we scored an awesome spot in the residential area not too far from Ms. Cyclone’s former address. On the way to the theatre, we saw this interesting architecture/signage combo:

Yes, folks that IS a neon sign on that pretty old apartment building:

What are people thinking? Seriously… We were super early, so we killed some time hanging out in T’s favorite coffee shop — Uptown Espresso and then wandered over to the movie theatre:

The movie was very good and both M & I enjoyed it. If you have any interest in the fashion industry at all, definitely go see it/rent it. A very nice start to the weekend, that even the fact that I had another work emergency waiting for me when I got home couldn’t ruin…

Off season

When I first started all of this triathlon training madness, I didn’t understand those athletes who didn’t want to stop training/take some time off. I loved the off-season and embraced it whole-heartedly. Lay on the couch instead of training in cold/wet weather? You betcha! I’m your girl. Eventually, I learned to not stop training altogether in the off season, as starting from scratch in the spring was a real pain in the ass (and the legs and the arms… ) so I would just scale it way back, but I still had no problem with that. This year, I finally understand my Type-A brethren, as I’m now totally paranoid about losing all of the hard-won fitness I’ve gained this year and feeling lost without having training that I should be doing.

So now I’m trying to come up with an off-season plan. Something that’s unstructured enough to avoid burning out (a very big possibility for me) but still can yield some results. I really need to improve my run, so that’s first on the list. I’m thinking that I’ll casually train for the Seattle half marathon at the end of November and then do a February Marathon with M (and possibly T, if he can stay uninjured.) I’m very much looking forward to marathon training with M & T – it will be a nice change of pace from all of the solo long run training I did for Ironman. Plus, it will help me build a humongous run base, which will help me greatly when I do start up tri-training later in the spring.

Thrown into the mix will be some swimming, some Pilates/Yoga classes and going back to weights/the gym, once the weather starts getting crappy again, (pretty much any day now… ) The biggest challenge of course will be to stop eating like I’m training for Ironman, which is going to be tough. So, you can look forward to lots of blogging about running with some dog stories thrown in here and there to spice things up. Viva la off-season!

Sunday in the ‘hood with T

There’s nothing quite like having an unexpected free morning. Especially on a beautiful sunny day. After a leisurely morning eating the breakfast I would have been eating while camping — bacon, pancakes and eggs. (Oh yeah!) After some quality gorging, followed by some quality laying on the couch, I decided we should go for a little walk down to the Farmer’s Market followed by a little more walking around the neighborhood.

The Farmer’s Market was a zoo (not surprising, given the weather) so we kept walking until we came to the Ballard Locks (officially called Hiram M. Chittenden Locks) I’ve managed to live in Seattle for a cumulative four years without ever seeing them, so today seemed like a good day to check them out. Tucked in the middle of a pretty botanical garden, the locks are pretty cool. There are two sections that boats go through on their way to/from the Puget Sound to Salmon Bay. Tons of tourist gather to watch the process:

Here the doors are opening to let some boats out:

Poor kayakers waiting for their turn:

Looking down the canal toward Puget Sound. You can’t quite tell from this photo, but there were tons of boats lined up, waiting their turn to go through the locks:

On both sides there are these terraced lawns where you can sit and watch the boats go by. (Or roll down them if you’re young and/or so inclined… )

T and I sat in the sunshine for a while, watching the boats go by:

After sitting around for a while, we wandered back. There were tons of salmon jumping in one of the channels, which was pretty amazing to see. It seems so counter-productive, but very entertaining to watch big silver fish fly through the air. Then we hit the farmer’s market again to get some crepes. (Oh yes, the post-race debauchery just goes on and on… ) All in all, a most enjoyable Sunday.

Black Diamond Race Report

After a not so restful night, courtesy of the a$$holes in the campsite across from us, one of whom insisted on screaming at the top of her lungs because “it’s a state park and people expect it to be loud, so f— them.” I mercifully managed to fall asleep eventually, but it was still very annoying. It was a chilly morning and all of us were a bit grumpy after the evening. On top of that, I was in a very strange head space for the race. After IMC, I didn’t do any real organized training. I got out and did a few swims, bikes and runs as I felt like it, but by and large it was unstructured “do what I felt like” type stuff. So, it just felt like I was getting ready to do a half-ironman on no training, even though intellectually I knew better.

So, despite wanting to bag the race, go back to bed and lounge around the campsite eating pancakes and bacon, we set off for the race. There was no parking at the park where the race was being held, so they had to drop me off and take a shuttle from some off-site parking. I hit the porta-potties since the line was never going to be that short again and then went to set up my transition area.

This race had a crazy number of first-timers. And I don’t mean first time half-ironman racers, I mean first triathlon people. The things I heard people say both yesterday and today was crazy. It was definitely going to be an interesting day. One of them was the guy who racked his bike next to mine, with all of his stuff in a plastic milk crate which he proceeded to put behind my bike tire, up against the fence. Ordinarily, this is a no-no and when he asked me if it was okay, I told him that it was fine today but that he shouldn’t do it in the future.

Soon, it was time to line up for the swim. I ran into my friend AndyPants in the transition area, who shared my sentiments on the folly of doing this race. We agreed that it was just for fun and that it was a good thing we weren’t eating pancakes and bacon (however sarcastically) and so forth. On a chilly morning, getting into a lake just seems stupid:

As mentioned previously, with all of the newbies doing this race, there were some amusing sights – such as this woman with Ugg boots:

I finally managed to get in the lake, filled my wetsuit with cold water and did a quick warm-up swim before returning to the beach to wait for the start. Don’t I look psyched?

The nicest thing about the swim was that there were two waves – men in wave #1 and women in wave #2, five minutes later:

The sucky thing about the swim was that it was two loops, which is not fun. The start was a total cluster, craziness everywhere:

I had the fight my way through every kind of stroke imaginable and few that weren’t and I didn’t really find clear water until the first buoy. Eventually, I found some clear water which continued for the last half of the first lap and most of the second. There was the occasional crazy swimmer to deal with, but that wasn’t such a big deal. I knew it wasn’t going to be as fast as I’d wanted because of all the time I lost at the beginning, but it wasn’t too bad.

After the world’s slowest transition, (complete with M & T heckling me) I was out on the bike:

The first few miles of the bike are never fun and this was no exception. It took about eight miles before I could get my head in the game and out of the “This sucks, I want to quit” mode. Finally, I started feeling better and really started enjoying the bike. I was passing people and generally just feeling great. The bike was also a looped course, but it was such an odd course that I didn’t get lapped by the fast people like Lake Stevens and you never really knew where you were in the loop, so it was easy to put your head down and ride.

I came in off the bike feeling great and my second transition was a bit better, still way too long, though. Then it was time for the run. This was definitely where I could feel my lack of training. I definitely pushed too hard on the bike, but the lack of long runs was killing me. The minute I started running, my legs felt awful and I knew it was not going to be a good run leg. I tried to run as much as I could and had some good sections where I could just find a zone and run but there were also a lot of sections where I had to walk. Luckily, I’d already planned to train for a winter marathon with M, so I knew next year’s run improvement plan was already underway.

In addition to the suckiness of my run, the run course was not my favorite. There were sporadic mile markers, aid stations placed at random intervals and all sorts of irritating hills. The worst part was the last mile or so, where you run around the lake on a dirt trail that includes a steep downhill followed by a steep uphill, which really suck after all of the miles that you’ve put in. I was running most of the time by this point, but I was afraid I’d fall if I tried to run those sections. Suffice it to say, I was not a fan. (Sorry about the lack of pictures, my race photographer had to take her sick husband home. But just imagine a tired and grumpy M running across the finish line… )

Before the race, I’d set a goal of 7 hours, which passed while I was somewhere in the last mile section around the lake. I was bummed that I’d missed it but pleased that I would be reasonably close and still faster than last year’s Lake Stevens. I crossed the line in 7:10 – a huge PR for me. Before writing this, I looked up last year’s times at Lake Stevens:

Overall: 7:49
Swim: 49:51
1st Transition: 4:44
Bike: 3:54
2nd Transition: 5:14
Run: 2:54

Compare with the splits from this race:

Overall: 7:10 (39 minutes faster)
Swim: 45:22 (4:30 faster)
1st Transition: 5:25 (a minute or so slower)
Bike: 3:25 (29 minutes faster)
2nd Transition: 4:08 (a minute or so faster)
Run: 2:49 (6 minutes faster)

Overall, I’m very pleased with my performance. Given how I prepared for this race, I know I can improve on it for next year and I know exactly how I’m going to do it. All in all, it was a very good racing season for me.

A taste of camping

I wanted to do one last race with all of the Ironman training, so I signed up for the Black Diamond half-ironman near Enumclaw. Even though, it’s only about an hours drive from Seattle we decided to camp near the race site, since we haven’t had a chance to camp at all this year. We got to the park early, since we couldn’t make a reservation — this was nice because we got our choice of campsites and picked our favorite one:

The boys as usual didn’t get to help with the setting up of tents or food unpacking and they were unamused:

After setting up camp, I needed to check in for my race and drop off my bike to make life easier tomorrow morning. After all of the pomp and circumstance of Ironman Canada, it was nice to have a small, straightforward registration process. M made a new friend:

We checked out the lake that I’d be swimming in tomorrow:

Dropped off my bike in transition:

And then I took an opportunity to take a racers-eye view of the finishing chute:

Now just imagine it filled with screaming fans and what-not.

The weird thing about camping so close to a town, is that we could go to Safeway and Rite-aid to pick up some stuff before returning to camp. So, after setting up camp we went and ran a bunch of errands. Gotta love getting away from it all! After our errand-running, M made us a kick-ass campfire and we lounged around it for a while. Then we made some yummy packets of fish (T, J & I) and chicken (M) with some corn and veggies. T had made an awesome loaf of fresh bread to complete the meal, so it was a great dinner. Some s’mores for dessert and campfire time and it was perfect. Then it was early to bed for the race tomorrow.