The evolution of a health nut

Like my book blog entry, my food blog entry may need to be split into two (or three, or four, or five...) to keep it manageable.


Spaghetti with tomato/cashew sauce and fresh basil
Let's start with a little background, some of which you might be familiar with already: I did not grow up cooking. My dad didn't really cook. My mom did, and while she did involve me in some of the process when I was younger - helping her snap green beans in half to cook, or arranging potatoes in the bottom of a pan of water to boil - I have little memories of such involvement in cooking after such a point. As I grew up and got both pickier and nastier in my adolescence, I imagine some of the joy of cooking was lost in my mother. Our kitchen, to be honest, never really inspired happiness or excitement surrounding the preparation of food. I don't blame anyone; I wouldn't have enjoyed cooking for the 14-year-old me either. My preferred daily lunch at school that year was a slice of pepperoni pizza, a can of Welch's grape soda, and a greasy chocolate chip cookie the size of my face. I didn't appreciate my mom's lentil soup back then.

Joining Harkness co-op in college was my first real experience with cooking sans recipes, utilizing bulk foods and fresh produce and spices to prepare meals for others. I only stayed in the co-op for a semester, but it was enough to dissolve at least some of the fears I had surrounding the kitchen.


Massaged salad with Swiss chard, beets, sunflower seeds, and homemade dressing with fresh ginger
Nevertheless, the reality of my lack of even the most basic fundamentals of cooking was stark - and remained to be so up until about the last year. (Some of y'all remember the EasyMac incident(s). Oi vey.) Through a long series of experiments, recipe trials, triumphs and travesties, I finally am beginning to feel as though I've transcended omelettes and stir-fries, and can now claim some competence in the kitchen - and perhaps even a little bit of pride.

Kitchen appliances have, no doubt, played a big role in this newfound confidence. My Vitamix continues to be a dream - a gentle humming machine of beauty that seems capable of doing no wrong. I have made everything in it from blended kale smoothies to vegan tomato cashew pasta sauce to fresh hummus to butternut squash soup - and seemingly, no matter what ingredients I drop in, something magical comes out. There's no undercooking, no overcooking, no scorching, no drying out, no failure to rise, or any of the other host of maladies that can foil even the most valiant baking or cooking efforts. If your ingredient ratios are a little off, you just add a little more in and blend again. Magic.

But I've been cheating on my blender a little, I must admit. See, I also hauled an old food processor out to Seattle from my childhood home in Kansas. At the time, I couldn't imagine what I'd ever use such a thing for, but I thought, what the heck, why not, and threw it into the moving truck along with a handful of other found objects salvaged from the house in Kansas. Only last month did I finally locate all the component parts of the food processor, reassemble it, and delight in the fact that it's still operational. *Drool.* What a dreamy appliance it is when it goes to work.

My favorite processor creations so far have been (1) homemade pesto, and (2) raw energy bars. Which to begin with? The pesto was unbelievably easy: fresh basil, toasted almonds (pine nuts, I learned, do NOT toast well in the oven), garlic, and olive oil. Pulse. Heaven!


Rotini pasta with pesto


Brown rice pasta with pesto, baked tilapia and mixed veggies
For the raw energy bars...I have to remember where I even got this recipe. If anyone wants the specifics, I'll happily share, because these were hands down the most delicious energy bars, store-bought or homemade included, I've ever tasted. I take no credit for these, as it was pure recipe-heeding that introduced these to my tastebuds, but wow...Food Processor, let me count the ways I adore thee.


Adding honey to the nuts and dried fruits.


Added cranberries, shredded coconut, raisins, and Green Magma (powdered barley greens)


Tell me that doesn't look amazing
My small army of kitchen appliances has boosted my confidence enough that I've branched out in many ways in my life so far in Seattle that never even seemed within the realm of possibility before. I've made my own granola, baked bread, created my own salad dressings, learned how to cook steel cut oats, rolled my own quiche crust from teff flour, made soup from scratch, cooked steaks with a homemade marinade, tried tons of different dark leafy greens in dozens of homespun salad combinations, learned how to make perogies from scratch (a shared learning experience with Alan around Christmas last year), baked fish, made my own guacamole, baked homemade pita chips, and tried more new foods and ingredients than I previously knew existed. What a wonderful world food is!


Grass-fed steak with wild rice and green beans


Homemade toasted pita chips and curried lentil dip


Our perogies masterpiece

I've read a lot of books lately about diet, mostly in relation to holistic health, disease prevention, athletic endurance, and general longevity. Several of them include: Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food", Victoria Boutenko's "Green for Life" and "Raw Family: A True Story of Awakening", Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle", Loren Cordain's "The Paleo Diet", and Erik Marcus' "Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating". All have been great, enlightening reads, and if you'll pardon the embarrassing pun, good food for thought. While there are a lot of different ideas out there - some of which are downright radical by our society's standards - the truth is that there are general overlaps amongst all of them. While the jury might still out on whether eating cows is a good idea, or if a food's glycemic index matters, or whether microwaving food introduces carcinogens, or if a cup of coffee a day is good or bad or you, etc etc...
Pretty much everyone across the board agrees:

1. Processed food bad.
2. Refined sugar bad.
3. Too much food bad.
4. Nuts and seeds good.
5. Fruits, vegetables, dark leafy greens really good.

That's not so hard, is it? Am I absolutely 100% avoiding any foods right now? Nope. I am generally trying to consume minimal: caffeine, processed foods, refined sugar, refined grains, gluten, cheese and alcohol, while trying to emphasize: greens, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, lean protein, seafood, herbal teas, and nutritional superfoods in general. I'm going on several months now without coffee, even more months with a daily fresh green juice or smoothie, and a year and a half now without missing a single day of work due to being sick. *Knock on wood.* I like this being-healthy business. Food is medicine.

Anyone want to have a dinner party soon?

So what does one eat on long run days, anyway?

My running route this morning: 19 miles roundtrip.
The book I mentioned in my last entry, Racing Weight, has a fun little section that interviews a bunch of elite endurance athletes about their typical daily diet. It's inspiring - to be reminded that food is indeed fuel (as well as medicine), and the better I eat, the better I run. Without intentionally doing so, I managed to get in 9 out of 10 superfoods today! Yum.

Here's the breakdown of my food today:

Breakfast:
Smoothie with lots of fruit, dark leafy greens, almonds, and chia seeds

During run:
1 pack of Clif Shot Bloks, handful of raisins (usually I eat more on my runs, but I had limited supplies since I didn't intend to go so long...)

Post run:
Bowl of lowfat vanilla yogurt with cranberries and walnuts
Electrolyte replenishment (Nuun)

Lunch:
Almond butter, coconut, and honey sandwich on sprouted seed bread
A bunch of carrots
A few squares dark chocolate
Glass of milk

Afternoon snack:
Raspberry oat bar

Dinner:
Big bowl of quinoa with stir-fried broccoli, red peppers, cauliflower, onion, chickpeas, a fried egg on top
Baked sweet potato
Apple

Dessert:
Trader Joe's gluten-free ginger snap cookies

Book Blog: My Reading List, Pt I

First of all, thank you again Nicholas Carr, for your wonderful wake up call with The Shallows, which reminded me that reading books is, and always will be, a valuable use of my time.

I went through a long, not-reading-so-much lull. It started in college, when of course, I was reading plenty of books and other materials for my classes - and it was wonderful reading indeed: international novels, political treatises, historically resonant works, compelling nonfiction, poetry, translations, essays about translations, translations of essays about translations...the world of academia was indeed a rich one.

At the same time, it left me little time to peruse books on my own. I'm pleased to say that even though I objectively still don't have the time for huge swaths of leisure reading, I'm carving out the moments for it nonetheless, and it's heavenly. Last night, I went out for drinks with a couple women in my javascript class to celebrate the end of our quarter (or, in my case, mourn...I will miss that javascript class dearly). One of the women mentioned that she has a weakness for high heels, and treats herself with a new pair every month - many of which she admitted just sit in her closet untouched, but the process of buying them is so exciting and rewarding that she can't help herself. I guess I'm like that with books; I buy books and check them out from the library at a rate that far exceeds my ability to read them - and yet I indulge in the pleasure of acquiring them, and am comforted by their presence in my home.

So what exactly have I been reading lately?

ChiRunning, by Danny Dreyer

I've recommended this one to tons of customers at REI looking for a more technical manual on how to adapt their form to more of a midfoot strike (vs. the traditional heavy heel strike), which often helps runners cut down on their injuries...and yet I've never read it myself until now! Man, what a tremendously insightful and valuable read this one's turning out to be. It draws on principles from Tai Chi, and encourages runners to derive their power from their core, rather than their legs. Just keeping some simple principles described in the first few chapters of this book in mind while running has already allowed me to have some tremendously enjoyable and surprisingly effortless-feeling runs lately, including a 17-miler one way run to Kenmore, a 20-miler out-and-back along Lake Washington last weekend, and a few powerful sprint workouts as well. So far, so good...none of those pesky old shin splints flaring up this time around! I'm excited about the possibilities here, and would absolutely recommend this to all runners.

The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell

Rachel's mom loaned this one to me when I was 17, and I just couldn't get myself to read it...sci fi? I thought skeptically. So the loaned copy sat on my bookshelf until I graduated and gave it back untouched. Then a couple months ago, I saw the same book on my friend Lauren's bookshelf, recognized it, inquired about it. Once again, the book was pressed into my hands, and it was demanded I read it. What a gem of a novel! In and out of chronological order, it tells the story of a Jesuit mission from Earth to explore an inhabited planet 17 light years away. The characters are spectacularly developed, and the story wonderfully told. Don't wait as long as I did to read it.

Racing Weight, by Matt Fitzgerald

This one's a bit of a guilty admittance, since it is essentially a weight loss book, and weight loss has such a strange stigma in our society. Every doctor I've ever had until now has either (1) told me I'm borderline overweight (because of that silly BMI nonsense, like that number matters more than the fact that I maintain a ridiculously healthy diet and lead a very active lifestyle), or (2) worried that I'm anorexic (because of my obsession with running...surely that level of enthusiasm for exercise must indicate mental illness, right?!) My doctor in Seattle is a triathlete, and for the first time ever, I have a doctor who isn't trying to diagnose imaginary problems with my body. She gets it! (It's kind of a coincidence, but not really, that of the hundreds if not thousands of doctors in this city, my trail running friend Elodie settled on the exact same one as me - both of us entirely independently of one another.) Anyway. With all that said, I do worry about my knees with all the running I do, and I also admit I have a secret pipe dream of being a semi-professional sponsored ultrarunner someday- and dropping a few pounds could certainly help on both those fronts. I am way, way over worrying about what I look like in a bikini or fitting into a certain size of pants...but I AM interested in being the best, most-injury-free runner I can be. This book is for me! Guidelines for weight loss and maintenance for endurance athletes just looking to perform at their best. Vashon 50K, here I come again.

Why We Run: A Natural History, by Bernd Heinrich

This is an interesting one. It used to be called "Racing the Antelope", which always caught my eye in the bookstore, because Seyeon and I have always nicknamed ourselves the Cheetah and the Antelope, respectively, when it comes to our running styles. Seyeon has these crazy muscles when she runs, and she can get into this powerful jet-sprinting mode that's almost scary intense (in an awesome way!) to watch. I tend to prance more, I suppose :P, when I run, light and happy and free like an antelope. Anyway, apparently the author got sued by some Phish fan turned author for supposedly ripping off the Antelope title, so he changed his book's title to "Why We Run." Bernd is both a biologist and an ultrarunner, so he tackles the subject of endurance from a biology standpoint, discussing all the unique qualities of various animals that allow them to be endurance athletes in their own ways - everything from camels to hummingbirds to frogs. It's kind of a meandering narrative, interspersed, too, with the author's own running anecdotes - but overall an enjoyable and educational read, if not a sometimes seemingly aimless one. Not done with it yet, so not sure yet whether I recommend it for sure - but certainly a fun, quirky read.

Poke the Box, by Seth Godin

This is a short read - for me, an impulsive Kindle buy that lasted about the duration of my light rail ride to the airport when I went to Salt Lake City a couple weeks ago - but a great one! I've become a big fan of Seth Godin's blog for daily common sense and business musings about the new information age economy. This book is just the latest in his prodigious list of published writings, but it's a good one - short, to the point, and totally motivating. How do programmers create things, Godin asks? They just write the code and see what happens, and keep tweaking it until it finally works; they poke the box. The world needs more people who start things, not just people who follow directions. We need innovators. We need people who aren't afraid to fail at things. And boy does Seth make me want to be one of them. Highly recommended, too. I shelled out the bucks to buy a print copy of it, too, to give as a gift, because if I've got one big complaint about the Kindle, it's that I can't turn around and immediately share with others what I've just read. Loaning my books to friends is on par pleasure-wise with procuring new ones for myself.

Well, I'm only 50% of the way through the list of books I wanted to write about, and it's definitely sleepytime now. Stay tuned for the other five soon. (And don't worry, they're not all running books...)

Getting my priorities straight

Things I love: kitchens and bookcases.

Do I spend (much) money on clothes or cars or jewelry or beauty products or movies or music or TV or a fancy phone? Nope. But after a year of tracking my finances on Mint, I've noticed that the budget I'm willing to justify for books and kitchen supplies (appliances, groceries, and dishes all included) seems to be relatively sprawling.

I've also noticed that kitchens and bookcases are inevitably the places I gravitate toward when I'm in other people's homes - the nooks I find myself nosing around in to learn about other people. And when I notice the same book on the bookshelves of several different people I admire and respect, it's not long before I'm tracking it down at the library/Elliott Bay Books/Half Price/Amazon (my book distributors of choice, in no particular order; I think I do equal parts business at all four.)

So I've been reading David Allen's Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (thanks, Tom and Brant.)


Me and Tom atop Mt. Si two weeks ago, having left Seattle at 5 a.m. with headlamps and snacks in tow to make it to the summit for sunrise!
Overall, the book is more corporate-jobby than is 100% relevant in my life right now - organizing my home office, ha! - but I've picked up a couple priceless concepts from it so far:

1. Stress comes from having "open loops" in your head. Getting them down on paper - every last one of them - clears up space in your head to relax and focus better, because you're not trying to juggle a hundred to-do's in the back of your mind at all times. I'm harnessing the power of the yellow notepad.

2. If anything on your to-do list will take less than two minutes to do, do it immediately. Amazing what a difference this simple change has already made for me!

I made a list of all the ongoing projects in my life - everything from specific work-related projects (the ONW website redesign, helping coordinate REI's annual running shoe expo) to school-related projects (designing a website for my comedian friend Quinn Patterson, applying for scholarships for next year) to ongoing self-education crusades (learning banjo, learning Dutch, learning PHP, learning about investments, learning about holistic wellness and alternative medicine, learning about social media and guerilla marketing) to strengthening personal relationships to training for ultramarathons to my ongoing book reading list to apartment maintenance to developing a freelance portfolio.


My Vision Board from a couple weeks ago.
It felt amazingly good to write it all down on paper. The process also reminded me of the five thousand or so blog entries that I haven't managed to write here yet but really want to! I know I tend to write disproportionately about running, the great outdoors in Washington state, and general life musings - and that makes sense, since those are largely the things that sustain my soul - but there are other unwritten entries itching to get out, too. In the works are: a serious food/cooking blog entry, a what I've been reading blog entry, a reflections on the Kindle blog entry, a music I've been listening to blog entry, a snowboarding in Salt Lake City blog entry, a 2011 bucket list entry, a gratitude blog entry, a tribute to good people in my life blog entry, an ode to my food processor blog entry, a tribute to my cat blog entry, a video blog featuring me on a snowboard and me playing banjo (not at the same time), and a likely-to-be-long-and-rambly blog entry reflecting on Sid, the lawyer I worked for one summer five years ago - a work experience that had a pretty profound effect in shaping the Me of today.


Beautiful footprints leading into the unknown.
Good God, it's a fascinating world we live in. Stay tuned.

Postscript: The following quote is painted in the employee stairwell at REI.

"Oh, let us always have a mountain within our soul with a peak so high that we never quite reach the top…for then we always strive for greater things and will not be content with merely climbing hills." - Ardath Rodale

She was and continues to be an inspiration to me. Indeed, let there always be a mountain within my soul!

Logic, linguistics, and long distance running: A professional vision

Warning: Really meandering blog entry. Proceed with caution.

One month ago, I wrote about the concept of urgency, on feeling a deep sense of it in my own life and everything I want to accomplish.

Sometimes my enthusiasm and big thoughts tip that scale from a healthy, productive sense of urgency into full blown panic. That's kind of where I've been today...or maybe this week altogether. I've run-commuted (vs. walk-commuted) nearly everywhere because I've just felt excited about going places, about this idea of movement, of a life lived in motion.

Motion is powerful.

As some of you know (but probably most of you don't), I am part of a networking group in Seattle of professional women working in the outdoors industry. It is precisely my kind of networking group - i.e. the kind that I can show up to in jeans and running shoes, and where conversations center on the relationship between business and our natural environment, rather than the soulless crushing of one by the other. Tonight, we had an event that focused on creating Vision Boards, a fancy term for homemade inspiration collages. Yup, scissors and gluesticks and magazine cutouts were all included this evening (with blueberries and candied pecans and fancy cheeses to boot!)...definitely my kind of networking group.

I have probably made at least a dozen of these so-called Vision Boards in my life thus far. I made them in high school. I made mini-ones for my high school graduation announcements to get myself psyched up for college. Seyeon and I made one together for our door when we first roomed together at Oberlin.

It was really interesting making one again (photo forthcoming in a future entry, when I can get my camera and the giant poster board collage in the same place at once...), this time with a "professional" vision for myself, rather than just a personal one. Are they really so different, after all? Do they have to be?


Me atop Mt. Si yesterday, again, just a couple hours before class. It was snowy and wonderful!
The Vision Board I made tonight, predictably, had a lot of mountain and running imagery. The dominant word that others used to describe when looking at my finished collage was "calm". In contrast, the woman sitting next to me had phrases on hers about multitasking and squeezing into skinny jeans; I judge not, for I very nearly glued the phrase "tea-sipping hippie" on my own poster, so certainly, to each her own! We are all individuals, and appreciating the strength in our differences is what keeps this world turning.

So, while my current jobs do not pay me to run in the mountains (yet :P ), they do so indirectly; I get to talk to customers at REI about that passion when they're shopping for footwear to help them get out in the mountains more, and I get to turn around and write about it all, as well as my enduring love for the Pacific Northwest, for Outdoors NW. That's why, I suppose, when enrolling in school forced me to drop one of my three jobs, SAT tutoring (despite being the best-paying of all!) had to be the one to go. I've just met too many burnt-out, regret-ridden middle-aged folks to consider selling myself short in this life when it comes to choosing my career path.


Orcas Island: Foggy and beautiful as ever!
The trail work party and 25K run on Orcas Island earlier this month revved up my soul again in much-needed ways. Perhaps I'm adjusting to the Northwesterner-hibernation cycle, and thus am feeling especially motivated to get moving again after a long dreary winter (and yes, the cherry blossom trees are already blooming here!)...but truly, there are no more inspiring people to be around than trail runners. They're down-to-Earth, fun-loving people who appreciate the value of hard work, of giving their all for the sake of a greater goal...people with a hint of masochism in their determination to pull off what once seemed impossible, people who like to spend hours on end in the mountains, people who have come from all over the globe to be in the Pacific Northwest because a great trail run is never more than a few miles' dash from your doorstep. Friends I made at last year's race have run 100-milers in the meantime - while holding down full time jobs! There are no excuses in this life to not start getting to work on your dreams tomorrow - and not the Ephemeral Tomorrow, but the real life, starting-in-a-few-more-hours Tomorrow.

Anyway. Ultimately, no, my "professional" vision is not that different from my personal one. I keep going back to the Howard Thurman quote I included on my blog a few months ago: "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive."

You know what's crazy? Of all the classes I've been taking for my web design program, my absolute favorite, hands down, has been my Javascript programming class. I love it. Like really, really, really LOVE it. Way, way more than my artsy design-based courses, and - well, that was unexpected. Seriously, you couldn't pay me enough right now to work on my upcoming "visual design studies" assignment - essentially, a layout design in Photoshop or Illustrator with color, images, typography, etc. Stuff I thought I'd really enjoy, but instead, have felt myself surprisingly bored and restless with. But you know what I just might do when I'm done writing this blog entry? Put on a pot of tea, turn up some Alexi Murdoch, and get cracking on my programming homework from class just a few hours ago. Why? Because I'm still riding out the feverish high I get twice a week from the learning and discovery that happens in that classroom. I love it.

Last month, I officially completed (and was paid for, woohoo!) my first web development project - a small contract project for someone I met in school, to code a website for a small business analytics company, for whom visual design prototypes had already been created. Essentially, I was given a PDF file with 10 pages or so to turn into a working website. I had a blast with the nitty-gritty of troubleshooting code, and not having to worry about visual design at all.

Hence the panic. Here I have invested five months already in school, on track in a program I'm no longer confident is the perfect one for me. Earlier today, I was drooling over curriculum descriptions in both the Web Development (more back-end programming for the web) and the Computer Programming certificate programs. Five months, of course, is only a drop in the hat of a lifetime - and 23 is still plenty young enough to be "figuring out what I want to do with my life." I know, I know; people are still doing this at 30, 40, 65...and I probably still will be then, too!

The loyal Lion that I am (and remain to be, thank you very much!), I still plan to finish the web design program - but it doesn't mean I'm not sneaking chapters at night in the PHP book I bought on the side for my own personal interest, or considering extending my current educational plan to encompass more programming. I feel as though I've been blind to the fact that in addition to my obvious love for words, I also have a powerful affinity for math and logic. The fact that when I was still tutoring for Kaplan, I enjoyed teaching the math sections more than the verbal should have been a tip-off, I suppose.


Mmm, warm fuzzies...
Our society draws this huge line between math and creative writing, like they're polar opposites, but...they're not. They're both left-brained pursuits. They're both problem-solving, in their own ways; either I'm staring at my mess of code on Aptana, trying to find the solution to make my webpage act the way I want it to, or I'm staring at my mess of words on WriteRoom, trying to find the solution to make an article or blog entry convey the meaning and emotions the way I want them to. Either way, I'm working on a jigsaw puzzle of words and characters, trying to arrange them in some meaningful way. Both are languages, to which you can devote a lifetime trying to harness and master the power of; both involve the translation of an idea or image in my head into something tangible to present to the world.

I can even still retain my Grammar Nazi ways in the world of code...in fact, the importance of differentiating between semicolons and commas, between capital letters and lowercase ones, is 10X more important in code than it is in creative writing! At least in English, people still understand the gist of what you were trying to communicate; computers do not. Browsers crash completely on you, sometimes, if you forget a semicolon. It's beautiful.

Of course, I have other passions, too, that must be fed, must someday be combined in an ultimately fulfilling mix of work and hobby:
(...and on that note, why that phrase "work/life balance"? Must those two be at odds with one another? I should hope not...)
- Creative nonfiction
- New media journalism
- Photography
- Meeting new people
- Trail running
- Snowboarding
- Endurance sports
- Clean eating
- Holistic health
- Yoga
- Universalizing financial education
- Leadership
- Coaching and empowerment
- Entrepreneurship
- Web app development
- Business psychology
- World travel
- Macroeconomics
- Small scale agriculture
- Helping others
- Changing the world

Haven't quite stumbled on all those lumped together in one job description yet, but I'll keep my eye out... ;) *

*Obligatory footnote to my bosses: Jamie, Carolyn, Greg...the wink is for y'all. Don't worry; if it wasn't already clear from the rest of this entry, I am content with my current work situation!

Who needs a car to get around anyway?

A life in the day (a.k.a. evidence of the Crazy.)

6:00 a.m. Alarm clock
6:15 a.m. Cook/enjoy breakfast (blueberry/banana oatmeal on the stove, yummy)
7:00 -7:20 a.m. Run 1.5 miles to work
7:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Princess shift at work
12:30 - 12:45 p.m. Speed shopping, REI clearance
12:45 - 1:15 p.m. Walk 2 miles to meet Seyeon for soulful lunch
1:15-3:00 p.m. Amazing catch up lunch!
3:00 p.m. Run 1 mile home
3:15-4:00 p.m. Do homework for evening class
4:00-5:20 p.m. Sweet urban sunset 6ish mile run with Jenica and Lauren
5:20 -7:00 p.m. Cook/enjoy dinner with Lauren
7:10 - 7:30 p.m. Walk 1 mile to class, talk to Alan
7:30-9:00 p.m. Programming class
9:00 p.m. Run 2 miles into downtown
9:30 - midnight - Sweet Luc & the Lovingtons concert at the Crocodile with Zoe
midnight - 12:20 p.m. Dishes, apartment pick up
12:40 a.m. Drinking hot roiboos tea with milk and honey, listening to beautiful folk, blogging, feeling quite content

Total human-powered miles: 13.5

Yesterday, I did all my errands on my bike - library, post office, and grocery shopping. Loaded up the paniers with tons of fruits and vegetables and grains, and soaked up every drop of sunshine that Seattle had to offer yesterday...delightful. One of the things I loved about Amsterdam was how easy it was to navigate by bike or foot...and it's one of the big draws Seattle had for me as well. Having my car here makes me lazier (and poorer...gas here is at $3.37/gallon, oof), sometimes, than I'd like. (Thanks, Seyeon, for being a huge inspiration of late in the ways of human-powered urban transportation!) Getting around Seattle on foot or bike is one of my February projects...expect forthcoming blog entries on such.

That, and a report on my past two glorious weekends up on Orcas Island! But for now...

G'night, good world.

Midday mountain fix

My day yesterday:

6 hour work shift
2 hours running up and down a mountain
4 hours of school
Late night grocery shopping
Zzz...

Heaven. It was a tightly scheduled day, and I was ten minutes late to class. Ten minutes is, without coincidence, also how long I saw at the top of Mount Si, basking in the sun and solitude and fresh air, looking out over epic views of Rainier and the valley 4,000 feet below me.


Even for my punctuality-driven self, this moment was worth my tardiness to school.
Still can't get over it...sitting on a mountain peak at 3:30 p.m., sitting in a classroom back in Seattle an hour and a half later. I love this state.

And I'd forgotten how much I love running up and down mountains. I'll find the time to write more about my past weekend at Orcas Island, which prompted me to recall the extent of that love, but the time is not tonight...must sleep.