Shake it up

This week in St. Paul has been my kind of August.  The high temperatures have been in the upper 70s, the humidity and dew points have retreated sheepishly, and the breeze has been wonderful and laced with almost-fall.  I had to snap a photo as I was walking around St. Paul yesterday because at this time of year, the sky really is that blue and the clouds really are so puffy that they look cartoonish.  The only sky that comes close to Minnesota's in August is Colorado, where the color is always a rich, rich blue every time I visit--and the sky seems bigger on the plains there, too.

Anyone who knows me knows I'm no night owl.  In fact, I'm just lousy at staying up late.  I'm also lousy at sleeping late in the morning but need copious blocks of sleep, so that drives my bedtime earlier.  Before I go on and make myself sound like even more of a wet blanket, I'll get to the point.  If I can fight my internal clock tonight, I'm going to stay up late and watch the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks today and is one of the best meteor showers all year.  Astronomy is another long-time hidden love of mine, and I have a strange hodge-podge of constellation and planetary fun facts stored up thanks to Dayton Elementary's library.  I've only actually seen the meteor shower once, when we were on a family vacation way up north a long time ago, and it was amazing.  Tonight, I would like to drive out to the country far suburbs and check it out.

Yesterday, dangerously toeing the boundary of my non-night-owlness, I ventured out of my comfort zone and went to a play on a weeknight.  The Minnesota Fringe Festival runs just through this weekend, so I was running out of time to see my friend Isabel's play, Red Resurrected.  I grabbed a ticket to the 8:30 p.m. show and headed over to The Lab Theater in Minneapolis's Warehouse District.  I got there early, in time to wander around a neighborhood that I rarely explore and then in time to get way, way at the back of the line of theatergoers after my walk.

Here are the views from my walk--the Minneapolis skyline and the Mississippi River:

The Fringe Festival is something I've had on my should-attend list for at least three years, but this was my first show, and I had no idea what to expect.  I've heard people describe the festival as a wide spectrum of real hits and, well, real misses, and Isabel's play was a real hit.  I'm no theater critic, but Isabel is super-talented, I got completely drawn into the hour-long play, and the music and stage and acting was beautiful.  There you have it: go see it this weekend!

Next: I have been bouncing off the walls this week because I'm flying to California tomorrow morning for a weekend with my wonderful friend Nat.  Nat is getting married in three weeks!  I've seen her regularly enough since graduation because I've taken annual work trips to her part of the world, but my work schedule during those trips limited our face time to a short lunch every year. That's not enough!  I am so excited to spend a whole weekend with her (and her fiancé too!).

Last but not least, I had a Cherry Dilly Bar yesterday, and I think it changed my life.

Cat Programme

Cat Programme is a Life Idea I conceived years ago.  It's a television show that would chronicle the secret nocturnal adventures of cats, who seem so innocent and sedate by day.  You'd never guess some of the messes they'd get into, right?  I believe that they cause a whole lot more trouble than anyone would ever imagine.

So Cat Programme (British spelling, please) would involve attaching cameras to cats' heads--ideally, on little cat head-sized helmets--thus documenting officially what cats actually do while we're asleep. A critical component of the show would be the reveal, when cat owners would watch the footage and usually be alarmed.

Show host: So, what do you think your cat normally does at night?
Owner: Well, I'd say he probably sleeps, walks around our home slowly, jumps onto the couch...
Host: LET'S GO TO THE VIDEO!
Owner, watching in shock: Oh my goodness!

That's Cat Programme in a nutshell.  Perhaps because of lack of funding and logistics related to keeping a helmet on a cat's head, the idea never got off the ground. But I've always kept the show concept in mind fondly.  Last weekend, I was at home, and my mom showed me a page ripped out of the July 31 Parade magazine that's mixed in with the Sunday circulars.

Dusty is a perfect candidate for Cat Programme:

The copy reads: "Dusty, the so-called Klepto Kitty (shown on the prowl in his San Mateo, Calif. neighborhood), has pilfered more than 600 items in the past few years, including lingerie, swim trunks, and towels."

Mostly, I had to post this picture because for a section of an image rendered practically useless by a flash, Dusty's eyes sure say an awful lot.  Dusty is a cat on a mission. He is not bothered in the least by having his crimes captured on film--and dare I say, he is downright irritated by the interruption. 

We should all live our lives so boldly--but unlike Dusty, of course, try to stay within the parameters of the law.

Roll out

Here is a post about how I found myself sitting on my bedroom floor, warbling an Adele song in the dark--all because of a fabulous, understated piece of fitness equipment.

I adore my foam roller, and as my running mileage piles up over the years, its value creeps higher and higher.  If you don't love them yet, you've probably at least seen piles of them at the gym. The basic idea is that you can use it to work through tight muscles in a way that I find much more painful effective than normal stretching.  People use it for everything: shoulders, calves, quads, glutes.  (There are loads of youtube videos to demonstrate.) I love it for my hamstrings and always-too-tight calves.  Someone else in my household has been known to massage his back with the roller in front of the TV.  I read once somewhere that many elite runners allocate 30 minutes per day on the foam roller.  Obviously, I'm not in that company, but it sure would be nice.

A foam roller is nothing fancy and pretty self-explanatory: a big piece of tough foam, between one and three feet long. In case you wanted to get a visual of the size difference in a not-to-size graphic, I will share the following image.  You can thank me in the comment section.

Credit to PerformBetter.com

This is a good time to add a disclaimer about the images used in this post, which are all courtesy of a Google image search.  I don't endorse any of the websites one way or the other--but most of the links will just lead to online foam roller shopping bonanzas.

But if you're ever in need of a laugh, I recommend a Google image search--not even necessarily about foam rollers, although these results in particular are priceless.  Typing in "foam roller" yields 400,000 images, ranging from very helpful tutorial snapshots to a lone image of a shirtless man in pale-wash blue jeans and no foam roller in sight.  A picture of Mighty Mouse was also among the results--completely unrelated to foam rollers, but sometimes I do feel like Mighty Mouse after I roll.

I never manage to look as cool as the woman on the right or as serious as the man on the left, though:

Credit to WSports

Credit to Squidoo

I also limit my rolling mostly to the living room in my home. But if I ever do want to tote my roller around town, I know where to go.

Credit to Exercise.com

I haven't taken my fascination beyond the entry-level roller.  The next roller upgrade (seen below) terrifies me.  It's like a stegosaurus roller.

Credit to Exertools.com

Last Christmas, my brother had his very own foam roller waiting for him under the tree, and he quickly became a fellow roller aficionado.  We share a strange sense of humor and thought it was hilarious to generate an encouraging playlist for using the foam roller. 

Here it is so far:

• "Roll out" by Ludacris, featuring the timeless chorus, "Roll out! Roll out! Roll out! Roll out!"
• "Rolling on the river," by Creedence Clearwater Revival
• "Rollin'" by Limp Bizkit, featuring the timeless chorus, "Keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin'"

I think you see where this is going, unfortunately.  Last night, my hamstrings were really in need of the foam roller, but I forgot about it, started reading a book in bed, and had just turned out the light.  I remembered and popped out of bed to sit on the floor, lights off, for just a minute to roll out my calves.  And honestly, I don't know how I made it this far in the summer without adding Adele to the playlist.  But I yelled my realization to Josh and then, as if that weren't enough for my poor boyfriend, starting singing, badly, "Rolling in the daaaaaaAAAAAaaaarrrk."  

It wasn't my shining moment in life.  My legs felt a heck of a lot better, though.

Dog party

Today was one of my favorite neighborhood events of the year!

It's Paws on Grand, known in my circle (e.g. Josh and my family) as Dog Day, when St. Paul's Grand Avenue businesses all rally together to create this mini-festival for dogs, owners, and dog fans.  I fall into the third category.  Josh and I have been in dog-related discussions for ages and are finally getting more serious about it.  This future canine companion would be the third dog in my life.  My family loves collies: the first, Chablis, died when I was five or six, and the second, Hayden, saw me all the way through high school.

It was a Big Deal when my family brought Hayden home, as my brother, Phillip, illustrates in this report:

But can you blame us?  He really was a furball with legs.

He's averting his eyes from my knee socks.



He's sliding on ice.



That's where the dog love all began.  I love all kinds, but especially big furry ones.

Here is a brief synopsis of Paws on Grand, courtesy of the neighborhood newspaper, the Highland Villager:

Now, let the photo essay commence!  This first snapshot is fitting somehow because the two girls on the left look very excited to see me.  I was trying to capture the monster dog waiting outside the ice cream shop and only later realized it was my sister and her friend Emily, who had been trying to cross paths with me for a few blocks.

I adore Samoyeds.  He is totally ruling this crosswalk, isn't he?

I don't even know what kind of dog this is but was admiring his or her festive costume. 

I pet this dog while the owners and I agreed how wonderful collies are. 

Even the restaurants celebrated dogs.  At Salut, these were the advertised specials:

This is the lone Keeshond I saw.  A Keeshond is the front-runner in our dog search--I realize now because these dogs also fall into the "furball with legs" category that my brother outlined in his report.

There were a pleasing number of puppies out enjoying the day and learning to socialize.

Here's a charming pack I spotted from across the street. Josh also wants one of these guys, but I'm reluctant.

"Hello, I like your hat!"

As advertised, there were wading pools.

Later in the afternoon, we plopped down onto a bus stop bench to rest and survey the scene.  My brother joined us here!  Before long, we noticed that there was a fifth member in our party, relaxing under the bench.

It was a long day for the dogs.  Behind us, this friend was looking mildly irritated.

And finally, Emily snapped a family photo.  The police officer in the background was on hand to make sure the dog party didn't get out of control.

Last night, Josh wondered out loud if the dogs knew what was going on--like last night was their own personal Christmas Eve and they were so excited they could hardly sleep. 

After seeing the wonderful mayhem that unfolded today, I can only guess that the answer is yes. 

Or maybe it's just me.

Urban Wildland race report

Short version: humid, slog, sweaty, the usual, etc.

Gosh, that's an enticing lede that really makes a reader want to read more.  Ready?

Longer version: Today was a rough go, but it was actually a good test of how much I actually love the Urban Wildland Half-Marathon--and the answer is a lot.  The race is in Richfield, a suburb south of Minneapolis.  I stumbled across it first in 2008, when I was in training for the Hartford Marathon, and it's good timing for lots of area runners who are doing big long runs this month to prepare for Twin Cities, Chicago, or other fall marathons.  In 2009, I ran the race again and set a big and also unbelievably unexpected personal record (PR).  That was the last time I ran Urban Wildland, so I have inflated the race in my memory to be the prettiest, fastest, most wonderful half-marathon in the Twin Cities.

Pre-race: I woke up and realized that conditions were warmer than ideal--but to be realistic and fair, my ideal won't swoop in until September or October. I ate breakfast, and headed over in time for the 7 a.m. start.  I was hoping to run this one hard as a benchmark for how my training is going this summer.  I had my fingernails painted, a little pre-race tradition originally conceived to remind me to maintain a pulled-together front late in a race when I sometimes feel like falling apart. Recently, it has spun toward reminding me to loosen up and have fun, which means the brighter color, the better.  Last night, it seemed to mean that the more a four-year-old girl would cheer on my color choices, the better.  (See right.)

Race: I was excited to see some of my running club teammates right around me at the start line.  They were shooting for a similar goal time, so I decided to hang with them for the first few miles.  Unfortunately, I knew two miles in that it wasn't a PR day for me--and actually, I should have known after my mile pre-race warm-up, when I was covered in sweat after 10 minutes.  At start time, it was 76 degrees with a 70 degree dewpoint--and almost worse, no breeze.  (Read: Sweatfest 2011, which is basically a summer-long bonanza this year.) I decided to scale back my effort from full-on race pace to relaxed long run pace, and then a few miles after that, choose the classic just-cross-the-finish-line race strategy.

Body: I don't really understand why you see this as a fun hobby.

Me: Sorry, Body, I'm at a loss, too.

But I felt better once I shifted into my new strategy.  I even settled into an okay rhythm later on the course, albeit after I glanced at a cab parked on a sidestreet a bit too seriously.  The other good news is that--PR or no PR--it's still a great race.  Today there were just under 1,000 finishers.  The course is flat and weaves between city streets (lined with great volunteers and spectators) and gorgeous, relaxing natural areas where it's hard to believe you're 15 minutes from downtown Minneapolis. It's also very spectator-friendly, and for me, it's a perfectly organized race: good t-shirts, pre-race communication, and event day logistics.

The miles ticked down, and I crossed the finish line.  My running club coach was at the finish and gave me a pep talk afterward.  I like this club!

Afterward, I went home to visit my mom, who is recovering from knee surgery.  She wanted to get out for her first post-surgery walk, so my mom and sister and I strolled over to the neighborhood park, which featured the most comfortable swing I've ever encountered.


My sister's body language indicates I have exceeded my time limit on the swing.

And then I was home and happily, firmly on the couch for the bulk of the afternoon, getting up only to refill my bowl of watermelon.  I picked a movie to lull me to nap, guessing that Julie and Julia was a not-too-captivating but pleasant choice.  Of course, I ended up watching the whole darn thing, intent on solving a debate with myself about who I love more: Meryl Streep or Stanley Tucci.  (Still torn.)

Happy Saturday.

This might replace the catamount paw as my sign-off.