Marvelous Monday: Week 39

Hey! Recognize anyone in this picture?

HA! It's me!

That's my shadow overlooking the Mississippi River on yesterday's run.

Five marvelous things about the weekend and upcoming week: go!

1) I dusted off my sewing machine last night and completed a project that has me bouncing off the walls in excitement. I was talking to Nat earlier in the week and waxing poetic about finding a pair of straight- or skinny-leg cords for fall, because all of my pants seem to be boot-cut. She told me she had stumbled on a blog post about how to convert boot-cut pants into straight/skinny cut pretty easily on the sewing machine. WHAT?! I was intrigued.

I have a general policy of not doing a step-by-step blog post when I am doing projects that I culled from other blog posts already in existence, so again, go over to that post for the full scoop. But here's the abbreviated version:

You place a pair of pants with a narrower-cut leg over the boot-cut pants and pin the line you'd like for your new width. I sewed from the inside seam up to the knee.

And then sew it! (I used a red-orange thread because I didn't want to change the spool just for fun.)

There you have it!

This is really, really marvelous because I did that to another pair of cords and now do not have any desire to buy new pants at all this season.

2) I have been referencing my love of fall weather relating mostly to leaves lately, but it deserves another mention because running is so much more fun now that the temperatures are cooler. The temp was in the upper 30s (with lots of sun) when I started yesterday's run, and it was exceptionally pleasant. And finally some goal paces are feeling attainable instead of lurking loftily in outer space!

3) Reading report: I am working on In the Garden of Beasts, which is a book by Erik Larson about the time leading up to World War II in Germany. He also wrote Devil in the White City (which I was fascinated by) and when I was talking to my dad's cousin a couple of weeks ago, he said that In the Garden of Beasts was better. Both books are in the genre called narrative non-fiction, so they're composed from an enormous amount of historical research but read like fiction. I find this style amazing and admire it to no end. (Don't worry - I did fetch Gone Girl from the library, and that's next. In the Garden of Beasts just arrived first!)

4) The Twin Cities Marathon banners are up in downtown St. Paul! That means the race is almost here.

I'm working with my committee that day in the media tent, not running it, but it's one of my favorite weekends (and events) of the whole year. I believe there are some Miles and Laurel readers participating in the race weekend events, and I'm excited to cheer them on, too!

5) I would call this weekend the one when Wish decided to like watching football on TV, based on this photo. Either that, or the dog is thinking about dinner. Or he has figured out that football equals getting to sit on Josh's head during the game. Either way.

What's marvelous about your Monday, Reader? What are you reading? What is your favorite part of fall? Do share!

My Old Dog

Reader, we have art!

Last night, Josh and I went to the Boys and Girls Club fundraiser at Target Field. A key part of this great event is the silent auction, which has an enormous amount of items on which you can bid - including paintings by some of the kids at the area Boys and Girls Clubs.

We were looking through the art, and all of a sudden, we both knew exactly what we wanted in our home: "My Old Dog," a painting by nine-year-old Molly from a Boys and Girls Club in St. Paul.

Josh bid on it - and then upped the bid after he was outbid. And then we won it!

I love everything about it: the old dog, the exclamation point about his head, the signature at the bottom when Molly ran out of room four letters into her name.

We brought it home, and it's going to be featured in a central location. Maybe even in our living room, above the TV:

(Don't worry, that's not an ethereal ghost in the TV - it's just Josh taking off his suit jacket.)

We discussed the possibility of Wish seeing it and ramming his head through the back of the canvas so his face was the featured dog. I'll show you a dog! Luckily, Wish was indifferent.

My Old Dog. I am so thrilled.

Jon Francis 8K Race Report

Oh, Reader, I'm afraid I'm becoming a broken record on Miles and Laurel. Clouds! Running! Skies! Leaves! Races!

Well, being that a whopping six days have elapsed since my last race report, I think it's time for another. If it seems to you like I'm racing a lot, you're right. I don't usually schedule this many on my calendar, but I explained a couple of weeks back that my marathon training plan has three weekends for which you run a race on Saturday (between 5-9ish miles, or 8-15 kilometers) before your regular long run on Sunday. This weekend is the second of those three, and I found a race in Stillwater: the Jon Francis Half-Marathon and 8K.

Proceeds from this race go to the Jon Francis Foundation. Jon's name was one I knew back in high school because he was a standout in the Minnesota prep running scene around the time when I was running cross-country. He died in a mountain climbing accident when he was 24, and the foundation is dedicated to supporting wilderness safety education. In a way, it was sobering - that's not quite the word I want, but it comes close - to participate in a memorial race named for someone who was born only a couple of years before you, on a course chosen to include the roads on which he trained for years. But even though I never met Jon Francis, given what I had read on the race website, I thought that he would have loved seeing hundreds of people gathering at beautiful Square Lake Park on a September Saturday morning for a run together - which is exactly what happened.

And indeed the park was gorgeous. I had never been out there before today, but it has a great reputation among Minnesota triathletes for the lake's water quality, which means a triathlon held there every September has always been on my radar.

The lake didn't look so appealing this morning, though. It was cold! 43 and windy, to be specific.

I got there with plenty of time for a long warm-up, so I jogged around some of the roads bordering the park. I wore a long-sleeved quarter-zip black shirt and 3/4-length tights for the race. For my warm-up, I brought along a pink fleece jacket that I basically wear with one or two layers in the most severe of winter weather conditions, so I was being a little dramatic. But when the wind was in my face, I have to admit that I didn't mind having that jacket along.

The views from the warm-up, I'd like to note, were lovely. Lots and lots of golden cornfields:

I love the light against the birches in this photo. Doesn't it say fall?

The race started a few minutes after 9:00, and the 8K (my race) and the half-marathon fields were together for the first three miles or so on a course that included both paved and dirt roads. (My first time racing on dirt roads since the Pork Chop Trot!) My pacing was, in a word, erratic. The hills were rolling, and I'd feel like I was trudging up a long incline, especially the ones on the softer dirt roads. But then we'd zoom along a gradual downhill for what felt like ages. I had no idea what my final time would end up being, or how I would feel at that point.

But - whew - I crossed the finish line feeling good, and my Garmin tells me I averaged a 7:43 pace per mile, which is consistent with other recent races and speedwork. I probably need to sprinkle some more hills into my miles for the last few weeks of training, but overall, thumbs-up.

And a thumbs-up to this event, too. I so wish I could have run the longer distance instead as part of my weekend long run, because I would've loved to explore more of that course! The volunteers were wonderful, the course was clearly marked, and the post-race food and drinks were great. (My favorite cheer from a volunteer was a man who said, "'Morning!" like he and I had just crossed paths on a stroll.)

Not to mention the fact that we got participation ribbons! Sweet, sweet, sweet.

Don't worry - I didn't race in the super-winter fleece jacket.

Okay, you got me. I really did to show you the ribbon, but I also wanted to show you that orange tree behind me!!

Bottom line: There are so many great events around the Twin Cities at this time of year, and this is one of them. I will keep this one on my list for next fall - the half-marathon next time!

A lost bid

I got this email yesterday and actually felt a pang of disappointment.

And then I brought my smartphone into the room where Josh was sitting and I said woefully, "I bid on something and lost!" I handed him the smartphone and got to hear him mumble "Jester...scrunchie collar...bells and skulls!?" out loud to himself.

Happy Friday to everyone, including my dog, who doesn't know that he just missed out on the chance to wear a scrunchie collar for Halloween.

Night at the museum

I used to travel a lot for work, especially in the fall, and one of the many takeaways from that experience - in addition to a precise ranking of my favorite Hampton Inn breakfasts - was how to get around completely by myself. (I'm sure I've written about this before, but it's teeing up the story of my evening, okay?) Part of that was the actual logistics: carrying a folder full of Google maps, navigating different regions of the United States in a rental car, and mapping out a schedule for each day that would fit everything in. But another part was learning, more broadly, about how to be an independent traveler on her own for long stretches of time. I grew comfortable with going to a restaurant on my own and carving out sightseeing during sporadic windows of free time alone.

That lesson has been a valuable one, and it stayed with me. Even without that travel schedule now, while I obviously love spending time with the great people in my life, I also quite like time spent puttering around town solo: checking out movies, exhibits, the farmers market, and so on.

Tonight was just one of those nights. My friend (and M&L reader) Katie had given me a heads-up, based on my love of Just My Type: A Book About Fonts, that tonight was Third Thursday: TypoGraphic at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. (Love, love, love tips and recs that come from things I post on this blog. Thanks, Katie!)

Every Thursday, the museum stays open until 9 p.m., and there are fun themes every third week. This month's was the result of a partnership with AIGA Minnesota, basically a professional association for design. There was a pop-up exhibit featuring some of the organization's award winners, a printing studio, a public font creation project, and so on. It was really neat to see the award-winning design projects collected in the span of a few tables. It was a great way to learn more about design - not just seeing billboards and magazine spreads and television ads every day, but in an intentional space showcasing some top-notch work. Super cool.

What turned out to be my favorite part of the evening, though, happened when I got to the museum a little earlier than I expected. I had brought a book in case I wanted to sit outside and read, but then the little lightbulb went off in my head. Hello! You are at an amazing art museum, open for visitors, to which you rarely go. Only you would think about reading a book instead of going into the museum.

As it turns out, a museum such as the MIA is the perfect place to let your mind wander and wonder and stretch. I felt more creative just being in that space.

I perused all kinds of art, from all different eras and places. Sometimes I paid attention to the context next to the art. I love the tidbits each card reveals, like this one:

The figure it's talking about, the man in the red coat, is a pretty key feature of the painting. I tried to imagine the thought process behind adding him in, two hundred years after the original was finished. You know what this painting could really use? A man in a red coat.

Other times I looked around at the museum itself:

The light and layout are just gorgeous.

All this beautiful space, about a mile away from bustling downtown Minneapolis!

It was a really nice way to spend a Thursday evening: a little out-of-the-ordinary but still relaxing, a quiet place to see hundreds of years of creative work from all over the world in one space.