Breakfast Klub and Sinh Sinh

GPG and I had a weekend of gluttony. At least, that's what it seemed like. We tried a few new places and here's a basic recap:

Breakfast Klub: I had a hankering for waffles for breakfast on Saturday, but GPG and I didn't know of any place that served waffles in town. So we poked around on the Internet and called a few places, and we found an on-line listing for the Breakfast Klub, which is on the corner of Travis and W. Alabama. We had passed by the BK several times before, and usually we saw a long line of people curling out the door and around the block. We often commented on the line when we drove by, because we couldn't believe that people would wait in line for the actual food in the restaurant. We figured that maybe some kind of special event was going on.

Well, it turns out that the line was indeed to get in to the restaurant to eat the food there. We had read on-line that the BK served waffles and were intrigued by the crowd of people who seemed to wait so patiently to get in, so we went there and stood in line for about half an hour before we were able to place orders and get seated. We both ordered waffles with strawberries on top. GPG got scrambled eggs and sausage; I got sunny-side-up eggs and a biscuit in lieu of meat (besides sausage, they offered bacon, ham, and turkey).

The verdict? Very good, very tasty. Perhaps not worth standing in line for, but worth waking up a little earlier on Saturday morning to avoid the line. The waffle was exactly what I wanted (though a bit on the small side, in my opinion) and I think they did something to the strawberries (maybe macerate them a bit? sweeten them?) to make them juicy and sweet. It was a gratifying breakfast, and their pancakes and French toast also looked mighty good. We'll definitely be going back again, though, as I said before, perhaps earlier or maybe on a weekday to avoid the long line.

In addition, just FYI, the BK has a southern sort of bent and serves waffles and wings (that is, fried chicken wings) and catfish and grits. Although I don't know if I'd be keen on eating those things for breakfast, and I'm not a big fan of grits, but the wings, at least, did look good. They also had some sandwiches and salads, I think, for lunch/brunch options. Check it out if you're in the neighborhood!

Sinh Sinh: To celebrate Chinese New Year on Sunday, GPG and I went to Chinatown. We weren't quite sure where we would eat when we started out, but I recalled that the Chairman and Chairwoman had ordered some takeout from Sinh Sinh that was quite good. So, when we found the restaurant, GPG and I decided to give it a try.

SS, like BK, was a good find. We ordered a seafood clay pot (with XO sauce--whatever that XO sauce is, it's always good) and a sizzling beef dish (the kind that comes out on a hot metal platter all sizzly and bubbling and hot), and both were very good. The cuts of meat in the beef dish and of the seafood (squid, scallops, etc) in the claypot were very generous and tender, and the sauces were flavorful. The rice was also quite decent--not the best quality, though not the worst, either. It was a really satisfying meal.

The only reason why we might not become SS regulars is because it is a bit of a drive for us and it's possible to get similarly enjoyable meals closer to our home base for a slightly cheaper price. But, if we're ever in that area, it's a very likely choice for a meal. A lot of the things on the menu looked great.

One lonely Wyvern

GPG and I spent the entire weekend eating. We made some good discoveries, which I'll write about later. Right now I'm trying to get a bit of school work done since I was sick (literally) this morning and wasted most of the day feeling gross.

But, I did want to post pictures of the Wyvern sock that I completed last week. I took the photos at night, so they aren't great, but you can get the general idea from them. Here is a full-on view of the sock. See the scales?


You can also see where I haven't yet woven in the end of my cast-off edge at the cuff!

Here is a view from the side. Marnie designed the pattern so that it has ribbing all along the bottom of the sole that continues up the back of the sock. It's a bit unconventional, but I like it.

The only major problem I had was with the short-row heel. If you look closely, you can see a hole or two there. I frogged and re-knit that sucker probably 3 times and it still doesn't look right. I think I had problems partly because I was trying to maintain the ribbing pattern; I would think that doing the wraps is easier with a plain stockinette heel. Oh, well. I have to remind myself: learning socks. These are just learning socks.

Anyway, I've gotta get back to school work. More about the Breakfast Klub and Sinh Sinh (two restaurants GPG and I tried this weekend) later!

Bonsai

Now that I'm on my way back to Houston this weekend to GPG, I decided I finally should get around to posting these pictures of our bonsai experiment. It would be silly to have them sitting in a draft, saved for the point of posting while I have no access to a digital camera, into a weekend where I will have access to a camera.

I don't really remember why GPG and I got interested in bonsai trees. Somehow we started talking about them over the winter break and decided to give it a go. However, it was pretty hard finding anything to start with in Houston; there really aren't too many bonsai dealers in town. We ended up buying this little Yaupon shrub from a regular gardening retailer:

A book we bought from Borders said that you can take normal plants and train them to be bonsai just by cutting them and wiring them properly. Since we don't want to drop a lot of money on the first trees we try out, since we'll probably kill them with our ineptitude, we wanted something cheap. Unfortunately, GPG started going at the shrub with the clippers before we got a proper "before" shot. Hence the branches on the table next to the shrub.

Here is an "after" photograph of the much-shorn Yaupon:


That is how it looked for a while until we finally made it out to a legitimate bonsai and orchid dealer waaay out in Sugarland, the afternoon before the marathon. We saw a lot of really beautiful plants out there and were pretty dumb for having forgotten the camera. While we were there, we got some wire to try wiring up our tree properly. Wiring it makes the branches grow in the direction you want to give the tree that nice, sculpted bonsai look. Here's the wired Yaupon:


While we were at the bonsai dealer, we also picked up two other Bonsai trees. I picked out a Bourgainvillea because I wanted something with flowers. Isn't it pretty?

Unfortunately, I only read later, in a bonsai book, that Bourgainvillea's branches get brittle after a while. I cut one of the branches on purpose, but ended up breaking off two more by accident. Oops. It looks pretty pathetic now:

I hope that some branches will grow back a little once it gets warmer and it starts growing more.

Martin picked out a needle-leaved Ficus. Here it is in all its bushy glory:

Unfortunately, by this point it was pretty late the night before the marathon, so I didn't get pictures of the Ficus after Martin trimmed and wired it. I'll try and get a picture of it later this weekend.

So far, the bonsai project has been pretty slow going, since nothing is growing on my tree. Hopefully it'll get more interesting when spring rolls around!

1 Wyvern down; 1 to go

I stayed up late last night and finished the first Wyvern sock instead of getting a good night's sleep before school today. Pictures to come this weekend, when I visit GPG's digital camera. Er, that is, when I visit GPG. Thoughts:

1. The two circular needle method is actually pretty useful; I think it knits a lot faster for me than the regular DPN method. Because I still don't have Internet access at home, which means that I couldn't look up the nice Turkish cast-on tutorial I referred to for the first sock, I ended up casting on last night for a completely different set of socks (cuff-down) for the Chairman's birthday and used the two circular needle method. Already I'm zipping along on the first sock.

2. Turkish cast-on: Also pretty useful. It took me three tries to get it to work, but it's actually a really ingenious way of starting a toe. I'm still not familiar enough with it to do it without referring to the tutorial, but I do like it a lot. (Hopefully I'll find the tutorial again! I looked for it just now to put in a link to it, but I can't find it. I think it's bookmarked on GPG's computer, so I'll have to look for it this weekend.)

3. Lastly, the short-row heel. I don't think I'm a fan of it. I ripped out two attempts before paying close attention to the third, and I'm still not satisfied; it looks pretty darn ugly. The wraps just don't look right. Apparently there is another way to do it with yarnovers instead of wraps, which is the way I've done short-rows before, so I will try that for the next pair. Hopefully that will look a little better.

And finally: did anyone see the hotdog-eating contest last night on Grey's Anatomy? Hilarious.

Fully recovered. Sort of.

We're Day 5 post-marathon and I am more or less recovered. Yesterday was the first day I could walk down the stairs normally, and I even ran 2 miles. Very slowly. Of course, I could feel my legs afterwards, but I think I'm well on my way to feeling like myself again. I hope that next week I can start running regularly . . . although I think I'll take things slowly to avoid any possibility of injury.

We're also in Day 4 of the spring semester of school, and I really need to get my butt in gear. I have a light schedule, which isn't helping; I need some steely discipline, stat. This weekend I have to do some major researching and thinking for a major paper.

Of course, instead of doing some of that work this morning, what did I do?

I tried to organize my yarn stash.

Each day this week I've taken a little bit of time to wind some of my stash yarn on the nice yarn winder and swift that GPG gave me for Christmas. The wound cakes of yarn were sitting on my table this morning and I decided I needed to tidy up and put them away.

That was a bad idea. It meant dragging out the plastic tubs in which I keep my yarn and realizing that those are a big mess, too, so the whole tidying-up process devolved into a big explosion of yarn all over my living room as I tried to get everything organized.

Now things are more or less under control, but I've finally realized the magnitude of my yarn stash. It's going to take a LOT of effort to knit through all this yarn by the end of law school. Fortunately, I have some ideas of what to do with it . . . but it will take a pretty long time, I think.

Okay, enough procrastinating! I'd better get that self-discipline in gear now.

26.2

All right--I'm finally somewhere with Internet access! Unfortunately, my home access won't be reconnected until next Wednesday. So I'll be flying blind at home for over a week.

Post-marathon recovery has been slow and somewhat painful. My legs were pretty sore and tired yesterday, and going down stairs was a very slow, step-by-step process. Something of a barely controlled fall, over and over again. Today, stairs are somewhat better--I can make it down a little more easily--but I'm still hobbling around quite a bit.

Although it didn't feel like it at the time, I think I had a pretty good first marathon experience. On the day of, though, I was pretty darn grumpy:


I had not slept a wink the night before. I tossed and turned the whole night, and maybe I dozed in fits, but it really felt like I didn't sleep at all. GPG also had problems sleeping. In fact, we were still up at 1 a.m. (before a 5 a.m. wake-up call), eating some food in the hopes that it would help us sleep a little better (I ate the leftovers from our carbo-load the night before at Carrabba's). I think the food helped GPG, but I was out of luck. Hence the grumpy face at breakfast.

GPG and I found some kind people to take pre- and post-marathon pictures of us. Unfortunately, GPG's eyes are closed in both of them. Pre-race:


Post-race:


Here's a better post-race picture of GPG. He actually felt pretty good after the race, and his recovery has definitely been faster and easier than mine. Unfortunately, he hit the wall around mile 22 and slowed down considerably. Before 22, he had been running at a 4:30 pace, maintaining approximately 9-minute miles interspersed with mile-long walks. But it started warming up quite a bit, and I think he got too overheated and wore himself out.


And here I am, post-race. Clearly, I'm a little fatigued.


I started the race very, very slowly. At each mile, volunteers call out the total elapsed time and the pace at which runners who are passing the mile marker at that moment are maintaining. I heard 13-minute pace calls for the first three miles or so before I figured I'd better pick up the pace.

For the most part, the pace calls dropped in time with each mile marker I passed, even when I stopped to walk. By the time I was at the final few miles, I was getting around 11-minute pace calls. I finished with a time of 4:44:55 and actually ended up negative-splitting the marathon. The first half took me about 2:25, and the second half took me around 2:19.

I had hoped to run a 4:30 or so, but I'm still pretty satisfied with my time. I ended up walking a lot less than I had thought I would, which I'm happy about. I also caught up with GPG in the last 0.3 miles and we managed to finish the race together, with exactly the same time! I was very happy about that, too.

After the marathon, we wanted to take baths, but we had no bath stuff. So we went to an Origins store, where a sales clerk very kindly gave us a free sample of bath salts:


I think she could tell were were somewhat in pain and probably felt sorry for us. I'll have to go back to the store and actually buy something in gratitude for that clerk's niceness to a couple of hobbling marathoners.

The Houston Marathon has usually given out sweatshirts to marathon finishers, but this year they had something different: t-shirts made out of synthetic material, with nice mesh sections on the sides. Work-out/exercise shirts, basically. Quite useful. I'm planning on wearing it sometime this week.

Here is the front, plus the finisher medal. You can tell that my face is a bit chapped from wind, sun, and wiping sweat off my face for 5 hours:


And here is the back:

All in all, a good marathon experience (although I'll be happier when my legs fully recover and I don't walk the gimpy walk any more)! They're actually kind of fun, in a very masochistic kind of way. All those people cheering for you as you run gives you a great feeling, and even the running itself was not as arduous as I thought it would be. Maybe I'll run another.

Temporary service disruption

I had a nice post about the marathon ready yesterday, but then Blogger ate it. Grr. And now I have to leave to drive back up to Austin, where cable Internet is temporarily off in my apartment. So marathoning and bonsai posts will have to wait until tomorrow, when I go back to school and the lovely UT Law wireless Internet. See you then.

Marathon's Eve

Well, tomorrow is the big day and I should get to sleep soon before the big race. I'm not sure I'm ready for this thing. But, at least I was together enough this morning to document part of the pre-marathon festivities for your viewing pleasure!

Here is GPG, holding our required packet pick-up forms before we set off for the George R. Brown Convention Center in the morning.

And here he is, looking shifty as ever, after picking up his marathon bib:


And here I am with my bib. Can you see the Nalgene bottle tucked in my arm? We were carrying that around to hydrate today. We have been visiting the bathroom virtually non-stop.


We made plans to meet up with another marathoner and half-marathoner at packet pick-up. The four of us all went out to breakfast together afterwards at Barnaby's. I didn't document our meal (eggs, potatoes, biscuits, and fruit/sausage/bacon), but I did manage to get GPG to pose for a picture with me to capture our food coma following the feast:

After we got back home, I modeled the official marathon t-shirt:

It's not a bad shirt. The top arc says, "January 15, 2006," and the bottom arc says, "26.2 Miles." I look a lot more confident in this picture than I feel.

After all the marathon activity in the morning, GPG and I spent the afternoon chasing after bonsai trees. That's right, bonsai trees. I have pictures of those, but I think they'll have to come tomorrow. I'll have plenty of time while I'm resting my aching legs to write about our bonsai adventures then.

Knitting Update

I have essentially spent my entire winter break knitting. I wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, knit, eat lunch, knit, exercise, eat dinner, knit, and go to bed. Seriously. It's sort of a sadly boring existence, but I have enjoyed it. Nevertheless, as I've mentioned before, I am a pretty slow knitter, so I don't have much to show for my efforts. At any rate, here is what I have been working on:

Baby socks for Clerk the First's new baby, Olivia. They're from my own pattern, which I sort of cobbled together from your basic sock pattern, plus leftover Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock from the socks I made over the summer for the Aspiring Ecologist's Christmas present. I cast on 32 stitches and eyeballed how big the sock should be. The quarter is in the picture for scale.

Next up, a sneak peek at the Chairwoman's Opal cowl, which I finished yesterday. It's a pretty substantial piece of fabric, and it took me a while to knit it to the proper length so it will cover both the head and the neck in the back. You can't see the stitch definition too well in this picture, but it's basically a spiral stitch based on a k4 p2 rib. I only have to weave in the ends now and mail it off. Maybe I'll get GPG to take a picture of me modeling it for posting after the Chairwoman receives it.

I also started a new sock out of Knit Picks Essential sock yarn. This sock represents a new venture in a variety of techniques for me: my first toe-up sock, my soon-to-be first short-row heel, and my first sock knit on two circular needles.

The pattern is Marnie's Wyvern. Unfortunately, mine doesn't look as good because I have plain, solid green yarn instead of the nice variegated Koigu that Marnie used. But since this is primarily a learning sock for me, I don't mind how relatively boring it looks. Plus, I consider these to be my TLR socks, since the green is similar to the green of the cover of the law journal (TLR) that I work on.

Here is a treasure trove I found today at Half Price Books:

It's Ann Budd's The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, which was a steal at just $11. Plus, the flap peeking out from the top edge of the book is The Knitter's Handy Guide to Yarn Requirements! An added bonus! It's sort of sad to think of the poor knitter who had to sell this book to Half Price Books. But it definitely has a good home now. I have a ton of projects queued up in my yarn diet, to knit up my stash, but I hope to knit some sweaters eventually.

Last up, here is what I did with the remnants of the red Opal yarn I used for the Chairwoman's cowl:

The picture isn't too informative. It's the front and back to the Carpetbag Pouch from Melanie Falick's Handknit Holidays. (Top piece is wrong side; bottom piece is right side.) However, because I had so little yarn left, I had to make some serious modifications to the pattern, the main one being that I only did 2 scallops instead of 3. Also, after knitting one side, I feared I had so little yarn left that I didn't cut the yarn after binding off. Instead, I unwound the rest of the yarn from the skein and started knitting from the other end! I didn't want to cut the yarn if it turned out that I didn't have enough to finish the second side. If you look closely, you can see that the side on the needles is connected to the other side by a twisty bit of yarn.

I ended up having to frog part of the top of the finished side and compromising on length for both in order to be able to have two identical sides. Instead of doing an extra 2 rows of knit and 1 row of purl before binding off, as the book instructs, I had to bind off immediately after finishing the scallop pattern. After cutting the yarn (finally), I had a piece about as long as my arm. Talk about cutting it close. As a result, the pouch will probably be a bit shallower than I had hoped, but I plan on blocking the life of the pieces to try and get a bigger bag so that it doesn't look too much like a pouch for sunglasses. I also hope that vigorous blocking will prevent the bag from getting too saggy after a while.

Finished pictures of the pouch will have to come much later, though. I have to wait until I go back to Austin next week to sew a lining out of fabric, and then once I'm in Austin I won't have GPG's nice digital camera. Pictures will probably come in a couple of weeks. And hopefully I'll have more progress to show on other works in progress, too.

Alito A-go-go

Yesterday I drove up to Austin to take care of a few loose odds and ends there. On my way up, as soon as I got within range, I started listening to KUT Radio, the local NPR station up there. They were carrying NPR coverage of the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice nominee Samuel Alito. Which brings to mind several things:

1. How great is KUT? I know that some other people have special fondness for other NPR stations where they have lived (I hear the San Fran station is terrific), but of all the places I've lived (not too many), Austin has by far the best NPR station. It's SO much better than KUHF in Houston, which definitely did not carry coverage of Alito's confirmation hearings. I think that broadcasting that coverage is a very good, civic-minded thing to do, because I think the hearings are an important event. So I admire KUT for carrying the coverage and I also admire Austinites for supporting the kind of radio station that provides that kind of good broadcasting. On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, for example, KUT broadcasts snippets of important audio moments in civil rights history, including MLK's entire "I Have a Dream" speech. It's totally cool. KUT is a great local NPR station.

2. That having been said . . . how much of a joke are these confirmation hearings? And even though I just wrote about how great it is that KUT broadcasts coverage of this important event, I'm partly serious. After listening to a few hours of the Senate's Q&A session with Judge Alito, I've come to a few conclusions. First, Samuel Alito is clearly an intelligent, well-spoken man . . . who is intelligent and well-spoken enough not to answer any questions in a particularly incriminating manner. The senators basically seem to spend the hearings chasing him around in mental circles, trying to catch up with him (i.e., trying to pin him down to a position OR trying to spar with him verbally and intellectually), but failing. He answers questions, yes, but he often answers them without actually saying anything.

But, he only does this because of my second observation, which is that confirmation hearings are basically a platform from which senators can play lawyer for a day and try to demonstrate their legal acumen, which is small, especially in comparison to Judge Alito's. They either ask vague conceptual questions ("What do you think about judicial activism?") that prompt vague conceptual answers, or they try to pin Alito down on certain issues by asking unformed hypotheticals ("If this had happened in a certain case, would you have decided it differently?"). Such poor questions naturally don't get the hearings anywhere. But, they do allow the senators to throw around case names like Lopez and Dole and Roe v. Wade, posture, and try to sound like they know what they're talking about.

I don't know if Alito will or should get confirmed. But I do admire him for sitting through the hearings, listening to senators bloviate, and still managing to sound civil, composed, and intelligent when he has the chance to speak. That's impressive.

18

I ran 18 miles on Friday. It was a long and uncomfortable experience.

First, I could still tell that my legs were not fully recovered from running 15 miles on Monday. Even fairly early on in the run, I could feel them complaining just a bit, although I still managed to keep up an acceptable pace (around 26 1/2 minutes for one 3-mile loop; then 27 and 27 1/2 for two more). I think I might have been able to do 21 if my legs had been completely rested, but they weren't. So I am definitely not doing any more major running between now and next week. My legs need to rest. I can't believe I thought I'd do 21 tomorrow.

Second . . . I had a bit of a scare when I finally finished and staggered down a little slope towards my car. I was looking forward to putting on some warm clothes, eating some food, drinking some water, and stretching out my muscles. But . . . I realized I couldn't find my car key!

I had ended up wearing pants with no pockets when I ran, so I had no where to put my car key. No problem; I did what I usually do in those situations: I took my car key off my key ring and slid it between my sports bra and my left side, under my left arm. That's usually what I do with things like IDs. I usually can't feel it and it stays there, pressed against me by the sports bra fabric.

Well, in the middle of the run I stopped to get a bottle of water out of my car. So I pulled my gloves off, got the key from under my sports bra, and opened up my car. When I started running again, I decided to put the key on my right-hand side (which I have never done before--I always do this item-stashing trick with my right hand into the left-hand side of my sports bra) because I was afraid that my left-hand side was chafing a bit. So I figured I'd distribute minor chafing instead of exacerbating the left-hand side and creating major chafing there.

But, as I said before, when I finally finished my run and felt for the key, it wasn't there. I felt all the way around the back and sides of my sports bra and couldn't feel it. I concluded that I must have dropped it on the trail. Oh, no!

Lesson #1 learned: always leave enough daylight after a run so you can look for your lost keys if necessary.

There was nothing to do but start walking and looking for the key. I figured that I would walk all the way down to the golf course clubhouse/country club thing they have at Memorial Park, and if I hadn't found the key by then I would look for a phone so I could call GPG and have him come and get me. As I walked, very slowly (not a good sort of walk to stretch out muscles that have just ran 18 miles), I wondered if there might be a way for me to call up the Chairpeople in Japan to find out if there was a spare key for my car somewhere. I also wondered if there was a locksmith still working on a Friday evening!

I had walked about a quarter mile, scanning the ground, when I felt some cold sweat slide down my chest. I reached up to blot it away, basically, with my t-shirt and sports bra. And guest what I felt then?

The key. It had worked its way around to the front of my sports bra from the right-hand side and was essentially stuck in the hem of the sports bra in my non-existent cleavage. What a relief!

Lesson #2 learned: Just wear pants with pockets, gosh darn it to heck.

Two days after, my legs are still pretty tired. Yesterday I was definitely walking the walk of the gimpy. And going down stairs was pretty excruciating. I expect today it will still be a bit difficult going down stairs.

In fact, I may drive up to Austin to do various housekeeping things tomorrow or later this week, and I have thought about taking most of my things back to my apartment then. That way I won't have to make multiple trips up and down 3 flights of stairs right after the marathon. Because that would just hurt.

Ugh. I really had hoped to get 21 in before the marathon, but I've run out of time. I hope the real thing isn't too painful!

Yee haw!

As some of you may know, UT won the Rose Bowl and the National Championship last night. I'm not a terribly big football fan (except for flag football when I can play), but I do have a bit of Texas and UT pride. So I'm glad for all the Longhorn fans (and boy, are there many) that we won. Across the street, a bar was hosting a Rose Bowl party and you could hear an enormous cheer erupt when Vince Young ran across the goal line for the winning touchdown.

As promised, some Koigu pictures. I tried taking them today in the sunlight and some of them came out well and some of them not so well. I took two pictures of each skein, one with flash and the other without. Then I tried to pick the one that showed the colors the best. Unfortunately, probably because I held the camera too close to the yarn, the flash would reflect on the yarn and wash out the colors a bit. Without flash, the sunlight alone didn't provide adequate lighting. So, as I said, some of the pictures are not so good.

Here is a nice lavender/green combo. This picture is an example of where the colors are somewhat washed out in the sunlight. The skeins are really a bit darker.


The next two pictures are of skeins I bought on the first day of the sale. They both are variations of an orange-blue combination. They're much more vibrant than the pictures let on. Although the skeins in the lower picture seem to have a lot of brown in them, they look really nice in combination with the light blue skein. So I think I may have to combine those two into the feather-and-fan scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts.



This is one of the pictures that actually came out semi-close to the real thing. These skeins have a really beautiful, jazzy line of brilliant purply-blue running through dark greens, greys, and browns. The color combination is lovely.


Some more of the orange-blue combo. The colors are a bit brighter in real life.


And, last but not least, a very light cream/yellow/blue combination.


Since the last post, I finished up a pair of little socks for Clerk the First's BRAND NEW BABY, born on New Year's Day: Olivia Marielle. Beautiful name, isn't it? I'll try to post pictures of those tomorrow. I've also started working on a cowl for the Chairwoman out of that fire-engine red Opal. Pictures may come. I haven't decided if it should be a surprise.

Er . . . scratch the pictures, please.

I had pictures taken of all the new Koigu yarn . . . but I guess I'm still getting the hang of using GPG's digital camera, because none of them were really all that good. So no Koigu pictures today. I will try again tomorrow and try to capture the colors more accurately.

But, I do have a few pictures to share of GPG's Christmas gift (his gift to me, that is) in action. I love it!

This is what we start out with . . .


Then we get a little winding action going . . .


And voila!


This is some of that eggplanty Opal I plan to use to make some armwarmers. It's luscious stuff.

My legs are pretty tired today from those 15 miles yesterday. I hobbled to the post office to mail a package and then to the bookstore to browse a bit, but I mostly stayed at home, sat, and knit. It's easy to forget that it hurts a bit to walk when you don't, you know, actually walk.

15

I had pictures taken of all the fabulous new Koigu yarn, plus pictures of the yarn winder and swift in action, but I just ran 15 miles tonight and I am pooped. So pictures will come tomorrow.

15 miles was pretty grueling, but I'm glad to have done it. GPG ran with me when it got dark, and we basically ran the whole thing without resting, which really wore me out. I ran 12 miles last week, and even the teeny one-minute breaks I took to drink water and walk a bit helped a lot. I managed to do those 12 miles in 1:47, including breaks. This time it took me 1:51 to do 12 miles. It took me 2:20 to do the full 15.

Still, I think my legs are improved from the last run. When I did the last 12, my left leg in particular did not like driving home and stepping on the clutch of my car. I was driving in 2d and 3d gear on regular streets and 4th gear on the freeway because I didn't want to step on the clutch that one extra time to bump up to the proper gear! This time my legs didn't complain quite so much.

But, I'm definitely tired and will probably sleep the sleep of the dead tonight. When taking a shower and rubbing soap over myself, I noticed that everywhere (stomach, arms, shoulders, etc.) felt like I'd been bruised all over. I hadn't quite expected that, even though it makes sense because all body parts are involved and get tired during long runs like this. I think that doing the actual marathon is going to be killer.

If my legs recover well enough, I'll try for 18 miles later this week, maybe on Thursday. Then 21 sometime next week. And then the marathon will be here. Eek. I can only hope that this crash-course training a) will do me some good without b) doing me lots of bad.