1. Thanksgiving was great - mmmmmmmmmMemphis eatin'
2. Dave ran the JFK 50 Miler and lived to tell the tale. Details at his blog. Photos are at my Flickr page.
3. I'm resigning from my church leadership position and shopping around for a new church
4. There is much knitting happening
5. Work just got crazier, with a big story hitting the wires and the #3 person on our 3-member team just resigned
6. I started physical therapy for my IT band injury and am running a whopping 15 minutes per day. Woot.
7. Saturday and Sunday are HOME APPRECIATION days in our household - cleaning, clothesventory and planning our holiday giving and funtimes
8. But FIRST! We're going to officially welcome the festive holiday season with your favorite and mine: El Vez, baby. His Merry Mex-Mas tour hits the Black Cat tomorrow night. Tickets are $15 until they sell out. We'll be there.
Love this - bushmeat chimps are getting the recognition they need - in the NY Post gossip pages!
I wrote this a couple of days ago, but wanted to post it before I left sunny, unseasonably warm San Diego. Thanks to Souza for being awesome and hanging out at Balboa Park and letting me crash on his couch!
Saturday, 4 November...
It's been lovely to be here on the beach in San Diego, learning about Chinese medicine and trying to get my spiel down correctly about protecting bears. I've only had one mild altercation with a disgruntled practitioner. She moved from one argument to another and back, and just seemed to want to find a reason to be unhappy with our being here. She kept telling me that she was a real "conservationalist" and that just kind of killed her ethos for me. I promise that I didn't laugh, though!
It's sooooo interesting here. There are a lot of things that I don't understand and several that just seem kooky. Like the lady selling (for $30!!!) a device that "harmonizes" the electromagnetic field coming from cell phones into your brains. And I've seen people really excited to find her product. And the two businessy-businessy guys in another booth selling some sort of combination of vitamin and mineral drink that you mix together in a shot glass and pay $60 each month to drink. It is pretty tasty, though. :)
I'm so glad that Jennifer and William and David are here - it's been terrific to spend time with them all. And William showed up in his sweater! I managed to get a cute picture of the two of us in La Jolla. I've had some great meals with them and am really looking forward to a leisurely brunch tomorrow morning. I'll get to see Souza tomorrow afternoon and evening, and he's graciously offered me the use of his couch overnight. Thanks, Souza!
Because I'm on East coast time, I've woken up pretty early both days - around 5:00 AM. But that's not too bad. I've gone for some nice walks (tried to run yesterday, but only made it 10 minutes - no rush to recover!) and I even did some morning Qi Gong on the shore yesterday with a big-shot instructor and a large group. I was in my running clothes, so I'm sure I looked kind of ridiculous. It was lovely. It was called the "five frolics" and I have no idea what that means in terms of Qi Gong, but we did exercises that involved the bear (perfect!) in which you rock forward, bringing your arms in front of you, then rock back and you pull your claws back towards your body. The tiger involved rotating your hands and arms up to your head, then extending your clawed hands to your sides at shoulder-height. There was also a monkey, as you rock forward, you wrap your arms around a "tree" and then slowly bring them back down. We also spent about five minutes standing still, hands held up in front of us, elbows bend, slightly rounded over, to settle any turbid qi into the ground. Fascinating and very peaceful way to start the day.
Right now I'm just making copies here in the business center. There are so many people here, and I've been handing out tons of packets, so it seemed necessary to make more. I hope I haven't needlessly killed any trees with this. We'll see how much I've got to ship back to the office. Fortunately, it's going a lot faster than I thought it would.
Ha! Who knew?!? In addition to the individual results in the Marine Corps Marathon, there are also several team competitions. Some of these are for military organizations, others are for women, men, mixed teams or companies. Well, as a lark, I joined one of the Montgomery County Road Runners Club (MCRRC) teams and my team won the women's division competition! Team Results here: http://results.active.com/uploads/txt/9841.txt. (scroll down about 2/3 of the page to "2006 MARINE CORPS MARATHON WOMEN TEAM RESULTS")
There are no cash prizes at MCM, but I bet I'll get a certificate or something. Dave, we're going to have to frame that, ok?