!Don't Panic!

I went for my first open water swim on Monday with Elaine. We went to a lake up in Fremont, and although it was a beautiful, warm day, the water felt ice cold. It was probably somewhere in the 60s. It was my first time swimming in a lake in several years, and the first time doing more in a lake besides dog paddling while waiting for a ski boat to pick me up. In the very back of the roped off swimming area there is basically a huge swimming lane, mostly used by people training for triathlons. You can see buoys marking the far end of it in this picture, although the whole length of it isn't in the frame.


We went in the water slowly, trying to get acclimated to the cold. I had to remind myself to breathe slow, to not freak out. It seems nice and peaceful in the picture, but it was a little scary going out into the deep, cold water for the first time, not having the pool ledge to grab onto if needed. The water was opaque, so at first I kept closing my eyes when I went under, which didn't help. The water also felt a little heavier, in a strange way. But after swimming a lap and getting warmed up I found my rhythm and felt strong. It was a lot of fun to swim such long laps.



The same day, before we went swimming, I had my first ride on a road bike [thanks Elizabeth!] with Elaine and Judith, with actual CARS! I was a little wobbly at first, but it was fun to go fast! Well, I was actually slow, but it felt fast.

Gnarls Barkley

John brought me down to Rasputin last night to get the Gnarls Barkley cd (St. Elsewhere). I like.



You can listen to the album on their website. Make sure you check out the second song, "Crazy", my current favorite (you can play/skip forward in the top right hand corner).

Car Wash Olympics

We washed our car tonight. We hadn't washed it in months, because of all the rain, and it was filthy. It took us forever to wash it. Thankfully I have John. He is a car washing machine. He means business. He is the energizer bunny banging on the huge drum, and I am the little monkey smashing my little cymbals. We make a good team.

tri for fun?

A triathlon for fun. Yes, such things do exist. A few months ago I would've thought that doing a triathlon, even "for fun", would be ridiculously crazy. But I'm actually thinking about doing one this summer....or maybe in the fall. Maybe it would be only a little bit crazy.

I've gotten into swimming regularly the last couple of months, and have been learning about the world of triathlons from my friend Elaine. I started swimming because I wanted to get some exercise and spend more time outside- after sitting on a chair in an office all day. And then last Saturday I got some new running shoes and went to the track with Elaine for my first run. Well, technically a walk/run. I have always hated running and could never understand people who did it for fun. But here I am, and I think I might like the challenge.

I think I like the idea of training for a triathlon more than the actual event- setting goals, having a directed schedule. We'll see how it goes. I've added a link to my training blog (on the left) that I actually started a couple months ago, before having any desire to run or bike. If I did do a triathlon, it would be a sprint distance one, with a .5 mile swim (in a lake), an 16 mile bike ride, and a 3 mile run. But hey- I could always speed walk the run, right? It wouldn't take too much longer.

if you have nothing better to do...

The Modern Language Association has a fun little tool- a language map of the US. You can look up what languages are spoken in your area and anywhere you want. Oh what fun! The Map

for all you daredevils

They're planning on building an all-glass skywalk over the Grand Canyon. Sounds like a good idea, right? I don't think I'll be doing it though- I don't know if any amount of good engineering could lure me out there. Just thinking about it gives me the willies, and the thing isn't even built yet. I think the attraction for me would be to look at the bridge from the side and see all the tourists, seemingly hanging in midair over the Grand Canyon. If you're interested in the details, here you go.

"if you're going to san francisco"

We spent the weekend up in San Francisco at our friend Mike's. We've been wanting to move up there for some time now, so we're trying to figure out which neighborhood we want to live in. Well, actually we know what neighborhood we'd like to live in- the Richmond. It's in the west part of the city, above Golden Gate Park and next to the ocean. The only problem is that it's far from the train station, where I'll mostly likely be commuting from.

The baby bullet train is around 40 or 45 minutes to Mountain View, which is pretty close to the time I spend now on my drive from the south. Too bad most of the tech companies are in the south bay- it would be much easier to just find a job up there. But since I've started taking a class here and there, I think the commute on the train would be ideal for doing homework and reading. The area around the train station has been developed over the last couple of years, so all the apartments around there are new "luxury" places with insanely high rates- even for the bay area. We could find something comparable to what we pay now in the "suburbs" of the Sunset and Richmond districts though. Ohh, the dilemma.

We had a lot of fun this weekend- Mike took us to an Italian place in his neighborhood (North Beach) where we had the most amazing calzone, with prosciutto, fresh ricotta and mozzarella. Here's the view from Mike's apartment:





On the way back from Mike's we drove around looking at different neighborhoods. The nice thing about San Francisco is that you can't get too lost, since you either run into the ocean or the bay before going too far. We're starting to know our way around the city.

John and the Mystery of the Chairs

We've been in dire need of dining room chairs for a long time now. The other weekend on one of our thrift store excursions we spotted four old "drop seat" wooden chairs with crappy padding on them. We got a really good deal on them, because, as the girl at the checkout counter said with teenage disdain, "those are really old." John has done a lot of furniture restoration in the past and has always been interested in learning about upholstery, so we figured that these chairs would be a good first project for him. Here are the before pictures.




We went to the fabric store and picked out some fabric we liked- we also had to get padding to replace the old filling of the cushions. John did a lot of work fixing the loose joints and waxing and polishing the chairs, besides fashioning the new cushions.