Diana IMd me on Monday and said that she'd like to run a half-marathon in October and asked if I'd run it with her. I've never liked running. All growing up, I played organized sports and it was used as a punishment: Miss a free throw -- run; Strike out -- run; Overthrow -- run. WHY would anyone ever want to run on their own initiative?

... I guess I'm finding out. Its all about looking at it from a different light. About a year and a half ago, Mendra came home and said "We're starting Weight Watchers tonight." It was great for me -- it wasn't something I was thinking about and putting off and hemming and hawing about... it was "here -- lets do this" so I did. And I did great at it. I'm feeling the same about this new running-venture.

After I told Di I'd do it, I immediately emailed Bob Bickel. I've known Bob the last 5 or 6 years from Bluestone Software, HP and now JBoss. Bob's quite the runner, he's done marathons and is involved with the Moorestown Cross Country team. Bob kicks ass. Within hours of telling him that Di and I wanted to do a half-marathon, he emailed me a training schedule. Today I did my second run, I'm sore, but I'm excited.

Things I learned from today's run in Salt Lake:

1. just because you've worked through your asthma at sea level, doesn't mean it won't come back at 4500 feet
2. there's less oxygen up here
3. you don't sweat as much in a desert :-D
4. hills are hard

So far I've run 1.5 miles on Tuesday and 1.75 miles today. I'll hit 2 miles on Saturday. I'm excited to see how well I keep up with this. Thanks for getting me started Di.

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Posted by Jessica on June 29, 2006 11:57:23 AM EDT #

This whole house thing is a lotta work, but its fun too. SO much to plan out. SO much to design. SO much to do. I like it.

We've got two planters in the front: one on each side of the steps. For the last year and a half, they had been covered with sheets of black plastic and 3 inches of mulch. The "soil" is a heavy yellow-ish clay, and there were 3 root stumps hidden under the mulch (one pretty big one... that was fun). We dealt with the stumps and breaking up the clay a few weeks ago. Yesterday we tilled in 3 bags of top soil, and a half-barrow of compost. We bought the brick border, and a bunch of plants and then went to town. I just hope the plants appreciate all the work and grow like mad.

There were a bunch of rocks laying around the mulch patches, and I thought it would be neat to make cairn's in the garden (like you see on a hiking trail to mark the path). I'll change them around every once in a while, plus it gives me something to do with all the big rocks we dig out of the garden.

Ya know... its amazing what you can find on the web. There are blogs dedicated to rock stacks found in nature and on trails... There's flickr tags... But really -- its this guy who does amazing things (Here's a great little video of him). Mine are just piles -- he balances rocks on top of eachother and makes these un-real sculptures. I wonder if I have the patience to do that...

I found this video last year... or maybe Dave found it... nonetheless, I'm SO glad I found it again. It's so neat to watch.

A short film that is played entirely in reverse and involves the "reverse destruction" of balanced rock sculptures. The movie is intended to be a manipulation of gravity and time though the simple effect of reversing the film. And although the film is played in reverse it appears that the man who is doing his magic is going forwards in time.

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Posted by Jessica on June 25, 2006 2:13:26 PM EDT #

Blake is obsessed with UGA. So I took on the challenge of knitting him a UGA hat. Here's the process for hat attempt #1:

1. buy some snazzy red, black and silver yarn (Wool-Ease "Ranch Red" and "Black" and Paton's Brilliant "White Twinkle")
2. knit a swatch to figure out the guage (19sts x 22rows = 4")
3. create a chart based on the guage
4. create a pattern based on a UGA logo and my new custom-chart
5. use the same simple hat pattern I've used before
6. knit

Here's the results:

The original UGA logo

The pattern I created using Macromedia Fireworks

The resulting hat. The 'G' is HUGE and the colors are a bit bunchy (I need to work on my tension).

I've only done intarsia knitting a couple times, so I knew this would be a challenge. Its hard to lock your stitches together when you switch colors without messing up the tension. More than that... I should have probably had 3 balls of silver hanging off the back instead of two (making each side of the silver ring a seperate strand of yarn and the middle its own piece) instead I used 2 balls -- carrying the silver across the back of one side of the G -- so one side of the G gets really bunchy (bad tension on my part).

Next steps:

1. knit something for myself (sorry Blake)
2. find some red and black yarn with a smaller guage (maybe Paton's Grace in cardinal and night?). Right now I'm using two strands of silver held together... so if I can find a red and black about the same guage as the single strand of silver, I can shrink the size of the G without changing the pattern itself.
3. Knit it again... being careful when I switch colors and not getting impatient with the intarsia.
4. blog

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Posted by Jessica on June 20, 2006 4:39:13 PM EDT #