Now running

I completed week three of my running plan and I'm surprised that it's still relatively easy. Not easy really, but not oh my god I'm going to die hard. And I must be improving some because I remember during week one I missed the cue to start walking again after a running interval and kept running for a whole 2.5 minutes! I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but my lungs were starting to burn by the end of that 150 seconds. Surprisingly, I survived the first day of week four without having to stop during a five minute sustained run. I'm not sure why I am so incredulous but perhaps I haven't ever been "athletic".

Although the two weekday morning "runs" are inside on a treadmill, I've been going to the trail downtown and doing two sets of the training podcast. I found two different podcasts that follow the same interval structure so it's the same but different. One has a lot of verbal cueing which can be nice so you know there is just one minute left until the end of the interval or just one more run. The other one is just music and has a series of ascending or descending beeps to indicate and increase/decrease in speed.

I have given myself a goal, or maybe more a challenge to work toward. October 10th is the local marathon. Which I will not be participating in, but I did sign up for the corresponding 10K which sounds so daunting, until you realize it's only 6.3 miles. Six is almost half of ten when you look at it that way. (But drivers in Canada can go 100km/hour which seems so much more fun.) Anyway, we have a matinee show that afternoon too and an evening rehearsal for the In Concert fundraiser so 10/10/10 will be a busy day for me.

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Garlic planting

This spring when we were shopping for annual vegetable seeds I grabbed a head of garlic that was by the register. I thought I'd give it a go. Apparently around here garlic really needs to be planted in the fall (like right now) to get a head start on the growing season. That head of garlic I grabbed in the spring was planted, but wasn't doing very well when it was accidentally tilled this summer. After my experiment with this Sunset vegetable garden plan (it looked like a good idea) we're going back to raised beds in the garden. In fact they are the same raised beds I built 4 years ago. I went back to the old house and disasembled them this summer. They look so big in this backyard. I'll probably need to make new ones in a few years as these are already starting to rot out (they were made from 20+ year-old fence panels). This year we're also going to start the garlic in the fall. I don't know the exact varieties. The bulbs are purple, there are two different kinds, and they are a hardneck variety. That means we'll get the garlic scapes in the spring and I can make more of that pesto. Remember, I'm still excited that anything will grow for me.

UPDATE: I started this post a month ago, planning on getting some pictures when I planted the garlic. Well it's in, no pictures, and I still haven't found mulch for the bed which means they've probably already frozen and died. We've had several severe freezes and a few light snows. It might snow more this weekend too.

I started installing the new porch light but now it's been 2 weeks and I'm not done yet. Of course that means we've gone 2 weeks with NO porch light - and i'm one of those people who leave them on all night. For me, dark houses make an unfriendly neighborhood and that can lead to an unsafe neighborhood. I guess it's time to stop procrastinating and take that trip through the knee wall in the attic (I have to install a new junction box in the porch ceiling). I took some pictures of the porch project so maybe I'll finish and get those up this weekend.

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Cleaning up

It is getting dark so soon already, and I'm not ready for it. We had the first hard freeze really early this year too, so it already feels like the beginning of winter. I feel like everything is in shambles and I let it get that way. I've been using my down time to do absolutely nothing. Not even laundry, or putting away the last two load of clothes from the last time I did do laundry. That might have been almost a month ago. I don't know how the time passed so quickly. Really, I do know what happened. It's what happens every year. I'm not home but a few nights a week and when I am home I relish eating real food cooked in the oven or in the stove. I do not feel like cleaning, or even picking up my clutter, doing a load of laundry or breaking down those cardboard boxes that multiply in my dining room.

I really have to get something done though. That is why I need to start the chore-a-day list again. I had one of these when I was a kid and the chores alternated between my sister and me. Funny how those same chores that your mother made you do are equally important in your own home 20 years later.

Sunday: Laundry
Monday: Clean Bathroom
Tuesday: Clean off Dining Table
Wednesday: Clean stove top & sink
Thursday: Water house plants
Friday: Sweep/Vaccum House
Saturday: Sweep/Mop Kitchen & Bathroom

I know it might be a little pathetic to see that I can't even do these chores on a semi-regular basis. And these all have to be things that take only about 20 minutes, because often I don't have much more time that that to tackle something. A lot of days the only time to get this done would be in the ~45 minutes I have between getting home from work and leaving for the theatre and I also need to take the dog for a walk and eat something in that time.

If I could keep this up for a month I would consider myself a success. If I get half of this stuff done two times in a month, I'm still pretty impressed. I had to try kind of hard to come up with 7 different little tasks and maybe things like watering the plants, cleaning the clutter off the dining table and scrubbing the stove top are laughably easy but in my house are rarely done.

Is it a sign of organization, or weakness that I'm putting these as reminders on my Outlook calendar so I remember? One month until status report.

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Chaos and clutter

All all the "shelter" magazines are going bust and more people are turning to blogs for ideas and inspiration, it was only a matter of time I guess before an online shelter magazine appeared. Premiering today (OCT 1) Lonny is an all online magazine. Like a magazine it still has advertising and a page based layout. It won't be the same as curling up on the couch or taking a bath while reading the newest issue but I'll take it where I can get it these days. I haven't read the whole thing, in fact I've just barely gotten past the first few pages, but already I hope it sticks around. Maybe it won't be great, but maybe it needs time to find its footing.

I'm going to save the rest of the magazine until I get home and have time (saturday maybe?) to read it full screen on the television. Big!

Speaking of computers and televisions, I had grand plans, I should have been done with building the new media center by now. But alas the old compaq case was to small to fit the motherboard. Did you know that some of the "media center" cases are hundreds of dollars! Ridiculous. My plan is to find a thrift store chase that is the right size and hopefully pay very little for it. The only usable thing from the compaq machine is the case fan which will go into the now 2-year-old "regular" computer. Since I already took everything out of the compaq case, do you think the electronic recyclers would be okay with all the components in a plastic bag then secured back in the case. It just seems silly to screw everything back in. Sadly I've given myself the expansive goal of three weeks to find a new media center case (that's when my copy of Windows 7 should arrive - pre-ordered for almost 60% off) and it would just be a waste to have hundreds of dollars of computing power sitting un-assembled in the living room for want of a metal box to contain it all.

Although it is now fall, officially and weather-wise, and the theatre season has started - I have plans. I don't know what I'll get done, but I have plans. I have plans to clean out the back bedroom; plans to paint the living room, dining room, bedroom (well I guess the whole inside of the house); plans to re-arrange the vegetable garden and plant garlic before the snows come; plans to do some knitting again; plans to do something to my office space (at work, not home). I think that's plenty of plans. I like to plan. I like to think of all the possibilities and put it all together. I like to pick colors and arrange furniture and organize a space. But you wouldn't know it to look at my house. It's cluttered and plain and nothing hangs on the walls. Books are still in boxes and things don't have a home and I live with a person who's idea of cleaning up is to stash everything in a box and toss it in the back bedroom. What will it take for me to change things?

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