26 September 2014

Walking things.

Yes, walking things.

Up until now, training has been hit and miss; a few miles here, a few miles there, but I’m ramping up in earnest. It’s not the number of miles I think I need to worry about—I can cough up 10-12 right now without any worry, I think—but toughening up my feet a bit. I’m slower than I’ve been in years past, but this isn’t a race, so that’s all right. I don’t need to be one of the first done every day but I don’t want to be the last either…and that only because the last walker of the day is celebrated: everyone rushes out of the dining tent and gathers around the flagpole and cheers while the last walker raises the flag.

It’s a special position, meant for a special walker, but I would be about 5 kinds of uncomfortable, I think. I’m an attention whore, sure, but the idea that 2000+ people will be watching me shuffle in and then raise the flag is a little more that my attention whorishness can handle.

So I want to walk at a reasonable rate, but not drag. I was a little freaked out about it in 2010…this year it’s a very mellow feeling. I’ll walk what I walk at the rate I walk; I’ll take care of any blisters along the way, I’ll listen to my body, and I will not forget to stop for lunch again.

What is a big deal for me this time?

I'm flying to San Diego. Alone. I do not fly well, as evidenced by my meltdown in the LA airport late May 2013. Granted, the stress level was much higher then—my mother had just died and we were on our way to her funeral—and the 3 Day is not stressful, just fun. I didn’t make it to my mom’s funeral (and I’m pretty sure she would have forgiven me for that) but I’m pretty sure I’ll be all right for this. It’s a short flight, I made sure to get a nonstop flight, and I paid extra to be sure I was on the plane in the first group so I can get my chit stowed in an overhead bin and get my asterisk into a seat before the throngs of people that might make me a little more nervous.

I kinda need to do this alone.

This is taking me so far outside my comfort zone that it’s a Big Freaking Deal. It’s shoving into my face more than one thing I hate: flying, flying alone, going somewhere new for the first time, going there alone, getting from point A to point B, alone.

The worries aside from my phobias, cortisol and blood sugar, I’ll just have to deal with. I’ll have a blood sugar monitor with me and hope that I don’t have an overly stressed response.But I want this to go smoothly, mostly because I would like to hop on a plane in the not too distant future to go see my sisters.

(My sisters who, BTW, are apparently walking machines as evidenced by the numbers being racked up on Fitbit. I am so lame by comparison right now. But I’ll show them. I’ll win.)

(It is a contest, right?)

Ahhh…and speaking of contests. You wanna know who wins, right?


But first...another prize has been added.
Five prizes, actually.
Five identical prizes.

Five people are getting one of these spiffy goodie bags; I gave a couple away a few years ago and people seemed to like them, so  I've added five of thee hard-to-find Komen string backpacks, and contained within are useful things. Pink things, but useful nonetheless.

And here we go.

Winner of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4

#191 Jeff Blackshear

Winner of the Soleus Go Activity Tracker

#150 Caroline Hendrix

 And winners of the Goodie Bag:

#214 Eileen Hendrix

#223 Susie McGavin

#78 Mark Halfpap

#40 Brenda Mendes

#85 Joan Durbin

I'll be contacting each of you via the email you used when donating, so keep an eye on your email. Prizes will be mailed out as soon as I have confirmation of your mailing address.

Now...there may be ONE MORE PRIZE, but I have not yet firmed things up with the donor. I'll ;et ya know!

THANK YOU!!!

25 September 2014

Just how invisible are bikes?



Heh.

23 September 2014

So the collective is losing its chit online because the President saluted a couple of marines with a coffee cup in his hand.

The horror.

So disrespectful.

He's a horrible, horrible man.

(Yes, this is dripping with sarcasm.)

So tell me, how did you feel when President Bush saluted with his dog awkwardly pressed against him? Horrified? Disgusted?

The President, while Commander-in-Chief, is not required to salute at all. We can thank Regan for the change; he started doing it and it's one of those things hard to get away from. The President doesn't have to so much as blink at the marines who stand at the ready.

But Obama and his cup and Bush and his dog...neither is or was being disrespectful.

They're a couple of men who are taking a moment to do something they are not and were not required to do, by statute or even long-held tradition: acknowledging those who serve at their orders and for their needs.

They don't have to, but they're both good guys so they probably always will.

People need to get getting so butt hurt over stupid things. Cripes, we're bombing Syria. Pay more attention to that and less attention to the little things that don't matter at all.

22 September 2014 - b

Goal reached.

Fully funded.

THANK YOU!

22 September 2014

A guy or reddit, /u/Worldsday, created and posted this, and I have spent way too much time just staring at it.


You're welcome.

19 September 2014

Oh...so close.

As of 8 pm, I am at 88% of goal, so just $270 shy of y'all getting to see me don the spandex and sing. Which, after having given some singing a go this past week, is a kindness to you all. It was bad. Really bad.

BUT!

All is not lost. You still might get something out of it!

Everyone who donated is in the running for a couple of really cool prizes. For every $5 you donated, you get a shot at winning. And it's not over--if you haven't yet donated you still can.

What's up for grabs?

Soleus Go Activity Tracker

It's a fitness watch band that you can connect to your phone via Bluetooth, and it has a 3D accelerometer, step counter, rechargeable battery, shows calories burned, sleep pattern tracking, fitness goal tracking, and has vibration alerts. And yes, I am holding it with my feet.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 7-inch tablet

An Android tablet running Kit Kat 4.4 OS with 1.2 GHz quad-core processor,8 GB Flash Memory, 1.5 GB RAM Memory, 2GB of memory available through a microSD slot and 50GB of free Dropbox storage, and it comes with over $300 in content and services.

There may be a few more smaller prizes up for grabs, but hey...these are pretty spiffy. 

Let's make this a quick one. Deadline to have a shot at one of these is 8 pm Pacific time, September 26th. And so you don't worry about that one huge donation that got me started...half of that was a cash prize I won, and the other half was a Pay Pal donation from someone who took herself out of the running for anything right from the start (but is demanding pink hair), so all those five dollar increments will not be included.

I only have $270 to the minimum I need to raise in order to be able to walk. Let's do this!

Donate $5! $10! $15! However man chances you want!

18 September 2014

There are at least 13 people who are trying to use my email address for various things. Most of the time it's clear they just simply forgot a digit or two when giving it to people--for their kids' activities, one to a Realtor who keeps scheduling appointments via email, a couple for school and I now know their grades--but tonight I got one that was clearly not meant for me.

I'm sorry, but I can't be friends with you anymore. You know why.

It's not from anyone I know, so I'm pretty sure I'm not being dumped by a friend or even a casual acquaintance.

So I replied.

I'm sorry. Who are you?

I doubt I'll get a response, but I'd like to think I helped whomever it was intended for get a bit of a dig in. If not, well...really, who the fark are you?

16 September 2014

Oh, yeah...there will be

Details forthcoming. And don't worry, if you already donated, you're already entered.

14 September 2014

See this guy?

He totally just won the 2014 Arty for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet.

I *TOLD* you my kid was an amazing actor!

He owned that role. Fark yes I'm proud.

12 September 2014

There are 70 days until the San Diego 3 Day.

There are 6 days until online check in begins.

I am a little more than halfway to reach the amount raised that will allow me to walk.

I have spandex.

I have a low threshold for embarrassment, but I'm willing to go there for this.

Spandex. Colorful spandex. What I have here are spandex tights with matching tank tops. Clingy, clingy articles of clothing.

I am not a small person.

I am, in fact, quite chubby.

Volumous.

Fat.

So... Here's the deal. I have $1015 to raise still. If I hit that by 19 September, 8 p.m. Pacific time, I will don said spandex, grab a guitar, and I will sing. In spandex. And there will be video.

Bonus:

If you guys get me to goal by that deadline, not only will you get me to do something I truly will find embarrassing, I will fully fund DKM's walk.

So what you're getting:

Me, in eye-blinding spandex
Me, singing, while wearing eye-blinding spandex
Video of my singing while wearing eye-blinding spandex
And two walkers fully funded for the San Diego 3 Day

It's all to save the boobies, people.

Boobies.

11 September 2014

7 September 2014

All righty.

It's going to happen. There are about 75 days until the San Diego 3 Day, and I'm pretty determined to get there and walk.

The intestinal issues that have plagued me in the past couple of years have been addressed (it was simple...cola-based soft drinks apparently hate me. This was discovered by accident when I stumbled upon Snapple Diet Raspberry Tea and stopped drinking Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi, and bingo...misery cleared up) and my foot is 99% better. I have splints and special tape to use on the foot to get me through training, and I don't think it'll be too much of an issue.

I will get fit with new shoes soon.

Walking has commenced; I can still do 10 miles without problems, which is about 23 kinds of spiffy. We've gone to SF to walk around and are planning on heading that way this week to pound out a few more miles on the hills there, because it's far cooler in SF than here, and here is pretty flat and boring.

There will surely be pink hair, because what's a walk without pink hair now?

The downside to that is that my hair is no longer an effective fundraising tool. I still don't have any great ideas for that, but there is new spandex on its way so I might use that somehow...just not sure how.

I'll figure it out.

I am prepared to self fund it, no worries about that. But if you want to grab a charitable tax donation, I have a spiffy page where you can do just that.

Think I suck? You can always donate to DKM, who is doing the walk with me, and with our team The Pink Slips. We each have to raise $2300...right now we're both sitting at exactly zero.

6 September 2014

I really don't feel bad for laughing...

3 September 2014

A couple of weeks ago I traded in the pretty blue motorcycle on a pretty red one. It was a little more complicated that normal; the dealership has sold their last red one earlier in the month and all they had on the floor were a couple of fugly weird gray-green models.

Added to that: I needed the low suspension version, because my lower back no longer allows me to get on and off a taller bike without issues.

So the sales guy called around, and by the day after we asked, he'd located a single red F700 GS with a factory lowered suspension in the LA area, and they were willing to trade bikes.

Yay for me.

It got here about a week before my birthday, and I've been having some fun on it.

Now, with it being lower--only a teeny bit higher than the seat on my last bike--I didn't think I would have any problems getting on the bike or getting off of it.

But.

There's this little knob on the pillion grip bars; it's there because it's a fix-point for BMW's hard cases (saddlebags, which I do not yet have because they are freaking spendy).

While we were taking a break from a mediumish-long ride (70 miles...long for us, short for most riders) I attempted to get back on my bike to move it forward in the parking space...and did not swing my leg up high enough to get over that low height seat, and slammed it right into that freaking small knob.

That freaking small knob freaking hurts when you slam your freaking leg into it.

This is the end result, several days later. It's about the size of my palm and while it's healing quicker than I normally do, it's still very ouchy.

Still...ouchy aside, this new bike rides so smoothly, is so well balanced, and stops so much easier than the Bonneville that I'm already convinced it was the right move. I don't miss the Bonneville, even though I thought I would, probably because the ease and smoothness of the BMW overrides the prettiness of the Triumph.

Whoever winds up with the Triumph is going to love it...it just wasn't the right one from me.

And the most important thing...the new bike matches my car.

Hell, yes, that's more than half the reason I wanted the red one. IT MATCHES MY CONVERTIBLE.

Priorities, people. I haz them.

1 September 2014

I woke up at 4:20 this morning with--surprisingly--no help from Max, mostly due to the weirdness of a dream I'd had, in which I had been arguing loudly with someone about the pronunciation of the word "meme."

I contended it's pronounced "meem" because that second 'e' elongates the first. They contended it's "memm" because...reasons.

I don't know who won, but just before I woke up I called them a Farking Flaming Bag of WonderSnot. Only it wasn't "farking."

No, I didn't eat anything weird before bed.

Max was thrilled I was awake, because this meant he didn't have to work hard to get breakfast. It did mean he had to wait until 7 a.m., but he seemed all right with that.

I was up until 8:30, when the sleep bomb went off and I had to crawl back into bed. I have no idea what I was dreaming about when I woke up later, other than I had just saved the world from a contagion of evil that was turning people ginger.

Redheads, I apologize.

I don't think you're evil. At least not consciously. Well, not all of you. There was that one guy I dated just after high school...

'Course, now I won't be able to sleep tonight because I didn't get back up until almost noon, and I have to be up tomorrow because for Bast knows what reason, the insurance company is sending someone over to evaluate our house for replacement costs. We haven't had a claim, ever. We don't anticipate a claim. The only thing we can figure is they were notified of the permits pulled for the kitchen re-do. The county tax assessor wanted an itemization of costs for it, maybe the insurance company got the notice, too.

Well...I suppose I don't have to get up. She can assess right over my sleeping body, I suppose. That would assure she'll also be taking pictures, right?

Maybe I'll make the cover of USAA magazine.