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My marathon

Jun 27

Posted by Diane in All About Moi, Health and fitness

(Nina tells all on her blog here. Also, she has pictures and I don’t. Check out the arms on the chick she was running with!)

I did it! I did a marathon in almost 5 hours exactly, which was my prediction. I ran 26.2 miles/42 km and I ran the whole way! (Not that I have ANYTHING against doing a walk/run combo–that totally works as a strategy. But I knew for me that if I started walking…I wouldn’t start again.) We did the Inaugural Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon!

Leading up to the race, my two biggest fears were that I wouldn’t get any sleep at all…and that I’d sleep right through my alarm. So I set 3 different ones. Last night I told kids they had to turn off tv and lights at 10. I said, “You can stay up all night every night the rest of the trip. Tonight you need to go to bed now.” You would have thought I said, “By the way, it’s time to go work the coal mines of Numidia.” However, they were asleep in seconds.

Then, at 11, the world’s loudest motorcycles went by, blasting Michael Jackson–the rarely seen Double Fail.

I woke up before any of my alarms and set about getting ready: went to get a bucket of ice, mixed the Cytomax, set up my Camelbak, took my preventative 4 ibuprofen (I would eat 4 more during the race), got my running number ready, grabbed my iPhone, and headed out to meet Nina at the Westin Hotel, where shuttles were taking runners out to Tukwila, the starting point for the race. I was surprised when I left the hotel, shortly before 5am, because while it was cold, it wasn’t that cold. I said, “This is going to be a nice run.”

We got out to Tukwila, where it became rapidly evident that, yes, a town’s worth of people were about to run a race. It definitely felt like the Bay to Breakers, because it was just a sea of people. (And when we were lined up, ready to be let loose, it really felt like the B2B, because of the sea of humanity.) The weird thing is that, as the sun started to come up, the temperature kept getting colder. Nina and I were huddling together, unwilling to take off our outer layers until the very last moment.

Nina and I were far enough back in the sea of runners (Corral 25) that we didn’t cross the start line until 40 minutes after the first runners, or in layman’s terms “right around when somebody was probably winning the damn thing.”

(Right as we passed the start line, my Polar watch went kablooey—the screen fizzed out, it lost all of its settings, and it basically went haywire. I spent the first mile trying to reset everything on the run (rimshot). I have no idea if it just picked the worst time in the world to do that, whether all the other Polar watches interfered, or there was something about the load of electronics at the start that made it go nuts.)

The marathon was run really well. There were Cytomax/water stations every 1.5 or 2 miles, with tons of people handing runners cups as we went by, and 3 Gu stations. (Gu is a thick sugar food supplement—not unlike cake frosting, actually—that runners and other athletes use to get fast, easily digestible calories.) Lots of people came out to cheer the runners on, with massive enthusiasm. Certainly more enthusiasm than I’d show for someone else’s marathon. The bands were probably pretty good, but we only got to hear every band for 20-45 seconds as we ran by, so I can’t tell you which one was my favorite. It was nice hearing bone-rattling music as we passed by though.

And we could not have asked for better weather. Perfect temperatures, clear skies, no breeze. Exactly what we wanted when we signed up to run in Seattle.

The first 10 miles were great, running through Tukwila (which was kinda boring, sorry, Tukwila), but ending up in residential neighborhoods and parks overlooking the lake.

At about mile 10 the half-marathoners split off from the marathoners, and we ran over the floating bridge, which allowed us to do such things as gaze at Mt. Rainier. Then we rejoined the half-marathoners for a long run through a freeway tunnel, which was unpleasant on so many levels: smells, light level, sound level, claustrophobia induction. (We ended up running through two more tunnels as well, which was really not very much fun. You ever read The Stand? Yeah. It was like that.)

Nina and I disagreed about who was driving whom: she kept saying I was making her run faster, and I kept wondering who in the hell was the one who kept speeding up into hills because they felt so good on her legs. (No, seriously, I run with a woman who speeds up into hills. I can’t decide which one of us is crazier.) On hills I found myself mentally chanting either “I know I can, I know I can,” or “I can run faster than Nina can,” which never made me run faster than her but did seem to work at keeping me within a few meters of her at all times.

At mile 13.1 we stopped to eat energy bars. “I’m sore,” I said, “but I’m not hating life.” I felt pretty good, in fact. I knew the tough part was going to be mile 20 and beyond, since the longest run I’d done was one mile.

We ran down a freeway into Seattle City Center, which was pretty cool: this mass of people descending on Seattle. We split up from the half-marathoners again, this time at Qwest Field (because they had to “cross the finish line”), and we began what I would have to describe as the long, hard, unpleasant section, not only because it was the final 12 miles, but because it was all concrete. (See below.) The medical teams started giving out packets of salt, which Nina started hoovering up due to cramping she started getting in one leg. I started having aches in the muscles that connect the hips to the, uh, gluteus, which make it really, really tough to keep lifting those feet.

It was also during this stretch (miles 18-22, let’s say) that I realized all I had eaten that day was 2 protein bars, about 6 packets of Gu, and all the Cytomax I could swim in. All I’d had was sugar, and my body passed along word that if I so much as thought about eating or drinking anything else with sugar in it, I would probably vomit. I felt like if I didn’t get some actual food into my stomach soon, I was going to pass out. I don’t know how I would solve that in the future—drink less Cytomax, more water?—because I can’t eat a lot of heavy, solid food before I run. And especially not before a long run.

At mile 23, we passed the incoming finishers, which meant we had another loop ahead of us with a turnaround. Someone on our side asked people on the other side, “Mile 24?” And they said, “25.” Which meant we had another two miles to go on this open concrete stretch. We’d been running for 4.5 hours, we were both exhausted, we both felt sick from the constant sugar, and I had started having trouble keeping up with Nina.

That was the point I said, “I’ve started hating life.”

Nina did not dignify that with a response.

We discovered later that at about Mile 24 I was on the verge of saying, “I’m going to walk, you go on ahead”… and Nina was thinking of saying much the same thing to me. Which is hilarious, because Nina kept pulling ahead of me, and all of my inner monologues that had previously worked to keep me abreast of Nina stopped working. I was wondering where in the hell she was getting all the damned energy at that point.

The last bit was a downhill approach to Qwest, which rocked, because no matter how tired you were at that point, you knew the marathon finish was not that far away and you could get a little bit more out of your legs with gravity’s help. So we took off down that ramp like two bats out of hell, and the whole time I was wondering, “Are Darin and the kids here? And will I be able to pick them out of the crowd?” As it turned out, the answer to both questions was Yes! and I waved madly at them. (Nina managed to spot her husband too, surprisingly enough.) We crossed the finish line at exactly 5:06:00, which was hilarious and gratifying, given that I’d predicted a 5 hour finish.

We kept walking—you have to keep walking after a long run, or else your muscles seize up—and I made us both eat bananas, because despite the obvious sugar they contain, they have stuff like potassium and carbohydrates too. I told the woman who handed us ice-cold bottles of water that I loved her. I put my medal on and refused to take it off.

When we found Darin and the kids we discovered that he had bought a dozen doughnuts for me as a congratulations! Which was my fault, because I’d told him to, but man, did the idea of sugar really turn our stomachs at that point. This lack of marathoner/doughnut interest was okay with both my kids and the kids of my Seattle friend Mary, who was also there at the finish to see me. The kids sampled every doughnut type.

Nina and her husband took off, and Darin and our family and Mary and her family headed out to get some lunch. I didn’t care what I ate, so long as it was salty and filled with lots of starchy carbohydrates. We went to a pan-Asian food court somewhere near Chinatown, which was okay, but I discovered that I couldn’t make myself eat! I’d thought I was intensely hungry, but something about the run completely shut my system down and I could barely eat anything. I figured my system would adjust as soon as it figured out I didn’t have to eat pasty Gu any more.

Mary took my kids with her while Darin walked me back to the hotel. In hindsight: despite the benefits of walking after a long run, the walk was really too much for me and we should have just taken the free bus service. I limped terribly at the end, mostly because of my sore hips (and I’ve been limping all day since). Darin left me in the room and rejoined Mary and the kids. I bathed (to try to soothe my legs a little), showered (because I’d just run 26.2 miles), and sacked out for an hour. You’d think that, having woken up at 4am and done some strenuous exercise, my body might want to put me down for, I dunno, at least 1.5 hours, but you’d be wrong.

I got up, rejoined the gang, and we all had a fabulous picnic lakeside, with the kids frolicking in the water! Turned out I’d run by this beach earlier in the day, though I had to admit I didn’t actually remember it.

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Bests and Worsts of the Marathon

Worst marathon preparation failure (almost): I forgot to pack a sports bra (but thankfully discovered this yesterday). Turns out Niketown doesn’t carry them. However, there is always Nordstrom, which has everything you could ever need. A marathon is not really the day you want to break in a new piece of athletic gear, especially not one that’s so, uh, close to your heart. Only thing worse would have been forgetting my shoes.

Worst marathon preparation failure (actual): I forgot to apply sunscreen. I was in such a hurry this morning, I just forgot. This turned out to be a perfect way to stripe my body in red and white. You can tell exactly where the edges of my shorts were. Oh yes, and: OW.

Worst marathon result (possibly unpreventable): I developed a perfectly round dime-sized blister on my right big toe. One of the things I’ve learned with long-distance running: how to drain blisters. You need a needle, rubbing alcohol (to sterilize the needle), and the fortitude to stick the needle through healthy skin to get to the blister. Yay. In addition, the nail my right second toe feels weirdly numb, like it got bruised or something. It looks fine now, but it still feels like hell.

Best sighting: An American bald eagle, in a tree, watching us run by. I said, “This marathon’s organizers went all out in getting attractions for us.”

Best conversation during the run:

“I’m sorry, this is going to mess up our time, but the next time we see a porta-potty I have to stop.”

“Time? You think I care about our time? At this point all I care about is pain management.”

Weirdest conversation during the run: When Nina and I both admitted we were working on our blog entries in our heads.

Worst company name: The porta-potty vendor was named “Honey Bucket.”

Worst snafu: I’d signed up for Darin to get texts informing him of my progress. Worked great for 9 miles…then nothing. Finally they sent a text telling him they were having issues—which he’d kind of guessed, given that I had already finished. (Their website, however, worked fine at informing him of my progress, so it was a good thing he knew my runner number.)

Best inspirational sign: “NO BAILOUT FOR YOU! Keep running.”

Worst runner habit: Seriously, people, have you never heard of “Runners left, walkers right?” if people continuously run around both sides of you, move to the RIGHT.

Weirdest runner habit: A woman was running with her hands down by her sides, without moving them back and forth. Try it. You’ll probably fall over.

Best t-shirt: Worn by the two young women who were wearing t-shirts that read

Non-refundable wedding deposit: $6000

Non-refundable wedding dress deposit: $1500

Cost of entering Seattle Rock and Roll Marathon: $150

Celebrating the “ex” in front of fiancé: priceless

Worst place to put a band (tie): 1) Inside one of the freeway tunnels; 2) Right across the freeway from another, louder band.

Best music: Let’s see, I have 25 bands to choose from, so I’m going to go with… DJ Steveboy of Podrunner! DJ Steveboy has basically made our running regimen possible with his mixes at various beats per minute—I’m convinced he’s a major part of why I’ve graduated from 12 minutes per mile to 9-10 minutes per mile. (Yes, the marathon turned out to be about 11 minutes per mile, but we stopped for porta-potties and stuff.) If you do any running at all, use Podrunner. It is Teh Awesum.

Meanest marathon course trick: We ran to Qwest Field…and then veered away again for another 10-12 miles before returning to finish. So mean!

Why I’d do this marathon again: Very well-run, lots of enthusiastic participants and supporters, extremely scenic.

Why I wouldn’t do this marathon again: The last 10 miles or so were on concrete. I think my Seattle friends called this stretch “the Embarcadero,” if that tells you were it is: it’s the freeway that runs along the shipping areas. The order of surfaces you want to run on are 1) dirt, 2) asphalt, 3) concrete. Concrete has absolutely no give to it, so it’s just hell on the joints, and I think it’s a big part of the hurt I have now. (The other part being, of course, I just ran 26 miles.)

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I am utterly thrilled I’ve actually done it! After so much time spent thinking about doing one—and having gotten horribly sick the last time I was supposed to do one, thereby missing out—I am just psyched that I’ve actually accomplished it!

2 Comments

Food, Inc.: the review

Jun 24

Posted by Diane in Cooking and Food, Movies, Politics

We went to see Food, Inc. last night—we are at the cornucopia section of the summer, where there are so many movies we want to see, yet instead of the three options I usually send Darin for our movie choices, I sent him only this one. It’s a documentary, it’s not a fun topic, gosh only knows how long it will be in theaters. So off we went to see it, and of course Darin ran into someone he knows. (This is a fairly frequent occurrence, honestly.) I did get my usual Red Vines, but Darin passed on the popcorn. Which, really, was all for the best.

Food, Inc. is sort of a greatest hits of current factory farming/industrial food complex criticism that we’ve read about from such writers as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma), both of whom are featured prominently in the film. Their theses are, to logline it: We have become removed from the source of our food; if we knew what went into our food we’d demand serious change; it is in everyone’s best interest to be fully informed about what the food manufacturers are presenting to us.

The movie presents an overview of the major factors involved with the industrial-caloric complex: the political, the economic, the medical, and the environmental. The political, showing the toothlessness of the federal government (when the USDA can’t even shut down processing plants known to be producing unsanitary food). The economic, where food—by which I mean food “product,” or the crap that litters our stores—is made so cheap by the vast corn subsidies our government gives “farmers,” by which mean the multibillion dollar conglomerates like Archer Daniels Midland or ConAgra or Tyson. The medical, where there’s no debate about how our modern Western diet is killing us. The environmental, where the runoff from the CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, where animals are grown and live their entire lives in a cesspool of their own manure) is destroying watersheds, killing towns, and encouraging the growth of diseases like our old friend, e coli.

I also have to criticize the movie for sacrificing depth for breadth. For example, one section of the movie is the story about the low-income family who can afford dinner for a family of 4 at the Burger King drive-through (primarily because everything at Burger King is heavily processed food, dependent on the ubiquity of cheap corn). The family goes to the supermarket to find healthier, fresher choices and they simply can’t afford it. Broccoli is not deeply subsidized. Burger King is. The father is taking various medications for diabetes, the cost of which severely reduces their food budget even more. The younger daughter is now at risk for developing diabetes soon. The film gives us lots of statistics about the rise of diabetes in our country…but then assumes we know the connection between this food and the diabetes, because it sure as hell doesn’t explain it to us.

The clear culprit of our current food system is the corn subsidy. Surprisingly, the film doesn’t call for the subsidy to be ended (or at least severely changed). That may be the take-away they’re hoping we get from it, but it never says it out loud. Of course, maybe they’re worried about being sued about that kind of thing. The film does explain that, unless you’re Oprah and have the money to pay the team of lawyers to fight the Man, you’d better shut up and keep your head down, or otherwise the ranchers/Monsanto/other will sue you to kingdom come.

Many people say, If the price of food rises, people won’t be able to afford it! The answer to that one is pretty goddamn clear to me: we can’t afford what we’ve got going on now, and if people can’t afford it, it’s time to pay them some more goddamn money, isn’t it. (And stop making them spend most of their food budget on diabetes medications.) Our American way of life is not sustainable, and we have to rethink what our real priorities are here. If Food, Inc. gets people curious about the topic, so much the better.

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If you are interested in this topic and don’t know where to start, here are some great books to check out. They’re popular science, meaning they’re written for normal human beings to read. (With the possible exception of The China Study, which has lots and lots of scientific studies and research for the biggest wonk to wade through, but you can still read plenty of stuff in there without going cross-eyed.)

  • Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser.

  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

  • In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. This is a good overview of the problems and issues confronting us in the modern food age and asks us to really think about what we’re going to do about it.

  • Food Matters by Mark Bittman. I like Bittman’s food writing for the NY Times a lot, and this book is another good overview of the issues we need to deal with, like, NOW about our the industrial-caloric complex. Plus: recipes!

  • Food Politics by Marion Nestle. This is an excellent in-depth investigation of what makes it to your plate and why.

  • What To Eat by Marion Nestle. After Food Politics so many of her friends said, “So what am I supposed to eat, anyhow?” Nestle then went into a supermarket and investigated what the hell is actually on the shelves. Wonderful reference tome.

  • Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People In the World by Greg Critser. Critser investigates where all this cheap corn came from (the Nixon administration) and the effects it’s had on our food and our health. If you want an explanation of what high fructose corn syrup is and why it’s bad for you, check this out.

  • The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. If, like me (being a good indoctrinated American), you said, What on Earth can we learn from the Chinese about nutrition, the starvation of whom we’ve been made guilty about for years? Well, this ain’t the Cultural Revolution and China exports food to us. (Think about that.) Campbell makes it pretty clear that the absolute first line of defense against what’s known as “the Western diseases” is what goes into our mouth. You can argue with his conclusions—but this is a pretty dense scientific tome and he’s published, y’know, actual scientific papers on these topics.

  • The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. Singer is a philosopher who specializes in the ethics of our food choices, which seems specialized and arcane until you realize it touches just about every single aspect of our lives. The book uses three families who have very different food philosophies (fast food, organic and free range food, vegan) as the jumping-off point to investigate where we get our food from and why it matters. I absolutely will not eat turkey ever again after reading this book (sorry, Aunt Lil, but no way, no how, am I eating turkey this Thanksgiving, or ever again at any other time). Singer is vegan but he doesn’t disparage the families who choose to eat meat: he investigates why and and where their food is coming from.

Feel free to suggest others in comments.

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In my continuing quest to go vegetarian cut way back on the amount of animal products I consume (I’m sorry, I’m such a weenie, I’m just not a labels person), I have started made it my default behavior to search restaurant menus for the most vegan meal possible. That is to say: a salad without cheese as a main listed ingredient >> a salad with cheese >> a salad with fish >> fried chicken sandwich with slab o’cheese and mayo.

Holy God, it’s nearly impossible.

Seriously, play this game at the next restaurant you go to. Look for the vegetarian dish. Find the meal where you can easily remove the animal products and have anything left. When vegetarians complain about pretty much being offered green salad (and usually iceberg at that) or maybe some roasted vegetables on pasta, they are not kidding. There is such a huge range of vegetarian cuisine out there and the general public does not see any of it, unless they go to an ethnic restaurant, such as Indian or Ethiopian. (Many vegetarian entrees at Chinese restaurants are often cooked in chicken broth, so that’s a big ol’ No.) And there’s an upper limit, even for me, on the amount of falafel and hummus I can consume. Admittedly, it’s a pretty high upper limit, but a limit nonetheless.

No wonder people think vegetarians are odd: they’ve been crammed into the odd corner.

I’ve taken to using apps such as VeganXpress and VegOut to try to find someplace in the neighborhood to get something to eat. I think I need a few new ones to help me out. If you have any suggestions, leave ‘em in comments.

After the movie last night we went to Rock Bottom Brewery, where I played the “anything but iceberg lettuce” game—I have nothing against salads, salads are the best, I actually love eating huge gigantic salads now, but I don’t want that to be my only thing—and came up with… the Tex-Asian vegetable potstickers. Which turned out to be (more or less) samosas in a vaguely potstickerish wrap. Well, I guess it’s a start.

8 Comments

More about clothing sizes and running

Jun 13

Posted by Diane in All About Moi, Fashion, Health and fitness

A couple of months ago I wrote about clothing sizes and how it’s not vanity sizing, it’s how manufacturers deal with their target market. It’s all true, I stand by everything I said. It’s not vanity! There’s no such thing as an archetypal size 8! It’s all based on the market and the sizes of the customer!

But still. These sizes. It’s crazy.

I recently measured myself and I’m basically the same size I was at 22. Yeah, I know: Go Team Diane! But finding clothes is getting hard. I bought a pair of size 4 Gap Long and Lean jeans on Mother’s Days, and they’re somewhat loose now. This body, 20 years ago, I was a size 8, maybe a size 6 with these legs—how in the hell can I be a size 4? Size 4 is for skinny people! And no matter what my running bud Nina says, I don’t feel especially twig-like. It’s not me, it’s the clothes, which is to say, it’s the population.

(What we learn from this is: Anyone who’s kept the same pants size for a decade or two? Hasn’t, if you know what I mean.)

What’s ridiculous is, a size 6 skirt I bought shortly before I got pregnant with Sophia (that would be 10 years ago! gack!) is still tight. And that Calvin Klein skirt (also size 6) I was so looking forward to wearing again? Yeah, it just looks kinda silly on me now—I’m guessing my parts are not quite shaped the way they were, even if they measure the same. Apparently clothing sizes have been adjusted downwards a lot in just the past 10 years. Alas, I am going to have to let the CK go, because I just don’t feel comfortable in it. Wah wah wah.

(And just in case you’re wondering, I have almost the exact same measurements as Marilyn Monroe did, according to this page, except my waist is 29, not 22. I can’t quite fathom a 22 inch waist, frankly. Your envy of Darin’s good fortune may commence now.)

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Nina and I did a 15 mile run today, and at mile 13 she said, “Are you tired?”

“Hell yes, I’m tired. I’m still waiting for my runner’s body to show up and this won’t hurt anymore.”

“I know, I’m wondering where mine is too.”

It’s just not fair that we’re doing all this running and all this training and it’s still hard. A six-mile run feels pretty normal these days; a 15-mile run feels like someone whapped me hard with a tire iron. And over the past several weekends I’ve done: 15 miles, 17 miles, 15 miles, 20 miles, and 15 miles. You’d think I’d have adjusted by now. But no: 15 miles still feels killer.

I’ve got to remember to bring ibuprofen for the marathon, because I need to be proactive on the pain.

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Vanity Fair done me in

Jun 5

Posted by Diane in Books and Magazines, Uncategorized

I’ve subscribed to Vanity Fair for years. Years. Maybe twenty years. I had a roommate in college who subbed to it, and she described to me its wonderfulness, with pictorial spreads of Giorgio Armani clothing (I had to say, “Who’s that?” because I was so out of it) and gushing suck-up articles on celebrities, balanced with really wonderful and intelligent in-depth political and global work that was clearly being paid for by the pictorial spreads and gushing suck-ups. So be it.

During the oh-so-crucial shopping season of September through December, during which glossy magazines swell like so many Octomoms with their endless advertisements, Vanity Fair led me to invent a new verb, “to vanityfair,” which means, “to rip out the gigantic quantity of ads from the magazines, sometimes reducing its thickness by over a third.”

Every so often I’d say, “God, this magazine sucks, I have to stop getting it,” but then they’d have another article that was totally wonderful and unexpected and I’d start liking it again.

But they’ve done it. They’ve finally managed to get me off my ass and cancel my subscription.

Last month, they had Jessica Simpson on the cover. Why? I don’t know. The story was all about how she’s not fat, she’s gorgeous. I don’t know that much about her, and I knew when I first heard the “Jessica Simpson is fat” stories that they were all an attempt to get some attention and sympathy. To have Vanity Fair waste my time with that story made me go, “Oh, please, do we really not have any celebrities any more?”

(In fact, we don’t, not really. The reason we have Brad and Angelina on the checkout stand every week—well, maybe you do; thankfully, my supermarket does not have checkout tabloids, yay Lunardi’s—is that they are recognizable to a vast audience and have great crossover appeal. The great expansion of the entertainment infosphere through hundreds of channels and the internet and iPods and such has led to inevitable schisms of domain—now there are tons and tons of celebrities, all of whom are known to a smaller and smaller audience. Movies are targeted to extremely narrow audiences: the likelihood that anyone over the age of 35 knows the name Shia LaBeouf, let alone what he looks like or how to spell his name, is pretty damn low, which is why he was in that stupid Indiana Jones movie last summer.)

But no, it wasn’t even Jessica Simpson that did me in. It was their 87 millionth article in a row on the great travails caused by Bernie Madoff.

They could not say any louder that they are New York-centric; they couldn’t be any clearer that the magazine is designed to be read by people that range from the Upper West Side to the Long Island Expressway. They have lots of New York things and nothing else. It’s tiresome and incestuous, it really is.

I know Bernie Madoff did a very bad thing. But it’s really not Topic #1 everywhere in the country. It’s really not the most interesting thing to happen ever, you know?

No, apparently Vanity Fair doesn’t know, because in this month’s issue (possibly my last), there’s another goddamn Bernie Madoff article.

The obvious criticism, of course, is that Bernie Madoff is exactly the kind of uber-successful, high-flying financier that Vanity Fair has extolled and sucked up to for years. Their endless investigations of the criminality of the Bush years does not make up for their continual praise of the Bush gang while things were good. (Really bugged me at the time too.)

Anyhow, in case VF is wondering why they lost another subscriber, that’s why!

6 Comments

A couple of pix

Apr 26

Posted by Diane in All About Moi

I’m not sure the difference is really noticeable here—in fact, if you ask me, it’s hard to see any difference at all. (But I may be slightly biased about this.) Here is me last July, at Mystic Seaport, doing the Fat Mom Hiding Behind the Kids pose, at about 177 pounds:

July.jpg

And here I am today, after a run with Rob, at about 145 pounds:

today.jpg

If you can’t see a difference…just STFU and don’t tell me about it, okay?

6 Comments

Followup to yesterday

Apr 23

Posted by Diane in Cooking and Food, Politics

Darin points out that the supremely stupid Maureen Dowd column (redundancy alert!) about Twitter contains the following exchange:

ME: Do you ever think “I don’t care that my friend is having a hamburger?”

BIZ: If I said I was eating a hamburger, Evan would be surprised because I’m a vegan.

Enough with the burgers already. We need to find a new standard food.

(Admittedly, Biz’s response is somewhat of a non-sequitur. Okay, more than just somewhat.)

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Today’s puzzlement (for Earth Day)

Apr 22

Posted by Diane in Cooking and Food

I’ve become interested in vegetarianism and veganism recently. I’d like to say I’ve suddenly developed compassion for other species—any other species…actually, let’s include ours in there too…except I haven’t. In fact I was most deeply affected in this respect by the book Food Matters by Mark Bittman, which I read on our recent trip to Hawaii.

There wasn’t anything particularly new in the book, I’d read the various things in bits and pieces elsewhere, but for some reason, the way he juxtaposed the effects of factory farming on the environment (for instance: the fabulous fact that raising livestock creates more greenhouse gases than does all of transportation…cars, planes, the whole nine yards) and the effects of our diet on our health (which I’ve known) and came up with Change Or Die really made a big impact on me. Here’s Bittman on the subject at a TED conference.

Bittman’s strategy of eating “vegan until six” makes a lot of sense to me (though of course I haven’t done it yet): eat a strong plant-based diet until dinnertime, at which point nothing is off the menu, although after a while you’re going to lean much more heavily toward the vegetables and greenery and use the meats as a condiment, not as a main course. And as a convenient side effect you’re going to find your health improve and your weight drop. Just a side note.

Between “vegan until six” and Michael Pollan’s seven words mantra, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” it seems really easy to choose what direction to head in.

I really like Bittman; I think How To Cook Everything is a fabulous general cookbook, and I am looking forward to picking up How To Cook Everything Vegetarian. (Well, after our remodel is done. Not buying more stuff now!) I am also bored crapless with the meals we’ve been having. I can see the kids aren’t going to be thrilled by moving to a more vegetarian diet, but my theory on dinner runs something like this: “You can eat it, or you can not eat it. There is nothing else being served.” So maybe they’ll adjust.

And by the way, if you don’t buy what Bittman or Pollan has to say, maybe you’ll buy Barack Obama:

(Let’s all take a moment to imagine how George W. Bush would have responded to that question. Or pronounced the word “vegan,” for that matter.)

Anyhow, so I’ve been reading up more on vegetarianism and veganism (hilariously, I’ve discovered that the built-in Macintosh dictionary doesn’t recognize the word “veganism”—uh, guys, you might want to get on that before someone shows up in your office with a flamethrower), and I’ve noticed something omnivores do whenever the subject comes up. It’s like a tic. A really, really weird tic that makes me go “Hmmm.” Obama does it in that YouTube video. In the letters to a recent Salon story about Jeffery Masson’s appeal to veganism, letter-writers did it over and over again. The general gist of it goes like this:

I like to eat steak.

or:

What you need is a good cheeseburger.

And all I can think every single damn time I see it is: Is somebody a little defensive about something?

It’s always about cow meat. It’s always specifically about consuming cow meat and how it’s superior to all other forms of food. I know that Americans worship this idea of the West and cattle ranchers and what have you, but…the knee-jerk defensiveness makes me think: You guys know there’s something wrong with your diet, right?

It is impossible to be informed about our current food production system and our understanding of nutrition and keep to the standard American diet with any confidence or gusto. Consuming cow does not make you superior; in fact, depending on the kind of cow, it could make you quite sick.

We know there’s something wrong. We know we can’t continue the way we’ve been going. And the entire world can’t move to our diet (which they are trying damn hard to do), because if they do the entire freaking ecological system is going to collapse. (Seriously. Look into it.) Start with yourself and discover different ways of eating that don’t depend on cutting up other living beings (that have a central nervous system—don’t go for that canard again).

And stop with mentioning the cheeseburgers already, unless you want to signal that you secretly know how bad your diet is.

Update: And indeed, the letters to this Huffington Post column about the enivronmental dangers of livestock production continue this you-will-pry-my-steak-from-my-cold-dead-fingers meme apace.

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It can’t be said often enough

Apr 21

Posted by Diane in Politics

Via Making Light, Charles Pierce at Eric Alterman’s blog:

I have now lived through three major episodes in my life where the political elite have told me quite plainly that neither I nor my fellow citizens are sufficiently mature to suffer the public prosecution of major crimes committed within my government. The first was when Gerry Ford told me I wasn’t strong enough to handle the sight of Richard Nixon in the dock. Dick Cheney looked at this episode and determined that the only thing Nixon did wrong was get caught. The second time was when the entire government went into spasm over the crimes of the Iran-Contra gang and I was told that I wasn’t strong enough to see Ronald Reagan impeached or his men packed off to Danbury. Dick Cheney looked at this and determined that the only thing Reagan and his men did wrong was get caught and, by then, Cheney had decided that even that wasn’t really so very wrong and everybody should shut up. Now, Barack Obama, who won election by telling the country and its people that they were great because of all they’d done for him, has told me that I am not strong enough to handle the prosecution of pale and vicious bureaucrats, many of them acting at the behest of Dick Cheney, who decided that the only thing he was doing wrong was nothing at all, who have broken the law, disgraced their oaths, and manifestly belong in a one-room suite at the Hague. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m sick and goddamn tired of being told that, as a citizen, I am too fragile to bear the horrible burden of watching public criminals pay for their crimes and that, as a political entity, my fellow citizens and I are delicate flowers encased in candy-glass who must be kept away from the sight of men in fine suits weeping as they are ripped from the arms of their families and sent off to penal institutions manifestly more kind than those in which they arranged to get their rocks off vicariously while driving other men mad.

Hey, Mr. President. Put these barbarians on trial and watch me. I’ll be the guy out in front of the courtroom with a lawn chair, some sandwiches, and a cooler of fine beer. I’ll be the guy who hires the brass band to serenade these criminal bastards on their way off to the big house. I’ll be the one who shows up at every one of their probation hearings with a copy of the Constitution, the way crime victims show up at the parole board when their attacker comes up for release. I’ll declare a national holiday–Victory Over Torture Day–and lead the parade right up whatever gated street it is that Cheney lives on these days. Trust me, Mr. President. I can take it.

Everyone who was involved—everyone—in approving these decisions, from the top down, needs to be on trial. Open it up. Let us see what was done ostensibly in our country’s name. Better yet, put them on trial at the Hague—oh, but we don’t belong to the International Criminal Court! Isn’t that convenient!

We’re plenty strong out here, Mr. President. If you keep hiding this from us, we’re going to keep on doing it.

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What happened

Apr 20

Posted by Diane in All About Moi

Well, the short answer is: “I still don’t know, because they’ve put me in this room and thank goodness I have my Mac and my iPhone so I can be entertained some.” (Yes, welcome to your modern hospital, with its free wifi for guests!)

§

This morning I left the house to go to a local cafe and do some writing. I got my nonfat vanilla latte, I sat up on one of the bar stools at the marble bar, and I bent over to plug my Mac into one of the power strips they have hidden on the underside of the bar. No charge. That was annoying. I leaned over to unplug it from the strip –

Suddenly I had this pain in my left side, below my rib cage, above my hip, like I’d pulled a muscle. I thought, “That’s a weird way to pull a muscle…” But it just kept getting worse, like I’d really pulled something horrible there, and I thought, “Did I just give myself a hernia?” (I’ve never had a hernia, I know nothing about them other than they “pop out,” and whatever this muscle pull was, it felt like it was popping out.)

I sat up straight, and the muscle still cramped. So I stood up.

And I immediately started to black out.

I often get lightheaded when I stand up (ah, low blood pressure), but this time my vision actually started to go. I gripped on to the bar stool or something to keep me standing up.

A woman came over to me and said, “Are you okay?” She sat me down in a chair and told me to put my head between my knees. She asked for my name, asked me what happened, and then called someone — apparently not 911, but whoever it was dispatched paramedics to the cafe. They arrived approximately 45 seconds later. Okay, maybe not really, but seriously, they had to have been at the next cafe over they got there so fast. They set up their little high-tech monitoring station, checking my heart rate, checked my blood pressure, checked to see if my side was still hurting (it’d stopped almost as soon as I’d stood up), and since I reported I wasn’t quite at 100%, the main guy said, “Which hospital you want to go to?”

Oh, SIGH. Okay. But I want you to know I agreed to do it only because this set of paramedics had to have been cast by Hollywood: they were seriously the best-looking group of men I’ve seen in a long time and spending more time with them was not a hardship.

They stuck an oxygen tube in my nose, hefted me onto a gurney, and wheeled me out to the ambulance. I answered lots of questions over and over. I said, “This is probably easier than some of your runs, huh?” The guy sitting with me said, “Yeah, you don’t smell like feces or vomit.” They had an EMT student in the ambulance, and they asked if I minded if he practiced on me. Whee! I’m a crash-test dummy!

Wheeled me into the hospital, took my blood pressure, my heart rate, my oxygenation. Told me to pee into a cup (seriously, is there not a better version of this someone could some up with for women?). Handed me a gown. Told me to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

It’s 1:00 now, so it’s been…3 hours? I have to get the kids in another hour. The doctor (who eventually stopped by, and asked all the same questions again) said he thought it was a muscle strain…or an ovarian cyst, so we really need an ultrasound. Since I’ve recently gone up on my oblique sidebend exercise at the gym–I hold a 42.5 lb. dumbbell doing that one; fear me!–I’m rooting for muscle strain, myself. I still feel lightheaded, but I haven’t eaten since 8:30 and I usually have both a midmorning snack and lunch by this time, so I’m not sweating the lightheadedness.

Mostly this is just boring. There’s a machine outside my room that goes BOING every 10 seconds. EVERY TEN SECONDS. I had someone come in to adjust my gown because apparently I was showing too much leg and then she pulled my curtain closed…which just then opened it that much on the other side. Thank goodness I have my Mac with me, because I would be bored bored BORED without it.

And that is today’s fun.

2:12pm Update: After 3 hours here, I asked the nurse for some water. No, she said, you need an ultrasound and your bladder needs to be empty. 45 minutes later I asked again and she gave me a small cup, telling me not to drink it all.

Then the ultrasound tech came by and mentioned that my bladder needs to be full.

The nurse came in and said, Was I okay with having a catheter to FILL my bladder?

I said, No, I’ll do it the old-fashioned way, kthxbai. <insert steaming angry emoticon here> So now I am drinking as much water as I possibly can. Hopefully this means I am on the fast-track (HAHAHAHAHA) to getting the hell out of here.

Final Update:
A friend got my kids at school, took them for ice cream, then took them to Club Swanky (where they practically live anyhow).

Darin came by at 3pm to stay with me, which was good, because after I drank a ton of water ultrasound wasn’t ready to see me. When they finally got me in there, the tech told me my bladder wasn’t nearly full enough (and I told her to stop pressing too hard on that particular spot, because “bladder not full” had a different truth value depending on which side of it you’re on). She managed to get the images she needed anyhow, all of which showed…nothing. No kidney problems, no ovarian cyst, nothing that they could see that would have caused that pain I’d had.

The doctor looked at all my tests and said, “No idea what happened.” Okay, he didn’t use those terms, but that was the upshot. General thought is that I did strain my oblique muscle and then cut off blood supply when I stood up too quickly.

Except for the fact that I’ve had low blood pressure my whole damn life and I know how to stand up without passing out…that sounds great. Where do I sign so I can get out of here?

We got the kids, went out to dinner, and came home.

It’s sort of frustrating that this anomalous incident is completely inexplicable, although I suppose that’s better than finding something horrible.

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Updates: me, movies, and how much Lost rocks

Apr 17

Posted by Diane in All About Moi, Health and fitness, Movies, TV

In no particular order:

  • Much to my own amazement, since my decision not to drink alcohol because it’s interfering with my exercise plan, I have not in fact had any alcohol. There was one night I actually wanted to have a cocktail, but we didn’t have a lot of time and I did have to work out the next day, so I passed. Saying no to margaritas at La Fiesta is pretty goshdarned hard, though. They make a very tasty, and very deadly, margarita.

  • I know I need to post some pix of My! Amazing! Transformation!™. I need to get batteries for my camera. How lame of an excuse is that? And yet: oh so true.

  • My guilty pleasure these days: SecretTweet. I have no idea if these are real or not, but unless they start mentioning space aliens or something, they could be. This is the kind of thing that makes me appreciate my own life more.

  • Movies we’ve seen recently:

    • Sin Nombre: I don’t know the provenance behind this movie. I was looking for something to see and I used the Rotten Tomatoes score to come up with one. It’s a film in Spanish with subtitles about a family trying to get to US from Honduras, and a boy who’s part of a violent, territorial Mexican gang, how they meet, and what happens. The simplicity of the storylines and the tightness of the focus on the story I think shows it’s clearly a first film by a young writer/director, but he’s a very talented writer/director who is interested in issues that have no easy and clean solutions.

    • Adventureland: It’s a very sweet look at summer 1987 after a kid graduates from college before he starts grad school. I’m kind of disturbed that 1987 = historical flick though. I liked it, but it was a small movie. I’m also kind of tired of movies in which everyone’s shared experience is one that I have nothing in common with. At least it’s not as bad as when I watch a high school movie and might as well be watching an artifact from a lost African culture for all I have in common with it.

    • Sunshine Cleaning: An interesting indie film that suffered from one too few passes on the script. Yes, the scriptwriter is saying this. There was some really good material in here, but it needed…I don’t know. Some kind of oomph. And less randomness.

    • I Love You Man: Paul Rudd is every girl’s fantasy boyfriend—the fantasy boyfriend you could bring home to mother. (You save the other fantasy boyfriend for…well…you know.) It was definitely an enjoyable flick, and I remember very, very little about it, other than they didn’t do the obvious (and so overdone) thing of having Rudd’s character end up in a fracas with another woman, leading his girlfriend to draw the wrong conclusions! which I was definitely expecting.

    • Monsters vs. Aliens: Jesus, does Pixar make it look easy, and then everyone else makes it look so hard. I don’t even remember that much about MvA, other than I was impressed that Hugh Laurie can do yet another accent that isn’t his normal voice. Such a great title though. Man, such a great title.

  • There are simply no words to describe how much “Lost” has rocked since they, in the words of Entertainment Weekly, decided to “let the freak flag fly.” You know none of the actors signed up to be part of a sci-fi/ancient Egyptians/ghosts/assassins/time travel/comedy/romance/action/adventure spectacular, and you know just as hard that the writers/creators could give a flying fuck what the actors signed up for. They have an end date! They don’t have to spin this out forever! Let’s ROCK this town!

  • Darin says the official “Lost” podcast by Damon and Carleton is Teh Awesum, so you should listen to that. (I have zero time to listen to anything, I’m finding, so I have not added it to any of my iPods, but I laugh like a hyena when Darin recounts the latest one.)

  • And, as always: Actors, there are no small parts, only small actors. Michael Emerson signed for two or maybe three episodes. And he took over the entire damn series. You can do it, folks.

  • I thought “The Unusuals,” a new cop show on ABC, was going to be about a precinct of detectives in NYC who have very strange, minor superpowers. I like my idea for the show much better than theirs: It turns out to be a very boring police procedural about a bunch of cops Who Are Quirky. We took it off the list of stuff to be recorded during the first half hour.

  • I was mostly satisfied by the “Battlestar Galactica” finale—so long as they ended without Galactica, say, plunging into a nearby sun with everyone on board I was going to be okay. (The show was so dark for the last half season I honestly didn’t know what they were going to do.) As Ted Tally says, you have to give your audience a little glimmer of hope at the end. Just a tad. I think the BSG guys didn’t have as tight a grip on their stuff as the Lost guys do, but there was still so much wonderful stuff in there over 4 years I don’t care. (For example: if you’re going to start every episode with the statement that the Cylons have a plan, get a kilo of cocaine, lock all the writers in a room for the weekend, and figure out that damn plan before you go Season 2, okay? Remember that for next time.)

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