Lent 2009

I'm not catholic (i was raised episcopalian) but i do celebrate / honor lent. it's one of my favorite religious practices because it provides an opportunity to reflect for a lengthy period of time about something in particular. Plus it ends with easter whcih has all these great "rebirth" overtones (plus bunnies & chocolate!) Over the years I've given up lots of things for lent - sweets being the most popular choice.

This year I have decided to give up "non-whole grains." What does that mean? Basically I'm not eating processed grains. The grains I eat need to have the whole kernel with the wheat germ and all the fiber from the outer bran layer of the wheat, and all the protein from the inner endosperm.

In general, as I restructure my diet, I want to focus on local, whole, and organic foods. I love breads (and carbs) but I don't think they always serve me well...and since i'm good with rules, I've decided that this would be a good way to try life without processed carbs for a meaningful period of time.

So what can I eat?
- whole wheat bread (i'm going to check on this as i may need to go to whole grain not whole wheat)
- steel-cut oats
- stoneground things (like corn) or organic farina (i.e. stone ground wheat berries)
- barley, buckwheat, quinoa, millet
- brown rice

things i can't eat (and will miss):
- french bread!
- cupcakes
- any kind of instant cereal
- granola (i think -- i'm checking on this one)
- luna bars

There are many more things I can't eat...

I do have two exceptions planned -- i hadn't realized lent started so soon!
(1) Dinner at the corson building (where i went tonight -- and it was awesome)
(2) Dinner in CA with my family at some Indian restaurant tomorrow night.

Outside of these two identified exceptions, i'm going to rigorously keep to this lent commitment. i'm excited!

Hai-Cuba

My good friend wrote a haiku for my dog, Cuba, who passed away in December. She shared it at the memorial we had for Cubes. It's awesome.


Hai-Cuba

Small, grey, and fuzzy.
Her size not matching her heart.
Beloved by all.

It's a funny thing ...
how something so darn tiny
can mean everything.

Onward she frolicks
in fields and gardens above.
Down here, we miss her.

my little dog, cuba: 2006-2008

my little dog, cuba, died on weds dec 10th. she died from complications from an emergency surgery she had on monday. she ate a rock -- i will never know or understand why -- and she had to have it removed. unfortunately the surgeon made a mistake and didn't close her intestines completely causing her body to go septic over the next 48 hours. i was there when she died and i think a part of me - a cuba-sized - part of me died too.

cuba was a 5 lb morkie -- a maltease yorkie mix. I got her when she was 6-weeks old. she completely changed my life - she had a frolicky, whimsical spirit that brightened every room. over the last 2+ years we spent a lot of time together - she traveled with me, she went shopping with me, in many ways she has been my closest and dearest companion. now that she is gone, i'm a little bit lost and i'm lonely. I feel that gap in my life and i miss her cheerful, sprite-like greetings when i came home. i miss snuggling in the morning and going on our exploratory walks all over queen anne. she may have been little, but her favorite thing was to go on walks and check-in on the neighbors.

Someone wrote to me that cuba represented a sweet and disarming part of me. I think that's true, she often acted as my ambassador - providing sweet joy to those around with little licks and some of her cute moves (downward dog stretches, over the shoulder winks, running around for toys, jumping with glee). She had a lot of cuteness to her. She would eat her food one piece at time -- i'd line it up in a row and she would eat each one bit by bit. it was adorable and silly.

i'm so sad by the tragic circumstances and i feel that time was stolen because of human error. losing a pet is always hard, the unexpectedness of it, i think, has made it a bit harder for me. i am incredibly grateful for my friends and family (and my co-workers). they have all been amazing. i'm not a very emotional person, but this has broken me and i'm deeply sad. my friends have come and taken care of me - cooked me food, taken me out, saved me from complete loneliness. my dad has come up to stay with me for a few days. it's been great and the connectedness i've felt from all the support has been a blessing.

i don't yet know how to commemorate my little one properly. the nearness of her is still close - i woke up this morning expecting her little self to be in bed with me.

all i can say is this: cuba, my little morkie, was awesome. i cherished my time with her -- and i loved her completely. i will miss you little one.

Below are some cuba pictures -- for more go here.

WOOOHOOO! Obama!

Last night, at the War Room in Seattle, I watched as Barack Obama was elected president. I am so excited! Change has come to America and wooohooo i am ready to do my part!

Here's a pic from last night -- what's missing is the champagne and the cheering.


I was glad to be in seattle, a city that is quickly growing on me now that I actually admit to living here :) At the same time, my people back in CA are having a rough morning as it looks like Prop 8 will pass. It provides a bittersweet reminder that we have a lot of work to do.

sunny in seattle

i am so happy with this weather forecast:

it's a little bit geeky ...

a couple of weekends ago David and I went to San Juan island for a mini-break. It was awesome (as you can see from the pics). We did hit one snag -- we decided to play a board game (Scavenger Hunt -- there's more strategy to it than one would think!) but the game required a pair of dice...which were no where to be found...and we didn't have the internet...So, david wrote some code and voila we had dice. See below (the formatting is a little off because of my blog -- sorry david!):

0  
0

UPDATE: hrm i seem to have broken the code. it worked wonderfully on vacation :)

SMX Advanced Presentation

Last week I gave a presentation on adCenter during the "Amazing PPC Tactics" session at SMX Advanced. My presentation focused on three things: Keywords, Bulk Tools & Tricks -- check out the presentation below for the details. It was a really fun session with lots of interesting information -- if I get links to the other presentations i'll post them.

This conference was a particularly exciting one for me as a product I've been working on shipped in Beta -- adCenter Desktop. Here's a link to an article on the launch. If you are interested in trying out the bulk management application, fill out this form and let us know.

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Going on Vacation: Australia & New Zealand

I'm flying out to Brisbane Australia for a few weeks of much needed vacationing. Below is my schedule. It's an interesting vacation for me as I've been to all the places I'm going to sometime before ... usually i try to break out and do something completely new. However, this will be my first multi-day-week bike trip...so that should be interesting. Yes, I plan to blog...

ok, so i haven't blogged in a long time.

Note: It's been ~6 months since i last blogged. Lots has happened. really. I think though that the thing most people want to know about are the triathlons. So I will write about that.

Yes, i did 6 triathlons last summer -- 3 sprint and 3 olympic. It was honestly one of the hardest and most insane things i have ever committed to doing and i don't think i would do it again without being in considerably better shape and having a lot more free time. It was hard on me mentally as well as physically. I would never have done the last triathlon -- where the water was BELOW 60 degrees and the temperature outside was just above -- if it wasn't the last olympic i had signed up for and not doing it would mean I would have to do 6 more triathlons the next season in order to finish my 3-3-tri challenge.

"Triathlons seemed easy enough"
Initially I thought that doing 6 tri's would be fun, interesting and not so tough. I had done 2 sprints before. The distances of an olympic are very approachable: 2K swim, 40k bike, 10k run. And, since I'm typically one of those over-achiever types, Triathlons seemed easy enough: get from A to B, quickly and efficiently. It turns out that when you travel pretty regularly, have some shoulder issues, don't like wearing a wetsuit and probably have a reasonable amount of extra weight to carry around that getting from A to B is often harder than it would seem and may be in conflict with my usual "win" mentality. This was probably the best thing about doing a bunch of tri's: i lost all the time. I never won. I was never even able to compete to win. I just had to focus on what i was doing, what my race was and what I wanted to get out of it.

"I hate wet suits"
Initially, when i first evaluated my triathlon goals they were pretty simple. Get in better shape and don't be last. Well, these goals came to an end during my 2nd Olympic Triathlon. I wore a wet suit for the first time in a race and it was horrible. I had a panic attack. I have issues with things touching my neck. I actually get a little bit uncomfortable when people wear turtle necks around me. Well, it turns out wetsuits touch your neck -- and need to so that your chest doesn't scoop water when you swim. This was a problem. A big problem.

Of course, I did try on a wetsuit before my race. We splashed around in our wetsuits the day before the race for like 3 minutes and although it seemed like it would annoy me, I thought it would probably be ok. This was not the case on race day. On race day we had a mass start. I dove in and started to swim and the neck part of my suit started to rub my neck and i FREAKED out. I had one of my only panic attacks ever. I tried to get over it, then i tried to loosen my suit and get it off. Funny how you can't really do that when you are in a race situation in the water. The result was that i struggled a lot during my swim (and burned my neck with the suits edge) and when i finally got out of the water i was right behind someone else, but i was last. Which meant i was last in the race.

This was a horrible place to be. The swim -- until then -- was kind of my strongest bit. Since it was a mass start, there was no one behind me to "beat" and as i got on the bike i was completely mentally off my game. I was consumed by being last. By failing at my objective. By hating my wetsuit. I was clumsy and cold. I was angry and disappointed. More than anything, I was mad. I dropped my chain on the bike -- a beautiful ride btw -- 3 times. I never drop my chain.

What does being last mean?
I did the run and finished the race last. I started crying as soon as I crossed the finish line and got a private moment. My friend Diedre (who had also done the race with me) came over. She was so excited. I was a total mess. Overachievers aren't last! What did this mean for me? Was I now a failure? A loser? My self-image was a mess. It turns out it didn't mean as much as I thought. The huge significance I had put on myself -- and the wasted energy being frustrated with the race and mentally being off my game, wasn't worth it. I'm not going to say that it didn't suck -- but now months later, I can say that this was one of the most important failures in my life. It's made me more human, more relaxed. I am more comfortable in my own skin.

I did eventually get better at swimming in a wet suit -- i still don't love it but i now see the value. I'm planning to do some more triathlons this summer -- but easy ones that I don't have to stress about -- i.e. all sprints! I'm also going to focus on cycling. I really love cycling now. Doing 6 triathlons was definitely insane (for me) but it was also great -- as I did them all and proved to myself that yes, I can set some specific health goals and achieve them. Maybe not how i dreamed but successfully none-the-less. I also proved to myself that i can stay focused on a ridiculous challenge just to persevere. Which proved to be a useless victory, but it's good to know.

Race Report: Triathlon #2 = sprints are fun

Two weeks ago I completed my 1^st of 3 Sprint triathlons and a week later I finished my 2^nd of 3 Olympic triathlons. This brings me to the mid-point of my 3-3 triathlon challenge. Now that I know what I’ve gotten myself into, I’m alternatively freaked out or excited. Below is the race report on the sprint tri.

Benaroya Research Institute Triathlon at Seafair (Sprint) – July 14
.5 mile swim, 12-mile bike and 3.1-mile run.

This triathlon was a ton of fun – there were over 2,200 participants and the energy was really good. There were lots of fast people and lots of first-time triathlon people. I ran into a bunch of people from team in training, it was nice to see familiar faces.

Since it was a local race, I got to sleep in my own bed. This was tough! I hit the snooze button many times – and only left for the race at 5:55 am after brushing my teeth and packing my tri-bag (a timbuk2 messenger bag) in a flurry. I was lucky I didn’t forget anything – like my bike! I arrived at the race site ~20 minutes before they closed the transition area. Which basically gave me enough time to find a location for bike + gear and lay things out and check the air pressure on my tires.

Swim:The swim was not warm, but it was short enough that the temperature didn’t slow me down. I had that initial “ohh, it’s cold I can’t breathe” feeling for about 50 yards and then I warmed up and it was fine. The hard part of the swim was the milfoil. This is a water plant that basically grabs onto you while swimming. It was scratchy and a little unnerving.

Bike:The bike was shorter than I thought and when I got to the turnaround I was surprised. That’s it? Oh man, I should have pushed harder!

Run: I think this may have been my best run all month. Even with walking up part of the steep hill at mile 2, stopping for water and needing to go to the bathroom…I ran my fastest 5K time in the recent past. I think it was partially adrenaline and partially just the realization that it was going to be quickly over..and hey, that wasn’t so bad.

Things I learned:

There are mistakes you can make in a sprint distance that you might not be able to get away with at longer distances. In this race the biggest mistake was probably nutrition. I ran out of the door so fast I didn’t have time for breakfast. In an Olympic or a long bike ride, I’d be recovering from that throughout the race…not so in this case as the race was over before I got hungry!

Taking the time to prepare your stuff the night before makes a lot of sense. During my transition from swim to bike I had to attach my race number to my tri-top. Having to open up teeny-weeny little pins and attach them to yourself when your hands are a little bit stiff from the cold water is, uhm, not so easy. I also forgot to untie my shoelaces on my running shoes…so before the run I had to untie them before I could start running. These are the kinds of things I could have skipped with a little preparation.

Triathlons don’t require a lot of “stuff.” Before this race I pretty much believed that in order to be in the right mind set I needed to have the perfect towel, a bunch of water bottles for rinsing post swim and lots of extra foods (i.e. alternate flavors of gu and shot bloks) and general stuff in order to be prepared for the “worst case scenario.” This time I had the bare minimum: some basic nutrition, 2 water bottles on my bike (only one with Nuun, the other got multi-purposed for rinsing), my running shoes, my clip-in bike shoes, socks, a towel and suntan lotion. That’s it.

I like races with lots of people. Since I’m slow I’m not in the “pack” and can sometimes be out on my own (esp on the run!). This race was crowded the whole time – and I loved it. I was in the third wave, of I think 12. This meant that there were lots of fast people after me – and it was fun to see them zoom by and it made me run faster to have them next to me on the run.

I highly recommend this race and definitely plan to do it again next year. Just, you know, faster.

travel tune hell

right now, i am buying music on iTunes that i already own.

Well, ok, some of it is new -- specificaly this new order/ bizarre love triangle/ remix is new -- but the other songs, i so own them!

THE STORY...

So why am I doing this? Well, my ipod nano died.
So i i went to the apple store to get it replaced, since it's new and it should work but it doesn't. My appointment with the guy at the "genuis bar" starts out fabulous. They can replace it. No charge! But.... they don't have any in stock. So i need to have one shipped. But they can only ship to the store. oh, and i'm in chicago.. and the nano will arrive "3-4 business days from now" when i'll be in NY. They can't have it sent to NY or Seattle. I have to call Apple Care. Because, apple clearly cares.

Well, I still need music.
I mean I HAVE TO RUN! I have a freaking triahtlon on the 15th of July and another on the 22nd and I have been a total lazy bones since I completed my first olympic tri earlier this month. So. I need NEED music. I mean if I had music, I'd be working out all the time right? It's the lack of music that's keeping me lazy. really. So. I left the apple store with a lime green ipod shuffle. I really had NO choice! Well, I considered the orange one (aka the little mandarin).

So now i'm downloading music to "Swish".
Swish is the name of my lime green shiny ipod shuffle. Music downloading hit a predictable snag: I'm on my PC. All my music is on my Mac. At home. In Seattle. Yep. So here I am. I need music. I have Swish. I download, repurchasing songs I have so already bought on iTunes -- but never transferred to my PC because, well who has the time to copy them to CD and reburn them here? i hate this DRM stuff. I hate transferring. I hate paperwork (yes, just for good measure i'm throwing that one in!)

...
Somehow, even with all this apple evil-ness, i'm still sorta thinking about those "june 29th: The wait is almost over" t-shirts all the apple employees were wearing at the store. i know. i know.

Race Report: Olympic Distance Triathlon #1 - Complete

I hope to update this entry with a longer, more detailed post on the King's Trail triathlon -- but for now here are the highlights:
(1) it was hot and humid
(2) I almost bumped into a sea turtle on my swim
(3) I biked all of the bike
(4) I ran more of the run than i expected, but i was still slower than i expected
(5) i feel fantastic!

I'm excited that this first triathlon is over. I now have all this data and information and I can't wait to make HUGE improvements on my next 5. WooHoo.

3 - 3 Triathlon Mania

I've decided to do 6 triathlons this summer. Below is my schedule. I'm still kinda in shock that i'm really doing this...but here i go.

Date Distance Race Location
10-Jun Olympic King's Trail Maui, HI
15-Jul Sprint Sea Fair Seattle, WA
22-Jul Olympic ChelanMan Lake Chelan, WA
26-Aug Sprint SB Tri Santa Barbara, CA
16-Sep Sprint Kirkland Tri Kirkland, WA
23-Sep Olympic Black Diamond Enumclaw, WA

Additional Races
28-May 40 mi (bike) 7 Hills Kirkland, WA
24-Jun 10K (run) Pacific Crest Sunriver, OR

whirlwind weekend

some weekends are just "one of those" weekends -- and this weekend was one of them.

(1) Minnie came to visit! It was just awesome to have her in town and visiting - even if she was here for less than 24 hours. It's just really nice to get to hang out with someone I've known for so long and to get to show them around seattle and all my new habitats.

(2) I got a flat tire on the first leg of the multi-brick workout on Sat. Yep. full on blow-out. We pulled over to the side of the road and luckily i had an extra tire in my bike-pack. Phew. This was the good news. The bad news is that it was the back wheel and changing the tire was hard! Thankfully "jason" -- a friendly seattle rider stopped and helped us switch out the tires and get going. Unfortunately my back tire just wouldn't fully pump up... so i rode it slightly less inflated than ideal back to base camp. I ended up doing 3 of the bike sprints and 3 runs (instead of the 5 I was supposed to do). I really need to focus on triathlon training. Also, see #6.

(3) KT and I went to see "The Queen" -- at this random theatre in northern seattle. I say "northern seattle" because i really have no idea where we went. We were practically in shoreline. But get this -- the movie was only THREE DOLLARS! I didn't know you could see a movie at a non-matinee time slot for under $5. We got some candy which brought the total entertainment bill to $4. I loved it. The movie was good to. But i didn't love it as much as JB or my mum.

(4) My dog got LOST. She's in California with my mum and step dad. Apparently when the meter-guy came by he left the gate open. Cuba, being an escape artist, ran away this morning. My mom called me after they had been looking for her for an hour and couldn't find her. I, uhm, FREAKED out. Seriously. My dog is super precious and losing her -- particularly when I'm so far away -- completely freaked me out. I booked my flights home so i could help with the search -- or be at the hospital should she be injured. Luckily, 4 hours later she was found at the next door neighbors. She'd been hanging out there while the lady tried to figure out who she belonged to. She came back home to us safe and relaxed after her morning adventure. PHEW. Thanks to KT for coming over and consoling me while i was, well, a wreck.

(5) Boys. I finally called one of the 4 boys I've been flirting with and asked him if he had a crush on me or not. This was NOT an easy thing for me to do since, well, I avoid intimacy and vulnerability at all costs. I am also pretty judicious about how i spend my time -- and who i spend my time with -- and this thing had just gone on long enough. Sadly, there's no mutual love-connection. I felt good about the conversation though -- it's important to be up front about one's emotions -- even if they aren't reciprocated. I can definitely relate to this post by eric.

(6) I learned to be true. My bike had been making a sound ever since the blow out. This sound made me nervous. I decided to check it out and made a make shift bike holder to play with the mechanics of my bike and figure out what's going on. Turns out that I seem to have bent my back wheel -- so I now have to get it "re-trued" -- i.e. aligned. *sigh* i love my bike! i am pretty sure with some spoke adjusting it will be just fine, but i'd hate to have to buy a new wheel.

(7) I forgot my dad's birthday. Seriously. And I called him this morning (his-b-day was yesterday) freaking out about the missing micro-mutt (see #4 above) and still completely forgot. I think my family thinks i'm insane.

(8) I realized I'd never survive seattle without KT. Friends are so important, and this girl just rocks. She's been here for me and all my crazy drama this weekend -- with laughter, insight, and just generally being a great friend. I have lots of friends that helped me this weekend -- all of them so special, and some of them such long-time friends (V, JB, kyle). But, it's super nice to have someone local, and I'm lucky to have KT.

rob lowe

i love that rob lowe is playing a candidate for president on brothers & sisters. Maybe he should really run for president. the next Reagan!

dating rule #1 "don't date the coffee guy"

My friend adam recently posted an entry to his Blog yesterday about the "levels of a relationship." His post has images from ppt! this is a guy after my own heart and as a result of his post we've been bantering back and forth about different relationship thoughts. I shared my spreadsheet and some of my core philosophies. He challenged me to blog them -- and before he went to he bed he gave me a 400 word challenge! so here i am blogging about my first dating rule ever.

Rule: Don't date your coffee guy.

History: I came up with this one in High School when my coffee guy had a crush on me (he was very cute too! and a good tennis player...) and i realized that I was going to have to make some tough choices. Do i go for the cute boy? or do i keep the coffee shop where i spend an inordinate amount of time?

How it works: Essentially, my reasoning was that if you date your coffee guy (or in college, your bartender) you have to be willing to give up going to the coffeeshop / bar if you break up. This means I had to evaluate which was more important to me -- keeping my coffeeshop or a new boy. In most cases, at least for me, it seemed that the boys who were interesting tended to work at the places i frequented. I attribute this to having more interaction and so I could see their coolness... This lead, in most cases, to me determining that the shop was more important than the boy.

Bear Down Wildcats!

As many loyal readers know, i LOVE my wildcats. And it's that time of year again. They are playing right now...and I haven't been channeling my love.

Go Wildcats!

back from vacation

I'm back from a lovely vacation in maui.
Check out my twitter log from that time:http://twitter.com/natala
Kelly's Pictures: http://kellyannthomas.spaces.live.com/
My fuzzy phone pics on flickr.

What did we do in maui?
kayak, swim, surf, suntan, drink, eat (particularly pineapple), more surfing, boy-watching, sunset-watching, mai tais, pina coladas, bike ride, running and more running, grilling, sunrise watching. it was good times.

On another note, i'm in the full swing of triathlon training -- thanks to a great kick-off in maui. I'm about to go out for a run -- and thanks to JB I'm now completely addicted to the gmaps-pedometer. I just mapped the route i typically run from my house to the water view and back. It's 2.8 miles (not long enough!) and the route that I walk cuba every morning (somewhere between .5 and 2 miles depending on how far we go).

I'm absolutely in love with pedomaps! No wi need to map out a 6 mile run to get in tri-shape...

on vacation

thanks for checking out my blog. i'm on vacation through most of next week in Wailea, Maui. I'll be snorkeling, biking, hiking and of course - spa-ing! I won't be checking e-mail and I probably won't blog (although I will twitter...).

anyways, ma halo!

it's raining, it's pouring...

As mentioned previously, I'm doing the King's Trail Olympic Distance triathlon in Maui on June 10th. I've been fussing around trying to be focused on getting back into shape and, being goal oriented, i knew a triathlotn would do the trick. Well, I'm now realizing exactly what I've gotten myself into. It is 7:30 AM on a Saturday and it is RAINING and yet here i am getting ready to go on a 20 mile or something bike ride on bainbridge island called "Chilly Hilly" -- who is this person? what am i doing? it's cold. I could be snuggled in bed. where it is warm. and cozy. Instead i'm trying to decide if maybe i really do need toe covers for my bike shoes because my feet might really get that cold. really.

Ok, i've got to go catch the ferry. wish me luck!