My 2008 Favorites

I am finally getting around to putting down my favorite things of 2008. I'll be happy if 2009 is half as great as 2008 was. These are things that made 2008 worth talking about.

1. Getting in (better) shape. Thanks to my walking/biking commute to work, the George Washington Parkway bike trail and our favorite little gym on Fort Belvoir, I am 20 pounds lighter than I was at this time last year.

2. Fireflies. One of my favorite things about moving to a new place is being constantly surprised by the different plants and animals. The birds and trees were enough to keep me excited all year, but nothing topped watching the fireflies.

3. Campaigns and rallies. We spent a good amount of the summer and autumn months at the Obama campaign office. We met some great like-minded people and saw a tiny piece of what it takes to run for a national office. I think it is like working as a towel boy for your favorite football team, then watching them win the Superbowl.

4. Rock Band. Yep, I spent plenty of time plinking away on a plastic guitar or singing into a microphone this year. I like the way you can get anyone to come to your house if you just say that you have Rock Band. A couple of drinks and Rock Band for a few hours... that is what Friday nights are for. Or Wednesday, or Monday...

5. Rachel Maddow on TV. Okay, I rarely get to watch her show on MSNBC because of my cable-less-ness. She has been my favorite political newsperson for the few years that she has been on Air America, and I love love seeing her all over the place now! Go Rachel!

6. The Batman roller coaster at Six Flags America. Hanging over the ground like you are flying. Coolest coaster ever.

7. Bust magazine. I finally subscribed to Bust this year after picking up individual issues for a while. Every new issue is better! Nice job making a magazine for working/crafting/DIYing/indie green feminists who vacuum and make cupcakes! It shows that you can be a feminist and feminine at the same time.

8. Lolcats. I guess technically I started loving this at the end of '07, but who's keeping track? icanhascheezburger.com and punditkitchen.com have turned into staples in my house. Not quite as important, but still worth noting, are lolsecretz and locatbible. Too ridiculous to explain.

9. Teaching ESL lessons. I work for an international business. Along with that comes international people. A few employees from Pakistan and the Philippines got together with me for weekly ESL lessons. I made up the lessons and they completed them in surprisingly creative and funny ways. It helped us get to know each other really well and taught everyone proper comma placement at the same time!

10. My Kenyan chat buddy. On the international note, I have a Skype chat buddy from Kenya. He teaches me words and tells me about his day to day activities. It is nice to hear about how different things are in other places.

The Five Things I Am Loving Right Now

1. Stephen Colbert's "Charlene (I'm Right Behind You)" on Rock Band II. This has been one of my favorites for some time now, but the fact that it is a free download on Rock Band II is the best.


2. The new Belle & Sebastian BBC Sessions CD is making me very happy. It is a great selection of songs, including four rare tracks.

3. This time of year always makes me feel crafty. Last year I made my own Christmas cards. This year I ordered a few embroidery patterns from Sublime Stitching and got to work. So far I have embroidered a cute little hedgehog on a dish towel. Boy oh boy is it cute. Next: zombies and pirates. And a squirrel.

4. I have new hair! It's dark with a little red. Also, say hello to bangs. (I love it.)

5. I finally bought tickets for our flight home for Christmas. Oh jeez, they were expensive. But it is worth it! We have not been in Salt Lake since last Christmas, and I have only seen my family for a few days all year. I'll drop a grand or two every year if that is what it takes.

Bundling Up In Winter Clothes

I am not doing great at keeping this blog up... fortunately I have been doing much better at continuing my running regimen. Judging from my first post, I started running at the beginning of July. My first time out I ran .7 miles straight without stopping. Not bad for a beginner. Now I am up to over two miles without stopping, and I am faster. I like to alternate between that and sprinting/running/walking for 35-40 minutes, and weight training in between. That seems to be a good routine for me.

It is fun to see how much looser my clothes are and how much stronger my arms and legs are. The tape measure usually gives me good news, but lately the scale has been stuck or something. Levi tells me that I should not pay so much attention to my weight since I am obviously gaining muscle, but it is hard not to be discouraged when I stay at the same weight for a whole month. At least I haven't gained any, I guess. And I have managed to lose 15 pounds this year, which is awesome. But none in the past month. Hmmm...

Here is my plan: Now that it is winter and the sun dresses are a few months off, I will bundle up in layers and coats and concentrate on getting my run time down and my endurance up. I will also work on my weight lifting goals. When the sun comes out in the spring, the smaller, cuter clothes will be a perk!

I Feel Like This Kid When I Watch the News

Fear definitely played a huge part in this election. Be afraid of Obama because of his name, because he is different, because he hates white people, because he won't know how to make big decisions, because he wants to give your money to poor people, because he is a Muslim, because he is pro-abortion, because he will take your guns, because his friends are terrorists. The list of things you should be afraid of was endless.

Be afraid of gays getting married. If society gives homosexuals equal rights, your marriage will be less sacred, your kids might decide to be gay, churches will lose their rights and next we'll be seeing people marrying their pets or house plants!

Most of the things that we should be afraid of don't even make sense. Can you tell me why churches would not be able to marry people anymore if homosexual marriage was legal? What law says that churches cannot refuse to marry people? I'm pretty sure that the whole separation-of-church-and-state thing protects churches from things like that.

Many people are terrified of this "change" that Obama is going to bring to us. I can't tell you how many emails I have received with a picture of Obama photoshopped over Bin Laden's face, that said, "You wanted change, you got it," or something similar. REALLY?!?

I am 115% confident that Obama is not a terrorist or a communist or the anti-Christ or any of those terrifying things that I have heard. I look around and see that we obviously need to do something different, and that is his plan. Sure, different can be scary, but at this point, going down the same path is far scarier.

To the people who buy into this fear business, I guess the point I am trying to make is, give the guy a chance. God knows Bush and the Republican-majority congress got several years of chances. We even gave them a couple before we started bitching. It is someone else's turn now! Let him try out a few things before you start yelling that he hasn't found Bin Laden yet, or that people are still losing their houses and jobs, or that the stock market is still down, or that the Sunnis are still fighting the Shias. Stuff like this does not change overnight, but at least we voted to start heading in the right direction.

Cardio Cheer!

It's been a while since my last update, but my cardio is a lot better than I thought it would be at this point! I have built up my running endurance and each time I can run about 1/4 mile longer than I could the time before. When I get up to two miles, I am going to start working on getting my time down. I'll be able to run a 5K in no time!

As far as the sundress thing goes, if I keep this up, next spring I should be able to pick out some pretty cute ones! Right now, most of my pants are starting to look baggy. I am going to have a good excuse to go shopping in a month or so.

This week I knew that I would not be able to go to the gym on Thursday because we were planning on going to a baseball game with our friends. Since Tuesday and Thursday are our gym nights during the week, we decided to go on Tuesday and Wednesday instead. Tonight we are going to volunteer, but hopefully I can do some cardio on Saturday and go to the gym again on Sunday!

Since they closed down our favorite free gym on post, and the other gym has eight hundred people trying to share thirteen benches, we decided to go get a free week at Gold's Gym. The layout is ridiculous and it is unbelievably overpriced, but I do like the little girls room they have tucked away in the corner. I was able to run in piece while watching Wolf Blitzer next to a large woman who was talking on her cell phone and walking on the treadmill slower than she probably walks to her mailbox. Wasting $70 per month? You're doing it... pretty well akshully.

Iz Your Frigerator Running?

My fridge is not actually going anywhere, but I searched for "running" on Photobucket and found this gem. Also, that fridge could possibly outrun me at this point, depending on how tough those little legs are.

I have still been running a couple/few times each week, trying to get better at it. It doesn't seem like I am much better, but I do take a little longer to improve in just about everything. One thing that has changed... I went on a bike ride on Monday night, which I have not done for a couple of weeks, and my usual route kicked my butt. I am sure that fridge could have gone farther than I did.

I guess I need to mix up my running and biking nights. So much to think about! On the bright side, I am slowly getting smaller and stronger, which is a big plus. I must be doing something right.

Once I go out on a run, or jump on a treadmill at the gym, my mind kind of goes blank. I want to just run until I can't run anymore to see how far I can go. Problem is, the distance I can run is not growing. Everything I read says that I should aim for a time limit instead. To start out, alternate between running and walking for 20-30 minutes. Maybe that will help me feel like I am improving more than busting my butt for the first 15 minutes, then dying slowly on the way home.

Garrison Keillor Says It Best

"And it's an amazing country where an Arizona multimillionaire can attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick. The Chicagoan was brought up by a single mom who had big ambitions for him, and he got scholarshipped into Harvard Law and was made president of the law review, all of it on his own hook, whereas the Arizonan is the son of an admiral and was ushered into Annapolis though an indifferent student, much like the Current Occupant, both of them men who are very lucky that their fathers were born before they were. The Chicagoan, who grew up without a father, wrote a book on his own, using a computer. The Arizonan hired people to write his for him. But because the Chicagoan can say what he thinks and make sense and the Arizonan cannot do that for more than 30 seconds at a time, the old guy is hoping to portray the skinny guy as arrogant.
"Good luck with that, sir.
"Meanwhile, the casual revelation last month that Mr. McCain has never figured out how to use a computer and has never sent e-mail or Googled is rather startling. It's like admitting that you've never clipped your own toenails or that you didn't know that toothpaste comes out of a tube because your valet always did that for you. It's like being amazed at the sight of a supermarket scanner. What world does Mr. McCain live in? Where does he keep his sense of curiosity? My 94-year-old mother has sent e-mail. Does somebody plan to show him how it's done and will they explain to him what "LOL" means?"