Jon and I are going dumpster diving! We're pulling cardboard out and loading it into the trunk of Jon's Lexus. Classic. Cardboard is a great substitute for weed fabric, and its a lot cheaper. Lay it down on the ground and cover it with wood chip mulch, and it will block weeds. It also holds moisture for plants, and will attract worms (which we just learned are good), and will biodegrade into compost next year. I may be visiting this dumpster a lot in the future.

Jon and I made hamburgers for lunch, and we used tomatoes and onions from my garden. (I got my first tomato of the year!) This garden thing is working out nicely.

I also went swimming in Benbrook Lake today. It was my first time swimming in a lake, but it felt great. I'm going to do great in the tri.

This is Myra, and Jon is taking care of her for a friend this weekend. She's normally a great dog, lots of fun and well behaved. But while we were out, she managed to get on the counter and eat a pound and a half of sausage and pepperoni that Jon had from New York. We told her she was a bad dog, but she seems to think it was worth it.

Jon and I made gnocchi and pesto today from scratch, and we used the basil from my garden for the pesto. It was delicious. Too bad more people don't cook themselves. They don't know what they're missing.

We learned about vermiculture in my sustainable life skills class today. Worms. Fun things. Worm castings is the best thing you can put on your plants, even better than compost. You can buy (or find) some worms, and raise them in a bin, and they will double their population in 90 days. Put them in the bin with some compost, newspaper, rotten vegetables, etc, and a little bit of sand, because they need that for digestion. They need to be kept moist, but not wet. After they've chewed up everything and pooped it out, you have worm castings to put in your garden. You can sift out the worms and use them again, or put them in the garden too. They aerate the soil, bring up good minerals from deep down, and filter out bad minerals. Worms are good things.

Karyn gave me a bag of Amish Friendship Bread starter. I am supposed to mash the bag for 10 days, then its ready to bake. I am mashing the bag. Next Wednesday is baking day.

I used to do bellydancing, but I quit last year. I danced in a troupe for years, but I decided it was time to move onto other hobbies. My toupe is buying back all of my costumes tonight. Its a little sad to do it, but they're paying me a lot of money. I miss the girls in the troupe, but not all of the practices and makeup and performances.

This bra is from my Great Loop costume, custom made in Egypt. Kind of appropriate that I'm wearing my tri top under it, since thats what I spend all of my time on now.

Jon and I are taking an Indain food course. Not a cooking class, because we're not doing any cooking, but they give us a lot of yummy food and recipes. I really like the saag paneer (creamed spinach with cheese) and beef jalferzi. The naan bread is really good, too. I never thought I liked Indian food, but its not bad. Its not as spicy as I thought it would be.

I went off-roading on my bike again. Once again, I was the only person on the bike trails at Z Boaz. I hope other people ride there when I'm not around. Its a cool little park. I did hear a dirt bike, but I never saw it.

I wore my softball socks so my legs wouldn't get grass cuts all over them. It worked, but now I have tons of little burrs stuck in my socks. Anyone have any idea how to get these out? They don't come off in the laundry, I know that. Seriously, any ideas? Little help, please.

Ah, home improvement. I like learning how to do things, and I like the way my house is starting to look, but I'm getting tired of texturing ceilings. I'm finishing up the kitchen today, the section that was exposed when we removed the soffit from the top of the cabinets. I do enjoy the home improvement thing though, and wouldn't mind a fixer for my next house.

My dad and Jon and I remodeled the kitchen this past fall. My dad has a lot of carpentry skills, and he built some new cabinets and drawers and put molding on all of the doors. All three of us painted the cabinets white. I did have professionals come install the quartz countertops. My dad built some door frames for glass cabinet doors, and after we finished the ceiling texture Jon and I worked on putting some of the glass inserts in.

Happy Father's Day, Daddy!

We visited a community garden in east Dallas today. At first I was thinking, "I live in the suburbs, why would we need community gardens? Everyone has a yard." But then I realized that a lot of people don't know how to garden. Its a skill that has been lost over the generations. My mom is a great gardener, but I'm not. At this garden, there are about 20 plots that families can rent and grow on, and wow, can they grow stuff. They were amazing. There were also several larger plots that were for the community, and groups from school or church or senior centers would work them, as well as Master Gardeners. Whoever was working during harvest got that food, and the extra goes to food banks. There were several fruit trees, grape vines, and even a honey bee hive, too. They have a lot of composting, and even rain barrel cisterns. Pretty impressive setup.

My friend Amy and I helped to harvest some rye. The rye is a buffer plant by the fence, that prevents weeds from growing. It also provides nutrients to the soil. After the rye we harvested is dry, they will have kids stomp on it to get out the seeds. They will make a little bit of bread, as a project for the kids, but most of the seed will go to plant more rye. After we finished harvesting, they mowed down the stalks, tilled the ground, and planted sweet potatoes.

I helped shovel about 6 wagon fulls of compost today. We learned about guild gardening in my sustainable life skills class, and planted some cantaloupes around some sunflower stalks. The sunflowers will shade the little cantaloupes, and the vines can climb up the stalks. Growing laterally (up) is important in urban gardens, because we don't have as much space to spread out.

I'm getting some nice quad muscles. Woo hoo!

I'm really impressed with the people protesting in Iran. Who expected them to take the elections to get rid of Ahmadinejad this seriously? But good for them. Since Sunday they have been holding peaceful, silent protest, and the numbers of people protesting are growing. Millions marched in Tehran today. The Iranian government is very upset by this, and the Basij (armed branch of the clerics) have been attacking. There is a lot of violence in Iran, as the Basij attack the people and vandalize the city. The Iranian government tried to effectively lock down their country, not allowing journalists to report and shutting down ISPs. But this is the information age, and its awfully difficult to shut down Twitter, not to mention all the proxies that people have set up all over the world for Iranians to use. By now, even government cabinet members are splitting on views on this revolution.

The protesters only want a new president and Supreme Leader, and release of all political prisoners. Not crazy requests (unless you're Ahmadinejad). I wish them luck, and I wish I could support them, but they're on the other side of the world, and its their country. I don't have the skills to set up a proxy, so I'll leave that to those who know how, even though the revolution needs them. They need blood too, but I don't know how to get that there. I wore green today to show my support, and told everyone I saw about the revolution. Fark.com actually has a lot of good info in the threads, and Autisn Heap (google him) can help you to do a proxy.

"The revolution lives on, long live the revolution." -- Tatsuma

Split training tonight. Its nice to have someone push me besides me. My run was 20 minutes in duration, with a 3 minute jog, a 1 minute run, and a 20 second walk. That 20 seconds went by very fast, I was still out of breath when I started to jog. But I can settle into a jog and stay there for a little while, so I did it.

The swim went very well. I only had to do 400 yards, with a 10 second break every 50 yards, but I ended up doing 600. Some of my breaks were a little longer than 10 seconds, if I was waiting for someone to pass me at the turn. But I felt great, like I could have kept swimming.

By the way, it is nearly impossible to put on a swimsuit if you're soaked in sweat.

I have attached lobes. They are pierced, but I don't wear earrings very often. I used to wear them with my bellydancing costumes, but even then I'd sometimes have to poke open the holes with a safety pin or something. As I was getting dressed the other morning I noticed that one looked pretty closed up, so I wore earrings to work.

I like having pierced ears, even if I rarely wear earrings. Some occasions/outfits just call for earrings...I did look nice at work.

I hardly ever see Archie drink from her water dish. I see her eat all the time. She must drink from somewhere, since she's obviously not dead from dehydration. She used to like to lick the bathroom sink, but not so much lately. Just in case she does drink from her bowl when I'm not watching, I try to keep it clean and full of fresh water.

Its after midnight, so technically its Sunday. The dinner party was a great success, and Jon and I are washing dishes. It took us an hour and a half (until 1:00 am), but thats 30 minutes faster than last year. We beat the dishwasher too. Yay. The dinner is fun, but I'm glad its only once a year. Its a lot of work, and a lot of stress.

Jon and I are hosting a dinner party tonight. We have a "Thanksgiving in Spring" dinner every year (well, this is the second annual) for a bunch of friends. Last year we made a turducken, to rave reviews. This year we wanted to do a suckling pig, but Central Market never ordered it. We confirmed with them three times, but when we showed up there was no piggy (last year they never ordered the turkey for the turducken). Central Market is obviously not the place to order meat.

So we're doing two turkeys tonight, for 14 people. We're having a first course of gazpacho, and we're making cranberry sauce, sweet potato spoonbread, mushrooms, bread crumb stuffing, andouille sausage stuffing, and garlic mashed potatoes. Jon has no aprons, so I'm using one of his old T-shirts while we cook all day. It works quite well, actually.

I'm taking a sustainable life skills class at Elizabeth Anna's Old World Shoppe downtown. I'm very excited about it. We're going to be learning about rain water collection, composting, vegetable gardening, raising chickens, vermiculture, honey bees, etc. Today was the first day, and we started making a sheet mulch bed for some compost. I'm loading watermelon rinds that the grocery store gave to us into my friend's car. Earlier in the day we got a trunk-full of cardboard from a dumpster. Pretty crazy.

For Valentine's Day, Jon and I took a couple's massage class at LMRA. We don't necessarily remember all of the techniques (and we really need to find some massage lotion), but I've noticed that he is (and I hope I am too) a lot more likely to give a massage, or just some gentle touching. Its nice to get a light back rub or head rub or something at night. And the leg and foot massages are awesome after a hard workout. I'm glad we took the class.

This is rain pouring off of my roof. Texas has some powerful storms, they're fun and sometimes scary. This is a scary one, so my split training class was cancelled tonight. I still enjoy the storms though. We've been getting a lot of rain this year. That's a very good thing. I just wish I had some gutters and rain barrels to collect it all. One day.

This is my nostril. I don't know. You try taking pictures of yourself everyday and see how creative you get.

I took my bike off-roading today. I went to Z Boaz park. Its a very nice night out, and there were lots of kids on the playgrounds and soccer fields, but no bikes. I rode around the road until I finally found the trail. At first I didn't like it at all. The flat sections were ok, although the vegetation was really overgrown (some of which I was afraid was poison ivy), and I really couldn't tell which way I was supposed to be going. The loops weren't very long at all. Every now and then I'd end at a steep hill I would not ride down, I'd walk or carry my bike down. I found the suspension bridge, and its fun to walk across, but no way I'm riding.

I went back across the suspension bridge to loop A. It was a little clearer, and a little hillier, and TONS more fun. I went faster and faster around the loops (they were still really short), and even up and down hills. I did have to stop a few times and tell myself I wasn't dead yet, but then I'd try something even harder. I had a lot of fun, and feel ready to go find some real trails.

I put out a lot of bird feeders in my yard (although not all at once). In the summer I put out this hummingbird feeder. I've had hummers for the past two years, maybe longer. I haven't seen them yet, but Jon has some, so they should be around eventually. I usually have to keep the feeder up for a few weeks before they show up. I think they make nests around here, because once they get going, they eat a lot.

In the winter, I have a tube feeder with sunflower seeds. I get Cardinals, Mourning Doves, Chickadees, Finches, and Sparrows. I've put up a suet feeder a few times, but I never saw anything, and then it rained and washed it all away. I need to try that again. I had an oriole show up to the hummingbird feeder one day, so I put an oriole feeder out, but I never saw him at it. I've seen the orioles, a male and female, for the past 2 summers, but they only stay for a day or so. Maybe with the feeder they'll stay longer.

I lurk on Fark.com a lot. Its very amusing (unless its a slow news day...). My favorite day is Caturday. Lolcats make me smile. Long live Caturday.

This is George, my dad's dog. He is very excited because I'm about to take him for a run, and he loves to run. My dad used to drive around in a golf cart, and George would run as hard as he could out in front.

I've never run with a dog before, but George did very well. After a few hundred feet he stopped jumping around and settled into a trot matching my pace. He only jumped at one dog and one car, which was very good. He ingnored most of the other cars, all of the other people, and any dogs that didn't bark at him first. He also did very well running along beside me and not getting distracted. We did 3.2 miles, and when we got home he was ready to go in, but we had a lot of fun.

Not only did I do my run workout tonight, I did my swim (600 yards) as well. Go me.

I came home last night, and these flowers just happened to be in my living room. :) I wonder how they got there (wink). Thank you, Jon. They are beautiful, and make me smile every time I look at them.

This is my friend Joy. She is coaching a split training class which started tonight, which splits workouts between running and swimming. Joy has coached lots of cool things that have led to my descent into crazy workout racing. She did the 5k prep class, Mud Run training, and Ragnar. I'm very excited about this split training. The tri is in less than 3 months.

This is a homemade pita chip from Pak-A-Pocket. It is delicious, as was my roast beef pocket (my usual). I should eat at more local places, like Pak-A-Pocket, rather than chains. When we went to Chicago, Jon did research and we avoided chains (except Starbucks). The food is so good, and unique, and the atmosphere is nicer in local places.

I stopped at Pak-A-Pocket to get dinner after playing sand volleyball. It was fun. Unfortunately, I forgot to go to John's and take his trash out. I'm sorry :-(

This is Karyn's foam roller, and it is totally awesome. Its wonderful for working out sore muscles. Its very dense foam, not squishy, but at the same time its not hard, so it massages you. You use your own body weight to provide the pressure. I like it for my back and calves. Tennis balls also work great for sore spots. I love to stand on a tennis ball. It hurts so good.

We made it back home to Texas. Its 20 degrees warmer here, and although there were people swimming in Lake Michigan, I think I prefer the 90's in order to go swimming. I've unpacked, done laundry, bought groceries, and swam some laps. I guess I'm ready to go back to work. Bleh.

Chicago, Day 4. We started with a gangster tour by bus. It was cute and corny, but fun. They didn't really have much to work with, because Chicago wants to forget about its gangster history. Dion O'Bannion's flower shop, Al Capone's furniture factory, and the site of the St. Valentine's day massacre are all empty lots now. The alley where John Dillinger got shot is still an alley.

Then we took an architecture tour of downtown by boat on the Chicago River. It was very interesting. The guide was very knowledgable, and talked about all of the major buildings by the river.

We walked over to Navy Pier and rented bicycles to go ride along the lake. Jon didn't want to at first, but did it anyway because I really wanted to, and he is the Best Boyfriend Ever. We rented cruisers, and you'd think they'd be very easy bikes to control. You'd be wrong. I almost fell over a few times, and starting and stopping was not very graceful. It was awesome riding along the lake though, we did about 10 miles or so. There were a lot of people out riding or jogging or swimming or just enjoying the park. I like to see people enjoy public parks.

The last thing on the to-do list was the Museum of Stained Glass Windows. It was pretty interesting. Some of the windows were very beautiful and elaborate. Tiffany knows his stuff.

We were going to eat at Ed Debevic's, but the host was an ass so we went across the street and had some wonderfully delicious Lebanese food. We later found out that Ed's thing is apparantly to have everyone be rude. I don't think you could make a burger and shake good enough to put up with rude servers. Go to the Lebanese place instead.

Chicago, Day 3. It was sunny today, so we went to the Sears Tower, and went up to the 99th floor. It was very cool being able to look all around. The city looked very big. I could see the giant Blackhawks jersey on the brontosaurus in front of the Field Museum--it looked like a red dot.

Then we went to the Museum of Science and Industry. More locusts there, of course. But there was also a German U-boat, U-505, that we captured during WWII. We walked though it as part of the exhibit. It was amazing.

We had lunch at a yummy Greek cafe in Hyde Park, and then headed north to Millenium Park to see the "Bean." It's a giant bean-shaped sculpture, shiny and reflective. It was fun to look into and take pictures of.

We went to the movies that night, and the theater was pretty nice. We saw Star Trek. I liked it, although I never saw any of the older Star Treks, and the time travel thing wasn't done so well. I will go see more Star Treks though.

Chicago, Day 2. We went birdwatching at Montrose Point. I've never seen so many warblers. It was overwhelming, but I loved it. Jon also spotted a Summer Tanager in full breeding plumage. I hadn't seen one before, but I had always wanted to, so that was great.

We then walked to the Lincoln Park Zoo. It didn't look that far, but it ended up being about 5 miles. Ugh. The zoo was full of locusts, but it was interesting. We saw a red panda, some warthogs in the mud, and some chimps playing in their own poo. The big cat house was really cool, it was the very old style that I've only seen in kids' books.

Then we went to the Chicago History Museum. They had an exhibit of dresses worn by rich Chicagoans over the years. They also had the bed that Lincoln died in. It was a small, ordinary looking bed.

Then...we went to Wrigley!!!! It was awesome, and everything I had hoped it would be. We watched the Cubs play the Dodgers. The Cubs lost, but it was a very exciting game.

Chicago, Day 1. It was a busy day, we went to the Field Museum of Natural History, the Adler Planetarium, and the Shedd Aquarium. Apparantly this is field trip week at the elementary schools, because there were school buses and kids everywhere. They swarmed like locusts.

The Field Museum has the most complete T-Rex skeleton ever found. Her name is Sue. We saw her, and we walked through the bird exhibit (of course) and the Native American exhibit. Outside the Field there is a brontosaurus skeleton, and it was wearing a giant Blackhawks jersey. So cool. There is also an Olmec head outside, which is what I am standing next to.

At the planetarium we got to see two shows, the Stargazers of Africa and Night Sky Live. I think the first one was about African people using the stars for navigation, mythology, etc. I'm not sure because I fell asleep. The Night Sky Live showed how to find constellations. It was cool.

The aquarium was pretty cool, too. They had fish, frogs, snakes, turtles, and whales. Little Beluga ones. Very interesting.

We had Chicago deep dish pizza from Gino's East. It was delicious.

Jon and I are going to Chicago!! Yay! We don't have a specific reason for going, or any friends or family to visit, Jon just thought it would be cool to visit, and I agreed. Our seats on the flight were in the very back, and as you can see, I have a nice view of the engine nacelle and nothing else. Boo.

We got to Chicago ok and checked into our hotel. It was very nice and new, the Hotel Felix downtown. The bed was so awesome we both fell asleep and took a nap. Then we wandered out into the city, got metro cards, maps, and brochures, and walked around the shore of Lake Michigan.