Green Eggs and...meat

This April I turned 28, and while the year itself is not an especially significant milestone, my reaching it was celebrated with great...well...greatness! As a birthday should be, mine was celebrated in several stages: drinks and snacketizers with friends and coworkers; a wonderful day and dinner at Big River with Kerry; a day with Kerry and her mom, and taco salads and strawberry shortcake, and presents; well wishes via Facebook, the postal service, and email; and a final installment at a recent Derby party with the half of the family that I brought to the marriage. Yes, I realize that I have mis/overused the conjunction, and. But it really was so great, and thoughtful, and fun, and surprising, and...and...and!

Now, what's with the title of this post? Anybody I've talked to since my birthday has probably heard about the Big Green Egg (reverent silence) at least five or six dozen times. The Big Green Egg was this year's big green gift made possible by the contrification (see v. contrive) of Kerry, and her accomplices, the Grandparents Mac, Kris, and Jim and Sue.

This grill/oven/smoker/roaster is truly indicative of the holy spirit, present in the lives of those who work with clay and fire. It is truly how God intended meat and fire to join for the sustenance of human life. I think you get the idea of how I truly feel. In the five or six times that I have used it I have not once been disappointed, and I have made beer-can chicken, pork tenderloin, pizza, another beer-can chicken, another pizza, and other delicious treats.

The presentation of the BGE was perfect as well. Since the body of it is 2" ceramic it weighs in at 140lbs. For that reason I got to help pick it up (literally) from the store. Well done, Kerry, Kris, Mac and Marion, Jim, and Sue! To give you a preview: Thanksgiving will never be the same!

I've been enjoying the various accoutrements that go with this grill as well. I've also started reading for pleasure thanks to the Kindle Mom and Dad gave me. There are so many books that I've thought I should read that I am now getting into. Incidentally if anyone would like to discuss the social commentary H.G. Wells presents through The Time Machine, I feel well-equipped to do so.

It was a great birthday and I felt well loved and appreciated by all!

Sunday Short: Wicked and Food!

Though life is still busy as always, it feels like these last few weeks have had a sense of normalcy to them. It may be because we aren't running as far (not because we aren't supposed to be, or don't want to, but because we can't. Injury issues. We'll see how the Eugene half goes), but regardless of why, it feels good.

I haven't got much to report, but I'll go through some highlights. Last week we were able to help two of our friends move and then watch one of them, and two of his friends, in a sprint triathlon the next morning. Those athletes are impressive. I don't know if we'll ever do a tri, but I'd like to at least be able to do each of the sports in a triathlon competently all at the same time.

On Tuesday of this week we discovered a new restaurant, which prompted me to make a list of everywhere we haven't eaten, but have meant to. We tend to go back to the known places, even though our spirits are more adventurous than that. This place is a Vietnamese Sandwich shop, which is quite tasty. I had a ginger beef sandwich and Joe had BBQ pork. We also split a bao. It was all delicious.

On Friday Joe took me to Wicked. The show was excellent, the company fabulous, and the dinner was tasty (though a bit hurried thanks to restaurant foible). It was so nice to get to go out out and get dressed up.

Yesterday we had an early Mother's day with my mom. She came over early and helped me with some alterations. We made her chocolate cherry cupcakes, asparagus, baked beans, salad, and chicken. Just how we made those things you will learn soon enough, but it really was quite tasty and nice to hang out with my mom.

The Inagural Corvallis Half Marathon

Last weekend (please note the timeliness of this post!) Joe and I ran our third half marathon. When we initially heard about the Corvallis Half, we'd already set our sights on the Eugene Half (May 1) and didn't think that we could do both. We hmmed and we hawed. Corvallis is where we started running. We ran some in Alaska, but we really started running a few months after we moved to Corvallis. We started on the Bald Hill path, and the Corvallis Half was going to retrace those footsteps. After much thought, we decided that we would make the Corvallis Half a training run for Eugene (watch for the Eugene post in May!).

Our long run the week before the half was a 10 miler and at mile 4.97 of our out-and-back, my knee quit via my IT band. There was no warning, no "gosh maybe you should think about turning around before you get as far as possible from home;" it just quit. I stretched and hobbled back a quarter mile, and repeated that process twice. All the while I was thinking of friends nearby who could come pick us up. I gave it one last stretch before I gave up entirely and that stretch carried me three miles. We made it home with one last stretch. It wasn't looking good for the race though. I gave it a good break, ice, NSAIDS, and tried another 5 miler during the week that went about as well. So, we were officially not running for the next four days in hopes of recovering. Now, since Corvallis was supposed to be a training run, this set us up for it poorly. All of a sudden we were tapering in the middle of our training instead of breaking ourselves down. With a good taper in, a knee that couldn't be counted on (now or for Eugene necessarily), good health (also something you can't count on, see Columbia Gorge Half),and a nice flat race, we were flumuxed. The training run for that day should have been a 15k pace. We decided to run our 9.3 miles at pace (assuming we made it that far), and then see how we felt. If we felt good, we'd maintain and shoot to meet our goal. If we didn't, we'd back off and see what we could do in Eugene.

Sunday morning we got up at 6:45 for a superb race start time of 9:30, had our oatmeal and tea and coffee, and headed out to meet my Mom at Gill Coluseum, near the race start where the marching band was playing. Fifteen minutes before the race, we headed to the porta potties, and found an enormous line. With a little luck we found ourselves peeing to the national anthem, and slipping into the group moments before the start. But it wasn't quite that smooth. Runners line up according to expected pace and shortly before the start they all compress together. We made it into line after that compression and the person I asked about the pace had no idea what I was talking about. We just had to hope that we were in the right area. We were shooting for a sub two hour finish, so we were hoping to find our high 8, low 9 minute pace folks. But with the gun, we were off! They played Fanfare for a Common Man, which was awesome and fairly appropriate. Also, we discovered that not only was my mom there to cheer us on, but "the cousins" were too! "The cousins" are officially Joe's cousins, and I have had the pleasure of acquiring them as mine too. They consist of a good number of cousins, but also an aunt and an uncle. Emilie was running the half too, which we didn't know until the day before the race. This was a lucky situation, because not only did we get to cheer Emilie on, we got her cheering section for us too! So, we had lots of cheering to send us on our way.

The first few miles went through OSU's campus, and were fairly easy. The only trouble here was the camber of the road, which was a serious threat to my IT band and knee. We solved that by running straight down the middle of the road-so much for race etiquette. In that section the counsins were there to cheer us on, not once, but twice!

After we roamed through campus proper, we headed out to the trail that runs through the fields and barns, and underneath the covered bridge out to the fairgrounds and the base of Bald Hill. My mom was waiting to cheer us on and catch my extra clothing after we crossed 53rd. We felt excellent as we headed into and along Bald Hill and remembered when those rolling hills had been such a challenge. It was an amazing feeling to run our third half marathon in the place that we had started by run-walking.

Bald Hill lead us out to the extension of Harrison, and this is where I thought I was done. Up until that point my knee had only made brief and light commentary-the sort of thing that would be standard on a normal run to the point that I wouldn't notice it--and I'd been able to baby it by running on the flat portions of the road. On Harrison we had to run on the shoulder in the bike lane. The camber was bad and my knee was pissed. I figured I'd stop to stretch as we turned onto 53rd, and see if I could make it from there, or if I'd have to be responsible (which I hate) and stop. But as we rounded onto 53rd and I looked for a good stretch spot, my knee reported that it was fine, and we went on without a stretch.

We climbed 53rd at a solid pace considering the false zero and were releaved to reach the aid station at the top of the slow hill, and the sharp downhill following. After gluggling our Ultima, we cruised down the hill. At the bottom the cousins drove by and we got another good cheer. Earlier in the race we actually had a fellow runner as us if we'd hired them. :)

From there we hooked into a little neighborhood, paused for a brief stretch, and soon after hit our 9.3 mile mark. Both feeling good, and having maintained an incredibly solid pace, we decided to go for our sub 2 hour goal and keep on keeping on. We then turned right, which marked our return to the finish.

I don't know what it is about mile 10, but it seems that it all feels great (excluding the Columbia River Gorge sick run) until that point. At 10 miles we always wonder what on earth we were thinking. It seemed that the aid station frequency increased in this section though, which helped a whole lot. Before we knew it we could see Reser (the finish) and.....we turned right, away from it. After about a half mile more of plodding, we could hear the announcer and we knew we were headed in.

We navigated the sharp hill into the stadium (killer when your stabilizer muscles have quit), rounded the final corner, and headed for the 50 yard line with the clock reading 1:54! We were thrilled! We cruised over the finish line with a chip time of 1:54:04, and beat our previous PR by just over 6 minutes. A volunteer I knew cheered us on, they took off our chips, handed us water, and we quickly headed over to my mom who had our warm things ready. I've had kind of a rough time lately with getting really badly cold after long runs, so I stripped off my wet things and slammed on my warm clothes. It helped a whole lot. Then we headed up, got our chicken noodle soup and bananas! Next stop was with my mom at the spectator section of the finish. She congratulated us, gave us hugs, and headed back home to run errands. It was so nice to have her there.

Usually we head home after races to stretch and recover, but this race was different. We knew tons of people who were running it, and for many of them it was their first half. It was brutal on our tired legs, but we wanted to stick around to cheer them on. Shortly, my friend Kathryn, who had intended to see the finish (we were faster than I thought) joined us in the stadium with...get this...mexican hot chocolate made with rice milk for us. Excellent race support. The counsins soon joined us and we cheered on finishers. Kathryn headed back home, but promised to meet us for lunch and a beer once we were done.

We watched for a long time, and saw Chris, Emilie, Gail, and Shelley finish, but sadly missed Teresa, Gordon, and Ben. Perhaps they went by in disguise. That's why we stayed so long. We were waiting for people who had already finished! We finally gave up (good thing too) and called Ben and Kathryn to meet us at Block 15 for BBQ burgers (Oh- yes) and our half-weizens (Block 15 gave dollar pints to finishers!). It was fabulous.

We trundled home, showered and watched a movie. It was deliciously relaxing. At 6, finding ourselves lacking the energy to make dinner, we drove to Market of Choice, bought 2 pepperoni strombolis and a piece of white and black cake, then back to the couch we went. It was really a fabulous race. Fabulous! We were so proud and it was great to have other people we knew run too. We also found that we knew many of the fans along the course, and that made the experience even cooler.

Splits:
1-8:51
2-8:42
3-8:45
4-8:53
5-8:53
6-8:38
7-8:54
8-9:15
9-9:08
10-8:47
11-9:00
12-9:21
13-6:53

I do think the course was a bit short, because my garmin only logged 12.75 miles. It could be my Garmin, or it could be the course. I feel alright though because even with another .35 miles, I know we could have made it well under 2 hours.

Postlude: I had noticed after the race that my face was quite swollen. My cheeks were so puffy they pinched my eyes, but I didn't think much of it until the next day when I found myself 3 lbs heavier than the day before. No biggy in the long run, but in one day, that's a huge load of water. My thighs were visibly swollen, and pants that usually went over my bum didn't even make it past my mid thigh. Dressing for work was a challenge, but I pulled it off for 3 bloated days. I'm happy to report that I have returned to my original size. If nothing else, it was definintely a new experience!

Sunday Not-so-Short: Tales of Woe and Spring!

Wow, it's been quite a two week period. I guess it was mostly just the first week that was difficult, but we spent the second week catching up and recovering.

On Monday, after our last oh-so-relaxing week, I learned that I hadn't gotten the job I had really hoped for with our local hospital. The news came in a one line email: the position has been cancelled. I don't know about you, but I like to know more than that. I called for more information, but didn't get a call until that Friday. When I finally did get the call I learned that through the interview process, the team had figured out that what they thought of as a Wellness Coordinator, was a whole lot less than what it could be. They realized that the position they advertised as a Wellness Coordinator position was really much less, and had to rework the PD to accurately reflect that. I think they would have offered me the job because the director said, "I so enjoyed listening to your interview, and I wished that we'd had you five years ago because the position would be so much different today." Wonderful, and ouch. Really, I would have done just about anything for the pay they were offering and it had so many other wonderful things about it that I could have forgiven the job for being uninteresting. Oh well, such is life. At least I know I'm good--I guess.

Tuesday I started the day by burning my hair with....my hair dryer. Now, this takes special talent. Many people accomplish it with curling irons, but I exceeded all standards and used indirect heat. Tip: Make sure to clean out your hair dryer's lint filter. The motor over heats if it doesn't get enough air. Luckily, I only burnt a section, so I just whipped out my best small sewing scissors, chopped off the offensive looking smelly bits of hair and feathered the edges.

That night when we got home, my mom called at let us know that my Grandma was in the ER. We're not sure what happened, but my mom had called her when she got home from work and didn't get an answer. Mom went over and found her fully conscious on the ground, unable to get up, but not too upset about that. They called the paramedics and were off to the ER. We spent Tuesday night watching the exciting scenes of the ER-seriously-and went to dinner with Mom at 11. Grandma had no broken bones, and no bruises, but seemed to have some issue with her leg. The next day I spent the afternoon at Grandma's getting things together with Mom and Nancy (her earthly angel points increase by the day) then Joe and I went out with Mom again for some incredible pizza. Grandma's all settled in the nursing home and doing better it seems, and Mom's working hard at figuring out the next steps.

Add to that one crazy work week and havoc in lives all around us, and we were pretty much spent by the end of the week. We tried to get lots of sleep on the weekend, and have a relaxing go of it, but sleep was not bountiful. Monday night we went to bed at 9:15 with visions of sleeping the whole night through, but at 11:00 our smoke detectors went off. I'm not sure what brand of smoke detector we have, but they are not the "you need to leave the house quickly and with purpose now" variety; they prefer to take the "THE WORLD IS ENDING AND ALL HELL IS DESCENDING UPON YOU" approach, which is actually more paralyzing that motivating. The house was in fine condition, but our nerves were shot. An adrenaline flood in the middle of a deep sleep is rather agonizing. An hour later we were able to consider sleep again.

Luckily, we've had a break in the action since then and have been soaking up the glories of life and spring. I feel like a lot of years, I let the early signs of spring slip by me and miss the anticipation they bring. All of a sudden-poof-it's spring, which is great, but I like savoring the progress. This year we've been doing much better. On our walks and runs I've been pointing out swelling buds, blossoms beginning, daffodils in all their varieties and all kinds of things. The warmer weather is perfect for running and that combined with a great fitness bump we've gotten from our training (local half-marathons) has made running a delight. Our speed work on Wednesday had both of us feeling like we could go faster and longer than ever, and our long run today felt great! Often in training we just feel tired and only catch up to our efforts at the end. It's nice to feel those benefits now, though we'll be getting into the breakdown stage again soon. We also spruced up our yard a bit and it's looking good. We've got hyacinth and daffodils making an appearance, and I think the tulips and a few other things are on their way. I've also been plugging away at my quilt project and making some real progress. Finally, and I'll sign off with this random thought, Joe made the best fish tacos ever last night. I'm completely ruined for all restaurant fish tacos now, but that's okay, because we can have his whenever we want them.

Here's hoping next week continues the upward trend!

Friends from Alaska

When friends that you haven't yet been able to host, call spontaneously and ask what you're doing in a weekend, the answer, for us anyway, is yes. While recovering from a nasty MLK-weekend bug Kerry and I got that phone call and decided that we needed to make a full recovery.

Though Kyle and Abbey live in Alaska, Kyle had a project in San Diego that he was managing. Since they had not yet visited us in Oregon, and since he would be flying through Portland, Kyle and Abbey decided that Abbey would fly down and Kyle would extend his stop in Portland from a few hours to a few days.

We had a great weekend of cards, wine tasting, watching football, eating amazing food, and just lounging about the house enjoying each others' company. We also had the good fortune of celebrating Kyle's birthday while they were here. Here are some photos from their visit:

The four of us post-dinner.

Joe and Kyle looking suave-like:

Kerry and Abbey looking beautiful at King Estate Winery, just south of Eugene.

Our little Town:

Sunday Short: Snow, Ice, and Relaxation

The big events are always fun to capture and seem like things that deserve some sort of record. This week I enjoyed a few small things so much that it occurred to me that a short entry here and there about the everyday things might be nice.

This week was a quiet one. We were both grateful for that because the two weeks before were anything but.

The weather in the valley was crazy though with snow and ice. On Wednesday morning we got up at 5:30 to run our 6x400 interval workout. The ground was wet and it was extremely cold when we left the house. We checked to make sure it was safe, and finding no ice, we went on our merry way. After our warm up and two of the 400s were done, we both felt a sharp drop in temperature which was dramatic enough that we could not attribute it to general chill. Extreme cold became bitter cold, but we kept running. During the next two 400s, the road got slicker and slicker until we could no longer run safely. We walked up to a new street that was much rougher and more runable with ice. On the way we could actually see the water freezing into ice. Small white bubbles would form underneath the surface and you could actually hear it crackling. We did get to the safe road and finished our work out before carefully scooting home. We both thought it was one of the more fabulous morning. We’d never had the opportunity to see the world freeze, and had never considered that the temperature might drop so severely so early in the morning. It was fun and made our warm showers even better.

On Thursday it snowed about 4 inches and OSU, in typical fashion was open. Our run that morning was great too. The snow was sticky and made crunching noises when we ran, but the world was quiet and the snow stuck in our eyelashes. There’s nothing like snow and ice to distract from physical exertion! Friday we were delayed 2 hours and had the lovely opportunity to sleep in. It was fabulous. We both vote that we always work from 10 to 5. The weekend was just as relaxing with pizza night on Friday (yum! Go Joe!), a day of catching up with small tasks and hobbies before going to my mom’s to eat a delicious dinner and play pinochle on Saturday, and a similar day on Sunday topped off with dinner with Kathryn and Ben. We finished the weekend feeling fabulous and I have almost 60 of my 9x9 quilt squares done!

Christmas

With yet another successful Thanksgiving under our belts Kerry and I marched boldly into the holiday season, venturing out the day after Thanksgiving to get our Christmas tree. While I don't think that either one of us would say that we've been displeased with our previous tree selections, until this year we had not sprung for the Noble. Quite frankly though, until this year we had not found the $25 Nobles.

While marriage is full of compromise, one of the things that Kerry and I are fairly agreed on is that a tree should at least go 3/4 of the way to the ceiling, should smell good, and while it should be well pruned, it should not look like it went through the yuletide pencil sharpener. In an effort to find this perfect tree we decided that we might need to leave the city limits (although there are plenty of places in town as the Willamette Valley provides most of the nation's Christmas trees). We turned to the paper and found an intriguing ad which read: Nobles, 12+ ft, $25. As it turns out it wasn't just the 12+ feet nobles that were $25, but rather those that fell within our desired size-range as well. Even with the plethora of trees virtually at our finger tips, it is difficult to find a Noble Fir for what we would consider to be a reasonable cost. This was a reasonable cost.

With that we hit the road ventured about 45 minutes south and met the nice elderly gentlemen who, presumably, is able to offer such affordable trees by up-selling unwitting tree-hunters with hand carved knickknacks. If either of our parents are reading this entry, you'll know that your children are rather particular when it comes to trees. We spent a good two hours wandering the property trying to find the perfect tree. We found it, cut it down, tied it to the top of the Subaru, and once again avoided being up-sold. There may have also been a few comments made by the proprietor about women and tying knots... We'll leave it at that. For those concerned, said purveyor of Christmas joy was still alive when we left the tree farm.

Now, Kerry and I own two sets of Christmas lights for the tree--a white set, and a colored set. Unless one waives his right of selection, we typically alternate between colored lights and white lights. This year we used the colored lights which meant that the white lights were used on the tree out front. We also decided that it was high time we got some other nicely-scented Christmas decorations--a wreath for the front door, clove pine-cones for the table, and one of those tastefully-smelly candles.

This was also the first year that we decided that we would try a new approach to Christmas: going back to our own house each night. We love our family dearly and found that we were exhausted at each stop because we hadn't had enough rest the night before. Generally we'll head to Eugene for Christmas Eve with the McLaughlins, spend the night, and leave between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning to make the 4.5 hour drive to the Evans Christmas in Puyallup. We'll then do Christmas late into the evening, sleep for four hours and make the drive back to the valley for the Will Christmas on the 26th. To make sure the Wills, Evans, and McLaughlins all got the best of us we decided that each night we would sleep in our own bed. I think that our families got the best of us under this approach. We had a fantastic Christmas and felt lucky that we were able to have seen everyone.

Yes, but can we use the table for Thanksgiving?

In one of our previous installments we mentioned what a great find our table was: so beautiful, so functional, so expandable, and so affordable. All we needed to do was refinish it. And while our initial assessment of the table’s beauty, functionality, and expandability remains true, for those of you considering such a project I feel a certain responsibility to share our experience restoring this fine piece of furniture, and that process’s effect on the last point: affordability.

Several weeks before Thanksgiving, which was to be the grand unveiling of the table, we took it apart, hauled it into the garage and started the refinishing process. If you’ve never started a refinishing project it can actually be quite satisfying to pull off the layers of stain and finish and start to see the actual wood. After several rounds of stripper and many sheets of sandpaper, we were able to marvel at the beauty of our table. It’s important to note that we were originally told that this table was made of solid walnut and as such we followed Minwax’s directions for finishing this table with that assumption.

With the table down to the bare wood we began the staining process, all too trusting of the Minwax directions. We applied a thin coat of custom stain mix (per Minwax's directions), let it sit, and wiped it off. What Minwax doesn't tell you is that a thin coat of stain really means no stain at all.

Unfortunately we didn’t discover this until we put the first coat of urethane on over the stain. Within a few hours pin-sized puddles of stain started creeping up through the not-yet-dry urethane. Crap. Confident that our good friends at Minwax knew what they were talking about we followed their sage advice: “Re-strip and sand the table, apply four coats of mineral spirits to the table, and then re-stain and finish.” Once again, those of you who’ve worked with wood have already discovered our grave error—mineral spirits should be used sparingly, especially when the wood with which you’re working is mahogany, not walnut. The wood would not stop bleeding stain!

I’d like to pause for a moment and also share that Kerry and I had been working on a lovely set of chairs while finishing the table. The chairs presented their own challenges to the refinishing process and finally resulted in a trip to the furniture restoration place to be stripped. Did I mention that we were four days away from Thanksgiving? While delivering the chairs (and therefore delivering ourselves from our own personal Hell) to be stripped we picked the owner’s brain about the table. He reassured us that we were close, mineral spirits never should have entered the picture and that we just needed to keep heat and air moving on the table. The table finally dried, we applied two coats of stain, five coats of urethane and it was nearly cured in time for Thanksgiving dinner—dry enough anyway.

The chairs on the other hand were nearly dry the morning of, but since we needed to sit people at our table we opted to put pillow cases over the chairs to ensure nobody’s sweater stayed with the chair as they got up for more pie. But the table, chairs, and our zest for refinishing projects are done.

The table before:

The chairs before:

The naked table:

Kerry putting the recovered seats on the chairs:

The finished chair:
The finished table:

With the table and chairs mostly dry we had a great Thanksgiving and successfully sat ten people around our new table and had a wonderful meal.