New Running Shoes!

I last bought new running shoes back in July. Since then, I've trained for and run a half marathon and the Ragnar Relay Florida Keys. Needless to say, I've known I should get new ones since the relay. In fact, I had toyed with the idea of donating my shoes at the end of the race. But, I didn't. This winter has been so mild (knock on wood) that I've been running more than I planned to do. On Sunday, I went to the gym and decided to do some intervals before weights, but after three quarters of a mile, my shins were screaming.

My new shoes:

I think the color and design makes them look a little futuristic. I'm hoping to break them in tomorrow.

February Snail Mail

One of my good friends recently bought her first house with her husband, so I headed to Penzey's Spices to pick up their housewarming gift. Can I just say that I think spices are a great small gift? Fun, tasty, and useful. Especially since I haven't seen the house and I have no idea what they might need to fill it or to decorate it.

Enough patting myself on the back. In true Carolyn fashion, I bought them a week ago, and last night finally wrapped it in brown paper and my trademark excessive amount of packing tape. I love that there's a post office on my commute that opens at 7:30. Since I need to be at work at 8, this means I can stop on my way in, rather than head out at lunch.

Now that I'm writing this, I'm remembering that I had a dream about a week ago about writing this post. It wasn't the same package, and I decided to take a picture of the package to post here. I forgot to obscure the address in any way, so all four of my readers knew his address now. Sorry about that, dream package receiver.

February Volunteering - Take 2

I am an avid listener/watching of public radio and television. One of the most exciting moments of my life was when a friend of mine asked me if I had been watching Masterpiece recently. No one had ever STARTED a discussion about a PBS show with me before. (For the record, that was about Sherlock, which aired last spring. A second season will air this spring. I highly recommend it.) Today, I decided to give back and volunteer at a phone bank for WXPN, a public radio station out of the University of Pennsylvania.

In college, I worked at Phonathon, which meant I was one of those college students who called and asked parents and alumni for donations to the school. After college, I managed a Phonathon at another school. I will say, waiting for the phone to ring was much easier than making a phone call, and 100% of the people I talked to today gave. It was awesome.

I had assumed that it would be kind of like the pledge drive rooms you see on PBS, only with the DJs up front, and everyone else behind them taking calls. No, this was set up in a conference rooms. Two DJs on one side, with their stuff set up on an old desk, then phones in a horseshoe around the rest of the room. When they break to encourage people to pledge, calls start coming in. When it goes to music it trickles and just stops until they come back to ask people to give again. I found this really interesting. I guess I had always assumed people called kind of throughout, but it picked up in the breaks, but it was almost completely silent when music was playing.

For the record, I'm going back on Monday to help out again. I probably won't post again unless something really exciting happens.

Podcast Challenge 4

In case my post about counting puzzle pieces didn't convince you that I'm a nerd, I stopped at the library after counting puzzle pieces (for charity) and got a book about people who love maps. No, not a book about maps, a book about people who love maps. Maphead by Ken Jennings was hilarious and eye opening. I didn't know there were so many people who loved maps and who loved what maps can do. There are people who have been to over 100 countries, who have climbed to the highest elevation point in each state, who travel to integer degree confluence points* (if you know what that is without me telling you, you are awesome), and (my personal favorite) who make Earth sandwiches**. And, of course, what book about people who love maps would be complete without GPS and Google Earth.

Jennings takes you to meet so many people, from 6 year olds who can find point to any country on a map (even without borders drawn) to tweens and teens competing in the National Geography Bee (special appearance by Alex Trebek); from everyday people who travel as wide as possible on as little money as possible to the inventors of geocaching. I found them to be simultaneously strange and inspiring. I couldn't imagine doing what these people do, but at the same time, I had to look into different groups and games just to entertain the possibility that I may tray. And, who knows, maybe someday, I will travel to 100 countries or make Earth sandwiches.

All in all, I highly recommend this book to anyone who has a passing interest in maps. Jennings is really funny and the book contains plenty of anecdotes from his life (like how his wife turns maps around so the top of the map is the direction she's looking and how he changed his GPS to say "You turned the wrong way, dumb-ass. Just do what I say" instead of "Recalculating").

*places where integer lines of latitude and longitude (no minutes, no seconds, exact lines) meet

**when people on exact opposite sides of the Earth lay a piece of bread down at the same time so the Earth is like the meat in between those slices of bread

Broad Street Run

The Broad Street Run opened registration today. Last year, it sold out in just a few days, so I wanted to be sure to register today. Naturally, I forgot this morning, thought about it while I was away from my computer, then thought about over an hour after I got back to my computer. Good job, me. I did manage to register, though. Now I have to stop skipping my long runs, though.

This is the first race I'm training for that I'll actually be focusing on being faster rather than just being able to do it. I already know I can run 10 miles, so that's not really a challenge. But this goal time means more running than I usually do (5 days a week vs. 3-4) plus weights and a day of cross training. If nothing else, this will be good for my fitocracy account.

Photos- With husband (2) and events in general

A background on the event I took pictures of:

Two of my bffs live in Baltimore. According to Google maps, this is a 2 hour drive from where I live. We've met a couple of times before in Delaware so we can see each other a bit more easily. A kind of long drive for a meal, but a great way to see friends who are farther away. Last time we were together, we decided to meet at Dogfish Head Brewery because we heard the tour there was great, and, hey it's in Delaware, which is in the middle for us. Within a week of the event, I looked up directions on Google Maps and discovered that the brewery is 2 hours and 15 minutes from my apartment. So much for meeting in the middle. Another reason we decided to meet somewhere instead of doing a weekend visit is that our February and March visits tend to get cancelled due to inclement weather. (Snowmageddon's real issue wasn't that it snowed for so long, but that clearing roads took forever; I wouldn't have been able to get near their neighborhood a week after it snowed.) Rather than having to miss out on a weekend of fun, it would be a day. So, naturally, it snowed. Not enough to keep us away (thanks, mild winter), but it snowed nonetheless.

We started off with a brewery tour:

I'm pretty sure this is the master brewer.

Our tour guide kind of reminded me of Forrest Gump, what with the full beard and the plaid.

When you tour a brewery on a weekend, the bottling section is pretty boring.

This wood is so hard, you can shoot it with a pistol and not leave a mark. One of their beers is aged in a barrel made of it.

Treehouse, what!?

Then we went to Dogfish Head Brewings and Eats in Rehoboth. Good food and good beer. I highly recommend it. Plus, they're super-hippies. They feed local animals with leftover grains from their beer making, and then buy meat and dairy from the farmers they sell the grains to and use it in the restaurant. So my short ribs came from a cow that ate grains used to make the beer I drank.

Then, since we were in Rehoboth and it was wintry mixing and dark, we decided to go to the beach. This is how you get ready to go to the beach when it's 35 degrees outside:

Don't want to get sand on your jeans.

Photo number 2 for the year! On the beach, in the wintry mix.

February Volunteering

Today, I went to Cradles to Crayons for their monthly Young Friends volunteering. Cradles to Crayons collects new and like new clothes, shoes, books, toys and school supplies and gives them to low income kids in the area. They have offices in Boston and Philly. Go here for more information.

This month for volunteering, they were packing kid packs and counting puzzle pieces. I find packing kid packs to be stressful because I don't know the children who are getting the packs, so I can't make informed decisions on what they want. I don't know their style, or what kinds of books they like, or what games they like to play. So, clearly, I picked counting puzzles.  (Full disclosure: I would have counted puzzle pieces anyway.) I really like puzzles and kind of wished I could do them instead of counting them. Could I have started with a 24 piece puzzle and stuck to puzzles of 100 pieces or less? Yes. Did I? Clearly not. I started with a 500, did another 500, then did some smaller ones, then 1,000. That's how I spent two hours today. And I enjoyed it. Even if I left feeling a bit cross-eyed.

Side note: if you ever want to volunteer, or have any new or gently used kids items you want to donate, let me know.