Running in the Dark

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Last year the Bourbon Chase pushed me over the edge into the dark abyss that was Blobtoberfest.  This year it did the exact opposite.  After 2 months of feeling off and being lazy, it kicked my butt into gear.  For the past 2 weeks I’ve been running an average of 20-25 miles a week.  Not fast, but more mileage than over the course of the summer.  By quite a bit.

You’ve also probably picked up on the fact that I think fall is the best time of year to run.  It’s just beautiful.  Unfortunately, there is a downside in that it hasn’t been getting light out until about 7:30am (one thing that sucks about being so far west in the eastern time zone).  Also unfortunate is that I don’t generally run alone in the dark, because I am convinced I will eventually get attacked.  And most unfortunate of all is the fact that all of my morning running buddies have either moved away or left me in the dust and are just way too fast for me to run with anymore.

Today I really wanted to get a run in, but have a long drive ahead of me and can’t do it after work.  So, armed with my pepper spray, I recruited another running buddy to come with.

…because he will protect me.

When I was training for serious I hated running with the dog.  Now, I prefer it.  We’ve found our groove and I usually only have to stop once for him to drop a doozer and me to clean it up.  No problem.

On mornings like this, because it’s so dark, I attach our only small LED round light to the back of his harness.  I figured it was either him or me, and since he usually runs next to me or just in front of me he could light the way.  Like Rudolph.

(Someone didn’t want to run this morning and crawled back into bed.)

My view for the entire run was essentially this:

But it worked.  The 6 miles flew by, the dog is (almost) as good as a person companion, and no scraped knees or broken elbows.

Though we both survived and there are very few things better than getting a good long run in first thing in the morning while the rest of the world sleeps, I’m still sticking with my policy on running alone in the dark.  Unsafe.

This afternoon heading up north to Cleveland to visit Lisa in her new home.  Very excited about that.  Very.

happy happy weekend

All Quiet on the Household Front

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Last week I worked from home one day, and by 9am was ready to kill me some animals.

So I really love working from home every once in a while, and really appreciate that I have a boss who is cool with me doing so.  It’s nice and quiet, no office politics, change of scenery, I can open the windows and get a little breeze blowing through the house.  So pleasant.

But this day.

First, the cat runs over and starts to eat the dog food, which makes Spike flip.  As I go into the kitchen to shoo him away, and the dog runs into the bathroom and eats the cat’s food, which makes him throw up.  And, more recently, the dog also eats the kitty litter, which makes me want to throw up.

Close both of those doors, nobody’s eating anything anymore.  The dog chases the cat.  The cat chases the dog.  I decide to lock the cat in the bathroom.  Within 3 minutes he somehow tears all of the towels off the racks, slides the rug across the room, sprays kitty litter EVERYWHERE, and breaks a shelf in the bathroom closet knocking everything on the shelf onto the floor.  Abandon that plan.  Now we’re all confined to the main section of the house.

The cat sits in my lap and the dog stands next to me barking.  I kick the cat off my lap. The dog the crawls in my lap and the cat starts batting him on the head.  I kick the dog off my lap.  The dog sits on the ground looking at me forlornly,  like “how can you let this happen to our peaceful home?” while cat walks back and forth across the keyboard sending emails that say $*%&^FJSDKJ#(ECJSLDKUWE to random work clients.

I prepare to relocate to the coffee shop down the street.

But then, very suddenly, they both crash and fall asleep, curled up on either side of me on the couch.

…and then the house was quiet, and so peaceful, with just the steady hum of the cat purring.

And you can’t help but be like, AWWWWW THEYRE SO CUTE HOW COULD I BE MAD AT THEM EVERRRRRR.

So no animal abandonment.  Yet.

Living with Cannibals

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By now you’re most likely familiar with the chicken coop.

Newly winterized, obviously.

We had built it with two perches: one high, one low.  Turns out Michele really liked sleeping on the higher perch, while Romy prefers the lower.

well hello there michele

Michele would also lay her eggs first thing in the morning from up there.  And often times, despite our best efforts to avoid this by piling hay underneath the perches, the egg would land on the hard ground and break open.   And, if the shell cracked open far enough, they would eat it.

Recently, though, the chickens have realized that they can actually peck through the shell if it isn’t already broken and enjoy eating what would otherwise be their own young.

In addition to the fact that the only reason we have chickens is to produce eggs for US to eat, this is gross.  It needs to stop.

The good news is the chickens are dumb enough that they don’t realize that the other egg that Romy lays in the corner of the coop is also an egg, and they leave that one alone.  And based on the fact they regularly try to run through the chicken wire that surrounds their coop to get to their food, even though they’ve had to walk through the door every day multiple times a day for the past 5 months, we figured their long-term memory can’t be that stellar.

And so we concluded that all we needed to do was prevent them from eating the egg laid in the coop for a few days in a row and they’d forget that they liked eating eggs at all.  And our problem would be solved.

We considered putting a net under the high perch to catch the egg, but I had images of a chicken trying to jump up to the perch and getting caught in the net and finding a strangled chicken dangling one morning.  No go.

Solution:

This weekend we nailed a piece of plywood over the top perch, completely blocking off the second level, and filled the above cavity with straw, simultaneously preventing anyone from laying off the top perch AND providing additional insulation for winter.  Boom.

We also ripped out the old perch and put in a longer, stronger, better bottom perch for the two of them to share.

Paul went out there this morning and found both of them huddled together on it.  He also managed to rescue the un-broken egg before they got up and tried to eat it.

So far, so good.

Harvest

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Spike’s duvet is out.  We had our first frost this week.  You know what that means.

Harvest time!

This year wasn’t a spectacular one for the garden.  I blame the extreme summer heat and, largely, neglect on my part.  But it wasn’t a total bust.

Things that took off this year:

The basil.  Holy cow, the basil.  Granted, we did start out with quite a few basil plants.

All of those tiny squares along the left side are little basil plants.  Like the edamame of last year, Paul planted basil in pretty much any empty patch of dirt he could find around on our property.  Unlike the edamame, these plants did not get run over with a lawnmower.  And they EXPLODED.  Big beautiful leaves.  We put it on everything.

Anyway, enough about the basil.  Next up:

Compared to our other crops, tomatoes did relatively well.  We got a few batches of about 30 tomatoes, though they were all pint-sized, misshapen Roma.  Oh well, lesson learned.  Next year we need better variety.

Other herbs that survived include the rosemary:

The oregano:

And, comeback herb of the year goes to…

PARSLEY!  I know it doesn’t look like much, but you should see what he looked like in August.  Way to go, buddy.

Finally we have the beets.

Though these were ready to go last year in July, we haven’t given up hope yet.

Things that just couldn’t hang:

Kale fail.  Something is eating it.  Our cilantro, string beans, and like 3 kinds of peppers that we planted all met an early death as well.

And, of course, our lawn corn.

It grew taller but, much to Paul’s chagrin, stopped at that height and has yet to produce any corn.   Again.  Corn Fail #2.

The oregano and rosemary is relocating to inside the house for the winter, with the hopes that it’ll get enough sun and Nerlens won’t eat them (he’s already started eating the small tree we have growing by the front window.)

Supercat the Tree Eater

Next year we’ll give the veggies a little more love.

This Land is Nerlens

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Paul and Betty at Alix’s house on our post-wedding drive up the coast, 2009

We’ve had mice in our house for a few weeks.  We thought they were confined to the guest room (sorry Jen, didn’t tell you about that.)  We put a bunch of (humane) traps out for a week with no luck.  Then last week Paul’s mom stopped by and called Paul to let him know we had mice in the kitchen too.  When Paul called to tell me, I was like, “(Big sigh). We really just need to get a cat.”

And he was like, “OK.”

Some background: Paul is deathly allergic to cats.  Even though they love him (see above).

He did live with a cat, Tayshaun, for a year in college (named after Tayshaun Prince, UK basketball star circa 2000.)  He said he just vacuumed like 4x a week and it was fine.  Plus, he said, this is going to be an outdoor cat mostly (our garage has god knows how many rats in it), so it shouldn’t be as big of a problem.

So that same day, we headed over to the Woodford County Humane Society.  The people working there are really wonderful, and they had about 3 million cats up for adoption.

30 minutes and $30 later, we drove away with a cat in a box.

Impulse buy.

Paul especially liked him because he thinks he looks like a wildcat.

Sticking with tradition, the cat is named Nerlens after Nerlens Noel, the top freshman recruit playing for UK (and top HS basketball recruit in the country) this year.

 …who does not look like he just got out of high school.

The cat and the dog have spent the past few days getting to know each other. So far it’s gone pretty smoothly all things considered.

This cat is super super friendly.

…but he’s also 5 months old and can be a total spaz.  So far he’s fallen into the toilet, knocked a whole bucket of kitty litter over into the sink, clogging it, and gotten stuck behind the washing machine, wedged between the wall and the machine about 2 feet off the ground (Paul had to dangle a dish towel over him, he clawed onto it, and we pulled him out.)

He also sleeps in the garbage can in the guest bathroom.

That’s his safe zone.

We’ll see how this goes.

Bourbon Chase 2012

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Another successful year for team Jim Beam Me Up.  Another unsuccessful year for the Spock ears I always want to put on the vans.

This year we had a runner drop out, but it turned out to be OK because JEN GOT TO RUN WITH US!

She was so excited.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Bourbon Chase, it’s a 12-person, 200-mile running relay along the Bourbon Trail across Kentucky that goes through all of the major distilleries.

Runners are broken up into 2 vans of 6, with each runner running 3 legs over the course of the trail.

The morning started out with a little rain, a 9:30am meeting, followed by a bourbon tasting at Jim Beam.

The only way to start an endurance event.

This year we were in Van 2, so had a few hours to kill before Van 1 finished off the first 6 legs.  So we checked out the distillery…

…then we hit the road, where there was a lot of this.

Lunch options were limited, and we had 2 people in the van with dietary restrictions.  We settled on a Mexican place in Central Kentucky.

I know.  We almost changed our team name to Team Gringo Diarrhea mid-race.

From there is was off to Makers Mark for the first Van 1/Van 2 handoff.

The sun kept fighting to break through the rain, and we checked out the mash.

Ryan was the lucky first runner from our van.  He took off around 5pm.

We ticked off the legs one by one…

…and ran off into the sunset.

Then it got dark.

And during leg #9, the rain came back with a vengeance.

Poor J. The rest of us spent a good 10 minutes in the van debating how important it was that we all be out on the course to cheer her into transition.

Traditional evening wear looked something like this.

coal miner? runner?

Plus a few blinking lights.

We wound our way through the dark Commonwealth.

harrodsburg, kentucky’s oldest town, 4am

Until, after a lot of running and minimal “sleeping” in the van, I ran the final night leg into the sunrise…and the Four Roses distillery which, along with coffee, bagels, and hot chocolate, has the most delicious bourbon of all.

Then, while van #1 ran the next six legs, we crossed some bridges…

…past Wild Turkey and into Versailles for a deeelicious country breakfast.

People also took the rest time to start rolling out our stupidly stiff legs and familiarize themselves with the beauty that is Biofreeze.

After that, it was over to Woodford Reserve for the final exchange from Van #1.

As Ryan made his way up the massive hill that comes out of Woodford, the sun came out.

And it got hot.  But beautiful.

The remaining runs were through horse country.

Jen ran the final leg into Lexington.  The way it works is both vans go to the finish line and the whole team waits for the final runner, then everyone runs across together, cheering, while the announcer announces the team name, and it’s very festive and a very big deal.

Well.  Jen ran so fast that our team wasn’t even at the finish line yet.  Apparently the announcer was like, “TEAM 507!  HERE COMES YOUR RUNNERRRRrrrrr.”  And she ran across the finish line.  Alone.

Fortunately, there was free bourbon to comfort everyone after the team fail.

And all was well.

finish line photo op

Thanks goes out to Jen for making the flight all the way out here, J & Ryan for inviting us on the team, the peeps in Van #2 for only being mildly stinky and making 30+ hours stuck in a van a non-negative experience, and George for organizing another glorious weekend in bourbon country.

More pics here.