Let my people swim to Antarctica

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Time for more books!  (In addition to Feel Better Little Buddy)

Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
Written by the founder and owner of Patagonia,  this book takes you on a brief tour through the childhood of Chouinard, his early interest in rock climbing (and the subculture surrounding the sport long before it became mainstream), and how his desire to create good climbing tools for himself eventually led to a business that is consistently listed on Fortune Magazine’s top 100 companies to work for.  Aside from just being a good story, Chouinard’s philosophies regarding the company’s role as a steward of the environment and the unconventional policies adopted by Patagonia are both inspiring and a case study of how, in an industry where the bottom line usually means everything, maintaining your integrity and a clear vision of mission can pay off in much bigger ways.  Plus the book has pictures.  Great read.

Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox
Lynne Cox is a pioneer in cold water marathon swimming.  This is her story, from swimming summer league as a kid to being the first person to swim across a number of increasingly freezing (literally) bodies of water.  Don’t go in expecting a literary masterpiece (the woman is an athlete, not a novelist), but the accounts of her actual swims and training make the book worthwhile.  Good read.

Cluck

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This rainy afternoon a new book came in the mail for Paul.

What we have learned so far:

  • Chickens have muffs (tufts of feathers around their ears…ear muffs)
  • If you don’t have a rooster, one of the hens in the coop will take on the roll of protector of the group and stop laying eggs
  • Chickens that aren’t fed enough protein can become cannibalistic (ugh)
  • Chickens can lose their toes from frostbite
  • Chickens “don’t make good choices”, and…
  • (…speaking of good choices…)  Cats and large dogs are usually cool with them and won’t bother chickens.  Most problematic?  Small dogs.

Paul is convinced we can teach Spike that the chickens are “part of the family” and he’ll leave them alone.  I told him fine, but if there is an incident I am not cleaning up the mess.

Garden of woes

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…or more accurately, empty garden box of woes.

the survivors, weathering some high winds on top of our rain barrel

Saturday morning I worked at a triathlon in Versailles (pronounced “vuhr-SAY-uhls”…and just FYI, for those of you who are local, if you are trying to use the voice command on your Andriod phone to get directions, Google Maps doesn’t recognize “vuhr-SAY-uhls”.  You have to pronounce it “vehr-SIGH”, like the rest of the world does).

The weather was completely awful (kudos to those who made it through the bike and the run, wet, in 40 degree wind and rain), and I was doing my best to sell arm warmers to those who came unprepared, when I received this text from Paul:

greenhouse flipped over again and spike ate most of the plants. taking the stupid thing back to my parents house and building a permanent one over break

Sure enough, I got home, the greenhouse was in pieces, all of our plants (except for the ones above, which are my flowers) were gone, and Spike looked stuffed.

I guess Paul put the greenhouse out when the sun started to peek through the clouds, went inside to take care of some business for like 3 minutes, while he was inside a gust of wind came…and you know the rest of the story.  Spike had a field day.

At what point do you just admit it…

via blackenedbutterfly

Move

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There is no difference between a pessimist who says, “It’s all over, don’t bother trying to do anything, forget about voting, it won’t make a difference,” and an optimist who says “Relax, everything is going to turn out fine.”  Either way the results are the same.  Nothing gets done.

~Yvon Chouinard, CEO and founder of Patagonia

Tragedy strikes

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Unrelated, but there are some awesome tulips blooming on our block.

A few weeks ago we noticed that our garden was wilting due to lack of sunlight in the kitchen.

So we started putting our plants outside on sunny days.

One weekend when I was out of town, Paul put the garden out on a windy day, and most of the plants died.  So we had to replant almost all of them.   That’s when Paul decided that, instead of waiting until it warmed up a little more, the answer to our problem was a greenhouse.  He found a row of lightweight shelves covered with a clear plastic cover in his parents garage.  Viola.  Our greenhouse.

We moved all the plants into the greenhouse and put it in the backyard.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, there have been quite a few tornado warnings the past week.  There may have been a few comments offered up regarding the possibility of the plastic acting like a big sail and the greenhouse blowing over…but nothing came of them.

Within 24 hours Paul was raving about the number of sprouts that had popped up.

Our greenhouse lasted two days.

There was one survivor.

We don’t even know what plant it is.

So we replanted everything…again…

…took it down two levels, and rigged it up to the backyard lounge chair with a bungee cord and duct tape.

Third time’s a charm.

Update: Paul says the surviving plant is “definitely a corn.”

Updated Update: Paul now says he thinks the surviving plant is just a piece of grass.

Final Update: It’s confirmed, the survivor was a piece of grass.  It’s been plucked.

Spring

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on my walk to work this morning

…is back!  Along with blossoms and tornado warnings, which terrify me.  Let’s hope it stays.

Run like a girl

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Finished the NYC Fitness Magazine Women’s Half Marathon this weekend, 2 laps around Central Park.

mile 11.5.  shoot me.

It was my first “women’s” race, and I don’t know if I’ll ever opt to do one again (I have never seen so much Lululemon in one place before in my life…and we all know how I feel about them.)  Did you know, though, that the race legally can’t exclude men, so there were some men who ran with us (as highlighted in the above photo.)  I don’t know what they did with the purple goodie bag full of Weight Watchers shakes and Tampax.

Went a PR, which was good, but it didn’t feel awesome (largely due to some poor decisions made the night before regarding food and hydration.)


post-race, in margaret’s apartment

But I did get to see some old friends and hang out in New York on a beautiful Sunday…it was great.

view from margaret’s window

For a full race report, go here.