hundreds of dollars later, i now have immunity from:
hep a – for life!
tetanus, polio, etc – just your normal booster
yellow fever – that one hurt a lot
rabies – one third, at least
the best part is that these are covered by insurance. good thing! vaccines are expensive!
angola, here i come!
For much of my life I’ve wanted to know how to drive standard. There’s just something undeniably cool about it, especially for women. I can’t quite explain it, but I think you know what I’m saying. Unfortunately for me, my parents got rid of my dad’s standard when I was 14, so the closest I ever got to driving it was when my dad would let me sit in the driver’s seat and “practice”… while the car was parked in the garage.
And unlike other challenges on my “30 before 30″ list, this one took way more of a lead up than it did action. First, I had to find someone who knows how to drive standard. Second, that someone needed to be willing to teach a beginner how to drive on their car. Third, wait, that’s it. All I needed was someone who was willing and able and it was surprisingly challenging to fulfil both requirements.
In the end, my pastor was the fortunate soul to have this opportunity. As we drove to a nearby parking lot, he talked through some of the aspects of the clutch and starting to drive. I had heard that getting into first gear is the hardest and Mark said that their car is especially challenging in that regard.
With Mark coaching me along, I eased off the clutch as I pressed the gas and soon enough, I was moving! Mark said that I picked it up quicker than his daughter, a high compliment. We practised stopping, putting the car into first and starting again. A couple tries in, I found myself on an ever-so-slight decline and kept on rolling back when I tried to drive. Then I would react and would mess up the clutch-gas ratio and would stall out. In true Mark fashion, when this happened, he yelled, “You suck!!”
Thanks, Mark. Thanks.
Though I didn’t quite get the hang of starting while on a hill, I did get to practice reversing, switching gears and gearing down in our half hour lesson. I also laughed a lot as Mark kept on telling me that people in neighbouring houses were too afraid to come out and making other inappropriate jokes. I could expect nothing less from him.
I discovered that what everyone says is true (that’s probably why everyone says it): the hardest part of driving standard is getting into first gear, plus all the configurations of such that one would find themselves in (stop-and-go traffic, starting on a hill, …) My experience definitely got my heart set on driving standard more than automatic, but first I’ll have to progress from Mark’s “You suck!” grade to something higher.
i realized yesterday that it is mid-may. yikes! i also realized that i have much to do in the next month and a half. double yikes!
so, for the sake of survival, i decided that my new approach to life is to just say no. apparently, it was a favourite word of mine as a toddler, as my parents like to tease me about. in the next couple months, though, what this means is that my default response to invitations is to decline, which is really hard for me, because i love doing things and i love being with people.
but practicality wins out.
“no, no, no, no, no!”
a.k.a. the 10k race i did on sunday.
firstoff, i realize that it is 11:34pm, which is also way past my bedtime. but i just got home tonight and am feeling rebellious toward doing what i’m supposed to be doing and i’m still recovering from spending 5 days in toronto.
so, the race.
going in, i was not feeling good at all. i had stuck pretty close to my training schedule right up until the final week. then i got sick: my throat was sore and i was blowing all sorts of mucous of my nose. (sorry for the mental picture.) and my knees were hurting from doing the max interval circuit insanity workout with shima last sunday in her garage, which involved a lot of jumping on the cement ground.
i wasn’t really feeling any more optimistic on the morning of the race. it was the second worst day of the month for me to be running (at least i didn’t have cramps!) and i hadn’t brought food from home so my breakfast was different than what i normally eat. oh, and i had severely underestimated the weather this past weekend and was cold for most of it.
blah.
but the sun was out and i surprisingly didn’t really dwell on the negatives. shima and i were too busy getting to bag check and finding people. they left me at a port-a-potty line since they run faster than me and were in an earlier corral.
once i was standing in the crowd, it wasn’t really that cold. people all around me were complaining about the weather, though, and that was annoying. it’s not like it was snowing or hailing or raining. we shuffled to the start line and surprisingly, there was no congestion! i was pretty impressed with that since at least the first kilometer of a race is normally slower since there are so many people, at least in the races i’ve participated in.
after the first couple kilometers, i found a pacer: a red-haired woman with pink compression socks and an orange race shirt that spoke disparagingly about 905-ers (ie, people who don’t live within the city of toronto, but rather, in the surrounding suburbs). there was a man with a sign on his back that said, “catch me if you can” and a woman who had “try to keep up” on the back of her shirt. neither of them were really all that fast, so i passed them with a “thanks for the motivation” good thought toward both of them. at one point there was a guy wearing a leafs jersey who was running for “game 6,” which i thought was cute. [btw, sorry for your loss, leafs fans.]
in the second half, i mentally attached myself to another runner who paced me from kilometer 4-ish to kilometer 9. through the crowd and after turns, i kept my eye out for the tall middle-aged man in a white shirt and blue cap. at 6k my right foot started to hurt enough that i had to stretch it out quickly against the curb. i had been walking a fair bit since thursday with my canvas camper sneakers that i really like, but that have no arch support. for some reason, it affects my right foot a lot more than my left.
by 7k my stomach was bothering me slightly but i was still on pace, running just under 6 minutes per kilometer, which was my goal. one part around 8k was super windy and i thought i might lose my hat, then i saw the 9k marker. although it was slightly uncomfortable, i started picking up the pace a touch, pulling ahead of white shirt and blue cap man, starting to sprint as i went down the home stretch to the finish. i crossed over one timing pad and then encountered a crowd of people before the finish line. bottlenecks happen when you have 27, 000 people running at the same time. i stopped my watch and patiently walked across the finish, slightly disappointed at the anti-climactic ending.
a few conclusions from the race:
1/ are torontonian runners a bit wimpy about the weather, or was that just the people around me?
2/ i pretty sure i’m capable of running faster, i just need to put in the effort to train and stay focused when i’m running. too often my mind drifts and i inadvertently slow down.
3/ i don’t think giant races are for me. i found this one too, too big. at the same time, running with that many people was a motivator to keep my speed where it should be.
i’m just looking at the results now and as an exciting tidbit, i know a couple of the top runners! charly allan (#6) is the son of the farmer i work with on wolfe island. adrian del monte (#13) is my co-worker’s son. they are speedy quick!
my friend/former student has started saying “cutesicles” in the last year when things are cute. and i think that term is cute, in and of itself.
i got to spend a bit of time with shima et al this weekend, meaning i have some “cutesicle” things to say about my favourite baby-turned-toddler. she talks up a storm these days and it’s a bit shocking to someone who has only seen her a few times this year. two memorable ones:
- i was unpacking my running gear last night and setting it out to prepare for today’s 10k run (maybe more on the race later) and exclaimed, “what?! these are the socks i brought??” when i saw the footwear i had packed. they are not my favourite running socks. mythilli, who was in her bedroom, just down the hall, heard me and – although she was supposed to be going to sleep – called out in a distressed voice, “brenda is crying about her socks! brenda is crying about her socks!” i went over to assure her that i was not crying. then i sang her an out-of-tune “twinkle twinkle little star” to try to get her to sleep. then she asked me to sing it again. i told her she had to lie down and close her eyes because that’s how we sing that song, hoping it would make her fall asleep. my suppressed giggles when i sang one part really out of tune probably didn’t help the cause.
- i was underdressed this weekend due to a combination of the warm weather we had last week and my optimism. as i was leaving their house today, i opened the door to see what the weather was like. burr! it was cold. and rainy. shima offered me an umbrella (which i accepted) and tights or other legware (which i declined). mythilli looked at me very seriously as i was putting on my shoes and told me, “it’s cold. and it’s raining.”
i rediscovered this yesterday and love it.
check out the rest of it here: http://www.sadiemagazine.com/issue-no-11/arts-letters/comic/i-think-i-am-in-friend-love-with-you
sad news about chris kelly of kris kross. a piece of our childhoods:
though, to be honest, all i remember about them is this song and that they wore their pants backward. there may even be a picture of two of my cousins dressed like them…
