I hope the saying is true, that “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” You must be loving this blog now.
Marc and I were in Ithaca last week, attending a symposium honoring his father and his PhD advisor, both Cornell professors.
We met in Ithaca, back when I was recovering from a foray into teaching high school math and trying to figure out what to do with my life and he was finishing his PhD. Every day at noon, we’d gather with the High Noon Athletic Club at the back entrance of Teagle Hall.
I was heading to the checkout at the Coop last week when I ran into a woman I know from my years with the University symphony. She’s a runner, and we are both friends with Monica, who is also a runner.
I asked if she’d done the 20km. Trop de monde, she said. Too many people. (There were 19,000 of us.) She and Monica had run 26 kilometers up and down the gorges du Nozon instead, because they were going to have to miss the Montée du Nozon race in the gorge on Saturday. Montée? I said. That sounds interesting…
I’m not doing very well on the moderation in running bit. But so far, it’s okay, no injuries. I’m going to continue to pretend to be a running blogger and do a “Race Report.”
April 28, 20km de Lausanne – Race start time: 6:19 pm – Weather: Overcast, humid, 26 degrees (Celsius).
You’re probably wondering what’s wrong with me. It’s already almost May and I haven’t written a single word about weeds yet this spring. Don’t worry, I’m still obsessed. The post is brewing.
I’ve been otherwise occupied, on many fronts.
Brendan and Luc are now able to forage in the fridge sufficiently well for me to leave town for a few days without worrying that they will starve to death. So last week I accompanied Marc to Vienna (he had a meeting). One of my good friends from our Baltimore days was planning to be there, too, and it was a perfect opportunity to see her.
I have a confession to make. My friend Brigitte is very knowledgeable about art, design, history and pretty much anything cultural. And because I knew this, I didn’t even bother looking at a guidebook or the Internet before I left. I knew she would have everything figured out for an awesome Vienna culture-fest. And she did!
Once a year Lausanne hosts a big natural/holistic medicine fair called “Mednat.” I went a couple of years ago and picked up some essential oils that smelled like the pine forests back in New Mexico. This year, the headline promised an “Agrobiorama Expo” which, to me, sounded like organic farm type stuff. (“Bio” is French for organic.)
Maybe the woman with heavy green eye shadow and ivy growing in her hair on the expo’s homepage should have clued me in …
Thanks to my friend Matt, who gave me a copy of “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer, I can no longer eat factory farmed meat (even in Switzerland, where rules and regulations are at least 300% stricter than in the US). So, thinking I would find some sources of organic produce, chickens, eggs and beef, I paid the 17-franc entry fee.
New Mexico is in the midst of a major winter storm, with snowpacked, icy roads all over the place, gusty winds, the whole shebang. And my family is up in it in a flimsy tube of steel. Continue reading
On a walk along the lake the other day, I came across this set of footprints. Evidence that I am not alone. Continue reading
Wow. I just want to go on the record here to report that writing 2,000 words a day is really tough. Last night, I was explaining the idea to Marc at dinner.
So how much have you written today? he asked.
Well, technically, 118 words. On the blog, I said.
So your first day is going to be one of your days off?
I can’t start with a day off! So after dinner last night I managed to crank out about 1,000 words. I got all the way up to where my main character leaves the office to go have lunch with the IT guy. Then I just ran out of steam.
Today I spent the morning translating, then went for a run. After my own lunch, I tackled lunch with the IT guy. I cranked away for what seemed like endless hours – and now my total is just over 3,000 words. Six pages of single-spaced text. Tons of riveting dialog.
I am already 1,000 words behind!
Well, I’m not going to waste my valuable typing muscles whining about it here. I still have four hours left in the day, technically. I can do this.
On another note, the Wikileaks guy, Julian Assange, lost his appeal (did he ever have any appeal?) and will have to go back to Sweden to face sex crime allegations. (Maybe his lack of appeal is why the sex wasn’t consensual in the first place?) Why Wired Magazine is reporting on this is beyond me, but there you have it. Word has it that documents from the rape investigation have mysteriously been leaked onto the Web…
I got the e-mail on Thursday. A translation for a client, due Monday. It was short and non-scientific, which can sometimes be a nice break. It’s good to diversify! I had a bunch of other stuff to finish up on Friday, but I said I’d do it over the weekend.
Saturday at 7:15 am, I’m in the car with Luc, headed to his school for the PSAT. We had discussed equipment the evening before. Two pencils, an eraser. A calculator, just in case. A pencil sharpener.
Not long ago, I did a guest post on the Running and Rambling blog. One of the best things about that blog is a series of entries called “Random Shots of Beauty” – pictures that Donald has taken out on his runs. I’ve decided to do a similar thing here.
This first entry is a picture shot by my brother Rob last week, i.e. early October, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. It took my breath away.
It should dispel the picture that many people mistakenly have of New Mexico as a hot, cactus-studded desert wasteland. In fact, Santa Fe in winter is colder than where I live now, outside Lausanne, Switzerland. It’s higher in altitude, at nearly 7,000 feet (2,200 m). And in the summer, it’s appreciably cooler, drier and more comfortable than Baltimore, where we lived for seven years before moving here.
It rivals Switzerland and Nova Scotia as one of the most beautifully livable places on the planet, in my humble opinion. (Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. There are already too many residents of a certain shall-not-be-named neighboring state buying expensive summer homes and trying to ski on our slopes. But they’re probably not reading this blog, anyway…)