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Running to MJ

I’ve noticed that when it comes to the tedious task of running on the streets, my legs are only as good as my iPod playlist. (Some Olympian probably just rolled over in his grave). The monotony of my shoes continuously striking the pavement for an hour is too much for my stimulation-craving brain to handle. And yes, I do try to look at the scenery, but not even Lake Union has the ability to keep my attention. I started out with a solely hip hop playlist, but since my iTunes collection of hip hop is severely limited, I grew tired of the same 15 songs. Now I run to a mix of hip hop and alternative, with a dash of Broadway tunes thrown in for good measure. Nothing gets your legs moving like “You Can’t Stop the Beat” from Hairspray! I was recently surprised by another song that inspired me to run faster, but not necessarily for a good reason. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” came on, and I think that was the first time I actually listened to the words of the song. The lyrics are terrifying! I could feel my heart rate rising, and not just because I was working out. So maybe I should be thanking MJ for helping get my heart rate to its optimum level. I’ve since solved the problem of the scary song though. I don’t listen to the lyrics, I just imagine myself doing the dance. That gets me going.

pretty mountain

Our office has a great view of Mount Rainier when it isn't super hazy outside. Today was particularly clear so I took a snapshot through the window. Video Only, you can thank me later for the free advertising.

MLS fever

Richard got on the big screen! You can see him after the goal scored, when they cut to the crowd the first time. He’s waving his scarf! I think Mom is right behind him. Way to support MLS, family!

Is this mine or yours? Definitely mine!

Snacks at the office are few and far between, and often result in food hoarding and conversations that go a little bit like this.

I go to the toaster and unwrap a bagel I’ve been saving at my desk, procured at first chance at least half an hour before the sales meeting even started.

Co-worker: “Hey, you stole my bagel!”
Heather: “No, this is mine! I grabbed it when Dave got here with them!”
Co-worker: “I wrapped mine with a paper towel! I’m checking the fridge! Oh, here’s mine. Sorry.”
Heather: “I told you!”

We regress to our animalistic instincts when food is involved. I write my name in big block letters on every jar of mayonnaise I bring in, and keep other food in my desk, lest anyone get the wrong idea. Others wrap snacks in paper towels or plastic wrap, and hide it in the furthest recesses of the fridge. When it comes to snacks, you must protect what you have! Give me my bagel! Hands off my peanut butter!

Coffee coffee

Stumptown Coffee supplies the beans for our neighborhood coffee shop, Voxx Coffee on Eastlake. Mark can never stop raving about Stumptown, mostly because it’s based in his hometown of Portland (plus their roasts are superb). Stumptown is apparently taking its java to the Big Apple and causing a stir in the meantime.

Read the feature on Stumptown founder Duane Sorenson here.

Movies About Journalists continued

After my previous blog post, I only thought it fair to include some movie titles so you can see for yourselves how fun it is to watch journalists take down the bad guys (or get taken down by the good guys).

1. “All The President’s Men” – Classic film about Carl Bernstein and Bill Woodward, the journalists who broke the Watergate story. This movie probably spawned the journalists of today. Everyone’s looking for their big source who will give them the big story.

2. “Shattered Glass” – A recent film based on the true story of a journalist at The New Yorker, who started fabricating sources. Never a good thing.

3. “Never Been Kissed” – Yeah yeah, I know, hardly a real journalism movie. But Drew plays a copy editor, so she’s close to my heart.

Feel free to submit more!

Movies about Journalists

"State of Play" arrives in theaters today, supposedly a high-powered intelligent drama about the clash between a journalist, his informant, and the corrupt corporation. It sounds intriguing to me, but not just because Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck star. The real reason is because I love watching movies/shows about journalists, maybe because it reminds me of the old days. I know my "old days" were short, but they were loved. And I know I'm not the only one who loves to watch journalists in action. (And yes, I am aware this site is a blatant rip-off of another).

An editor from The Washington Post was a consultant for the film, and you can read about his experience here. I'm sure he never guessed his career would take him to a play with Rachel McAdams!

Candles are a foods group

Mark and I think it's funny that not only does Safeway sell candles with the image of Jesus or Mary on them, but they are sold in the Hispanic foods section. Last time I checked, candles were not food. I'd like to see an edible candle though. Burn the majority and eat the rest! It sounds anti-wasteful.

Opening day

As it is opening day for our beloved Seattle Mariners and the long-awaited homecoming of star Ken Griffey Jr., I only thought it befitting to mourn the loss of a luxury stolen by the economy. Everyone's trimming the fat, and my company is no different. This year, we bid goodbye to our company season tickets. How I will miss thee, club level. Your seats are superior to the left and center field bleachers, and I enjoyed receiving menus when we arrived. Not that we ever ordered anything. But we could have! And I can't forget the parking pass provided with the tickets. We could forgo the walk from Pioneer Square for an evening!

But fear not, Mariners. We'll still be there in full support, but probably in the $7 center field seats. Hey, we've got to trim the fat too! At least we're still showing up. You guys better do the same. We have a deal.

Sick Times At Seymour High

I think we all can agree that head colds are a miserable annoyance that most everyone must endure. You do your sick time, probably around seven to 10 days for the virus to run its course, and then you’re back to a healthy streak again. But those seven to 10 sick days bring out the dramatic side in you, a side that says that this is certainly the sickest you’ve been in months, and it feels like you’ll never be healthy again. In fact, you don’t even remember what it felt like to be healthy! Your nose is red from the constant Kleenexes, and your swollen sinuses are pushing the tears out of your eyes. All you want to do is lay on the couch with a blanket and a TV show on DVD (and a brandy doesn’t hurt either). Of course, immobility seems to make the sinus pressure worse, but just the thought of taking a walk exhausts you.

I hate to be dramatic (well, who am I kidding? I love it!), but today is one of those days. Only I’m not at home on my couch. But I plan on being there soon.

A night to ourselves

So active!

I don’t mention work much on my blog but in case you were wondering, I’m in marketing at a corporate real estate firm in south Seattle. I’ve learned more about lease negotiations and industrial building specifications than I’d ever cared to know. But that isn’t my point. I’ve been here over a year now, and I’m continually impressed by my co-workers’ athleticism and desire to stay active through their 40s and 50s. One of them used to play on the professional golf circuit and another played professional hockey in America and Europe; both still play their respective games, as well as compete in a slew of other activities like the Mountains to Sound relay or local triathlons. Our office hosts a few marathon runners and I hope to join their ranks in June when I participate in the Rock ‘N Roll marathon here in Seattle (although I’m only doing the half-marathon… so I’m that much closer to joining the ranks). Another co-worker is a dancer: ballroom, swing and salsa. She’s out at dances or lessons four to five nights a week. Most of the guys in the office are also involved in coaching: basketball, hockey, soccer, baseball… you name it! I’ve been informed about the game of squash and how it is superior to racquetball, and even shown videos of professional players.

I hope that when I’m in my 40s and 50s, I’m half as active as these guys.

Sounders still undefeated

Today Mark and I drove to the George and the Dragon an hour early in order to secure prime spots for the Sounders FC's match against Toronto. It felt a little weird to order beer at noon; I don't think our bodies were ready for alcohol that early. Especially since we had eaten oatmeal half an hour before we arrived. We've been at the G&D for all three games of the season, but there was definitely a difference in today's game. Today marked the Sounders' first away game, so all the season ticket holders had come to the G&D to watch the match since they couldn't go to Qwest Field. You could tell who they were by their green scarves and their initiative to lead chants! It was quite exciting and made for a festive atmosphere, especially when the Sounders claimed a 2-0 victory. Seattle still holds undefeated bragging rights and every game has been a shutout. It's fun to actually support a winning Seattle team. The Seahawks continue to struggle, the Mariners lack pitchers, and Oklahoma claimed the Sonics. Beyond them we only have college sports, and I'm not prepared to throw my fan weight behind a bunch of 20-year-olds.

April Fools ideas?

I know it's a little late to be planning pranks for today, but Wired has some great ideas for your inner nerd.

Netflix!

Mark and I recently joined the multitude of subscribers who have navigated to Netflix rather than run to the movie rental store every weekend. Lately, I've taken to starting conversations with the question, "What's on your Netflix queue?" I've learned that this can be a sort of touchy question, as some friends will respond with "Uh... don't judge me..."

Apparently Netflix has taken its toll on relationships too... funny.

Those poet dreamers...

Have you ever had a dream that you were flying? I used to have these dreams periodically when I was a kid. They would usually begin at my aunt’s and uncle’s house in Greeley, where a ramp led to their front door. I would start at the front door and run down the ramp, and by the time my feet reached the end, I was running on air and taking off into the sky. I was afraid of heights as a kid too, but that fear never seemed to surface in my flying dreams. I remember looking down at treetops and fields and thinking how green they were. I always knew when the dream was about to end because I started to float back down to the ground. I would try and kick my legs to get back into the sky, but the sense of buoyancy was gone.

Eventually (I think it was middle school), I became disillusioned with these flying dreams because I knew I would never be able to fly in real life. Before I went to bed, I would tell myself that I would not dream about flying, because the disappointment of having to wake up without that ability was too strong. I don’t think my imagination has been the same since. Dreamers sometimes drive me crazy. I want to shake them and say, “Snap out of it! Pull yourself together man!” But I think I’m going to start daydreaming more. There’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? And I think my imagination needs the practice.

The lay of the land

Mark and I are trying to live up to our outdoorsy city, and made the most of our quasi-spring weather this weekend. Yesterday we went to Discovery Park and hiked around, making it to the beach and the lighthouse. It turned out to be a gorgeous day and we got some good pictures out of it.



Today, we went to Gas Works (not quite as outdoorsy, we know, but still outside!) Our goal was to fly Mark's kite, but when we got there, no wind could be found...



Finally, enough wind came around so we were able to get the kite in the air! Let's go fly a kite, up to the highest height...

Sounders FC is here!

Seattle bleeds a new blue and green, as shown by the thousands of fans who packed into Quest Stadium last night to welcome the Seattle Sounders, the newest expansion team of Major League Soccer. Mark and I weren’t as lucky as those attendees, so we took ourselves to The George and the Dragon, a popular Ballard pub that usually shows British Premier League games, and was dedicating at least two of its screens to the Sounders’ home opener. We arrived a mere 30 minutes before the start of the match, and all available chairs and benches were already taken. We were lucky enough to acquire a couple of bar stools, which we parked in front of one of the main screens. Front row seats!

You would’ve thought we were actually at Quest Field by the roar of the crowd in the pub. I could barely hear myself! The mood was rewardingly optimistic, as the Sounders soundly defeated the New York Red Bulls 3-1. Here’s to a new season that we’re looking forward to supporting! We even jumped on the bandwagon and bought partial season tickets. Soon enough we’ll be joining the fans at Quest Field wearing blue and green and waving Sounders scarves!

And congratulations to our neighbors to the north and to the south, Vancouver BC and Portland, who were both awarded MLS teams! The Vancouver team name will be up for debate, but Portland's team name will remain the Portland Timbers, the same name as their USL franchise. Move over, land-locked America... the Pacific Northwest is on its way.

Photo credit by Mark Harrison of The Seattle Times

Farewell to the P-I

Click here for the full story of the P-I's history. Here's to the transition to being a one-newspaper city... we'll miss the competition.

Illustration by David Horsey, Pulitzer Prize winner for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Caller identification?

This actually registered on an incoming phone call on our caller ID at work:

REAL ESTATE A**

I laughed. (I won't spell it out, use your imagination).

Favorite SNL cast members (in order)

Kristen Wiig: Kristen is without a doubt my favorite SNL cast member. She plays the weirdest characters and pulls them all off without a hitch.



Seth Meyers: I wish he did more than Weekend Update. He has great timing.
Darrell Hammond: Better than the real Bill Clinton.
Abby Elliott: Abby’s still fairly new, but she’s great for only being 21! And she was a dead ringer for Jessica Rabbit on Saturday.
Michaela Watkins: Great impressions. I thought Joan Rivers made a cameo the other night until I realized it was Michaela.
Fred Armisen: “I Ran So Far”… need I say more?
Will Forte: Not a big fan of MacGruber but he’s a natural in a mullet.
Jason Sudeikis: I most love his appearances on Weekend Update as a washed up rock star or songwriter. He’s a good Joe Biden too.
Casey Wilson: Typical all-around American girl next door.
Bill Hader: Meh whatev. But he played a great alien on Saturday.
Kenan Thompson: I still can’t get past his Nickelodeon background…
Andy Samberg: He’s too silly for me.
Bobby Moynihan: Sorry Bobby. Not so much.

Favorite cameo appearance: Justin Timberlake

Track this!

I’m a goal-setting person. I have to set an achievable goal in order to get anything done. When I decide to put on my tennis shoes and go for a run, I can’t just “run until I get tired”. (I’d quit in five minutes!) My running has to be defined by a time limit or by a distance limit, something I can tangibly measure. Enter http://www.joesgoals.com/! The look of the site isn't too pretty, but it gets the job done by allowing me to place checkmarks next to the goals I set on the days I accomplish them. For example, one of my goals is "Half-Marathon Training" and I can check off the days I run. You can also create a journal that supplements your goal: I use my journal to note how many miles I ran that day. The site allows you to run reports to track your progress on a graph -- you can see how well you did or if you really fell off the wagon.

The site runs off a point system, and you get positive points for each goal you check off. You can also add negative goals, i.e. bad habits you want to get rid of. If you put a check mark next to the negative goals, you’re assigned negative points. The whole idea is to stay in the positive and achieve your goals! I love it. Here’s to happy goal-setting. :)

Happy birthday Richard! :)

The great thing about being a twin is you get to share your birthday with a cool person!

Workage

You know you've been at the same job too long when you start entering your work e-mail address on Web sites where you should enter your normal one... I've been working at the same place for a year and four months, which is a long time in my opinion. Especially considering the longest I’ve ever held a job is two years, but that job was only part-time. So really, in Heather time, I’ve been working here for more like two years and eight months. No wonder I feel like I’ve been here forever.

Friday Friday (bah-dahhhh, bah-dah-dah-dah)

This is what my Friday night has come to. I am wrapped in a blanket on our futon, Amoxicillin in hand, with the extended edition of "Return Of The King" in the DVD player. Strep throat has rendered me contagious and I couldn't go to the church retreat that I'd been looking forward to for a month. Thus I sit, accompanied only by Frederick the chinchilla. Mark did go on the retreat, and I'm facing the first night of our married life without him. I hope I can sleep.

But enough of this pity party! I have made an album of our wedding pictures and posted them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hbombterryaki/WeddingPictures#

I'd invite you over, but I don't have enough Amoxicillin to go around.

Alarming

I'm in a war with my alarm clock. Every morning it goes off at 6 a.m., and I snooze it until 6:30. This means I hit snooze every five minutes until 6:30 (sorry Mark... although, you are supposed to be getting up earlier than I am, but you never do!) At 6:30, I debate whether I should style my hair or just put it up. Putting it up means I don't have to get out of bed until 6:45. At this point, I carefully examine the clock and make sure it hasn't gone off an hour or two early. Though this has never happened before, I refuse to give up hope. Precedent doesnt faze me. Or maybe I just expect different results but never change my actions? I think that's the definition of insanity.

Bringer of bad news?

Have you ever noticed that negativity loves company? I am certainly not immune. Due to our lack of Internet at our apartment (and our staunch refusal to sign up), Mark and I usually spend at least an hour on Saturdays at Voxx Coffee, a local spot on Eastlake. Voxx offers free wireless Internet and excellent coffee (Stumptown), and we use our time to catch up on news and blogs (and Facebook). For some reason, whenever I come across a sad/morbid story, I feel compelled to share it with Mark. I have been known to begin conversations with “Ohh, do you want to hear a sad story?” Mark will then say one of two things: “Do I have a choice?” or “Sure…” Well Mark, here is my resolution. I refuse to share negative stories that do not somewhat concern us. Of course, I’m not saying we should turn a blind eye to the hardships of the world, but I don’t want to be the harbinger of unnecessary depressing anecdotes. We’re surrounded by too much negativity in the first place to go about finding it ourselves!

Baseball for the newbies

They say that you have truly learned something when you can teach it to others. I grew up around baseball, and I thought I understood the game well enough to explain it until I went to a Mariners game with a group of middle school students and sat next to a boy who had only been to one baseball game in his entire life. I spent the last three innings of the game (we were very late… long story) trying to explain to him what strikes, outs and innings were. Throughout our discussion, I kept noticing how many exceptions there are to the game. I’d spend a couple of minutes explaining a rule and then a play would occur that blasted the rule out of the water. For example, one of the players hit a home run. “Look Peter, he just hit the ball out of the field into the stands! That’s called a home run.” Of course, two minutes later, the next batter hit a foul ball. Naturally, Peter got excited and thought it was a home run, so I had to back up and say, “Well actually, see those yellow posts over there? If you hit it in between them, it’s called a foul ball so it doesn’t count and you’re up to bat again…” The game was just full of these! Oh and did I mention that Peter’s first language is Mandarin? I never would have thought that baseball could teach me so much about cross-cultural communication, or maybe just communication in general. Peter and I bonded over that game, and when the last out was called, he was just as excited as I was that the Mariners had won. On the way back to the church, he couldn’t stop talking about how great baseball was and how he wanted to go to another game. I was just glad that my inadequate descriptions had somehow made sense. I was sure exhausted afterward though… I don’t know how teachers do it.

We're gettin' outta Dodge...

Mark and I are visiting Colorado during President’s Day weekend and can’t wait to see everyone! The only problem with visiting good ol’ CO is that I never know how to pack. The weather could go from a blizzard to 70 degrees in two days. You just never know. I usually end up taking at least four pairs of shoes... and some slippers. Mark always wonders why my suitcase is so heavy…

Ultramarathoners

You think you're intense? Check out these guys. I can barely run two miles without having to stop, but Sam Thompson ran the whole Appalachian trail over 99 days (2,175 miles). I guess that's what it takes to get a North Face sponsorship!

A call to hope

I’ve always loved benedictions. My pastor in the church where I grew up was exceptionally good at benedictions, and they were usually my favorite part of the service (and not because they marked the end!) I looked up “benediction” and found out it comes from the Latin “bene” (meaning “well”) and “dicere” (meaning “to speak”). Rev. Joseph E. Lowery gave the benediction at the presidential inauguration on Tuesday, and I found it an excellent call to faith and unity. His words remind us that while America may have come a long way, this is a process that is far from over. Just yesterday I read about a documentary about the de-segregating of a high school prom in Mississippi. When I read the first line of the article, I automatically thought this event occurred around 50 years ago. I was shocked when I read on and discovered it happened LAST YEAR. Worldviews don’t change just because of the passage of a law, and Lowery’s words are just as timely today as they were when he worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The full text of Lowery’s benediction can be found here. Picture courtesy of The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Come visit us!

Hey everyone! Southwest Airlines is having a great sale right now on flights to and from Seattle, so now would be an EXCELLENT time to buy tickets and visit the Emerald City! See here for the Southwest sale. You have to book by tomorrow, January 22, and the flights must occur between February 3 and May 31. Come on, you know you want a vacation...

The rest is history

We are taking part in history. I hope I can look back in 50 years and recall with clarity the importance of today. Live blogging on the inauguration at The New York Times.

(Photo courtesy of The New York Times)

Bored?

Is your Web surfing limited to a few familiar sites? Sign up at www.stumbleupon.com and you'll never have to be bored online again! You can check boxes for subjects that strike your fancy (e.g. art or computers), install the Stumble toolbar, hit the Stumble! button and see where it takes you. You'll be entertained for hours. At least I am. But that doesn't take much.

I swear they didn't pay me to write this.