Thoughts in Random Patterns

18-1

Dear Tom and Bill and the offensive front line of the Patriots,

Well, that didn't go like any of us wanted it to, did it?  As you drove down the field in one of those heart-stopping end of the 4th quarter drives, I said to Brad that I would try to take more time off the clock so that the Giants didn't have any time left on their final possession.  But you gave Eli time to play the very best football I've ever seen him play, and you lost the game.  Gack.

And now it's 7 long months until the next football season begins.  I guess I'll have to find something else to do with my time.  Sigh.

Groundhog Day

Happy Groundhog  Day.  Punxsutwney Phil saw his shadow, so we'll be having 6 more weeks of winter, which I'm pretty sure we would have whether a rodent sees a shadow.  I have been enjoying hiding in my burrow this winter, but now that the days are longer I'm emerging.

Gifted

I've been thinking about intelligence today and what it means to be smart.   I made a site visit to the Rocky Mountain School for the Gifted and Creative and was both amazed by the educational process there, and reminded of my own childhood journey.  My kindergarten and first grade teacher, Mrs. Scholemberger, was concerned that I might be what was called in those days "retarded" because I couldn't skip.  I remember the humiliating, agonizing experience of being singled out and made to skip lengths down the basketball court in the gym.  Maybe I even had to take after-school skipping lessons.  I can't remember for certain.  I also remember this boy, Mark Something, who peed his pants while sitting in one of those brightly colored injection molded plastic chairs and denying that he'd had an accident when accosted by the teacher, who interrogated him until he cried, while the puddle of pee cooled under his chair.  Childhood is wonderful, isn't it?  When I got my diploma from Wellesley I really wanted to track down Mrs. Scholemberger and show it to her, maybe doing some skipping while holding it.

Looking back on my skipping lessons, I think Mrs. Scholemberger was probably trying to make sure I was developing normally, whatever that means.  I think I was exhibiting the introversion and asynchronous development which are now considered to be hallmarks of gifted children's development.  And when I got to 7th grade I took some fun tests with lots of puzzles, and was placed into the Gifted and Talented program in my public school, where I grew bacteria on agar plates and stained them to look at under the microscope and decided that I wanted to be a scientist, and learned Basic programming and did all kinds of logic puzzles, and made literally lifelong friendships with my peers.  GT rocked for me.

What I saw at the Rocky Mountain School today felt like a sanctuary for kids like me:  rooms full of visual stimulation, classes grouped by ability level and not by age, with different subjects grouped differently, art and music and wellness integral parts of the curriculum, and crazy high achievement from very young kids.  I was there for about 3 hours and wanted to stay longer and see what I could learn.  Maybe one of these young people will invent an alternative to fossil fuels or anti-gravity boots or the great music of the 21st century.  I can't wait to see..

Ambivalence

After watching the Red Sox pummel the Rockies last night, I'm still not sure who I'm rooting for.  Living in Boston for 11 years, including 1986 , I've long been a part of Red Sox nation.  My first apartment after college was about 3 blocks from Fenway Park.  But I've now been living in Boulder for 12 years, and the Rockies run up to the World Series has been surprising and inspiring and wonderful.  Brad has been wearing his Red Sox jacket around town this week, but more as a provocation than an actual statement of allegiance.

I was hoping for close, well-played games and that I'd be happy whichever team won, and would feel badly for the losers like I always do.  Tonight I'll definitely be cheering for the Rockies.

Happy Half-Birthday to Brooks

Brooksie Brookster pupster is six months old today. 

He sleeps through the night and is incredibly cute and will obey commands like Sit and Down as long as we're in the kitchen and I have a treat in my hand.  I'll expand his range of obedience any day now.

October?!?!?!!

I imagine that I'm not the only one who is startled to find that it's October.  And I'm especially surprised that I let more than a month pass without doing a blog post while I was watching Roger Federer win the US Open in New York and eating Italian food in Rome and turning 41 in Venice and walking through San Francisco with my niece and loving my puppy who now sleeps through the night.  I don't know when blogging became just another obligation, another of the 714 items on my To Do list, another thing that leaves me always feeling behind on everything -- and the longer I went without writing, the harder it seemed to start again.  I thought I needed to do an update on all of the travels and zooming and scurrying I've been doing, but I'm just going to start with today, and try to post again tomorrow.  I'll do September posts in my voluminous spare time.  Ha ha ha.  Ha.

I started October off right by going to a Monday morning cardio workout class with my friend Katherine and getting my heart rate up to 549 beats per minute, and then going to a yoga class.  Tuesday I did an hour of Pilates apparatus and 75 minutes of yoga.  Wednesday I did a private Pilates apparatus lesson and 75 minutes of yoga.  Thursday I came up to Keystone and then rested since pretty much every part of me was sore.  Friday I rested some more.  Saturday I rested and took a 4 hour nap.  Maybe I overdid the exercise thing a bit?!?   Today I took the dogs for a nice 75 minute walk through our neighborhood in Keystone and feel pretty good.  It's definitely harder here at 9,000 feet.  I'm in Boulder for the entire month of October, so I'm trying to get into a good exercise pattern before travel picks up again in November.  My 20th college reunion looms in June and I'd rather not be a marshmallow for that, and the holiday eating season approaches, and my damn doctor told me I need to lose weight.  I'm doing this really radical and strange diet where you eat less and exercise more.  Crazy.  Let's see if it works.

And life is good.  Brad and I were in the same place at the same time for almost all of September, and he's not traveling until October 30th, which is an enormous change from the first 8 months of the year.  It's great to be together.  We have big plans for the afternoon -- watching the Broncos while Brad runs on the treadmill, and then maybe even watching the Rockies, and then napping on the couch. 

Tomorrow is Monday again already.  I'll be closing up the Keystone house and driving the dogs back to Boulder and making peanut butter chocolate cheesecake in preparation for a nice dinner with friends at our house on Tuesday.  And I'm sure I'll get some exercise in somewhere.  And a blog post, too. 

Applauding the Landing

My friend Katherine asks why people don't applaud when their plane lands anymore, and I hope it's because people are getting better at risk assessment and realize that flying is far safer than driving a car -- but that's probably not the reason.  And sometimes people do applaud.  On the way home from San Francisco Monday evening, there was a massive thunderstorm between Denver and Colorado Springs that closed the airport because of lightning strikes when we were about 100 miles out.  After circling the Denver Airport for 45 minutes, we finally landed at DIA instead of getting diverted to Laramie, Wyoming.  And people did applaud.  The approach was a little swervy, but the landing was not that bumpy, and not at all scary compared to various and sundry aborted landings and takeoffs I've had in Washington DC and San Francisco in fog banks and flying through hurricanes.   It was nice to get down safely, and then drive my car at an unsafe rate of speed the 50 miles home.

Q: When is a Sprinkler not a Sprinkler?

A:  When it's a rattlesnake.

Yes, that's my back patio.  Yikes!  I was sitting outside reading and letting the dogs run around and wrestle with each other when I heard a sound.  My first thought was that it was the sprinkler system starting up with that sputtering sound it makes.  I was all annoyed because I was going to have to move or get wet and I don't want the sprinklers going off at 5:15 and my book is really good.  Then I looked around and saw what was making the sound.  Pretty damn close to my chair and book and R.W. Knudsen grape spritzer.

I grabbed Brooks and called Kenai in my "dammit, I'm serious" voice and we went inside.  I called Brad at work and told him my little story, using his favorite expletive several times, over and over really.  Then I calmed down enough to sneak back outside and take these photos. 

I'm having dinner with some friends in town, and will check to see if the snake is still there in the morning.  Maybe when the sprinklers start up at 8:30 they'll scare it away.

Puppy Love

Between the jet lag from my trip to France and Brooks still thinking he needs to go outside at least twice in the night, I haven't had a full night of sleep in about a week and my brain is definitely not firing on all cylinders.  Brad says that the only reason puppies survive into adulthood is that they're so cute you can't kill them even when you want to.  A friend sent me a hilarious dog FAQ from McSweeney's that sums it up perfectly.

This is Brooks in his different stages of activity, from Asleep to Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Ah, Paris

I'm in the City of Light until Sunday, taking my 18 year old niece, Morgan, to France for her birthday gift.  We took the overnight flight from Dulles on Wednesday night, arriving here to a cloudy gray city yesterday morning.  We came to our incredibly tiny, but wonderfully orange hotel room and slept until 4:00 in the afternoon, which isn't the recommended way to acclimate to a new time zone, but felt wonderful.  We're staying on the Left Bank near St. Germain and walked around the familiar 6th and 7th arrondissement after having splendid pastries and cafe creme at Laduree, which is literally just around the corner.  We walked around until 9:30 and had dinner at a sidewalk cafe also just around the corner from our hotel.  It's always delightful to share my favorite city (or one of my favorites) with a new person, especially one as observant and fun as Miss Morgan. 

I slept until right at 2:00 in the morning, and then was wide awake.  I could hear Morgan starting to turn over and stir around 3:30.  We stayed in bed until 6:30, came downstairs to our contemporary hotel lobby and had breakfast.  Now we're going to head to the Louvre, which I think takes up most of a day.  The decorative arts galleries are open again after several years of renovation, and I'm excited to see them.  We'll also try to go to L'Orangerie, which had just opened also after years of renovation when Brad and I were here for the month of May last year and had very long lines.  We'll enjoy the Tuilieries, although it's kind of a cloudy day again and the flowers won't be at the biggest blooming. 

We're here in Paris until Sunday afternoon, when we take the TGV to Aix-en-Provence for a 5 day horse riding excursion.  I suspect the country farm where we'll going won't have a computer in the lobby with free internet access, and my phone and texting isn't working at all here -- so I'll probably be taking a genuine vacation from the computer for awhile.  C'est la vie.