Wish me luck!

So, we head down to San Diego this weekend! Finally time for the marathon - and I have to say, I'm nervous!!

I'm sure that it won't be anywhere close to a best pace, but I'm really hoping that I finish like I want to - I'm not time-conscious, I just want to FINISH! I'm nervous because it's my first race this long, and I feel like I haven't prepared enough. I've done lots of running, but haven't been able to do as many long runs as I've wanted/should have done. With work being so crazy, finding time to add a 3+ hr long run into the schedule was very challenging. I think this'll be the last full marathon I do for a while, definitely at least not until I change jobs - those training runs are just too hard to squeeze in when my work week is this long! Half-marathon training runs, even the long ones, are much easier to work into a schedule and still have a life outside running.

So, we'll see how I do. I'm planning on walk-run intervals on Sunday, and I think that'll get me through. Nothing to do now but drive down to San Diego tomorrow, enjoy myself for a few days and then run on Sunday. Gonna give it my best!

Besides, if nothing else, it'll be a good motivational kick in the pants to keep me running through the summer :)

Death Valley vacation - Pt 2

Before actually visiting the park, I thought Death Valley National Park was really just the valley. It includes the mountains on both sides as well, so here's a little of what's to see beyond what most people think of when they think of Death Valley. There's plenty of road to drive, as well as trail, which give some really pretty views across the valley. This shot below was at Dante's Ridge, which is one of the higher points on the eastern side of the park and overlooks Badwater. It's a crazy drive up to the trailhead (just a tiny little trail to the overlook once you get up there, though). Something like a 15% incline! Very very steep! And of course, once we're up there, Zach does have to get as high as he can :)

In the northern part of the park, up in the mountains above the valley, is a large historic house, Scotty's Castle. Interestingly, not a castle, nor owned by Scotty. It was a vacation house built by a wealthy couple in the 1920s, and Scotty was their dear friend and caretaker of the place. Tons of stories about the place! It's actually not completed, either. In the late 1920s and 1930s, the couple lost a lot of their fortune (as did most people) and construction came to a halt. By the time they were ready to start work again, the country had started setting aside land for Death Valley NP and everyone realized that the house was actually about 1 mile from the land the couple owned!. There had been a mistake in the only survey of the area, and so the couple had built a $2 million house on land they didn't own! It was eventually worked out as the house was incorporated into the park as a historical building, but it was a long time before that was actually sorted out.

One of the best parts of Scotty's Castle was the detail in the place. The fixtures, the patterns on the tile, all sorts of little accents show such attention! You can just walk around and find all these interesting little points. Like the weather vane below, a miner (possibly Scotty himself, according to the stories!). And the door, which has such incredible metal work on it. You can't see from this angle, but the door handle is a seahorse, to fit with the sea imagery on the door. So neat!

Another of the little surprises we found in the park was in the mountains to the west of the valley. Darwin Falls is a year-round waterfall in the park (as opposed to the 'dry falls' scattered in the mountains around the park). It was beautiful!! As you hike up towards it, you start walking along the waterway flowing from the falls and the valley just gets greener and greener, until you come into a little wooded nook with the falls flowing down. Dragonflies darting about, sunshine coming through the leaves... so pretty! Zach took the opportunity to cool his feet from the hike, and we spent a good little rest just enjoying the greenery!

Overall impressions from our trip:

• Much more to the park than we thought, really. Spent several days there, and filled them all! Certainly worth a trip if you're in the area. Very interesting historical and natural features.
  
• We're actually planning on going back. We'd like to hike Telescope Peak (Zach and his love of standing on top of high places again!) so we might take a long weekend over the summer and hike it. Yes, go to Death Valley in the summer. Really though, Telescope Peak is at a high enough elevation that it gets snow in the winter (they say the paths are 'typically clear by June'), so it is recommended as a summer hike.
  
• On a personal note, there's just something depressing though, when Death Valley, bordered by the Funeral Mountains, is more scenic and has more life than the place one is currently living. (sigh...)

Death Valley vacation - Pt 1

So, now that life is calming down a little, I've got some time to organize and post pictures from our last trip (just in time, before our next trip, to San Diego this weekend!!). That's life isn't it? :)

Anyway, last month we went up to Death Valley NP and spent a few days camping. Both of us wanted to see it, and figured April would be more temperate than later in the year. Was still in the upper 90s while we were there, but could've been so much worse!

When people think of Death Valley, they really think of Furnace Creek and of Badwater Basin, even if they don't think of the names specifically. Those are the areas in the valley itself, all the below-sea-level areas. The visitor center at Furnace Creek is 190 feet below sea level, and where we camped right nearby was 189 feet below. So, we've now camped below sea level! (If you look closely at the picture below, you'll see the temperature is nearly 100 in the shade!)

The visitor center was very interesting, actually. There's a lot more history in Death Valley than I thought. I thought it was more like the Mojave - more natural interest than historical. Death Valley actually has a mix of both. There was a lot of mineral work done in Death Valley, with borax in particular being mined from the valley floor. The valley is particularly mineral rich, as it was once a sea floor, and with high evaporation leaving behind the salts on the valley floor. Borax mining in Death Valley is where the Borax 20 Mule Team logo comes from - it took carts with 20 mules (well, 18 with 2 horses) to cart the partially-refined minerals down to one of the train stations south of the valley.

The unique shape of the valley, besides being tied to the source of the mineral deposits, is also why the valley gets such high temperatures. The valley is surrounded by steep mountains (not like the hills surrounding our post, just south of Death Valley). Telescope Peak, the highest point in the park is approximately 11,000 feet above sea level, and directly overlooks Badwater Basin, at -282 feet. Such high mountains block rain from entering the valley, and at the same time trap the warmer air from the valley, which just keeps circulating within the valley, creating an effect like an oven.

There are several spots around the world which have similar conditions, the very high temperatures and points below sea level. All have to be in arid environments, so that the land is exposed (instead of being a lake or inland sea). There are others of these points further below sea level than Death Valley (the lowest is the Dead Sea), but this is the lowest in North America. Badwater Basin is the lowest point in the park at 282 feet below sea level (named because the water at the spring was so salty that the surveyor's mule wouldn't drink - he marked it on his map as 'bad water'). You really get a sense of how far down this point is in the picture below. The road is at the bottom of the picture, and the small sign at the top of the picture marks where sea level is. Standing where I was to take the picture, I was still maybe 10 feet above Badwater at the parking area, and I had to really try hard to get both in the same shot!

Interesting little story: how Death Valley got its name. A wagon train tried to find a shortcut across the valley as they were heading west, and got lost. There was actually only one death, someone who was already sick from the journey west, but those in the train with him were in dire circumstances when they were finally rescued. As they were being guided out of the valley, one of the travelers turned back and said "Farewell, death valley." And the name stuck! Here's the full story on the NP website.

More later, as I get some more pictures sorted :)

Review: Kinky Boots

It seems like drag queen movies came up back-to-back on my queue, so Zach went in and shuffled things up a bit. He tries to get a mix of 'my movies' and 'his movies' on the queue, but since I had the account a good 3 years before we were actually in the same household... my movies outweigh his a good bit :)

Anyhoo, the movie this week is: Kinky Boots.

The story: A young man inherits the family shoe factory. Generations of manufacturing sensible shoes, and struggling to get by, since everything is now mass-marketed and cheaply produced. In order to reinvent the brand, and keep everyone employed in the meantime, they look for a niche market and find it in the drag queen community: making "kinky boots" designed to handle a man's weight. And, to make it more fun, actually based on a real story!

This is a fun movie. It's not gripping drama, is on the predictable side, and has a few over-the-top moments (like the finale at the catwalk in Milan) but is very entertaining nonetheless. It's simply a fun, feel-good sort of distraction, and we all need those from time to time.

The acting is solid, but nothing exceptional, except for one part. The whole movie is really held together by Lola, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor. What a great actor! I recognized him from Love Actually (he's Peter, Kierra Knightley's husband) and from Serenity (he's the Operative). Zach recognized him from Four Brothers (he was Victor Sweet, a rather sadistic drug lord). Interestingly, Four Brothers, Serenity, and Kinky Boots were all released the same year - quite a range!! He does a great job here of making Lola believable, more than just a stereotype, not just an over-the-top persona which it could have easily been. And, he does his own singing :) Told you it was a good soundtrack!

The costumes are pretty fun. Well, most are pretty ordinary clothes, so it's all about the shoes, right? The first sample model Lola designs are thigh-high, bright red, and have a holster for a whip on the side!! The shoes at Milan are fun too, showing a wider range of the Kinky Boots line - some are really cute shoes, honestly!

Also to be mentioned about this movie: great soundtrack! Check out samples here at Amazon. Not something that you hear about a lot from me, but this one has just some fun songs. One of my favorite songs ever appeared on it, a little-known gem called "In these shoes" by Kirsty MacColl. Anne and I each had heard it once or twice on the radio (back when 93.7 was the Coast, not Bob FM, all those ages ago, for you Hampton Roads folk) and could never find who it was by! One of those times that a song is played in the middle of a set, and the announcer doesn't tell you who it's by of the name of the song. So frustrating. Anyhoo, this song was right in the middle of the film in the background, and then over the ending credits! Woohoo! I was so excited, I actually called Anne in the middle of the night (her time - sorry, hon!) And yes, have since downloaded the song for myself :)

Overall: 4.5 of 5. Not classic, but lots of fun. Worth at least one viewing, if you like feel-good British comedies (I do). Can definitely see this one on the shelf.

J is for...

Joey!

Probably my most important J! The only reason I didn't use him for J last year, was that I'd just used him for I. Well, not this year! Here he is, my lovely, stubborn, adorable, veggie-devouring, little poop machine :)

I is for...

Innocent?

This isn't a recent picture, from last spring really, but it's one of my favorites of Zach. Just seems to capture him :)

Not much of a story, at least that you can't already tell in the picture. I'd been making chocolate chip cookies, and came round the corner to see someone sneaking cookie dough. Just love the look of "Oh, no, I've been caught!" Cracks me up every time!

Silly kitten pictures :)

Yes, I know - been ages since I've posted. But, work has finally sort-of calmed down. At least enough, I can start catching up on posts :)

For today, silly pet pictures :)

For those of you familiar with the comic strip Rose is Rose, you will of course know the character Peekaboo, the household cat. There is a running idea in the comic strip of Peekaboo treating family members with "sit-in-things therapy." Peekaboo gets into boxes, pots (complete with lid on head), etc., always with the mindset of relieving tension of the family members.

Well, I don't know if it's intentional or not, but Scruffers likes pulling the same sort of play. We're always finding him in new and unusual nooks and crannies. And while we're guffawing at where he's squeezed himself into this time, he just looks at us like, "What? You have a problem with this?"

So, to provide a smile for all of you, here's our massive 16-lb nutcase finding all sorts of unusual napping spots, such as....

The bathtub

The kitchen cabinet

A cardboard box

A sleeping pad roll, as Zach was trying to pack for a training trip

A shoebox (his "pouting box" as we call it - he sits in it when we won't let him sit in our laps)

The newly-delivered recycling bin, now officially kitten approved.

Just some fuzzy silliness to brighten your day :)