This year's birthday consisted of driving mom and dad to the airport (wish I could go to alaska, too!) buying my annual rosebush with my birthday money from grandma, along with a bunch of other garden additions, and spending hours in the garden planting, weeding and mulching :) and then going out to eat with Michael and touring the inside of Jennifer's new house. For some reason I didn't feel like a bike ride today, so I didn't go. It was humid and windy and threatening to rain, so I didn't feel too bad about that decision.

I did get in two bike rides in WI while I was home over the weekend. One 20 mile ride around Butternut lake and one 15 mile ride to Fifield. Not as far as I should have gone, but hilly, so I got a bit of a workout. And now I know where I can ride without getting chased by dogs.

The vacation went by too quickly.

Thanks, Kris, for the itunes hookup. I owe you!

Talking to my fellow Desperados last night (the writing group) I learned from Mike that a friend of his and his wife have personal challenges every month. Like going for a month without alcohol, or only eating vegan. So we decided to have a writing group challenge-- to write for 10 minutes every day for the next month. Today is my second day, and so far I'm doing well. Blogging doesn't count, nor does emailing. It has to be either actual journaling or writing a story. I managed to add a bit to the novel last night and tonight. The 10 minutes usually stretches out to more, but the great thing is that I can stop after 15 and feel like I've really accomplished something. At this rate, I may actually finish the novel this summer!

Had a great bike ride tonight with the bike club, same ride that just about broke me last year. This time I did much better. I can tell I'm making progress. Baby steps, but steps nonetheless, like writing 10 minutes a day, pretty soon it really adds up to something!

Oh, and I was sporting my Vanderkitten kit (or as I call it, my Vander-kit-n)

The Naturalist's Estate Sale
This was definitely in my top two estates sales ever. Right up there with the hatmaker/printmaker couple sale in Kenwood-- this was a Nature-lover's house in Longfellow. A small, unassuming house that beckoned with vintage linens waving in the breeze out on the front lawn. Jennifer tipped me off to this one, calling me while I was weeding my side garden and insisting "you have to go!"

I rode little blue over and had a devil of a time finding something to lock her to. Finally a smallish tree half a block away seemed like the best bet.

Nothing was lacking at this gem of a sale. Vintage jewelry: check, cool glassware: check, ladies' hats, scarves, pins, and vintage clothing: check. Vellum maps of the BWCA, binoculars, wool blankets, wooden musky lures, old lanterns, geodes, shells, chemistry sets, flower press, rock cutter, and my favorite, but dang, it didn't fit-- vintage ladies' fishing jacket!

I am in a severe paring-down mode, or at least a stasis in my possessions mode, so I had to restrain myself at several points, especially with the light up globe. But I did come away with a small ziploc bag of paper ephemera including Audobon Bird Cards (unused), two Boy Scout Luminous Pocket Planitaruims (Northern and Southern hemisphere), a small envelope with a copy of a letter written in 1944 from George North, who was stationed in North Africa, and a compass from the US Army Corp of Engineers.

If tomorrow is half price day, it may be hard to stay away.

Two bike goals accomplished in two days:

I went out to the track on Thursday to cheer on my teammates. Track racing looks really fun and scary!

I rode my bike to work yesterday! It was 28 miles round trip with three moderate hills. It wasn't as difficult to find a route as I had feared, so I'll probably do it again. And everyone at work was really impressed and they all asked me about it. "How did you get here?" "How long did it take?" and "Did you get rained on?" Answers: mostly on bike paths or lanes, an hour and 12 minutes and no :)

Finally, I found this in a format other than cassette tape. For your listening pleasure, it's T.S. Eliot reading the Waste Land!!!

http://world.std.com/~raparker/exploring/thewasteland/explore.html
This website will take you through all of the allusions in the Waste Land. I found myself immersed in this website for an hour before I even realized it.

Yesterday I inadvertently did a 56 mile bike ride. How does one accidentally end up riding for four hours? Try to find a small town on the outskirts of St. Paul where you friends are riding in a TT and don't bring a map.

I never did find the TT, but I got in half my miles for the week in one day!

What not to do if you want your quads to feel good:

Ride your bike 14 miles in the wind as fast as you can,
don't do anything the next day,
the following day attend a yoga session where you spend several minutes in chair pose rotating with several minutes in crescent lunge.

Ouch.

Tonight I did practice racing and sprints with the VB gals.
Can't wait to see how it feels tomorrow!

I had to do three posters for my typography assignment due today. It's for a fictional designer lecture series at the Walker Art Center. Here is my favorite one. But according to my class, it had lots of problems. Back to the drawing board?

Hey, it's May Day and a full moon. That must be why I feel so gooood today! And the flowering crabapple or dogwood or whatever they are on 28th street are blooming a block from my house and man, do they smell great! The azaleas and tulips are looking great, and pretty soon it will be lilac time :) Time for one of my favorite bits of doggerel...

Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in her fingers while she talks
Ah my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands
Slowly twisting the lilac stalks.
You let it flow from you,
You let it flow.
And youth is cruel and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.

—T.S. Eliot

Here's what I did last weekend...The Minnesota Ironman! No, not a triathlon, but a 66 mile bike ride through windy farm/new suburb country. There I am at the front of the pack, as usual. Okay, so I'm just glad that they actually captured it on film, because for the whole second half of the ride I was wheel sucking at the back of the pack, gasping just to hang on. From this pic, it looks like the scenery was nice. I wouldn't know. I don't remember seeing any of it. Nor do I remember taking my hands off the bars unless I was eating or drinking. No idea what I'm doing in this picture.

On the positive side, it was both the farthest and fastest I've ever ridden. Yay for drafting! And Yay for the massage people at the end of the ride :) mmmm, calf rub!