iSummer

Remember me?  I'm back from Insane Six Weeks of Summer '08!  It was a good one, a nice mix of your everyday summer rowing competitions seasoned with a little improv study and topped with a birthday-time family reunion.  I don't know why I say I'm "back," because not much has ended except for races. But still.

In other news, I got an iPhone!  Holy crap, I know.  It was an AMAZING birthday present from Bridget, Bill, Patti, and Brian, and it has definitely changed my life.  But not in the annoying way, where I always look at it and not at real people.  At least I think.  Instead, it helps me keep up with correspondence and items that I would otherwise not get to during the day and have to deal with late at night (like I'm doing now), and also allows me to not have to call Brian once a day to ask him to go into my email and find some essential bit of information that I neglected to write down.  And, it has GPS.  GPS, people!  For some reason this blows my mind, probably because I've experienced GPS very very few times before.  Like, there is actually a dot that represents me on a map created by an object in space.  And it helped us find our race course in New Jersey like seven different times.   Unreal.

That's all.  I don't talk about many things other than rowing and iPhones these days, it seems. At least I'm talking about something.

Inspiración.

Am I alive? Yes.

It's been a long and extremely busy few weeks. First, my organization put on the first Chicago Mexican and Latino Book Fair, which was a great success and a ton of work. However, because of the event I had the pleasure of hosting several amazing artists from Latin America. First, this woman stayed with me for a weekend, and she was incredible. A children's book author, storyteller, singer, and social lecturer from Mexico, she entertained me for two days with stories, hilarious wordplays, and songs. Literally. She pulled out the guitar and sang for me in my apartment. And after that, we lent the apartment to four members of Teatro Trono, an incredible youth and street theater/arts group from Bolivia and my favorite performers ever. People at work kept thanking me for driving them around and making sure they got fed and stuff like that, but it was a serious privilege to go to different schools and workshops and watch them mesmerize kids and adults alike.

So there was that. And THEN, it was Memorial Day weekend and the whole sculling (rowing) team went up to our teammate's beautiful house in Michigan on the St. Joseph river. We rowed for five hours each day, cooked a lot, ate a ton, napped, got massages, nursed our hand blisters and sore muscles, watched World Championship rowing races on DVD and generally chillaxed as much as we could while still being competitive. I seriously did not want to leave, ever.

Double race pieces...

Now I'm trying to get back to that long lost place where I cooked the veggies that we get delivered each week and actually spend time in the apartment. But it's like 90 degrees, which makes me not want to be inside with our dinky fan. So we'll see.

Fennel and apples and chives, oh my!

Things I haven't been doing much of: sleeping, blogging.

Things I have been doing a lot of: rowing, improv, COOKING!

Let's talk about that last item, shall we? Okay! The story behind it is, we joined a CSA with Brittnye a few weeks ago. If you're not familiar with CSAs, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and when you join one, you regularly receive a box full of veggies and fruit from local farms. You're supporting local food production, in this case organic, and you get whatever is in season, whether it be root vegetables, apples, or garlic. In our case, we actually get home delivery once a week, and the produce comes from several local farms, so we always get lots of different stuff.

This has revolutionized my life.

I was already trying to cook more, but this... this is special. I was unprepared for the joy I would feel at peeking out the back door and seeing that non-descript gray cooler box waiting for me. I pulled out the surprises one by one, gazing at them, smelling them, feeling their weight in my hands. Fennel! Leeks! Carrots! Kale! Everything I sliced emitted amazing aromas, even the shiitake mushrooms. If you know me at all, you know that I normally stay far, far away from any type of mushroom. I've tried to like them, I really have. But in this case, I didn't have to try. Those babies had me at "oh, what's in this little paper bag?" They looked so fresh and were so aromatic that I promptly made a fennel-mushroom sautee and loved every bite of it.

And it's only gotten better from there. Between in-depth gmail chat conversations with my foodie sister, emails/phone calls with Brittnye (Brian's foodie sister), and some quality time with Marcella Hazan, a sort of magic began. The thrill of seeing what I could do with what had arrived on the back porch--knowing the quality of everything was always great--became addicting. Roasted beets, leek pesto, the best freaking green beans ever... I think I'm in love.

Happy Spring!

Oh wait, I have a blog too?

Yeesh, sorry about that. Busy couple of weeks, much less time spent with computer! A few things I've been up to (#1 is the reason I didn't use the computer at work, and #2 is the reason I'm always too exhausted to do anything once I get home):

1. The Fourth Grade Play that Would Never Die finally kicked the bucket. Thank god. I didn't think I could spend any more time telling 9-year-olds to speak up. For those who don't know, it really doesn't matter, but this was the culmination of a drama residency I did at a couple of schools with fourth graders. Of course, everyone wants to see a "product," so we had to do something and the whole process kind of took forever, with every day the last week becoming a big effort. Still, the performances were cute, and the kids really amazed me with their effort and ability to memorize lines and blocking. And the parents got pictures and video, which is ultimately what's important, not actually be able to hear the lines, right?

2. It may have been a week ago, but I believe I'm still feeling the effects of Physical Challenge Weekend 2008. It all started with the fact that about a month ago I started rowing again, a lot, with a new intense coach. I didn't plan it that way, but last weekend I ended up having to do a 6km erg (rowing machine) test on Saturday and then the Shamrock Shuffle on Sunday. It really wasn't all that dramatic, but I was proud of myself for never puking throughout the whole weekend and getting through both events better than I expected! Since then we've been able to finally start rowing on the water, so it's still taking up most mornings...

That's what I've been up to, pretty normal stuff. Be back with more exciting things (hopefully) very soon!

Cold feet?

Is it appropriate to wear flats yet?

Cause it's like 42 degrees, but it's so darn sunny.

I don't think I can bear to put boots on one more time.

A project.

You know how there are some blogs that you get in the habit of reading, just because you stumbled upon them? Well I have a few of those. There's one in particular that I love, the blog of a friend of a friend (actually the friend of a sibling's ex-boyfriend, if we want to get technical). It's just a regular blog, pretty because she has web design experience, and I really like her writing. After I read her posts I often find that I begin composing posts in my head with a similar voice, which of course never come out like I wish they would. I think there were a few times when I almost even met her in person, but I never actually did. Several times I've wanted to comment on her posts, but something stopped me...maybe I liked being a secret reader, or maybe I just didn't want to startle her.  Silly, I know.

Anyway, I've decided to rip off her new idea, which is part group project, part blog challenge:  inviting readers of the blog and friends to submit photos, self-portraits to be exact, with the theme "Your Environment." That can mean whatever you want it to mean. The catch? Photos should be taken with either webcam or old-school digital equipment only: think PhotoBooth, plain digital cam, or even cell phone. No altering of images at all except to add borders.

For example:

Self Portrait with Salad Bowl

Feel free to either add your photos to the Flickr group here, or post them on your own blog.  Or hell, send them to me and I'll post them for you if you want!

Go!

Clear air.

It's hard to blog every day when you're in the middle of nowhere with not even cell phone service, let alone internet. Which is where I was. For a few days.

On the weekend we drove like a million hours to Hayward, Wisconsin, where Brian's friend's family has a house.  It's one of those places that's decorated with images of frolicking bears, moose silhouettes, and old-timey snowshoes.  The whole area was blanketed in white, and we spent our time playing games and cooking in the warmth, as well as snowmobiling (or "snow machining," as Susie says Alaskans say), across the vast, frozen lake. I was as freaked out as my mom would be at first ("On a frozen lake?!"), but it took me about three minutes to become accustomed to the air on my face, the bouncing over treacherous bumps, and the high speeds. I would have called them breakneck speeds, except that when we got back Brian made my wussy ass get off the snowmobile so he could take it, alone, up to speeds of 100 mph. I guess I wasn't quite as daredevil as I thought. But whatever! Anything that requires a full face helmet (see photo) is adventurous in my book.