Isolating iTUNES

Sea Hag,
I know you wanted a list of "sad (because someone I like doesn't like me) songs". This playlist is for you dearie!
:) LJS

My Doorbell	The White Stripes
I Want To Be The Boy	The White Stripes
Your Heart Is An Empty Room	Death Cab For Cutie
16 Days	Ryan Adams
La Cienega Just Smiled	Ryan Adams
When Will You Come Back Home	Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
A lover i don't have to love	Bright Eyes
Land Locked Blues	Bright Eyes
Jane	Barenaked Ladies
Dear John	Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
Honey Please, Can't Ya See	Barry White
Standing In The Doorway	Bob Dylan
The Blower's Daughter	Damien Rice
The Brilliant Dance	Dashboard Confessional
As I'm Leaving	David Gray
Be Mine	David Gray
Here With Me	Dido
She	Elvis Costello
I've Got A Crush On You	Frank Sinatra
Looks Like Rain	Grateful Dead
Lover, You Should've Come Over	Jamie Cullum
Now You're Gorgeous, Now You're Gone	Joe Firstman
Lies	Joe Firstman
Split Screen Sadness	John Mayer
Hurt	Johnny Cash
Back to Me	Kathleen Edwards
Your Eyes Open	Keane
I Alone	Live
Have Mercy	Loretta Lynn
Miss Being Mrs.	Loretta Lynn
One Of These Mornings	Moby
The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get	Morrissey
I Know It's Gonna Happen Someday	Morrissey
Darling, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup	Nat King Cole
Jealousy	Natalie Merchant
Which Will	Nick Drake
In your eyes	Peter Gabriel
Jealous Guy	Roxy Music
Let Down	Radiohead
What Sin Replaces Love	Ryan Adams
Possession	Sarah McLachlan
I Love You	Sarah McLachlan
Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now	The Smiths
I will not take these things for granted	Toad the Wet Sprocket
All I want	Toad the Wet Sprocket
Love Rescue Me	U2
All I Want Is You	U2
Space And Time	The Verve
We're going to be friends	The White Stripes

Fear me!

Meander over to International ___ Day for some phobia pfun! :) ljs

"Nice legs"

And with those two words, I had found a new meditation during today’s run.

Let me back up here. I don’t like running with music; I find it counter productive to my desire to be as unplugged as possible. Plus, it IS dangerous because you can’t hear cars, or some psychotic flasher/crazy person running after you. So, I look forward to my long runs because they’re a great chance to sort out my mind; separate out the good, the bad, and the ugly of psychic cowboys. My long runs have been a blessing, especially in difficult times. Today I was considering the misuse of the word “myriad”, living in the country versus the city, the emotional fortitude of vampires, and noting the beautiful landscaping in some yards.

I’m about 3 miles into my run and I pass by a *guy* who said to me “Nice legs” in response to my “hello”. Ummm, yeah. “Nice legs” is not, to the best of my knowledge, the most socially acceptable greeting but I laughed it off because it was just so surreal. As I ran on, I realized that I was simultaneously

a) weirded-out

b) disappointed at myself for being flattered for a millisecond. Gloria and Betty were so not happy with me and may revoke my membership in the “we are self-respecting women and thou shall not treat women as objects” group.

Overall, I figured that the *guy* was harmless but very inappropriate.

For the next 3 miles, I began to ponder the acceptability of such statements to total strangers, and I wondered why it was more likely that a man would say that to a woman but not vice versa, or even for a woman to say that to another woman. Now I’m curious. And, if a Gen X-er such as me is curious, then I will actually do something about it. Heh. As I’ve told Lord Mullett, “the world is our oyster, but all I want to do is take a nap”.

If you have a story or something to add, please do in the comments.

I use the word *guy* with intent because I was reminded from this quote from “Say Anything”: No. The world is full of guys. Be a man. Don't be a guy.

I'm off to re-read "Love in the Time of Cholera", it's a wonderful novel. It may even surpass "Wuthering Heights" as my favorite book.

Stay vertical, :) LJS

Her Blondeness

If it’s not one thing, it’s another eh? As blogger is temporarily on hiatus, I am typing this blog on Word. It is not without a hint of irony that I said I am typing on Word, because it was giving me problems since last Thursday. I would try to open Word, and see…nothing…blankness. But, it would follow shortcut keys and actually open. I thought many things:

1) Oh drat, it’s the end of my productivity

2) A file is corrupted! Auntie Em, Auntie Em!

3) Office had gone beserk, despite the fact that all the other Office applications worked just fine

4) A spyware or virus had eaten Word as a tasty snack

5) By enabling a “feature” to save versions of my documents, I had unleashed the Hounds of Hell and they were attacking Word. Poor helpless little software. {sniff sniff}

So…trying to be e-savvy, I did the following. Reupdated virus definitions and ran Norton several times, bought (ack!) Spybot, uninstalled and reinstalled Office 2003, defragmented my C drive, ran scan disk, and prayed to the all knowing Gatesian god from (longitudinally) above. Alas! None of this worked, although now I must mention how awesomely fast my computer is running. I know that y’all are wondering what caused this problem, and took away many hours of grad student productivity.

The answer is…

My blondeness.

Yeppo. In a blonde moment of epic proportions, I had *forgotten* that I was using two screens when I was visiting Montreal and hence did not revert my laptop back to the single screen. I was using Word on the 2^nd screen, and my computer thought that I was still using 2 screens and THAT’s why I wasn’t seeing Word. When I switched back to a single screen mode, Word magically reappeared and all is now right. Egad, that was painful to even write. Damn, I need tequila.

Word out, yo. :) LJS

More mundane running babble

Except that, maybe, it wasn't so mundane. I signed up to run a 10K, and today was the DAY of the Dexter-Ann Arbor run. Each year a 5K, 10K, and half-marathon is run along Huron River Dr. The road is quite scenic and totally worth getting up at 5:30 am (yes, Domie...AM) for it. I enjoyed the run immensely, gazing at the wild phlox, the poison ivy (itch itch itch), and the masses of people passing me by.
Today's journey starts at 5:30 am, no wait...5:00 am...when NPR started discussing religious tolerance in the Middle East. I dragged my butt out of bed, finally, at 5:30, and breakfasted on a yummy (oh so yummy) Montreal bagel (they're REAL good) and some coffee. Now, while I may have a fleet of pirate ships along the Oregon coast, I have no motorized transport here in my exile of Michigan. I just have a bicycle to get around. And, it was raining this morning. And, yours truly had to bike and slosch her way to the loading area where buses took us to the start. All I have to say right now is...thank you sweet lord for creating synthetic fabrics. Because, the all-powerful Oz knows that wet cotton really sucks to run in. So, no problem! Even though I was pretty soaked from my bike ride, I dried out quickly.
I ran with G-man, a post-doc in my lab, and the race started off without a hitch. Feeling semi-delerious, I thought that I could finish without taking my usual walk-breaks. Of course, I made that decision at mile 1 when the energy is still high, you're warming up and feeling good. So..maybe not the best time to go all egomanic on one's suffering legs. But, I stuck with it and only had one brief walk break for less than a minute. THAT, I was most pleased with. And, it did make a difference in my finish time. I broke my goal pace by ~30 seconds, and my pace was 10:36 min/mile.
Another bonus was seeing the elite runners finishing up the half-marathon. Imagine someone running 13 miles in the time it take you to run 6, the winner of the half-marathon had a pace of less than 5 minutes per mile...these men are zooming! It was awesome, and inspiring, to see them chugging faster than most scooters toward the finish. They even had a police escort, how awesome is that?
The last quarter of a mile was hell for me because I had side stitches and I wasn't about to walk. (bad ego, bad!) But, when we finished, I was happy because a) I finished and b) I made good on my goal to not use too many walking breaks. The post-run picnic was pretty tasty with all the usual suspects: chocolate cherry bread, bananas, and tons of water. I'm resting now but I feel great. Can't wait for October!
A big congrats to Mattie, who finished the half-marathon with an awesome pace of 7:13 minutes/mile! :D

Trodding along, :) LJS