Christopher ran his first* half-marathon yesterday with his dad, the 3M Half-marathon here in Austin. They both put in a lot of hours to get the boy ready, and the preparation definitely paid off yesterday. C looked happy before, during, and after the race, and dropped a 2 hours, 6 minute time, which is really fast especially for a kid.
The boys before the race
Scott at mile 5.5
C at mile 5.5
Off they go again!
A sign someone was holding at the finish line.
C approaching the finish.
I LOVE this picture.
I also really love this picture - just the way Frank's smiling at Christopher.
The boys after the race.
Me & C after the race. Look how tall he is! (No, I'm not pregnant. I only look pregnant because I have their hats and gloves stuffed in my pockets.)
The giant cookie his Grandma made him. She made a couple hundred cookies for the Distance Challenge finishers, and one extra special big one for Christopher.
Christopher after breakfast, still grinning up a storm.
We checked the 3M results last night, and it turns out Christopher was the youngest person to run the race this year. And this might have given me pause, made me wonder whether he was too young, except that it seemed effortless to him the entire time, he never stopped grinning, and after the race he was still bouncing/jumping/playing around. I don't think we'll let him do a full marathon until he's about 16, but I'm pretty comfortable (and impressed!) with him running halfs at this point.
Way to go, buddy!
* ok it's technically not his first half-marathon to complete. Since he walked one with me a year ago, let's call this his first half-marathon to RUN.
Tags: 3M half marathon, boy, running
I've really got to be better about getting Christopher's pictures taken. Professionally, I mean. I take a lot of semi-decent pictures of him with my DSLR and many more with my phone, but I'm pretty bad about making an appointment to have it done right.
This is pretty silly considering that one of our close friends, Nathan, is a professional photographer who has offered to shoot Christopher many, many times.
So a few weeks ago I finally asked him to. Here are a couple of my favorites, which by the way Nathan turned around to me fast enough for me to include in our family calendar for this year. NICE! thanks, Nathan!
Nathan also does a lot of other types of photography - notably, burlesque and musical artists. Check him out! www.nathanhallphotography.com
Disclaimer: I never just randomly endorse people or companies, and no one pays me to do so (I wish!). Nathan's a great friend who does great work, and I think people should know it. That's all!
Tags: nathan hall photographer, austin, photography, professional
I'd hoped to read 60 books in 2011. I didn't hit that goal, but I managed 47, which was eight more than I read in 2010. (Frank, by contrast, ended the year with 151 (!) which just boggles my apparently puny mind.)
I also read longer books this year. In the last quarter, several of the books I read were 800+ pages long, though they were also my most interesting books, so I sped through them really quickly.
2010: 39 books (14,683 pages) read
2011: 47 books (20,024 pages) read
I'm going to try for 60 books again this year, but if I don't make it, I hope it's because I spent a lot of that time writing, instead of on Twitter or surfing the web or, god forbid, obsessing about the election.
Here is a list of my favorites for 2011. I read several really good books, but these are the ones that I craved and devoured:
Fiction:
- The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
- 11-22-1963 by Stephen King
- A Song of Ice and Fire (5 book series, so far) by George R R Martin
Nonfiction:
- The Social Animal by David Brooks
- In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen
I also really enjoyed the premise behind The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. For me, it was a little overly religious, but the nugget of insight was really helpful. The idea is this: the way you like to receive love is often the way you express love, but may not correspond to how your mate (or family member, or friend) likes to receive love.
For example, some people really need to hear that they're doing a great job/are wonderful/are smart/are beautiful/are capable - they need words of affirmation. So, guess how they show others they love them? Yep, by expressing their love/admiration/respect all the time. Which is GREAT! But maybe doesn't completely meet their mate's needs, because they need physical touch, or acts of service, or something else, to feel loved.
It's a super simple concept, but really valuable to understand. My favorite thing was when Christopher and I talked about it, and he was able to peg all the people in our family (the book offers 5 categories or "Love Languages") and said it helped him understand them better. Pretty cool.
I don't think it's the best written book, but the perspective it provided us merits a mention.
What were your favorite books of 2011? I'd love some recommendations.
Our full book list can be found here.
Tags: books, 2011, power of one, game of thrones, 11-22-1963, george rr martin
(Disclaimer: If you were born after 1985 this probably won't make any sense to you since you probably don't know how to read an analog clock. Heh.)
A conversation I had recently with a good friend revealed that not everyone mentally imagines the calendar year like I do - like a clock. While it's not shocking to me that I see the world differently than the average person, for some reason I was surprised that it's not the norm to visualize time this way. So...welcome to my weird!
Here's a clock:
Now here's how I imagine the months:
It makes complete sense to me because of the way we number our months. 1 = January, 4 = April, etc.
My first clue that other people don't see it this way was hearing a person thinking aloud, trying to remember which month was which number, and trying to count on their fingers how many months were in between two other months. That it wasn't an automatic thing committed to their memory was a pretty big surprise to me.
Something else became clear to me, too, after hearing myself describe August and February as opposite each other (and getting weird looks): I also apparently superimpose the color wheel on my clock. Remember the color wheel from your school's art class?
Color wheel:
My mental calendar:
I mean, come on - March is totally a green color, right?
So, like complementary colors, months can be each others' opposites. February is usually our coldest month here in Austin, just as August is our hottest. December is cool but not always COLD, just as June is usually approaching hot but isn't roasting us yet.They're in opposite positions - directly across from each other - on my crazy color wheel clock calendar, so they're like complementary months. Easy, right?
Who's with me?
*Crickets*
(Thought so)
Note: comments appear not be working again, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Tags: mental calendar, clock
Christopher's fourth grade class did a really fun project that culminated Monday (Halloween) in a Dead Words Funeral.
Each kid had to make a tombstone that honored a word no longer to be chosen in writing assignments - overused words like "big", "pretty", "bad" and "said*."
Christopher's word was "big." Here he is, preparing to eulogize it:
(RIP Big. "You were a big help." Survived by: giant, large, gigantic, towering, and humungous)
I love this idea. And it got me thinking: what words or phrases would I kill from use? Just off the top of my head, here are some that make me cringe to hear. Happily, some of them appear to be fading from use, but I'd like to hurry up the process.
Please Die:
"bling"- "epic"
- "first world problem(s)"
- "welp" (used as a slangy substitue for "well...")
- "jump the shark"
What would you add to the list?
(* Re: "said". I think it's good for fourth graders to know you can state/exclaim/proclaim/announce/retort/sputter/mutter words, but ultimately, "said" gets the job done and doesn't try to steal the show from the dialogue.)
Tags: overused words, dead words funeral
One of my hobbies is genealogy and family history. I really like the research, and piecing together pieces of the big puzzle. I've been doing it for about 15 years, off and on.
You'd think that after a while the thousands of people would all run together in my mind, but they don't! There is always something interesting, quirky, creepy or funny to be found...especially in Frank's family. There are some really interesting people in my tree, but in general it's pretty WASPy and English, while Frank's is full of really colorful characters - like French privateers (semi-legal pirates) and hot-blooded Sicilians.
This morning I peeked into the Massa family, one of Frank's maternal lines. They emigrated to New Orleans from near Palermo, Sicily, in the 1880s. I found these two articles which, taken together, are hilarious (if you're cynical. Which I am from time to time.)
Article one: from the New Orleans Item, 10/4/1917:
Article two: from the New Orleans Times Picayune, same day, evening edition:
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