Four in the net, ready to go. We be fast, they be slow!

I know this is a running journal, so be warned: I'm going to talk about hockey.

The Stanley Cupcake - Game 1
Originally uploaded by BlindTurtle

Well, here it is. My Super-Secret Hockey Dessert: The Stanley Cupcake. I know, it’s just a red cupcake with white frosting. BUT. It’s a red cupcake with white frosting. In honor of the Red Wings, ya dig? My original plans were too lofty for my tiny brain; I had intended to make a stencil out of the Wings logo and make logo-shaped sprinkles on the frosting. Didn’t work. Penalty for icing. Very sad.

The cupcakes themselves are delicious. I made the Crimson Velveteen Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World (with Vegan Fluffy Buttercream Frosting). It called for two tablespoons of red food coloring. I only had two tiny bottles which added up to one tablespoon. I think for Game 2 of the Stanley Cupcake, I’m going to make regular yellow cupcakes with red food dye. I think the red would stand out more. I think. What the fork do I know about baking? I have a lot of other ideas that I’m not even going to attempt, mainly because I’m only amusing myself here and it’s not worth the money, time and effort. If I was entertaining a group of hockey-loving friends, it’d be a different story. As it is, I have only one hockey-loving friend and she has the great misfortune of living at the exact opposite corner of the country. (I say misfortune but you know what? SHE HAS HOCKEY.)

As for last night's game, well, it was fifty kinds of awesome. Maybe I should say 37 kinds of awesome because Samuelsson got the first two goals (unassisted). I don’t know much about hockey, but I still say that Lidstrom’s disallowed goal in the first period was bullshit. Fleury was out of the crease and Holmstrom (who wasn’t in the crease) hadn’t actually touched him with his stick, but whatever. Kronwall is a joy to watch, I’ve quickly realized, and I still get a big kick out of Rafalski. Here’s to hoping Chelios and the Mule are ok’d to play soon. I mean, the Wings kicked ass without them, but it’ll be nice to have them back. Anyway. Only one person reading this (at least, I think she's reading) gives a shit about hockey, and I already talked to her about all this last night (and during the game). So for her benefit, I submit this awesome shot, plus a nice summary with a better shot of Fleury kissing the ice (which I still feel really, really bad about. Don’t laugh at the poor kid! Let’s see you try and run on ice skates through a narrow passage while wearing 80 tons of padding.)

Indi tells me that we almost got the Penguins last year. As much as I’m rooting for them to lose right now, I’d take them as Portland’s hockey team in a heartbeat. JUST SO I COULD GO TO THE GAMES. That would bring the Bolts, the Wings and the Caps to town. *tear* Still, it would be really sad to see Pittsburgh without a team. I would hate to take that away from them.

Oy. What a great night. I sounded a lot like this**, except without the Indi, the crowd and the goal horn. When Lidstrom scored (what should have been) the first goal, I was so excited, I jumped up and somehow knocked my glasses right off my face. I was crawling around on the floor going, ”Help me...I can’t see...” I found them eventually. They’d landed on the couch behind me.

Also, I wouldn’t let anyone eat a cupcake until they watched five minutes of hockey with me. Sis and Homer ended up watching most of the third period. I’m hoping to get my sister addicted so she’ll want to go up to Vancouver with me to see the Canucks play. What? It’s only a five hour drive, and we can stop by the Supernatural set on the way home. Stop by, sneak in. What’s the difference?

Floor hockey was my favorite part of high school, even though I fucking hated high school with the white-hot fire of a thousand suns. We didn't get to play that often, but when we did, look out. Maybe I was taking out my frustration on the other girls (*cough*theydeservedit*cough*), but I dished out quite a few bruises in my day. I'm sure I scored a goal or two, but all I remember is not wearing any padding and having sore shins for a week.

**Tampa, Florida - February 27th 2008: My second hockey game. (The Bolts vs the Minnesota Wild.) Called in a voice post to my Live Journal. The Bolts lost again, but it was still fun. Anything goes, way up in the nosebleeds. And apparently I talk funny.

Week 3, Day 2

The weather gods are in a good mood. It’s supposed to rain today, but I just got back from running and it was 57°F. Sunny, windy and gorgeous.

The brain cell gods were not in a good mood, as was evident when I got down to the track for my warm up and realized I’d left my running shoes at home. Had to drive back home and change. My sister accidentally broke my clip-on sunglasses, and I left my regular ones at her house, so I was forced to use my mom’s baseball hat to keep the sun out of my eyes. Unfortunately, not only did the hat proudly display the name of the local senior center, but (except for the bill) it was made entirely out of black velvet.

The first 90 second run was easy. First three minute run was fairly easy. Second 90 second run was easy. Second three minute run just about done me in. I blame the hat. It’s okay, though; I wasn’t expecting Day 2 to go as well as Day 1. I’m still jazzed and looking forward to Day 3 on Tuesday! Looks like it’s going to be pushing 70 with no rain. Niiiiice.

For breakfast this morning I had some soy yogurt with ground flax seed and a hand full of grapes. I haven’t had lunch yet, but I ate an orange a few minutes ago, and now I'm off to do aerobic and lower body. Can I just say how much I enjoy having muscles? What I don’t enjoy is having them concealed under a mountain of fat. It’s frustrating. I wish I could be fit overnight, but I know I’ve got a long road ahead of me and it can be disheartening at times. 99% of this is diet. I’m not eating as well as I should be. Last week when it was 100°? I had half a pint of ice cream for LUNCH. One of the good things about summer (if you don’t have frozen delectables lurking in your ice box) is that I never feel like eating. Normally, I have so much anxiety, I can’t stop thinking about my next meal, but once the mercury starts skyrocketing, I can’t be bothered. All I really want is fruit and water. And bubble tea.

Anyway, I’ve been doing the Tonly Little strength training DVDs for about four or five weeks now. Though I’m seeing better results from him, I don’t want my body to get used to the routine, so I think it’s time to switch things up again. I’ll probably just go back to my Karen Voight routine (but add way more reps) or find something new. Also, a couple of weeks ago, I was poking around the Runners World website and came across a video of pre-run yoga poses. I thought that sounded promising, you know? Anything to help boost my performance. Then I watched the video and holy twig how does she DO that??

I was stretching after my workout yesterday and managed to twist myself into a slightly modified version of the pigeon pose and it wasn’t too bad. I think incorporating some yoga into my weekly routine would really benefit me at this point. I just suck at it. I use my fatness as an excuse, but I’ve been told numerous times that it’s entirely possible to do yoga when you’re overweight. I have yet to see evidence of that, but I’ve lost quite a bit of weight now and might find things different these days. I’ll keep you posted.

I’m a bit tired right now, as I was up until 1 a.m. working on my Super-Secret Stanley Cup Dessert Project. The baking part came out (almost) perfectly, but the other part, I’m not sure if it would qualify as a launch problem or a design problem, but I had to scrap my plans and improvise. I’ve banned everyone from eating them until after the first octopus hits the ice tonight. LET’S GO, RED WINGS!

Quote of the day:

“The hockey gods are smiling so wide, we can count their missing teeth.”
---NBC announcer guy on the Red Wings/Penguins finals matchup.

Very important: tomorrow is May 25th. Don't forget to bring a towel.



See you this Tuesday!

Week 3, Day 1

You can’t see the challenge of this I suppose,
but time is a dare and I’m trying to

I did it! Bye bye, Week 2. It’s been nice knowing you. I have now commenced with the kicking of Week 3’s ass.

I’m not gonna lie to you people. It wasn’t easy. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. Let me start at the beginning.

I fairly leapt out of bed this morning, so excited was I to start Week 3. I inhaled some grapes, washed my face, got dressed and left the house at a little before 9 a.m. It wasn’t track time yet; first I had to go to the compounders to pick up some meds for Benduka. Ben is my FLUTD cat that I mentioned in the previous entry. He’s back home and doing well, but needs some meds to keep him from getting reblocked. So I picked up the meds, went to my sister’s house, gave him all the medicine he needed for the morning, fed and medicated the rest of the animals and then went back home. Ate an orange, brushed my teeth, then headed down to the track.

It was 52°F, overcast and windy. Perfect day for a brand new run.

Naturally, the 90 second run (and walk) was no big deal, but nervousness about the three minute run made those 90 seconds fly right by. The next thing I knew, I was plodding along. And kept plodding ... and plodding ... and plodding ... and holy shit, I didn’t feel like I wanted to die. When the three minutes ended, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. I knew I still had another round to go, but I didn’t care. I’d just run for longer than one minute for the first time in 20 years. Even if I couldn’t finish the rest of the run, I’d still won.

I’m happy to report that I did finish. The second 90 second run/walk was a little taxing, and the second three minute run wasn’t as easy as the first, but I made it all the way through without wanting to collapse at the end. In fact, I was so jazzed, I had a hard time slowing down for the cool down walk. I had to keep reminding myself to take it easy. I suppose listening to Mott the Hoople wasn’t helping.

Won’t you roll away the stone
Why be cold and so alone
Won’t you roll away the stone
Don’t you let it die

So I did it! And I can’t wait for Saturday so I can do it again! It might rain but WHO CARES?

I’m so happy right now.

I had a post-run smoothie for lunch because I wanted to make sure and get my flax seeds for the day. I’ll probably have some tofu and sauteed spinach/garlic for lunch. Right now, I’m going to do aerobic and lower body strength training.

See you Saturday. Just in time for GAME 1 OF THE CUP FINAL!!!!!!!! Woohooooo! I hope Chelios and Franzen will be able to play.

Week 2, Day 18 (revisited)

Perfect day for a run. 53°F, mostly cloudy, windy. NOT HOT AT ALL. The forecast is for rain today and tomorrow, but when I saw the sun doing it’s best to beat the clouds, I put on my running gear and drove down to the track.

I was feeling pretty good at the start of it, but by the third interval, I felt pretty run down. Usually I push through with the fourth interval, but today I only felt good during the fifth interval. When the sixth came around, I felt really heavy. Maybe it was that bowl of Cocoa Pebbles I had for breakfast (badbadbadbadbad).

Maybe a lot of my problem is boredom? I’m 95% sure I’m going to try W3D1 on Thursday:

Brisk five-minute warm up walk, then do two repetitions of the following:

• Jog 200 yards (or 90 seconds)
• Walk 200 yards (or 90 seconds)
• Jog 400 yards (or 3 minutes)
• Walk 400 yards (or three minutes)

I need to go out and get some good running shorts first. I usually wear these cheap, blue (ugly) shorts my mom got me from Bi-Mart last year. Bleh. I’m hoping I can find something suitable at Goodwill.

I’ve just eaten an orange and a bunch of grapes, and now I’m going to warm up again and do my lower body workout. I was going to do 20 minutes of aerobics, too, but I have to go to the library later, and I figure I’ll just swing by my sister’s on the way back and bully her into taking the dogs for a walk with me. The other day we walked them for an hour. Tank passed out when we got home. I’m glad he’s getting exercise, but it breaks my heart to see old age catching up with him. Speaking of old, here he is with Freddie. This is the first thing I see when I wake up in the morning (click to enlarge):

I didn’t work out at all yesterday; we had an animal emergency and had to rush our cat, Ben, to Dove Lewis. (Urinary blockages in male cats can be fatal.) My whole day was fucked up after that, so I just took it easy and tried not to freak out. I knew he would be okay, but when you’ve got panic disorder, little things are big things and big things are catastrophies. They’re going to pull his (urinary) catheter today, and if he has no problem urinating, we can bring him home.

In happier news, THE RED WINGS ARE IN THE CUP FINALS!!!!!!!!!!! Fuck you, Dallas. HAHAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA! I can’t wait for Saturday. With everything going on yesterday, I completely forgot about the game (Chelios was out. Grim!). I caught the previous game, though, and though Franzen was still out, I was happy to see them playing some of the other guys. I get a big kick out of Rafalski, too. And not just because he's from Dearborn. We're the same age! See, you're never too old to play hockey.

Anyway. See you on Thursday.

Week 2, Day 17 (revisited)

I didn’t get up early enough yesterday to beat the heat, so I skipped my run and did my upper body workout. Even that was torture. It was in the 90s for two days in a row. Friday it hit 100. I went outside for two minutes to water my plants and came back inside dripping with sweat. All the baking chocolate in the house melted. I had to stick it in the fridge so now I have a couple bags of chocolate bricks. I’ll have to have my brother-in-law come up and put the AC in the kitchen window again. I’d do it, but I’m very small and the AC is very heavy and a move like that could kill me.

Anyway. It was 75°F by the time I got down to the track this morning. It wasn’t too bad at first; there was a slight breeze blowing off and on. By the time I got to the third interval, I was drenched and wishing I was running towards a large body of cold water. If I hadn’t been so overheated, I think I might have been a little bored with the run. I think maybe this week I might try Week 3. It’s going to be in the 60s, so woohoo.

To sum up: nothing to report except that I need to get my ass out on the track at the first sparrow’s fart if I don’t want to die from heatstroke.

For breakfast this morning I had a couple slices of fresh pineapple. I’ve hated pineapple my whole life, but suddenly ... I don’t. It’s not my favorite fruit in the world, but it’s all I had available so I ate it. Craving vitamin C, I guess. Haven’t had lunch yet but it’ll probably be a bean burrito or something.

I keep having dreams about the U.P. I haven’t been there in...nine years, but I miss it terribly. The first time I went was 1996 with my then-boyfriend, his niece, his older brother and his girlfriend. It was a memorable occassion for me because it was the one and only time we ever went on a trip together. I won’t get into that, but suffice it to say, I fell in love with the place. I never realized until I started looking at the atlas, how much area we covered on that trip. We left Chicago and drove all the way up through Michigan. I remember being excited about this because my birth mother lived in Saginaw at the time. (I ended up meeting her almost exactly one year later.) We stopped in Marquette to get gas, if memory serves. We camped in the Ottawa National Forest (specifically, Sylvania, near Loon Lake), but we spent a lot of time in the Porkies. I’ve got a picture of me and the niece with Lake of the Clouds in the background. We went to Iron Mountain and Ironwood. And then there was the Presque Isle River. We did most of our hiking there. Did a lot of swimming, too. Got leeches stuck to our toes. We stopped at Manabezho, Nawadaha and Manido Falls, which were gorgeous. At Manido, you can walk pretty far out onto the rocks and get close to the water. There was a big, swinging bridge at one point. I pretty much ran across it both ways. Bridges make me nervous. Helloooo, Lake Superior! As a Midwesterner, I’m ashamed to say I’ve only seen three of the five Great Lakes. One night, we all went out by the lake and lay in a circle and watched the most amazing meteor shower I've ever seen. The sky up there is so clear, I can't even describe it. It's unbelievable.

The next time I saw the U.P. was three years later. Different boyfriend this time around, and we stayed at his family’s cabin on Oxbow Lake (in Wisconsin) rather than camping in the forest. And I had Tank with me, too. Funnily enough, we ended up going to Presque Isle and walking across the same damn bridge.

Hey, why don’t I shut up? I guess I just really miss the Midwest. The PacNW is beautiful, but the people here are different. Portland doesn't have that "home" feel to it. No block parties, no illegally turning on fire hydrants in the summer. Now that I’m (kind of) over my fear of flying, I’d like to fly back to Chicago and visit. I’m also planning on flying out to Pittsburgh in the Fall to visit my BFF (picture taken when she was 11 and I was 13. She’s on the left. This was the last time I was taller than her.) Either that or she’s coming out here. I told my sister that we should take a trip to the U.P. I really, really want to go to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, too. And while I’m there, stop in to see the wolf center. My friend, Hillbilly Mike went up there a lot and he never shut up about it. Paddling around in his canoe. I don’t think he camped, he just slept in his car. I’ve been wanting to go for over ten years now.

Anyway. I’m going to my friend’s softball game in a couple of hours, so I’d better get my ass in gear.

Week 2, Day 16 (revisited)

I'm updating from my sister's house. She needed her car again, so here I am. Got up at 8:00, but I still didn't have time to run, so I brought my gear with and ran while Sis was out. I left at around 11:20 and got back at noon. It's pushing 80 out there, and before I left, I started thinking maybe I'd put the run off until this evening. But then I thought about how I had a long day ahead of me and knew that if I didn't run now, I probably wouldn't want to later.

So I ran.

Nothing remarkable to report. I felt pretty good, despite the heat. No dogs tried to eat me. No semis or school buses tried to run me over. Said hello to some horses and a mule. Recovery time was good, and I was pretty solid for each interval. I might give Week 3 a try next week. I'll see how I feel. If I can't do it, I'll go back to Week 2. If I may quote McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest:

I tried, didn't I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.

Week 2, Day 15 (revisited)

Hey, guess what? I ran today. Tonight, actually. My car is on the verge of joining the choir invisible, so my sister has loaned me hers. Unfortunately, she needed to pick up some Old Animal Supplies from the vet today, so I went and picked it up for her. I brought all my running gear with me, even though my heart wasn’t in it.

When I got to my sister’s house, we played GTA IV for a little while, then she flipped on You Are What You Eat, and the more I saw the more uncomfortable I got. I didn’t want to run, but I had to. It was close to 7 p.m., but I didn’t care. I put on my running clothes, strapped on my iPod and headed out the door. Grubs would have come with, but she only got a couple hours of sleep last night, so I let her off the hook.

It was really nice out, 53°F. Mostly cloudy, a little bit windy. I was wearing a long sleeved tee shirt, which I regretted once I got going. The run went really well. I was pretty ragged by the third interval, but I knew I’d feel better at the fourth. And I did. The same white car drove past me about four times, which was really weird. I had my pocket knife with me, though, so I felt safe enough. My sister’s neighbor’s dog ran out and almost attacked me. That was fun. On the other side of the loop, two more dogs ran at me. Also fun.

Anyway, the run went by really fast, mostly because I was thinking about how I was going to have to shoot past my sister’s street (it’s a big loop) and keep going straight for the sixth run and then head back the other way for the cool down. Before I knew it, I was walking back to my sister’s house. I think I did pretty well, considering what a shitty day I had. I feel stronger these days.

I’ve been doing the Self Challenge for nine weeks now. My accomplisments (losses) so far:

• Weight: 10 pounds
  
• Waist: 3 inches
  
• Hips: 2 inches
  
• Thighs: 2 inches
  
• Chest: 3 (maybe 4) inches
  

I have worked out for 3,555 minutes and burned 19,153 calories. I am also now at a weight that I haven’t seen in about seven years. I hate to toot my own horn, but I’m kinda badass.

For breakfast I had a tastes-like-feet Whole Food Energy Bar (10g of raw protein. Berry flavor, my ass). For lunch I had pasta with veggie sah-sidge and a spinach salad. For dinner ... holy shit. I haven’t eaten dinner yet. Er. Tomato soup?

I stole some tofu from my sister, so I’ll be having a lot of tofu scrambler tomorrow. I’m addicted to it. Wrapped up in a tortilla. Woah boy.

It’s going to be pushing 90° on Thursday, so you can bet your ass I’m going to be out on that track bright and early.

And so, I’ll see you in two days.

(Game Four in 20 hours, 47 minutes, 24 seconds!)