Zhinka dinka doo

Bike to Work Week, day 3

Max's red cruiser bike

ughhhhhh...owwww....hhhhsmmmffffffff.....

Today is the third day of Bike to Work Week. Day 1 was much more fun. Day 2 was OK except for the butt-hurting thing. Day 3. All I can say of day 3 is ouch. My tush feels much better with my super padded seat plus padded bike shorts. But almost the entire rest of me hurts or is completely worn out. The worst is my shoulders, from pulling on the handlebars as I climb up (small) hills and make my way over rocks and felled branches on single track. I guess I should have remembered that this would happen, but I didn't. Surprisingly, my legs hurt the least, they're just tired of all the work. As am I. I plan to keep going, but I'm so tired.

On Monday, I had a plan for today: (all on my bike) take Max to school, go to work, meet a friend for lunch, go to violin lesson, pick up Max at school, go home. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! What a nut job! I did go with Max to school today, but S pulled him on the trail-a-bike (thankyouthankyouthankyou), and I did climb the hill to work. And I will be biking home. But that's it. I'm going home, picking up the car, then I'll go to violin and pickup Max.

We got to do the bike-to-breakfast this morning. Once again, Max was so excited! He was awake at 6am, got dressed in a flash, and was so happy to be riding his trail-a-bike to school. We stopped at City Hall for bagels and orange juice. The nice people there were giving out Hawaiian leis to all bike riders (one woman was chasing them down as they stopped at the light). They also gave Max an apple and a power bar for later. The ride to school was nice, but only because S was the one pulling Max.

I keep thinking back to high school, when I ran track. Sprints, the 400-yd almost killed me every single time I did it. At the beginning of each track season, I would arrive with absolutely no off-season training. The first week would be pure hell (kinda like this week), the next week would be a little better, then after that it would be a constant low level of pain. I'm much older now, so maybe it will take me more than 2 weeks to feel better? I think I could keep this up if I knew it would get better. Since it always did in track, and then again in crew (rowing) in college, I feel pretty certain that it will here too. But then my body says OH YEAH? SHALL I REMIND YOU OF THE PAIN HERE?

And then I tell my body to shut up, what does it know? Except with age it's getting harder to out-shout it.

Bike to Work Week, day 2

In our continuing saga of Bike to Work Week, we awoke this morning to this:

A couple of inches of snow. Undaunted, I was still going to bike to work, right after my 90 minute dentist appointment for crown prep. We found out that school was delayed by 2 hours, which for kindergarten means it's cancelled because kindergarten is only 3 hours long. So there were a few more hours at home than planned, a drive to drop Max at a play date, then riding to work.

By then it had stopped snowing and was a bit warmer and more pleasant. The urban trail wasn't too muddy, I didn't get a skunk stripe up my back. Those are the good points. The bad? Man oh man does my butt hurt. After picking up Max from his play date, we hightailed it over to the bike shop and picked up a new soft, squishy, gel-filled seat for me. I'll report tomorrow on whether it helps or not.

Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and warm. And it's bike to breakfast day! Yay!

Bike to Work Week, day 1

Art by Karen Knorowski, click picture to go to FlagstaffBiking.org

This week is Bike to Work Week in my town and in lots of other cities across the US and the world. This ties in well with a Low Carb(on) Diet that we're on with a bunch of other friends (more on that later), one of the things we're trying to do is to reduce the amount that we drive to reduce the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere.

BTWW is fun, with lots of activities planned. Today was the kickoff ride around the downtown center, with some breakfast goodies at the end. And then a bike-police escort to school! Officer Dave's bike was complete with red and blue flashing lights and a neat little siren! Very cool for the kids. I think that Max was the only kid there with training wheels. There were others about the same age, but they were on trail-a-bikes (which we'll do the next time too). He did really well, riding 3.8 miles total. He just rides slow; he has training wheels so he has no need to go fast, and this was a much longer ride than he was used to. We were bringing up the rear of the opening bike parade and had two traffic wranglers, the bigwig in biking in Flagstaff as our personal cheerleader, and a police pickup truck keeping all traffic back as we slowly brought up the rear. Happily, everyone in cars was really nice. No one honked or tried to jump the bike line. On the ride to school we weren't able to keep up with the police escort; after we crossed the main busy street with everyone else, we stopped, rested, and walked a lot. But we made it to school in time, just as the kids were going inside from the playground, and everyone cheered as we came into the parking lot. Max was tired but really excited about his adventure. He did request a ride home in the car, though.

After dropping him off at school, I biked to work. Unfortunately, I work at the top of a 400-ft. hill. It's not too bad to walk up, but biking...that's another story. The road is pretty steep. Lots of people at work make a real effort to conquer this hill. And I think that many succeed. But me, I take the back way, up the urban trail (nice wide, woodchipped trail through the forest, no fumes, deer for company). I biked until my lungs were working serious overtime and my heart rate was way past "training" and into the "call the paramedics" range, then got off and walked the rest of the way up. It was so pleasant. I arrived at work tired but not peel-me-off-the-floor exhausted, and was able to actually work while I was there! I have biked all the way up before, but then I just lay on the floor for two hours and don't do anything. Not very useful. Especially since we had a friend of Max's over for a playdate today. I didn't want to be so tired that I would turn on the stove burners and tell them to make themselves lunch while I crawled into bed.

Tomorrow it's supposed to rain, but I have rain gear (because I'm married to my husband, who for some reason always seems to hike in the rain), so we'll see what happens. Then Wednesday is Bike to Breakfast day, with free breakfast stops all around downtown. Thursday is Bike to School day. I'm planning to bike every day this week. Who knows, with luck this may become a habit.

Blessings

Last week I returned home to a box outside my door (love boxes!). Because all boxes are Max's (or so he thinks), we opened it together to find these amazing goodies inside. They were from the lovely and super sweet Debbie of puanani.

There were so many wonderful things. A beautiful and really colorful koi nobori for Max for children's day. Max also got a great book about seasons in Hawaii and a fun card.

There are two amazing Hawaiian cookbooks: What Hawaii Likes to Eat and Best of the Best from Hawaii Cookbook. I had seen "What Hawaii..." on her blog a while back and had asked about it (repeatedly, but only because my browser wasn't working, really), so imagine my surprise when it showed up at my house, and brought a friend too!

I spent a wonderful month in Hawaii when I was in grad school, as part of my research. It was quite an amazing time. The people, the land, the weather, the food were all indescribable. I came back from my adventure with one tiny pamphlet cookbook that I got at the Bishop Museum, and ever since I've regretted not getting something more substantial. But now I have the opposite problem: there are so many tempting recipes, I don't know where to start!

I'll have to work on that. In the meantime and to distract me from my indecision, there's a wonderful Hawaiian quilt kit. Have you seen Hawaiian quilts? So beautiful. A kit is perfect for me. And it's in blue, Max's favorite color!

To top it all off, there was a lovely bag of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, which my hubby thinks are his. I'll probably give him a few :)

I've "met" some really wonderful people through blogging. Debbie and I have never met in person, but I do feel like I know her almost as well as I know the people in my sewing group. I feel truly blessed to have wonderful bloggy friends and local friends in my life. Thank you, and mahalo!

Children's Day

First: thank you all for the birthday wishes earlier this week! It was so nice to open my email to all your wonderful notes!

Now, continuing on. This Monday was Children's Day in Japan. We had a celebration at Max's school. I dressed in a kimono that I got from a friend. We brought in a koi nobori that we received from the wonderfully generous Debbie (more on this later), along with irises both real and paper, fusen (origami paper balloons), origami kabuto (Max calls them Viking helmets, I call them samurai helmets), and rice-based treats.

Max has been practicing his origami tecniques for a week and has made about 20 kabutos. We brought in extra paper and he sat down to teach classmates how to fold the kabuto.

The rice treats were yaki onigiri and mochi crackers. The mochi crackers were made from store-bought dry mochi cakes (I used these, the Super Seed variety), sliced into thin little bits and baked at 450 for about 5-10 minutes. They're cracker-like but with an interesting chewy texture.

While these were both good, I had spent the weekend attempting a different snack, mochi (the soft, fresh kind). I tried making it with mochiko (sweet glutinous rice flour), but my mochiko was quite old and I'm not certain it was the right kind. I usually get a certain brand, but I had gone to our local (and now defunct) asian grocery where the woman there assured me that this was the same stuff. After trying it, I'm not convinced. They were inedible and so were tossed. Next I tried making mochi from actual sweet glutinous rice grains, not the flour. I soaked, drained, steamed. The next step is to pound the cooked rice with mallets, but since our mallets are all out for repair, I tried kneading it in the bread machine (something I read online, but I can't find it now). After a long time of waiting and resetting the machine to knead some more, it made a dough that is reminiscent of mochi, but is not really mochi. For the children's day party I finally gave up, but I want to try this again and see if I can get it to work better now that I have more time.

43 prime

I found these this morning in the kitchen. Cranberry-lemon scones, made by the sweetest husband last night when I was asleep. They were delicious!

Edit: this afternoon Max and I were at the Barnes & Noble cafe for a little snack. He asked, "how old are you now?" "43", I answered. "43? You were 42 yesterday and today you're 43. 43. 43. 43." The lady at the next table was amused at how much entertainment Max was getting out of saying 43 over and over and over. I remarked that I wished he would just stop saying it. I've never been sensitive about my age, but when faced with it on continuous loop, to my surprise I got a little antsy.

Flowers and chocolate

After buying a Michael Miller fat quarter bundle, in colors that are atypical for me, I wanted to try to use them. A bolt of milk chocolate colored linen jumped into my arms at the fabric store. The bolt claimed the color was "potting soil" and I can see that, but I like "milk chocolate" better. I combined them with some of the pinks from my fat quarter, and am really happy with how it turned out. I also squared the bottom on this bag, I think I like it better this way.

More pics on flickr.

Music for May Day

Happy May Day!

We went downtown at lunch today to see one of the elementary schools (not Max's) perform. First there were dancers, then the little violinists came out. Kindergarteners, 1st graders, 2nd graders. I'd guess more than 100. All stuffed shoulder to shoulder in the performance circle at Heritage Square. Suzuki teachers buzzed around them, tuning violins and tightening bows, while the students mostly ignored them and talked with their neighbors.

The teachers called for everyone to get ready to play, and they did. "Hello wall" (the step that gets the violin out from under your arm and ready to go under your chin) is what we're seeing in the picture above. Then violins under chins, bow flies away, lands on E, ready go! Although we were pretty far away, the sounds of their playing easily reached us and Max hummed along while playing with woodchips and dirt.

I was impressed at the sheer wrangling powers of the teachers, never mind the fact that the kids were (mostly) playing together! And there was not even one dropped violin! Pretty impressive!

Bags, bags, and more bags

I finally got back to sewing this week, out of necessity. I had promised Max's school's PTA that I would make a pair of tote bags to go along with a set of other stuff I was putting together for a silent auction. While I know that had I failed to finish these, that no one would have come after me, demanding a tote bag, I still felt it necessary to make good on my promise. So on Tuesday evening, just after dinner, I set to work sewingsewingsewing and finally finished the bags and bundling up the rest of the auction package at 2am.

The two on the left, the purple stars on white (it looks just white in the picture above) and stars on beige, are the ones I finished Tuesday and are for the auction. The one on the right (I call it "electric raindrops") was my test bag, finished a week ago. I liked the tote bags I had made before, but I wanted some sort of closure for the bag. I worked up this design, where the front pocket extends up and over the top of the bag and loops over a button on the back. The extra flap can be tucked inside the pocket if you don't want to close it. I like this design, I think it's more useful than an always-open tote bag.

Here's the reverse side of one of them:

They're lined in mattress ticking as usual, but I think I'll switch to coordinating fabrics instead, next time I make one.

I stuffed the bags with goodies from our local observatory (that's why the bags are star-themed). I really hope someone bids on these packages. I think that when I go to the event tomorrow night, I'll just avoid the table that these are on, it would be too hard for me to see them if they were being ignored.

Sewing circle cake

Tonight is my night to host the weekly sewing circle, so I made cake. White vanilla cake, with a secret. It's made with tofu! The recipe is "tofu pudding cake" and it uses a box of silken tofu plus a pouch of tofu pudding mix. It's dairy-free, or would have been had I not used butter.

Desserts at sewing group are encouraged to be test desserts. You know how you would not try a recipe for the first time when you're having a bunch of work friends over? Well this group is not like that, we're all about testing and learning. This one looked like an interesting recipe, I wondered what the tofu would add.

The taste, of course, is the thing. And this one is delicious. The tofu gives it an interesting flavor layer, like there's something else there but you don't know what (in a good way). I had to taste a little piece--just to make sure it was ok, you understand--and kept on taking little slices all the way across the cake until I had eaten more than half the row! It's a hit with me, we'll see what everyone else thinks of it.

Now I must go and pick up the boatload of toys that are scattered about before people arrive.