*linnea's pita email me bring it tell me where ya at? too much information? you decide. me: heh. feeling: running mileage this month: 83 11/02: 65.2 11/3/02: 26.2: new york city marathon 10/02: 129.1 9/02: 163 8/02: 181 7/02: 127.5 6/02: 100 5/02: 75 4/02: 109.2 3/02: 110 2/02: 95.5 1/02: 57.75 12/01: 101 11/01: 65.5 10/01: 77.2 10/13/01: 26.2: hartford marathon 9/01: 169.5 8/01: 181 7/01: 155 6/01: 126 listening to a lot lately: wilco reading: the poisonwood bible by barbara kingsolver recently read: lying by lauren slater book reviews: where i arbitrarily rate, rave, and rant about books i've recently read, including the one above buy me stuff: at amazon stuff i've written for lifetime cosmetic surgery diet do's & don'ts nine new ideas for new year's spa chef secrets fitness success story title IX and elsewhere bar reviews foreign service? myths about africa war room workplace the archive index 2000 summer sept/oct nov/ dec 2001 jan/feb march april may june july august september october november december 2002 january february march april may june july current

what have i got to say today? Thursday, March 6, 2003 12:00 p.m. DOG DAYS OF WINTER will this winter never end? i know, i know: every year my bitching and moaning about the weather reaches a deafening pitch by the time march rolls around, but please, people, this winter has been the worst. it doesn't help that i have a dog to walk several times a day, but i have never run so much on a treadmill ever. and for it to go from 50 degrees yesterday to 26 and snowing today just saddens me so much. boooo. digby is doing well, thanks for asking. he's getting pretty big (36 lbs) and at times can be better behaved, but he's still incredibly sneaky and destructive at times. things he's eaten recently include: scented candles, a notebook, furniture tacks, many pens and markers, guitar picks, the heel of a shoe, rubber balls, newspaper, napkins, book covers, and more. his favorite things to steal are my hats and gloves. i'm starting him in obedience class on monday and i really can't wait. the child needs some structure, i've decided. Monday, February 3, 2003 09:24 a.m. SHOE IN At long last, my shoe crisis is over. I think, actually, that this is what has been holding me back from posting on linbird. Ok, not really, but it did leave me feeling vaguely uncomfortable, struggling, bloated with worry – it was all very similar to constipation, actually. Not that I would know – as a runner, this is not a condition I’m highly experienced with – so much movement keeps you so damn regular it’s kind of scary. But I digress. The shoe crisis was bad news. Over the past few months, one after the next pair of shoes fell out of my life or got booted (har har). Pairs I had loved and been trying to cram my feet into would no longer compliantly molded around my feet; they decided instead to start leaving me welts and bruised toes with every wear. My trusty black boots, which I had somehow made to last three seasons and still got compliments on, suddenly came down with a hole, a slit right across the leather top, probably due to the inclimate weather that I continued to wear them through. (it was, no doubt, a form of protest.) then my cute but cheap brown heels started to show their cheapness more than their cuteness. In a nutshell, this left me with a shoe crisis on my hand. So I started obsessively shopping for shoes. But I never came home with anything! Until finally, Saturday, I dropped in the shoe store directly across the street from my apartment, which I never go to, and ta-da, the coolest pair of black bcbg shoes – and for only $60. ding ding ding! So now I feel much better, relieved, relaxed, fulfilled. Phew. Monday, December 30, 2002 07:53 p.m. THE PASSING OF CHRISTMAS christmas is now just winding down in time for new year's. i guess that's the good thing about having divorced parents in new jersey and in-laws-to-be in queens: you get to have many christmases, so the season lasts and lasts and lasts. i received many cool gifts this christmas -- including a digital camera, the products of which you may or may not see here in the near future -- but i guess the oddest thing i got was salsa. but as it turned out, it wasn't even for me. the blueberry pancake syrup was. yeah, gram! but when mike and i returned to nyc on sunday afternoon, we found out that a man in our building jumped out of his 11th floor apartment and killed himself just a couple of hours before. mike's dad was there waiting to pick up the car from us and he saw the whole thing. i guess he jumped pretty far out and away from the building because he ended up landing first on the tree on the edge of the sidewalk and then crashing through to the street below. the first thing i thought when i heard the news was that line from "when harry met sally" about the holiday season: "lots of suicides." then i started trying to picture the guy and remember which of my neighbors he was (i really couldn't, i found). then i thought of all the people who jumped out of the world trade center because it was either that or face the flames, and i just had to wonder what was going on in his life that his future looked comparable to being burnt to a crisp. anyway, it all left me feeling nauseous and sad. and later, when i took digby out for a walk, he kept tugging me to go over towards that tree, with broken branches all around it and yellow police tape partially cordoning off the area. it's always been his favorite tree to pee on, after all. Thursday, December 26, 2002 07:43 p.m. SNOW DOGS happy christmas, everyone. i had been singing "(i'm dreaming of a) white christmas" as i baked cookies and hauled ass across the city to cap off my holiday shopping and then i got my wish, which was just so nice. digby went crazy seeing real piles of snow for the first time ever. he was eating it, diving in it, sniffing it, just generally getting so excited over all of its iciness (he loves ice), and even after getting a drastic haircut on christmas eve. i thought when he got his haircut maybe he'd go from being a hot dog to a chilly dog (he's always panting and likes to hang out by the door to the balcony where there's something of a draft), but it seems it still suits him well; he's just more comfortable. and now mat-free. he was seriously matted, the poor guy. his new do is even growing on me. you can see his eyes and he's very stream-line and slinky. it shows off his personality quite well. he's just freer to be himself now, maybe. Thursday, December 19, 2002 01:41 p.m. PHOTO FINISH over the past week i've been organizing a "name the bratty baby" photo contest here at work. i had the idea for it a while back, and with all the festivities and general work slackage going on in the office these days, i figured it was as good a time as any to do it. the point of the game is for everyone to bring in a baby photo of themself and then we all try to guess who is pictured in each photo. the younger the baby, the more difficult the game is. the only other time i've ever played this was with my high school basketball team. back then, everyone was so psyched to do it. game = fun, right? but here, it was a bit more difficult. several women kept forgetting to bring theirs in, and almost all the guys were annoyed with just the idea of it, which i don't get. so, after a game delay due to supervisors' forgetfulness, we finally played today and a good chunk of the office (18 out of 27) joined in. we all gathered around the 19 pictures, covering our answer sheets like school kids. as it turned out, i ended up getting the most right, which is just funny. but two other people got one less than me, so i declared them the winners, we had pizza and talked about what the next contest will be: most awkward teenager.... Tuesday, December 17, 2002 9:25 a.m. SUBTERRANEAN HOMESICKNESS i've been taking the bus a lot lately. not strictly, but usually on route to the subway. and it's really kind of revolutionizing my life. mostly because the transfer is so painless and neither leg of it is ever really crowded. though i've lived in the nyc for over 3 years now, previous to a few months ago, i had never even been on the bus. but i had always sensed that there was this pleasant, civilized secret-from-me life of bus-riders going on while the rest of us and all the wild animals and rats and bums scurried about below street level. and, as it turns out, i'm correct. at least relative to straphangers, bus-riders are calm and collected, even quiet, not pushy. they form polite little lines to board, tell you if there's gum on the seat you're about to plop down in, stand up a few minutes prior to exiting. happy little children call out and wave to their pals, and their moms are relaxed and balanced, not carrying eighteen bags and three cups of cheerios and racing with their children flying out behind them (an example from the subway leg of my travels this morning). there's also just something gloriously satisfying about seeing the subway card swipe screen read, "1 XFER GO" (or whatever it says exactly). now if only they would provide a bus that goes directly from my house to my office. Tuesday, September 24, 2002 05:29 p.m. YOUR TIME IS UP ok, ok. so i couldn't resist for too too long. the fact is, i got uninspired. but i think that after doing some new, fresh reading, i just may be back in action. no promises, though. Wednesday, August 14, 2002 11:43 a.m. ONWARD WORDS so, it's been a while, but give me a break. to be honest, i haven't been doing much of anything besides running and working. but that's all going to change, because i'm going to add an extracurricular activity: writing. yes, i realize that words are my daily grind, but they too must be my daily salvation. or something less dopey-sounding. so, for like the 18th time, i'm going to vow to give myself assignments, or AN assignment at least, each week. more to come on this. but the gist of my feeling is, if, over the course of 8 years, elizabeth wurtzel can write a ridiculously self-indulgent, self-serving, frustratingly inane and completely-devoid-of-perspective memoir, and i can waste a week of my free time reading the 350+ pages that comprise it, then i can, at the very least, manage to do something more enjoyable with that very free time, such as write my own self-indulgent, self-serving words, which will hopefully be a little less devoid of perspective. but, you know, we'll see.

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