Things on my mind, in no particular order:
1. Our primary credit card number was stolen, not very long after I had re-memorized the number they issued us following the last hacking incident. It was a weird kind of theft, with purchases sprinkled across the month. Only one was big enough to make us suspicious, so we went through the whole bill a line at a time. On doing so, we found several more -- the kind of small-scale purchase where I might normally say, "I'm not sure what that is, but I expect Elwood knows."
2. Dear Mystery Thief: How about if you get a job, so you can buy your CSNY albums with your own money?
3. This time I am going to make an Evernote list of all the automated payments that this credit card handles. It would be smart to include their contact info as well, but I'm making no promises. Ugh, it's not my favorite part of modern life: requesting password resets for accounts I only visit when I need to update my credit card information, and waiting on the phone with customer service.
4. This is another one for the Dept. of First World Problems file.
5. I love my job. The semester is off to a good start, I think. I haven't been in my office very much because of renovations. I have a huge south-facing window, and they took out my blinds. All of us along the corridor have been completely crippled by the sunlight. It sounds implausible, I know, but it's impossible to work in there. I feel like Gollum sneaking out from under the mountain after years in the goblin caverns, pinioned by the sun. I'm here to tell you: it's no wonder he was crabby!
6. Oh, oops, that's another first-world problem, isn't it? Too much sunlight in my office is not exactly a tale of woe for the ages.
7. I am knitting a pair of purple Errant Socks for a pal. I thought I was pretty comfortable with cables but these are a little brain-bendy. (In places you need two cable needles, one to dangle in front and the other to dangle in back. Fun, but weird.) The thing new knitters most need to know, if you ask me, is how to fix mistakes confidently. Nobody ever gets it all right the first time, but the ability to say "Oh, yes, I forgot to cable those stitches three rows down but I can sort it all out" is worth rubies. I would have enjoyed my first dozen knitting projects a lot more if I hadn't been seized by spasms of despair and exasperation every time I goofed something up.
8. I think I might enjoy my life a lot more if I were not seized by spasms of despair and exasperation when I goofed something up. Knitting As Metaphor, yet again.
9. I started the half-marathon training program in Train Like A Mother and realized quickly that I need a deeper base before I can finish it. I can't double my weekly mileage that quickly without consequences. My shins are still complaining about last week, even though I skipped the 5-mile run I was supposed to do yesterday.
10. New plan: 10K in the spring, think again about a half-marathon in the fall. (I'm still considering the Hal Higdon half-marathon plan, which I'd need to start in a couple of weeks, but I'm leaning toward the 10K.) The TLAM 10K training program requires less mileage, as you might expect, and more speedwork. To my great surprise, I love the speedwork.
11. This is deeply weird.
12. But also true. After I finished the first speedwork run (they are mostly a variant on the idea of 3 miles + some number of strides, at least in the early weeks) the thought that popped into my head was "I feel like a badass." This is a preposterous thought, because my idea of "fast" after a 3-mile run is a hundred yards at a 7.5-minute mile pace, but it sailed into my head anyway.
13. And what is a blog for if not to record the improbable thoughts that sail into one's head?
14. One more running thought, because I want to remember that the nature of my aches and pains has changed. I used to have joint pain: knees, ankles, hips. After working on a shorter stride and a stronger core, the joint pain has vanished. So even though my shins are hurting enough to make me reconsider my spring running plans, I'm pleased that a) I've been consistent about running through the dreary season and into the winter, and b) I have a different kind of pain, one that's a known issue for runners who bump up their mileage too quickly. That's a problem with a solution.
15. Did you make it through this concatenation of random snippets? Thanks for slogging through!
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