Status Message 6:11 pm

Gmail: They CAUGHT ME! I will be doing my civic duty starting March 24th. Funny enough I already have that day off work :P

Everyone else: Lunar Eclipse tonight! 8:45-midnight, Peak at 10-10:15, Full Moon, clear sky, last time to see a total lunar eclipse in Michigan until 2010! Go out and see it people!

Status Message 12:00pm

Dear Body, you need more than 5 hours of sleep a night, no matter when you actually go to sleep. Please get with the program. Hugs and Kisses, Lana's brain.

What a weekend...

Well ths isn;t that exciting of a weekend, but a quick summary:

Friday: Dinner with Katie D then off to Vinology for a delicious glass of wine and then home again. SO exhausted from this past week.

Saturday: Up with the dawn (or when the heat turns on) and it is time to clean the office! Got all the crap out, much filing and going through of stuff. I went through my postcard collection (I need to start that up again, but for some reason in the US, using post cards as advertising is not as big as it was in Australia - or maybe it is just metro-Detroit. Good thing I'm heading to Chicago next week. Then I cleaned some more, reorganized the graphic novels, and realized that i have a TON of prints that I really should put up since they are so cool. Then my finally showered and headed to the bike shop with my friend Jenn and then off to WinterBlast - SO cool. Got to make smores, watch snowshoeing, check out the nifty ice sculptures, the spirit of Detroit, dog sledding, people waiting in INSANELY long lines for the snow slide and skating, and then finally dinner at the Detroit Brewing Company (yummy frambois) . Best Part - I didn't even have to drive!!

Sunday: Woke up early again (How come I can't do that during the week?) and did a bit of cleaning, but mostly vegging and watching DVD's - watched Antonia's Line which was AMAZING, some hockey, made a list of all the size frames I would need and went to Michaels to get some - better than custom framing, but still sorta expensive, but my house is gonna look SO much better with all the prints up. ESP the Eames Lounge Chair print on special Eames paper which will hold the spot in my living room until I can get one of the real chairs for myself (in like 30 years). Then putting the pictures in the frames, and figuring out where all of them are going to go - I'm playing the pictures version of 'musical chairs' right now. This afternoon's goal is to finish up in the office - I have a TON of stuff to put away that is currently chilling in the office, but if I want to have people over, that will need to be taken care of tonight (or maybe tomorrow). And finish up this icky report for work.

God, I'm an old boring fart sometimes :)

When Regular Carb Loading Just Isn't Enough...

So tonight was groundhog's night and since it is a holiday we party (or so I have been informed). After a fairly decent workout, I showered, grooved to 100.3's Flashback weekend and scooted over to Libby's. I hadn't had time yet for dinner and neither did some of the people at the party, so we ordered food ONLINE from NYPD (I was not aware you could order food from there online but I am SO in in the future) and since I am racing tomorrow, I though that some good pasta was in order. They group also ordered some pizzas and garlic knots and what not. So after I had eaten some pasta, I decided a little half slice of pizza was in order and at the same time someone opened up one of the packages of garlic knots. So I had a slice in one hand and a garlic knot in the other and I had a delemma - how can I keep eating pasta and drinking beer if my hands were full. First I requested a straw, but there was none to be found. Luckily one of the people at the party was able to help me out by both feeding me pasta and beer while I also had my pizza and garlic. I am so glad that friends are so supportive of my racing that they would be so caring as to make sure I got as much carbs as one person could handle. I'm just lucky that way.

Water Bottles - An Adult Sippy Cup

As I was coughing up a lung last night I had an epiphany about a few things. 1) Excedrin might be great for getting rid of my headaches, but the caffeine is not good late at night 2) a nap in the middle of the day will keep me up at night 3) these two things together are dangerous and cause me to sleep weird and 4) all a bike water bottle is is an adult sippy cup - whenever I want a glass of water, but I fear my clumsiness, I just use a bike bottle. Great for when those cold meds make you a bit loopy. I couldn't fall asleep until 2 am and I was WIDE awake by 7:30 am. Which was good because I learned how to caramelize onions (which takes forever) and made quite a decent scramble. After spending all day cleaning my room (I banish you dust bunnies to the vacuum!) I decided I should be a good minion and get my training done for the day - some arm cycling to loosen up, the whole evil workout and then home for some quality time on the trainer. After trainer time (during which I IMed - bet you didn't know you could balance your lap top on your aero bars.... well sorta) I got to my favorite part, stretching. My trainer gave me this great new stretch, which really helps with my hamstring, but it takes 6 minutes on each side. Since I was so engrossed with my IMing, I decided some multi-tasking was in order. And that I should share that with all of you. What you can't quite see is that my other leg is stretched out along the floor, for that extra deep super hami stretch. I couldn't reach a pillow without getting up, but the shoe box worked perfectly - bet you didn't know they were also usefuly for super pillows!

Urban Skiing - or - Enjoying Myself on the Backs of Other People's Lazyness

So it snowed today - in such a potentially dangerous way that we all decided to give ourselves a 3 day weekend :) That being said, it didn't really snow much - not the snowpocalypse that we were all promised, but it was snowy enough for one of my favorite winter training - cross country skiing! And since the city of Ann Arbor decides to be really lazy snow plowing on days that the kiddies don't have school, the roads were delightfully snow covered. Additionally, since most sane people also stayed home, and by home I mean IN the home, the sidewalks were also snow covered. What did this all mean - it meant instead of running to the mail box and getting some miles in for the USAT challenge, I instead skied there. It doesn't count for miles, but it was a LOT more fun. I encourage most people to shovel in the middle of snow storms so there is just that dusting on the sidewalks - makes for great urban skiing!

I made it

Well it took a LOT of sweat and a little tears, but I finally made it to my 2007 goal! I worked my butt off during break (30+ miles a day) and watched a LOT of tv, pared down my podcasts, but I made it! Now for this year's goal - 3660 miles on the bike (darn leap years) and 365 miles run. Up to this point I have 9 miles run (but given my foot's condition that is pretty darn good) and 187.5 miles on the bike. And since January is biking month for the Triathlon challenge, I am hoping to get up to 500 miles for the month of January - Not only would that put a HUGE dent into my mileage for the year, but hopefully put me up in the top 100 again for miles in this year's challenge. MUST BIKE MORE