I try not to post while grumpy, but sometimes, it helps to write something out, get it over with, and then move along. This is one of those posts ( Read more... )

I ran the Mercer Island Half Marathon today, in 2:29:57. That's a new PR for me - my previous fastest half was 2:35:55 at the extremely hilly Seattle Half Marathon, and an "accidental PR" on a flat training run a few weeks ago at 2:32:41. It's also a significant chop off my 2007 time (2:44:24) and my 2008 time (2:42:14 ( Read more... )

I'm not sure why, but it's important to me to have cool business cards. (Note my prior obsession with gift and personal cards and my first foray into social cards.) Frankly, the standard Microsoft-issued cards are just really dull. (And, my current ones are now out of date, which means it's a good time to fix this ( Read more... )

Recently, I've been fooling around with Inkscape and GIMP. Inkscape, like other vectored programs, started as a complete mystery to me and required copious searching for tutorials to figure out how on earth things worked. (For example, there is no eraser in the tool. Why? I don't know, but apparently it's common for vectored graphics programs.) ( Read more... )

This weekend, Jeff and I and 10 other people played in Puzzle Hunt 12/13. We did extremely well, coming in second. In recent years, we've finished, but not placed, so this was really cool.
( Read more... )

I kept meaning to write about my weekend, where Drew (agh ) and I went to a small, but extremely high-quality bluegrass festival called Wintergrass.

Fortunately, I was slow enough to write it up that Drew beat me to it and said pretty much everything I would have wanted to say. Thanks, Drew!

About six months ago, I realized I had a mess of embroidery floss, a hoop, a half-finished beginner project, and no interest in embroidery. So I tossed everything out.

And then, recently, I stumbled across the book Doodle Stitching: Fresh & Fun Embroidery for Beginners, a book that is so adorable in its embroidery that I immediately made the ( Read more... )

Following in Zach's footsteps, I'm posting my "25 things about me" meme from Facebook here, as they'll get sucked into Facebook automatically ( Read more... )

I'm back, although Heathrow and traveling was a nightmare yesterday. I'll avoid relating too much because I'll just get annoyed again. The sad highlight is that it's very likely I've lost my umbrella- I was forced by security to check it and had no protective cover to put it in. Add to this that British Air failed to get my baggage on the plane ( ( Read more... )

A short list of observations from my time in London:

• Although I think of suet as a bird food, it actually makes an amazingly good pastry
  crust for suet pie.
  
• London women are all quite fashionable and dress up more than I'm used to, particularly with the shoes. They either have more comfortable dress shoes here, or they all have feet of ( Read more... )