Been a while since I’ve done one of these, but things have been so nuts this week otherwise…

Trader Joe’s Pear Sauce. Where has this been all my life? I’m actually not a big fan of applesauce, it’s always very bland and uninteresting to me. I will buy ones that have berries or some other fruit mixed into them, although finding applesauce with both something else added in but not having sugar added can be tough. Well, Trader Joe’s is now offering pear sauce. No sugar added, and using pears instead of apples. Quite frankly, it’s outstanding. It’s got a crisp taste to it, and there’s actual texture to the pear sauce, you aren’t just eating mush. Yay!

Visqueen – Message to Garcia. In March 2005 I went to see Shonen Knife at the Black Cat in DC; super-small show, a ton of fun. But the group that grabbed my attention even moreso was Visqueen, the opening act. I ran out and bought both of their albums and absolutely loved them, a group of indy rockers from the Pacific Northwest. After what’s felt like a small eternity of waiting, their new album hit about a month ago and I’ve been entranced with it ever since. More and more of the songs are slowly lodging their way into my head. You know that normally I would never send you to MySpace, but I’ll make an exception here so you can listen to some of their songs. http://www.myspace.com/visqueen

Sushi for lunch. Such a simple but easy pleasure. Mmmmmm.

Marathon training almost being over. It’s so nice to know that I only have one more long training run this year, for January’s Disney World experience. As much as I enjoy running, 20+ mile runs are no longer exciting or interesting or something to look forward to. It’ll be good to focus on shorter distance runs for a while once it’s all over.

Finishing mind-numbing pieces of work. I know that doesn’t sound great. But after spending seven hours fixing two PDF files (more if you count all the time spent on them yeserday), it is a genuine relief to finally have those two nightmares out of my non-existant hair. Seriously, I almost did a dance of joy, I was so excited that they were finally working properly.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “What Have We Started?”
Can a song simultaneously be pop, orchestral, grandious, and intimate? Yes, if the song is Sophie Ellis-Bextor singing “What Have We Started?” Her Trip the Light Fantastic album is pretty great, but it’s one of my favorite songs from the entire album. There’s just this sort of ker-pow moment that hits me when I listen to it. (And oh look, someone put the song on YouTube.)

Green Tea on an Autum Morning
I’ve been sipping a mug of genmai-cha (the kind of green tea that has roasted rice in it) and it just fits the outside world perfectly. Not too cold, but not too warm out either, a touch of mist and wet in the sky; it’s the archetypal autumn morning for me. Very relaxing, very beautiful. And the tea is also very delicious.

Charlie Getting the Giggles
The production of All’s Well That Ends Well last night did a good job with a painful play (there’s a reason why it’s one of the “problem plays” of Shakespeare), but one of the cast members’s voice was sending Charlie into hysterics in the final act. Probably because he sounded like a cross between Buffalo Bill in Silence in the Lambs and a Hanna-Barbera animated character. So, so, so not good. The whole last 20 minutes of the play, Charlie was just silently shaking with laughter every time this person talked. (But hey, unlike at least 8 other people last night, we didn’t leave during intermission.)

Breathing
Who knew it was so underrated? It has been such a relief the last two days to be able to take big, deep breaths with no problems or issues.

An Empty Vase
I got some flowers delivered last month, and all I can think today is that next week I should bring some flowers in to fill it back up. The possibilities are endless. Who knew a temporarily empty vase could be so exciting?

It’s back!

Tenba Messenger Bag
Karon found this bag and while I was initially unconvinced, I watched the video and am now totally in love with it. Special camera insert! Mesh back to stay cooler against your body on hot days! Specially lined bottom to keep it from getting wet on a damp sidewalk! Metal rings for the strap! (As someone who had a beloved messenger bag break because the rings snapped, this is particularly important.) Lots of little carrying things! Of course, at just under $100 on Amazon, it will be sitting on my wish list instead of me snatching one up. I am trying to be frugal these days.

Registration
I finally got off my butt and registered for the Philadelphia Marathon on November 23rd. (The 45th anniversary of Doctor Who, ha ha.) I’d planned to run this for a while, but actually getting around to doing so is such a great feeling. It makes it feel, well, real.

Black Orchid
My DVD of this classic Doctor Who episode showed up today. At under $9, and being a story that revolves around a cricket match, look-alikes, and a costume ball, it’s hard to not see the awesomeness. Yay! I cannot wait to watch it as well as all the extras.

Demo
I freely admit it, I never read more than an issue of Demo back in the day. I decided to give it another whirl, though, and this time I’m really enjoying it. It reminds me a bit of (bizarrely) Dubliners in how it’s just little snatches of people’s lives; it thankfully doesn’t go to James Joyce’s extreme of ending a story in mid-sentence, but I’m really liking it. I’ll definitely check out Brian Wood and Becky Cloonan‘s follow-up when it drops this fall.

Lunchtime
Why am I so hungry today? Seriously, totally ravenous. Cannot wait for lunch.

“Why Not Smile” by R.E.M.
I’ve always loved this song from R.E.M.’s much-maligned album Up; the first sans drummer Bill Berry, there’s a much quieter, almost etherial nature to the album in general. There’s such a sense of hope about this song that it gets me every time—for a song that starts with the quiet lyric “the concrete broke your fall” it’s surprising how upbeat this song ultimately is. (There’s a not-very-good fan video of the song on YouTube that at least lets you hear the song itself.)

The Cactus Fairy
Laura came into my office today with both hands full of tiny little pots, each with their own little cactus. She’d been replanting some of the cacti from a large number that she’d raised from little dots, and by the time she left, three cacti were sitting on my bookshelf next to the window. They’re wee little things and adorable. Hopefully I won’t over-water them (as some other co-workers have accidentally done).

Han Ah Reum’s Wasabi Green Peas
I used to think that all wasabi green peas were the same. You know, crunchy, tasting of slight spice and heat. That sort of thing. When I work at Big Planet Comics on a Sunday (about once every six weeks or so), I’ll stop at Han Ah Reum (also known as H Mart) and do a little shopping. It’s a Korean chain of grocery stores that has a location near the store, and it’s always a journey into excitement. I wouldn’t have expected my best purchase from the last trip, though, to have been some wasabi green peas that I threw into the basket as an afterthought. They’ve got an amazing level of spice to them; not just in terms of heat, but rather in flavor. I ate the last handful this evening and it took all the control in the world to not have devoured them all sooner.

The Wire Series Finale
This actually made me both happy and sad. I started watching The Wire on June 2nd, 2002. The show began that night, and a combination of a love for HBO’s shows at the time as well as recognizing cast members from Oz and, well, I decided I should give it a try. To be honest, I wasn’t terribly sure at first if I was going to stick around. The first season began very slowly, but I decided to hang in there and I was definitely rewarded for doing so. Sunday’s episode closed out its fifth and final season, and it makes me so happy that I’ve been able to enjoy 60 fantastic episodes. I’d stood up to get something across the room about ten minutes from the end, and ended up standing in place, staring at the screen through its finale. That felt right, somehow. Standing at attention, some sort of show of respect, to what I came to feel was one of the best shows on television. It never got high viewership numbers, but the amount of critical praise continually heaped on the show probably kept it alive. I’ll miss this a great deal, but I’m so glad I got to enjoy as much of it as I did.

Driving Home In Daylight
Now don’t get me wrong, I hate the fact that when I wake up for work it’s still dark out. But being able to leave work while it’s still light is a huge thing for me. It gives me more incentive to exercise, to do things, to have the chance to do more than just go home and eat dinner and prepare for bed. I went out and ran after work yesterday, and it was lovely. I can’t wait for it to be a month from now, by which time it will be a little warmer and lighter even later. Hurrah!

It’s really been a while since I’ve written one of these (October 2006, yeesh) but that doesn’t mean there’s a lack of good things in my life. So, anyway, here are five more things that, as of late, make me happy.

Good race photos. This year’s batch of photos from the marathon are really great; a combination of “oooh, that’s a nice picture” and “I cannot stop laughing at that photo” categories. I’ll do a longer post soonish showing off the better ones, but in the meantime, this is just as we’re exiting Nags Head Woods Preserve at mile 13. I look so… well… happy. Part of it was just finally getting off of that up-and-down torture trail, but also because I was having a great time; I felt strong and confident halfway through the race, my best one yet.

A cleaned-out closet. Now that colder temperatures are here, I took the shift in weather patterns as an opportunity to drag everything out of the closet, sort through it, and get rid of things. I’ve now got two very large bags of clothes heading off to Goodwill, and everything that’s left is sorted and much better organized. Going to my closet in the morning no longer makes me flinch, which is always a nice feeling. (Now if I can just tackle my other “problem areas” before too much longer…)

The Palm Centro. It will probably shock people to know that not only has it taken me this long to get a combination PDA/phone, but that it was not in fact an iPhone, but the new Palm Centro. But you know, I really love it. It syncs perfectly with all of my software at home and transfers exactly what I want it to, I’m very familiar with the Palm software, and I don’t feel like I’ve got something that I will drop and break in a matter of minutes. (What can I say? I would never actually enjoy owning an iPhone because I would be petrified that I would destroy it.) It looks cute, it works great, I’ve got my custom ringtones, and finally I have the combination of phone and data that I’ve been waiting for. (I also have to say that I am impressed with the quality of photo it can take for being just a cameraphone.)

The Savage Lovecast. Call me juvenile (it wouldn’t be the first time) but listening to Dan Savage’s sex-advice podcast while working out at the gym just makes me snicker. In a good way, really. He’s got a good sense of humor, usually has good advice, and it certainly makes the time go by quickly. (And sometimes it’s just super-sweet and touching.)

Clever co-workers. When I got back from the marathon this year, Laura had taken all of my Doctor Who action figures (which are in my office) and had all of them running a marathon. Complete with the Empress of Racnos handing out Gatorade, Daleks cheering people on, and actual photos of the Outer Banks Marathon’s course used as scenery. What can I say? Laura is really, really clever. (As are many of my other co-workers.) I promise a bigger gallery of photos of this event are coming soon, too!

(The first five of these posts were on my old LiveJournal site. For those who simply have to know… part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5.)