Two Thoughts, Almost One Theme

Posted on 28 February 2010 by sarahthe

1.) Clarification about Running: Contrary to popular belief, I have been working out. The other day when I posted about how I’d been entirely un-motivated to work out, it was but a momentary lull it what has otherwise been a fairly successful year of exercise discipline thus far. I haven’t been writing about it because, although it’s been consistent, it hasn’t been very inspiring, nor has it been remarkable. It’s just been me getting my butt out of bed at 5ish to go to the gym before work in the mornings. I’ve been running about 3 miles at least 3 times a week. Some of those weeks, I’ve even meandered past the cardio equipment to the weights. Shocking, right? So when Cassie asked me to run the 10k (6.2 miles) with her yesterday, it’s not like I was dragging my butt off my (comfortable and alluring) couch for the first time in 3 months. It was just the first time I’d run a.) more than 3 miles, and b.) outside, since Thanksgiving’s Turkey Trot. I was unsure of whether or not I was going to be able to elevate myself (mentally and physically) to double my usual running distance, but I totally did. Just wanted you all to know that I’m not some super awesome athlete that can sit around for months on end doing nothing, only to jump up and go do something really difficult. I’ve been working for it.

2.) Thought for the Evening: I haven’t cleaned my house in 2 weeks. It’s rather unlike me to have gone this long without doing any house-cleaning, but these past 2 weeks just haven’t lent themselves to a lot of free time. I’ve been wandering around the house for this whole evening trying to figure out where to start. The feeling that I have about cleaning the house is not unlike the ones I was having about working out last week. Where do you start when everything needs your attention? Alas, I’ll just have to apply the same method: Get off the couch, pick an area, get started. And with that, I’m off to the kitchen to start on the dishes.

The Cowtown 10k Race Report

Posted on 27 February 2010 by sarahthe

Allow me to assure you, it was plenty cold this morning. Like, really, really cold. Especially around 5:30 a.m., when I dragged out of bed before the sun was in the sky on a Saturday morning, just to appease the running appetite of my relentlessly motivating friend, Cassie.

Hello Cowtown.

Trick is, we knew it was going to be cold. The weather man was accurate in his predictions, so it’s not like it was a surprise. The most shocking part, I think, was how saturated the nearly-frozen air was with water. Every breath that each runner expelled from their lungs was clearly visible as a cloud of moisture being pushed out of their bodies. If I hadn’t been so distracted, listening to Cassie tell me fantastic tales of nursing school and The Adventures of Being Single, I would have been very disheartened by the inevitable dehydration that surely faced us as a result of our persistent moisture-clouds. Alas, I was distracted. Both by Cassie and her stories and by the fact that I was having a hard time using my fingers because of their altered status of matter. They were frozen. It was really cold.

So I had a really long week, right? Seems like every day this week I came home and just crashed after work, going to bed as early as 8:00 p.m. because I was totally out of energy. When Cassie talked me into doing the 10k with her (Wednesday) we decided to run 4 miles on Thursday so that we’d be ready for the 6.2 on Saturday. I haven’t been talking about it on my blog a lot, but I’ve been running. I’ve been going to the gym about 3 times a week, usually in the morning, and running about 3 miles whenever I go. I was nervous to run this race though, because I hadn’t been running outside. I’d been running inside on the treadmill and OMG. Running on the treadmill is kind of terrible. So I hadn’t run outside, nor had I run more than 3 miles, since the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning. And that was a long time ago. I was scared.

After running Thursday’s 4 miles with Cassie (followed shortly by a collapse into bed), I was pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is to run outside than it is to run on the treadmill. Even when you consider the hills, the wind and the cold, it’s still easier to run outside. I had forgotten that. Today, though, I was only positive that I could run 4 miles. I had only proven to myself to be able to still run 4 miles. When we hit the 4 mile mark in the race today, I felt myself hit a mental wall. I kept thinking, “Oh my gosh, I have no idea if I can do this, I’m not sure if I can do this.” Cassie, at that point, was just getting warmed up. She looked at me after we climbed two hills in a row and asked, “Hey do you want to step it up a little bit?” I answered plainly, “No.” She was like, “Come on! You can do it!” And I was all, “GIRL, THIS IS ALL I’VE GOT.” Relentless, she asked, “Well, what do you think about stepping it up for the last 1/2 a mile?” I agreed, just so that I could go back to trying to breathe. Breathing and talking at the same time is much harder than just breathing. And believe you me, breathing was plenty hard at that point.

When we crossed the 5.5 mile mark, Cassie was like, “COME ON, LET’S GO!” She might as well have been wearing a Richard Simmon’s costume, she was that damn encouraging. I stepped up our pace (a teeny bit), all the while thinking to myself, “Hey. I’m no fool. She said she wanted to step up the last 1/2 a mile, and this is a 10k race! I still have .20 miles left before I have to start running faster! She’s totally cheating me!” But I guess she’d clued into my competitive spirit, and she knew I wouldn’t let her get too far ahead before I tried to chase her down. She beat me across the finishline by 20 seconds. Immediately after we finished, we both stood in the middle of the crowd and counted our own heart rates, as medical nerds are wont to do. She may have beat me across the line, my friends, but I totally kicked her ass in the heart rate race. I body slammed her to the ground, counting a full 45 b.p.m. higher at the finish line. Booyah. It’s so awesome to be a winner*.

(*Um, to whoever of you is about to tell me that the person with the lower bpm is actually the winner: shut up. Just let me have this one, okay?)

10k

Posted on 26 February 2010 by sarahthe

Because I love physical pain, and because I clearly don’t know know when to say “no,” I agreed to run a 10k with my friend Cassie tomorrow.

That’s about all I’ve got for now. I’m sure I’ll have much more time to post about it later, when I’m totally unable to walk because of The Pain of Being Totally Stupid.

On Being Geriatric

Posted on 25 February 2010 by sarahthe

Y’all. I’m 90 years old. I totally rocked a slip-and-fall today.

I was just trying to walk into work. There wasn’t even a curb that tripped me or anything. I had 3 bowls (2 empty, one filled with corn dip) stacked in my left hand, my purse, my keys and a grocery bag in my right hand. I started walking towards the office when the tower of bowls started to wobble a bit. I shifted all of my focus to my left hand, trying desperately to keep my glass bowls from breaking in the parking lot, and to keep my corn dip from being slung through the air at top speeds.

Then, somehow, I was on the ground. It happened that fast. I was upright, the bowls were tipping, I was on the ground. My right foot was burning with the same pain one feels when they acquire a sizeable strawberry/road rash, and my corn dip (and its tightly secured plastic wrap, still in tact) was thankfully still right-side-up.

The most geriatric part of it all, though, was that when I was looking around the parking lot after slamming into the ground, it wasn’t to make sure that someone didn’t see me. It was because I couldn’t believe that our never-empty parking lot was totally deserted when I was in such desperate need of someone to help me get off the ground. For about 10 seconds, I really understood the reason someone might wear the Medical Alert necklaces. Soon after, I landed back in reality, remembered that I’m still just 26, got up and brushed myself off and went inside. The only lasting injury to mourn was some dirt ground into the top of my shoe.

Scenes From Life: TV Edition

Posted on 24 February 2010 by sarahthe

I’m sitting on the couch, watching a Modern Family commercial with Zack when Mitchell, one of the characters, says the following quote: “Her first words were a gay dad’s worst nightmare!” The commercial cut to Mitchell’s adopted daughter, Lilly, saying her first words.

Me: “Did she just say ‘Tranny?’”
Zack: cracking up, grabs the remote and rewinds.
Mitchell, again: “Her first words were a gay dad’s worst nightmare!”
Lilly, again: “MOMMY!”
Me: Ooooh. Mommy. That’s not ‘Tranny’ at all.

Family Portraits

Posted on 23 February 2010 by sarahthe

I’ve uploaded all the family reunion portraits here, if anyone would like to go look at pictures of people you don’t know.

Here’s a sampling:

Uncle Mike and Aunt Karen look lovely in a dramatic shadow caused by only one of my flashes going off.

My cousin (of some degree), Ryan, and his son, Ras. I liked their pictures because there were both wearing such dark colors. If it wasn’t for Ras’s buttons, they kind of look like their heads are floating.

This is what my dad’s cousin, Brian, does when you tell him you want to take his “Mug Shot.” We all laughed so hard that we didn’t bother to take a forward-facing picture. This one suits him just perfectly.

On Being A Total Gearhead

Posted on 22 February 2010 by sarahthe

About a year and a half ago I upgraded my camera and bought myself a Canon 40D. This camera has been nothing but good to me. Unfortunately, the camera has been so good to me that I never really learned how to use it properly. I put off reading the manual for way too long (as in, I still haven’t read most of it) and have just been toying with it on automatic for the most part. I’ve become fairly skilled at manipulating the images in the auto setting, metering on darker or lighter objects to trick the camera into overexposing or underexposing things to get my desired effect. This is outrageous, right? I mean, who buys a billion dollar camera just so that they can use it like a point and shoot?

Most people. But that’s not the point.

The point is that it was dumb for me to be using it that way. I understand the way SLR cameras work, and the basic principles of photography. Terms like f-stop and shutterspeed don’t confuse me; on the contrary–I know what they mean and how they work together! I learned how to take pictures on a fully manual SLR from the late 70′s. The trick about using a fully manual SLR is that you have to have some kind of a light meter. The light meter serves as your guide for attempting to gauge how accurately your settings are going to interpret the light in any given situation. There were two main reasons that I wasn’t using my camera in Manual Mode: #1.) I didn’t know how to do it. Like, physically, I didn’t know which buttons controlled which settings. A problem easily solved by, ahem, reading the manual. The second problem, #2.) was that I didn’t know where the damn light meter was on my camera. I’d been looking for it for over a year unsuccessfully. That is, until I realized that it’s all over my camera. Not only is it on the ‘control panel’ on top of the camera, it’s also easily found by, ahem, looking through the view finder. Also, my smart-cookie readers might point out here that problem #2 could have also been easily solved by READING THE FREAKING MANUAL.

Last March, I spent a week hanging out with my friend Joy at SXSW. While I was there, another friend of mine, J.Lee noticed that I was using my camera on Automatic mode. After a thorough chastising, he told me which buttons I needed to be using in order to adjust shutter speed and aperture in their respective priority modes (e.g. the 1/2 manual modes on the camera that allow you to adjust either the shutter speed or the aperture and then the camera fills in the rest of the settings in accordance to what you’ve chosen). I played with those modes some, compensating for my apparent lack of a light meter by shooting in automatic mode, seeing which settings the camera was using, then using that as a starting point for my manual efforts. Imagine how incredibly ridiculous I felt 9 months later when I finally found the light meter. Really, really, REALLY ridiculous.

The ridiculousness doesn’t stop there, though. Oh no. It gets more embarrassing.

We only went to the camera store in the first place because I had two minor items I needed to replace. First, Scout chewed up my lens cap (thankfully, not while it was on my camera), and then my card reader’s cord shorted out. I suggested that Zack and I go to a camera store that was about 20 miles away. It’s the best camera store around, I thought. Zack then suggested that perhaps we could go to this other camera store, a mere 3 miles away. It’s just like the other one, he said, but a lot closer.

And that was the beginning of the end. Well, the beginning of the end of the money that I’d been saving up to buy a couch, anyway.

The moment we stepped foot into the store I knew that the people there were going to be the kind of people who would know things about cameras. Not just your average Big Box Electronics Store Salesman who only knows what he reads on company memos–these employees are Camera People. The gentleman behind the counter asked me what I needed, found me a card reader and a lens cap, and then asked me if there was anything else I wanted to know about. I was like, “OOOH, YES.” I asked him about what kind of an investment a person would have to make if they wanted to get their flash off of their camera (to fire remotely). When I got my 40D I also purchased an external flash for it (a Canon Speedlight 430ex), but I’d been wanting to do more with lighting lately.

He taught me about PocketWizards, we looked at the Canon Speedlight 580ex II, then we talked about light stands and umbrellas. I left the store salivating.

I spent the next 3 days scouring the internet for information about PocketWizards and remote lighting systems and so much more. I called my dad and asked him what he would buy, a couch or camera equipment? (Camera Equipment.) I asked Zack his opinion. (Do whatever you want *cough*camera equipment*cough*.) I slept on it.

Then, last Wednesday, I grabbed my camera bag, loaded Zack in the car, and we drove to The Camera Store with my money burning a hole in my pocket.

After taking to the Camera Guy at length about different equipment set-up possibilities, I wound up getting a surprisingly inexpensive ‘Portable Speedlight Studio Kit’ which includes two lightstands, two umbrellas (with interchangeable white and silver reflective surfaces), two wireless receivers and one transmitter. Because he saved me so much money (buying all those things separately like I’d planned would have cost me 4X as much as I spent) with all of those items, I still had enough money to buy myself the (oh-so-fabulous) 580exII that I’d looked at the week before. To say that I’ve been happy with my purchase might be the understatement of the year.

What’s so embarrassing about all of that, you ask? Nothing. The embarrassing part happened after he’d outfitted me with all of this gear. We were standing around playing with some of the remote flash capabilities that are built into the Canon flash systems and Camera Guy reached over to show me how to access a certain menu on my camera. The 40D has 3 possible positions on its on/off switch. There’s On, Off, and then this mysterious (to people who haven’t read the book) Third Option which is denoted on the camera body by a white line. When he turned the camera on, he switched it to that White Line option. I said, “Oh, I see you’re using the White Line Option. I’ve been wondering what the difference is between that position and the “On” position.” Having already discussed at length my critical failure to read my camera’s instruction manual, he didn’t bother to lecture me on how stupid my question was. Instead he just said, “Well, that opens up all of your camera’s features. It allows you access all of the different menu options instead of just the limited ones that you can see when the camera is “On.” Light blubs in my head. I said, “Oh. So does the camera have to be on that setting before I can adjust my aperture in my Fully Manual mode? Because it’s been driving me insane that I can’t adjust that.” He said, “Yes,” then thoughtfully added that perhaps I might really consider reading that book. Like, soon.

I just wonder if after I left, he went around the store to systematically inform the rest of the employees that he’d just sold a boat-load of camera equipment to a 2-year owner of a Canon 40D who, until today, didn’t know how to turn her camera on.

Zonked

Posted on 21 February 2010 by sarahthe

I am totally zonked. Dad and I hauled down to Houston today for an afternoon with The Twins. It was a 16.5 hour day and I can’t even begin to tell you how tired I am now. So I won’t. I’ll just tell you that I have the cutest nephews in the world.

Pillars of Family

Posted on 20 February 2010 by sarahthe

Sometimes it’s hard to remember why we go to family reunions. They are sometimes awkward, especially if you have a family as large as mine. My mom’s side of the family is fantastically huge. Most of her eight brother and sisters have large families of their own, and every time we get together I meet family members I’ve never seen before in my life. Though it seems like my dad’s side of the family would be more simple because he only has one sister, it’s not. Instead of gathering together on the Aunt-and-Uncle level, dad’s side of the family still gathers on the Great-Aunt-and-Great-Uncle level (as relative to me, anyway). So although dad’s immediate family is rather small-ish, there can still be over 100 people at a family reunion on dad’s side when all of his cousins and their families are in attendance.

Today was one of those family reunions; The Goodwyn Clan got together for a rousing afternoon of good food, good times and, inevitably, a few more introductions to new family members.

Last week I went to a camera store to buy a lens cap and walked out with a few umbrellas, light stands, a flash, and a remote triggering system for my camera. Because I’m overly zealous to use my new camera equipment, and because I have a desire to one day be able to actually put a face to all the names of my family members, I set up my new portable studio in the hallway of the church and had the families come in one-by-one to take some family pictures. The idea went over smashingly well. Above all the pictures I took today, though, I think I will value the one I posted here the most. That’s (Great Aunt) Ina, (Great Uncle) Tom and my Mema, Burnell (starting from the left). They are the foundations of the family, three of the original six Goodwyn children, and you just would not believe how outrageously fun these people are. These three are the reason that we brave family reunions and their potential for awkwardness. Once you get the Goodwyn Siblings into a room together, the laughter becomes contagious. That much is obvious, I think, by the way my Mema is just about to double over in stitches about something that Tom had said just before I snapped the picture.