catheroominations

This week I had planned to spend some girl time with my good friend MB in Napa. She’s here from Lexington, KY and meeting some of her gal pals for a week of wine tasting, pampering and possibly some piercing or permanent inking in honor of a milestone birthday.

Unfortunately, I had to cancel because I was asked to take my boss’ place at a training course this week. In Mexico. I quickly renewed my passport, picked an awesome hotel with fantastic photo opportunities, and was learning things like one should never say “Yo soy caliente,” unless one means “hot” in the Paris Hilton sense and not the “I am sweating my face off” sense. And then aye caramba, just days after I told MB I couldn’t make it to Napa, my plans changed. Mexico was out, because my services were requested in North Carolina to help with a documentation emergency. I’m just a tech writer. I don’t feel important enough or smart enough to fly out here and help (the depth of my self-esteem knows no bounds). When this trip was presented to me (read: when I was told I was going to work in NC), it was suggested that I come Every. Single Week. That’s right. Fly out every Monday and home every Friday. But that’s not feasible for several reasons, so I’m here this week and next and then we’ll see where we go from there.

This morning, I awoke at 3:45 AM. (That 3:45 was in all caps, by the way, because I was yelling it.) Three forty-five in the morning is not morning. It’s still night. But I got up and was at SFO in plenty of time for my early morning flight. I felt like a zombie. I was there, but not really there and I didn’t remember how I got there. So, when I saw someone I thought I knew, I wasn’t surprised I couldn’t remember his name. Also, turns out, I didn’t know him, exactly. It was Adam from Myth Busters and he was standing near me at the security check point. He is much taller than I thought. Also, he’s kinda hot, in a geeky way. Señor Savage es caliente.

So here I sit in a Residence Inn, while Matte gets DirecTV installed at our house, clears out our apartment, bolts bookcases to the walls for earthquake safety, gets the fence repaired that the fumigators busted into slats, waits for AT&T to set up our phones, and generally gets us moved in to our house. I would much rather be there, helping him, (and watching the cats slide all over the hardwood floors) but I sort of need this job to help pay that mortgage we just signed up for for the next 30 years.

Inside the tunnels, the stone tunnels, are the trains
And inside the trains, the steel trains, are the bags of skin
And inside the thin skin are the blood and the bones
And inside the blood and the bones are the dreams
It really is that simple, it really is that fragile
I am one such dream inside the blood and the bones and the bags and the
trains and the tunnels
There’s a dream sitting next to me
There’s a dream across from me
Fragile

We all know that one day
The tunnels will crumble and the trains will stop
And the blood and the bags and the bones will be gone
And in between now and then something will happen to all the dreams
I don’t know what will happen to the other dreams

But I know what will happen to me
Sure as rain, I know, sure as winter

I’ll breathe and grieve and struggle and strive and love, love
And if I’m lucky once, just once, the dream will drop to the floor like a vase
and shatter in shards of silence
Where I will see, I will see in the pattern of the pieces, I will
See something

This will, this will happen
But now the train with all its fragile cargo rolls on.

- Peter Mulvey

45

I was planning to be in Seattle this weekend to see Dave Matthews play an acoustic set with Tim Reynolds, but I canceled the trip to be with my family while my dad has surgery on Friday. Effing cancer.

My friend Rachel needs to sell our tickets. She has decided to turn the ticket sale into an auction to benefit Team In Training. She recently signed up for the Summer 2008 Season and will run two races with me. This is her first step in fundraising for the cause.

If you’d like to purchase 2 tickets to see Dave, Tim, and the Dalai Lama (details here) send an email to catheroo AT gmail DOT com. If you live in Seattle, Rachel will FedEx the tickets to you.

Bidding starts at $100 for the pair each which is the original ticket price, plus the cost to send FedEx.

You don’t want to miss this! I mean, Dave is awesome himself, but the Dalai Lama!? Awesome.

Got electrolytes?

Originally uploaded by catheroo

I spent a sunny California day in Santa Cruz today, helping to hydrate Team in Training runners. I gotta say, having people be so happy to see you is a pretty cool thing. Also cool? Not running!

This is how I greeted Matte tonight:

“Hi! My feet smell rancid. And I have bad gas too.”

My feet do smell horrendous. It’s the shoes I wore to work today. I swear. It isn’t the fault of my feet. The shoes have no ventilation whatsoever, so when I take them off, the aroma permeates the room. Matte used to sell shoes, once upon a time, and even he says they’re really stinky. Seriously. P.U.

You so wish you were in my living room right now, don’t you?

Yes, I joined the throngs of fans and went to a midnight release. Rachel, Matte and I decided to do this at around 9:30 tonight. We went to Books, Inc. in Mountain View because I heard they were selling books to those who had not preordered. We arrived and waited in the line of people who spontaneously decided to get our copies tonight. The pre-paid people received their numbered tickets, and we heard them hand out tickets beyond number 200. We thought we’d be sitting outside for hours, waiting for the numbered folks to get their books before we got ours. But just our luck, when 12:01 struck, they let the last-minute sallys in to pay for their books, and GAVE us our books.

We were out of the store by 12:10. While the planners and pre-payers waited for their number to be called. Sweet! And 20% of the FULL priced-book went to Mountain View schools. Bonus!

********UPDATE 11:00 pm********

I finished the book. All 759 pages of it. I won’t mention anything here, just that I refused to put it down (except for the 5 hour stint helping a friend move today.). Who moves on the day the final Harry Potter book comes out anyway?