A weekend in A2, part II

Yes, the glorious weekend continued on to Saturday, when Chris and I hit the Farmer's Market and then Zingerman's for lunch. The evidence, in photos, if you will:

Mmmm...strawbies...

Wooden fish. No reason.

And pretty flowers...

It is Ann Arbor, so a little peace with your produce...

Head gear for your "Little House on the Prairie" re-enactments...

Al Gore, America needs you!

But me? Mostly I just needed lunch at Zingerman's:

Loads of loaves to ogle while in line...

Plus beautiful hand-made local cheese...

Perfect day for dining al fresco

After lunch, a little impromptu entertainment outside the Kerrytown Concert House as a father and son fiddlin' duo practice for a recital...

And all of that by 1 pm!

A weekend in A2, part I

I spent much of this weekend wandering around Ann Arbor with my new camera, taking pictures of not much important and enjoying the weather and the company of my husband. The former was idyllic and the latter was a nice treat, as he has been working 15 hour days, seven days a week for some time now to keep the wheels of Sharesleuth rollin'. (The result of this last burst of work is an interesting piece on a company that implants human cadaver bones into spines -- which, you might be fascinated/horrified to learn does not require FDA approval. Read it here.) Friday evening Chris and I wandered into town after dinner to check out the scene and grab a coffee. On the way, we encountered some A2 wildlife:

Even the graffiti artists are polite here:

Ann Arbor's packed with some really gorgeous architecture, especially around Main Street. This view is of one of my favorite buildings, the First National Bank Building, an Art Deco gem that dates back to 1927 and, at the time of its erection, was the tallest structure in the city.

Nowadays, historical architecture competes with the crop of lofts that are popping up around the area, most of them in new construction high-rises. (Well, not too high...A2 doesn't like to have their skyline messed with, and I say, good on 'em.) I can't conceive of where they'll find people to fill all the lofts they're building, especially at price tags ranging from $250k to $600 per unit.

Onto downtown...typical of a gorgeous summer eve, Whiteyville was in full swing, packing in the outdoor cafes.

Not a bad place to live, at all.

Do you have my car keys?

Because, seriously, it's been three days now and I can't find them anywhere. Could I get them back?

With a heavy Hartford

Yesterday I got a call from my lovely friend Shannon McGinn, who relayed the sad news to me that she and her business partner James have sold Hartford Community Cafe in St. Louis, my beloved old haunting ground. Thus the bad titular pun of this entry. For lack of a more eloquent expression of sentiment, let me just say I am completely bummed. If you don't know Hartford, then it's hard to explain just how important it was to me, this little community they created over the past few years. Maybe where you live you have just such a place -- a corner coffee shop, owned by people you know and like a great deal, with a rotating cast of lovable loons both in front of and behind the counters. With Hartford, Shannon and James accomplished what many business owners only dream of -- creating a place where customers truly felt like they were a part of something, a place where they were really and truly welcome.

Hartford was unabashedly imperfect, eschewing the mainstreaming dictates of more corporate venues for a laid-back sensibility that attracted regulars looking to feel at home even when they weren't. Lots of businesses can attract customers but Hartford attracted people and, at the risk of sounding totally cheesy, many of those people became friends -- of the owners and of each other.

Even since I moved away from St. Louis -- no, especially since I left -- Hartford provided me with a central hang-out upon my return, a comfortable and familiar place where I knew the faces. Shannon and James opened their place to the the community (I know, I keep overusing that word, but there simply isn't a just substitute -- check your thesaurus), kindly providing us a home for Free Candy when the late, great Commonspace closed its doors. They stayed open late on Sunday nights just to accommodate our show and couldn't have been more supportive and encouraging of our kooky efforts.

I have to say I'm feeling a little homeless right now. I understand that life takes unexpected turns and that Shannon and James have made a very, very difficult decision, and that it is the right decision for them. I hope they never equate selling their business with failure, since the community they created on that little corner of Hartford and Roger in South City helped breathe life into the neighborhood was -- is -- an unequivocal success.

I truly hope that, whoever the new owners are, they understand that the intense loyalty of Hartford's customers wasn't because of the cappucinos or falafel sandwiches -- it was because of the spirit of the people who owned the place, the energy they put out there and the family of customers they attracted. We could all go down to Bread Co. or Starbucks if we wanted fast, perfect service in a sterile environment. It was because Shannon was there and made us feel not only welcome but as though we were the most important people on earth.

I wish Shannon and James all the luck in the world wherever their next adventures take them and I'm especially grateful that I get to count Shannon among my close friends now, and that's all because of Hartford and the way she opened the door to me. I'm going to miss swinging by and setting up my laptop, knowing it's only a matter of time before a familiar face drops by. I'll miss long stretches of chatter with Thomas Crone and Fred Hessel. I'll miss the exceptionally accommodating skills of Customer Service Kal. I'll miss seeing Michaela, Val and Jermaine, all up to various levels of no good.

Thank you, Hartford, for the countless afternoons and evenings, the hours of wireless internet access, the crazy episodes of Free Candy, miles of yarn knitted, endless cups of coffee and hot tea, mounds of falafal sandwiches and the cast of insane, unpredictable characters you attracted that just made it all feel so much like life.

Mother's Day

This weekend, on Mother's Day, we buried my mother. That might come as a surprise to those of you who know that it's been 3-1/2 years since she died. We had originally placed her ashes -- now sealed inside a black and white marble box -- in her garden at her and my Dad's house. However, when my father sold the house a while ago, we moved my mother's remains and have sought for a while to find the appropriate place to put her to rest. We are not church people, nor are we cemetery people. I'm more of the scatter-me-and-I'm-gone sort -- or at least I thought I was -- but that's hard to do when one's remains are hermetically sealed inside marble. Can't exactly scatter a marble box without risking injury and/or a lawsuit. I do know that, in the time since my mother died, I've felt as though we were missing something -- some kind of physical touchstone to remember her by.

I would like somewhere, I've realized, where I can go and remember her. This has become especially prevalent now that the house she and my father lived in together has been sold. My mother was everywhere in there, from the Pepto Bismal pink paint on the living room walls to the blue and yellow kitchen curtains to the sprays of flowers springing up next to the pool. The entire place was her.

Now that my father has remarried and moved into his new wife's home, there is no place that feels like my mother. I have photographs and mementoes. I have some of her clothes, scarves, books. I have a notebook from her days at teaching college in Glasgow, pages she filled copying poem after poem in her incredibly neat handwriting. I have cards and letters, a pair of shoes, some purses. I have items that she knit by hand. But I didn't have a place -- nor did I really expect I would want one.

We learned that the church preschool where my mother taught, in Louisville, had planted a tree in her honor, complete with a memorial plaque right next to the brand new playground. It occurred to us that this would be an ideal place to lay her to rest and so we tried for a year or so to coordinate schedules so that my sister, two brothers and various spouses, children and significant others could be present.

We aimed for this Mother's Day. My older brother, as it turned out, was on a belated honeymoon with his wife, so he was unable to be there. My younger brother, who manages a restaurant, was unable to get time off work. So it was my sister and her family, me and Chris and my father who went to the church on Sunday to memorialize my mother.

I did not have tremendous misgivings about this event. It made sense to me, that we would finally have some kind of, as the psychobabblists like to say, closure. There has been so much change in our family since my mother died, I thought it would be a resolution, some kind of punctuation mark that might allow us to move forward, intact in whatever way we could be after a death fractures a family.

My mother was a beloved and very gifted preschool teacher. She had infinite patience for her children and they adored her. So perhaps I should not have been as surprised as I was at how present she is at the preschool, how well memorialized she is. There is a path of bricks at the entrance to the new playground composed of bricks inscribed with names of donors, students, parents and lost loved ones. How strange and slightly stunning to see one of them bearing my mother's name and that of one of her classes from the 1997-1998 school year. It must have been organized by the parents of her class that year, parents who remembered upon her death a full five years after she had taught their children. How odd and unbelievably moving to know that people had remembered my mother in ways I was not even aware of.

My mother's tree is at the far end of the new playground, in a lovely shaded area. If I knew more about trees, I could tell you more than that it is a young one with a plaque at its base that reads, "In loving memory of our teacher, Mrs. Anne Smillie, October 2003." If I knew more about people, I could tell you whether or not it is always wrenching to see a memorial and skip over that brief moment between when you recognize it as a symbol of loss and that instant when you recognize it as a symbol of your loss. It feels strange and personal and gut-wrenching.

My nieces Rebecca, 8, and Olivia, 5, placed some irises next to the plaque and the rest of us took turns following suit. We had a moment of silence and then my sister and my dad took the girls inside to see a tile wall they had installed inside the church to further honor my mom. In their absence, I watched as my brother-in-law Bill dug a hole in which to place my mother's ashes. Chris helped him gather up some mulch to cover the hole with after we were done in the hopes that it would all just blend in, perhaps as though we'd never been there.

Bill and Chris went back inside and sent out my father and my sister and just the three of us stood for a moment before my father placed the marble box in the hole. My father has aged considerably in the three years since my mother died. His hair is nearly completely white, his movements are hesitant and more laborious. Of the most painful images in my life, certainly one is that of my father lifting that heavy marble box and stumbling awkwardly to his knees in order to put his wife's remains to final rest.

We took turns covering the box with dirt, then spread mulch across the top to disguise the freshly disturbed earth. By the time we were done, no child on the playground would suspect that anything had been changed in their tiny world, exactly what my mother would have wanted. And then we left.

I don't know what difference it will make going forward to know that my mother is in her final resting place. It is not that I believe she is in that box, that we have buried anything more than her physical remains. I don't know if I'll visit that spot on future visits to Louisville. But something feels undeniably concrete about having placed the ashes; it feels heavy and sad and right. It feels less to do with how we've handled her remains and everything to do with how we've honored her memory.

And it feels like it's over, which is good. Something is settled, taken care of. I'm not sure it makes any difference to my mother, wherever or whatever she is now, but it makes a big difference to me.

Bigger 'n Nothin'

It was, by all accounts, a glorious weekend. Perhaps a tad chilly for some, but with the sun shining brightly and temps flirting with the mid-60s, it was pretty perfect for little old me. Makes me want to fill the window boxes of our house with bright-faced annuals to admire from the street and the comfort of our back deck, but Michigan natives warn me the finicky nature of the weather here makes it unwise to do so before Labor Day. We were due a glorious weekend, I think, as last week, when it rained, it poured...if only figuratively on our end. Though it is my understanding that it both rained and poured back in St. Louis, where the basement of our little blue house took on indoor pool status. As if a leaky basement weren't enough, our renters informed us that the water heater was leaking and the refrigerator was on its last legs.

Being a landlord is difficult enough, but doing it from a distance, finding reliable service people and coordinating repairs and replacements is a particular kind of stress. Truth be told, were the market not what it is, we'd consider selling the house just to get out from under it. But now's not the time. We promised our little blue house o' love a kitchen upgrade and some bathroom repairs before we sell and if things would just quit breaking down, we may be able to afford it in between tenants.

Enough about that, though! Saturday, itching to get out of the house, I found a listing for the Bigger 'n Texas Sale, billed as a "giant community garage sale" to benefit the Ann Arbor News. Sounded like fun browsing, so I pried Chris away from the computer and lured him out to the Washtenaw Farm Council Grounds to check things out. After paying $5 for the privilege of parking (reminding ourselves that we were supporting local media), we headed towards the sale.

To be honest, our first instinct was disappointment. I pictured something far grander in scale, but in reality the sale took place in two large barn-like buildings with tables set up in the middle of and around the perimeter of each room. Now, I've been to a few garage sales in my time. Even wrote about them for St. Louis Magazine once. But this, my friends, despite its promise (or, perhaps, because of) would qualify as the crappiest ever.

It was a strange mish-mosh of true garage sale crap -- tables piled with junk that was pushing it to have been purchased once, let alone trying for another go 'round -- and jewelry, crafts, perfume knock-offs and infomercial fare (complete with vegetable-peeling demo). Some of the crafts were obviously hand-made, possibly by blind people. Others were obviously purchased -- gross after gross of wooden roses tinted unnatural shades, for example -- and here for the resale.

It's likely that some of the stuff for sale, dusty and dented in its packaging, were straight off the back of the truck. And talk about variety! At one booth, you could buy a genuine bottle of Armani cologne -- a single box, slightly scuffed at a third of the usual price -- or walk tables away and save even more with a similar looking box of R. Mani perfume.

Chilly, or just like your throw rugs to make a statement? Consider the booth selling giant, garishly-colored synthetic fiber throws with subtle graphic imagery, like a half-naked woman or the Confederate flag (with or without "Git 'er done" acrodss it). Need a peg board with ducks on it? Ladybugs? Geese? Trucks? Cars? Boats? Cats? Dogs? Jesus? Anything? You're in luck!

It took us a whopping ten minutes to stroll by every booth, careful not to make eye contact with the desperate folk behind each table. (I learned the hard way by looking twice at the vegetable peeler display, mostly because I thought they were selling browning chips of sliced potato. I managed to free myself by declaring, "If my husband finds out I can peel vegetables, what's next? He'll expect me to cook them?")

Even accounting for hyperbole, whoever named this sale has never actually been to Texas. Or looked it up on the map. The Bigger 'n Rhode Island Sale probably wouldn't draw a crowd, but it'd have been more accurate. In fact, the only thing bigger 'n Texas here was the size of the average rear end. As a not-small woman myself, I confess to being stunned at the number of morbidly obese people lined up to buy small plastic buckets full of fries from the concession stands. I didn't even know there were this many fat people in Michigan.

We felt we had to buy something to justify the $5 entry fee, so we bought some alarmingly cheap replacement blades for Chris' razor -- which he needed anyway -- and came out about $2 ahead and rich in the knowledge that we would never make the mistake of repeating this event in the future.

The rest of the weekend went swimmingly. Saturday night we stayed in and finally watched The Good Shepherd, which has been sitting on our DVD player for about three weeks. (If you ever order a DVD from Netflix and it says "long wait" next to the status, the reason is people like me.) While it's still mildly adorable to watch Matt Damon attempt to play anyone over the age of 25, I think a better title would have been The Extremely Confusing and, Really, Only Moderately Interesting Shepherd.

Yesterday, as I mentioned, was glorious so after running a few errands, we hit Gallup Park in the afternoon, where Chris took a run and I did my version of walking (interspersed with brief, brief bursts of what barely qualifies as running) along the lake. Such a beautiful sight, people snoozing in the grass, whole families on bicycles, kids and parents cutting through the water in kayaks or paddle boats.

Then, being the true nature lovers we are, we headed to Ikea in the hopes of finding some chair cushions to make the adirondacks on our deck a tad more comfy. No dice in that arena, but no worries! We still spend $50 on crap I didn't know I needed until I got there. Gotta love the genius mentality of the place, "I MUST spend this money because it's so CHEAP." Or maybe that's less the mentality of the place than the mentality of me. Either way.

Developing the past

In the midst of this weekend's spring cleaning flurry, I unearthed two of those Kodak disposable cameras, each with just a handful of pics left on them. To the best of my knowledge, we have been carting these cameras around with us for years, moving them from house to house, obviously with the intention of finding out what the hell is on them at some point. And so, on Saturday, in a fit of purposeful activity that will not likely be seen again for months, I not only added developing said film to my list, I actually took them to Target and dropped them off at the photo counter. Truth be told, I was a bit excited to find out what they would produce. It's been years since I've bought a disposable camera and I assumed these might be leftovers from the cameras we had on the tables at our wedding in 2001.

In fact, considering our wedding photos turned out to be pretty disastrous--the photographer was a friend who didn't know her flash didn't work--I allowed myself to hope that not only would these be wedding photos but they would be, somehow, AMAZING wedding photos. The perfect shots, in which not only would everyone be in focus and properly lit, but in which I would also be twenty pounds lighter. Time (and the imagination) can do amazing things, after all.

I returned to Target today to pick up the photos. To extend my anticipation, like the infant I am, I made myself purchase the items I needed from the store before I could go and get the photos, let alone look at them. Finally, I handed a surly youth at the photo counter the stubs they'd torn off my envelope, pretty proud that I'd actually a) kept them, b) found them and c) brought them with me. He didn't even glance at them. He asked my last name and proceeded to look up my order alphabetically. SO WHY THE HELL EVEN GIVE ME THE STUBS??

But I digress.

I took the packets of photos to my car and opened them with great anticipation. The first set, sadly, was a total dud, a series of photos of some ballpark in Cincinnati. (It turns out Chris took them years ago when he was writing for the Post-Dispatch about the then-still-hypothetical new ballpark.) So that was five bucks pretty much wasted.

The second pack took me back--and aback. Apart from a handful of blurry, faded photos I took on the way to Target the other day to use up the last few shots, there were another handful of blurry, faded photos--and not of our wedding. In fact, they were from even before, apparently at a small going-away soiree at my house before Chris and I moved (and moved in together) to Indianapolis in 2000.

I don't actually remember the gathering, but it appears to be me and the women who were then closest to me from my recovery program. We're in my house, back when it was still just "my" house and not yet "ours." There are packed cardboard boxes sitting on a sofa table I no longer own. We're drinking soda out of red plastic cups, my real glasses no doubt stashed away for the move. Of the six women there, only three of us, to my knowledge, are still sober today.

I remain in contact with just one of them, my friend A. The other one, my old sponsor L., moved to Iowa and got married. I'm pretty sure she's still out there, doing the deal, living a happy life. I'm among the still sober, having marked ten years in recovery last September.

Of the other three, two just faded from the program, as people are wont to do. Last I heard--and it's been years since I heard anything or, frankly, even thought of these women--they were both still using.

The third woman in the photographs is my friend Susan. There are two pictures of her, more than any of the others. In one picture, she's standing in my living room doorway. She's dressed up, in a black suit and black-and-white striped top, like she just came from work. Her hair is short, blonde and curly and her mouth's open slightly, as though she's talking while I'm trying to take her picture.

In the other picture, she's mid-laugh, mouth wide, eyes crinkled at the edges. Just over a year ago, Susan died of heart failure at the age of 44, alone in the apartment she'd just moved into. She was going through a rocky divorce from her husband. She was using at the time and she'd been dead for a couple of days when her teenage daughter found her body.

For those of you who don't understand what the disease of addiction is like, these stats are actually pretty good--that 50% of us who gathered in my house that night are still alive and sober is far above average. Research on this stuff is always a bit hazy, but there's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that if even one of us was still sober, we'd be ahead of the game.

It's remarkable to me that I discovered these photos today. This morning I was at a meeting with a friend I've known for about a year. He's one of those people I came to love very quickly and very much and, like so many people I've seen over the years, is struggling to reconcile the lure of his old flashy drug-fueled life and the comparable boredom (perceived and real) of sobriety. I've been thinking a lot today about how tenuous all of this is, how delicate and unlikely long-term sobriety can be.

Today is also my incredible sponsor's 24th sobriety anniversary and I was already--even before I got the photos--teary-eyed with gratitude to her just for sticking around all this time and paving the way for those of us who are desperate to find a light on the path, anyone who will just show us how this is done. What we do...it's not easy and there are no guarantees. That's not a plea for self pity; it's just a fact.

I've just taken another look at the photos and the fact that the film is grainiest and faded most on the photos of the women who have vanished is all a bit too dramatic, don't you think? If I wasn't holding them in my hands, if I saw this in a film, I'd declare it all too, too much. But that's just what they mean, isn't it, when they say that thing about life being stranger than fiction.

Chris has already pitched the ballpark photos into the trash can in his office. I'm not sure what I'll do with my set. Maybe I'll hang onto them for a little while. They'll sit on my desk for a few days, where I'll look at them and make a conscious effort to remember. Then I'm sure I'll stuff them in a box and, probably, move them with me next time we go somewhere. I suspect, at some point after that, they'll just vanish, just disappear, like photos and old friends sometimes do.

This 'n that

Not much to report in the last week or so. Had a cold. Went to Miami, with said cold. Don't worry, you'll be spared long, overly-descriptive entries about Miami. Similarly, you will be spared a host of photos of Miami, as my camera -- which has successfully made it on countless trips, abroad and cross-country -- somehow cracked its LCD display while sitting on my desk just before we left. Weird, huh? Chris was scheduled to appear on a panel at the Off Shore Due Diligence Conference in Miami on Wednesday morning and somehow convinced me to go along. Now, I should say that I am not, as a general rule, a fan of Florida. Not as a state, just as a general concept. I'm pale and sensitive to the heat, I don't like pastels or high-rise condos. Or alligators. So what's the point?

However, I do have a couple of friends in the Miami area and Chris did have us booked in a fancy hotel with a nice soaking tub...and you know how that can sway this girl. So, despite being sick with a rotten cold on Sunday, I went with him on Monday. At first things looked good -- we were upgraded to first class on the non-stop flight out there. Not just first class, but first ROW in first class. Does it get much better than that?

Yes, actually. It does. Like, most other places in the plane. While I am getting good at being a brave little flyer, things feel verrrry different in the first row of the airplane, where you are about one flight attendant and a narrow bathroom away from sitting in the pilot's lap. The cabin tends to shimmy and shake more than usual. Say you weren't feeling all that grand to begin with -- perhaps a bit jittery and grumpy -- and it might not make for a lovely ride.

Miami is for certain people. It is for women in tight pants and high, sparkly heels. It is for people who tan, as opposed to bubble, in the sunlight. It is for those who find heat charming and invigorating. It is for people who drive rented Bentleys and drink giant rainbow-colored drinks from plastic glasses in the cafes along South Beach. It is not, as you might suspect, for me.

But that's okay. Miami doesn't need me to buy it. Judging by the miles upon miles of giant concrete high rises that obscure the views on the drive between Miami and Fort Lauderdale (where we flew in and out), there are TONS of people who are just dying to live the dream. There must be thousands of condos and apartments in various stages of construction and renovation, all empty boxes muddying up the scenery, billboard after billboard promising paradise with an ocean view.

It was, however, delightful to see our friend, former Knight-Wallace Fellow Vanessa Bauza on her home turf. Didn't think it was possible, but she looks even more beautiful than ever. And I had a great time Wednesday afternoon catching up with my friend Lauren, who I met at the Iowa Writer's Workshop three summers ago and with whom I have kept up a semi-regular e-palship.

I can't say, however, I was reluctant to leave or that I'd be eager to return. It's a perfectly amicable separation between me and Miami. We just have irreconcilable differences.

Back in Ann Arbor, a couple of days of rain finally gave way today to a beautiful crisp spring Saturday, perfect for today's graduation. Chris and walked into town for lunch then spent the better part of the afternoon doing the kinds of chores summer's onset inspires -- putting away thermal gear, cleaning out the fireplace, sorting through winter clothes and making stacks for the Salvation Army.

We may not have the beach here in Ann Arbor and I'll still need to keep a few sweaters handy to keep me warm when a chill sets in. You won't see nearly as much skin as you would over coffee at the News Cafe on Ocean Drive in South Beach, probably not a man in a bikini singing for his cappucino. I'll stick with Michigan anyway. J. Lo and Gloria Estefan can hold down the fort in Florida for me.

Oh, crap...

So, the verdict is in: I didn't make it into the MFA program. It's weird, but I kind of knew on some level that was going to be the outcome, so I'm pretty accepting of it. That doesn't mean, of course that I'm not disappointed, usually in sudden bursts, and that I'm not struggling with extrapolating this to mean that I'm a gigantic pile of shit and should probably never write anything ever again ever for all time ever. That's just sort of how my brain rolls.

Sigh.

Any thoughts on how I should spend the next two years instead?

I feel you, Jeff Tweedy

"I'm a lot happier than I've ever been. When you're dealing with addiction and depression, you end up not being as direct or as honest in the writing and the process as you'd like to be. The world is complex, confusing, scary enough. Before, I would make things too baroque, too complicated. Now I just want somebody to sing me some fucking songs." -- Wilco's Jeff Tweedy in an interview from the May-June '07 issue of Mother Jones

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Is it braggin' to say that last night's Free Candy was among the best we've had? Probably. But I'm saying it anyway. We had super guests, a stellar audience and, best of all, Gene Dobbs Bradford and The Blues Inquisition were one of the most mind-blowing bands we've ever had. Ridiculously talented folk who also happen to be a bunch of great guys. You simply must check them out if you get a chance. (The drummer was kind enough to supply us with a few timely rim-shots, which I'm told made Amanda and me much, much funnier.) Speaking of Free Candy, about a year ago a friend here tried to convince me that we should start a franchise of the show in Ann Arbor. At the time, I didn't know if we'd be here long term and wasn't sure enough of the community. However, as it becomes harder and harder for me to get back to St. Louis on a regular basis, the idea of doing the show here becomes even more appealing. Let's just say I'm mulling it over, considering co-hosts and beginning to think about logistics.

Not speaking of the marathon, Chris did great yesterday. He came in just under four hours and 10 minutes, right around what he was shooting for. Considering it's his first marathon in a couple of years (SLACKER!) he's feeling really good about his performance. Best of all, he employed a walk-run technique (running 9 minutes, walking 40 seconds or so) for part of the race and it seems to have had a substantial impact on his recovery. He's in far better shape than he usually is the day after.

Of course, he's still insane for running 26.2 miles in the first place.

On a completely different note -- since I'm so obviously rambling anyway -- Lambert Airport was a zoo this morning when we arrived for our 8:50 flight from St. Louis to Detroit. Just crazy lines for security, snaking their way back and forth across the terminal. Apparently it's par for the course for Monday morning travel. Still, as we stood in line at the gate, the woman in front of me joked that perhaps it was extra security for all the NRA convention folk leaving town. We joked about people hiding weapons in their carry-ons.

It turns out that at almost the exact moment we parried back and forth about crazed gunmen, a man began a shooting rampage on the campus of Virginia Tech University, leaving more than 30 students dead. I read the breaking news as soon as we got back home to Ann Arbor and have been following the details all day since. There's nothing I can say about it that won't sound like a pathetic attempt at poignancy, a lament about the state of modern society -- and the media already have that covered, when they're not offering up confusing and conflicting details of the developing story. I'm just really sad about it, that's all.

And a little pissed at the press coverage. CNN had a photo on its front page for a while that showed police carrying a student out of the building. It was impossible to tell if the kid was alive, but he was at the very least passed out. I couldn't help but wonder if his family was reading CNN and if this might be the way they found out that their child had been injured or, worse, killed. This from a media outlet that, like most others in the US, won't show the coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq unless we find the "reality" too jarring.

It's a story like this one at Virginia Tech, too, that points out the drawbacks of the immediacy of online news reporting. So many facts are murky, so many conflicting details and all of it seems to be being thrown online with more regard for speed than accuracy. On both CNN.com and MSNBC.com today, the little slugs or factoids about the story conflicted with details in the main copy. At one point, CNN.com was reporting -- on the same page -- that the gunman was killed and was still at large. It's still hard to tell what's going on.

What does seem to be emerging, however, is a tale of inadequate response that goes far beyond the media. In the hour plus between the time that the gunman killed two in a dorm and embarked on the bulk of his killings in classrooms across campus, the university failed to shutdown the campus. Police assumed, apparently, that the gunman had left the campus and no further precaution was taken. A simple cautious lockdown could have saved nearly 30 lives. It'll be interesting to see how the buck gets passed along on that one.

I'm wondering if I feel this news just a tad more strongly now that I live in a college town, know kids at school here and walk through and around campus on a regular basis. There's something so jarring about school shootings, such a violation of what should be one of the last safe places. Like I said, it's just sad, sad stuff.

Pardon the mess

I've just upgraded to WordPress 2.1.3 and now the navigation bar that usually appears to the right of the entry is on the bottom of the page. Sigh.

I'll work on it as soon as I get a chance. In the meantime, don't blame me. Blame technology. That's what I do.

No doubt about it

We're home. We've been home from vacation, in fact, since last Tuesday -- nearly a week -- and yet I feel like I'm still adjusting. Must be the signs of a good time, eh? And, in case we have any doubt that we are no longer in the fantastic warmth of the Southwest, it has snowed to some degree virtually every day since we got home. I haven't had a chance to finish posting my journals from our vacation and I really do want to tell you all about the amazing time we had a 10,000 Waves in Santa Fe. Definitely one of the coolest places we've been and well worth saving up for a while to get yourself there. Unless you don't enjoy peace, serenity and relaxation -- with a little Japanese-style pampering thrown in. In that case, stay away from this place at all costs.

Gearing up to head to St. Louis on Wednesday. Amanda & I are doing a Free Candy at Hartford Coffee Company on Sunday night. Chris is flying in to join me on Friday and he's planning on running the St. Louis Marathon on Sunday afternoon. He'll be the jelly-like one in the front row at Free Candy. If you're in town and around, please join us at 7 pm at Hartford -- get there early if you want a seat!

In the meantime, I'm finishing up some work here and enjoying the fact that our good friend Graham Griffith is in town for a couple of days. He and some of the rest of last year's Fellowship class are doing a special seminar Tuesday to talk to the graduating class of Fellows about adapting to life after the dream year. Our advice? Don't do it. Probably not that helpful.

Spring has sprung

It's not a particularly auspicious start to spring here in Ann Arbor. The skies are grey, the temperatures are chilly, the ground is muddy from the snow-'n-melt dance we've been doing for the past week or so. Still, I must admit there's something I like about just being able to say that it's spring. Maybe I can talk myself into feeling like spring. And while I'm ready for spring, there's also part of me that can't quite believe winter is over. Time seems to be flying. We've been back here since July and in some ways it feels like we just got here.

Not much to report at present -- working on editing the KWF newsletter, redoing the website and writing articles for a couple of clients and hanging in MFA limbo. It's enough to keep me out of trouble. Sigh.

What season is this?

Two days ago it was 70 degrees in Ann Arbor. After dinner, Chris and I got coffees from Espresso Royale and wandered over into the Diag to see the campus come alive with the promise of spring. Students were everywhere with pale limbs and soft bellies, squinting mole-faced into the light, tossing frisbees and baseballs back and forth, all self-conscious and pliable as if being seen for the first time in months. They sat on the concrete benches in front of the library, their feet resting on the last remnants of snow -- random ice piles covered in dirt. The ground was squelchy and brown from all the melting.

Yesterday it was still in the 60s and a warm rain melted the stubborn patches of snow that clung to shaded parts of front lawns and even the corners of our deck.

And this morning, I woke to an inch of fresh snow, light and fluffy, coating the branches of trees like a picture postcard.

How odd.

It seems...

...I created a disproportionate amount of suspense by announcing the loss of the last entry. Believe me, people, it was nothing grand. I think the whole first half of it was whining about my health as the last month has been particularly trying for me with my fibromyalgia and its treatment, coupled with an uncooperative thyroid. All of it conspired to keep me pretty much exhuasted for weeks on end and even simple tasks seemed monumental. Someone asked me what fibromyalgia feels like. It's hard to explain because there are system-wide symptoms ranging from total exhaustion accompanied by insomnia (a nice dichotomy indeed), a lot of muscle pain, headaches, the delightful irritible bowel syndrome (just like on the commercials!) and a crippling loss of memory and concentration.

The treatment that I'm on (the mysterious sounding and rather controversial alternative treatment, the guaifenesin protocol) operates on the theory that people with FMS (that's fibromyalgia syndrome) cannot flush calcium phosphate out of our kidneys. The phosphate builds up in our bodies in lesions, causing all sorts of system-wide problems.

Guaifenesin, which is a harmless ingredient found mostly in cough medicine, somehow helps the body flush out the build-up of phosphates in cycles. However, as the phosphates move through the system, you get much sicker; all the symptoms are magnified. Generally, my neck and shoulders burn or ache all the time anyway. When I'm cycling, as they say, it's much worse. I'm completely exhausted and the pain in other areas -- mostly my quads, arms and hips -- gets pretty bad. My arm muscles burn to move glasses from the dishwasher to the cabinets and I have to pause every couple of glasses. My leg muscles burn after four or five steps to the point that I have to stop and blink back tears.

Not pleasant.

But...the idea is that once you cycle out all the built-up phosphates, which could take a coupe of years, you'll feel much better. And you'll have decent days in between the cycles. What's the alternative? Well, there isn't one. The standard medical response to FMS is that there is no treatment or cure, that it's debilitating and you just have to learn to manage the symptoms, which get worse over time. So I might as well try it, right?

The only other catch is that, for some reason, salicylates applied topically block the efficacy of the guaifenesin. What does that mean? Well, salicylates are found in plant oils and extracts, so you can't use any topical products -- makeup, shampoo, lotion, toothpaste, etc. -- that contain those or take aspirin or any medicine that contains aspirin (which is, after all, salycilic acid.) It makes for some complicated shopping, let me tell you. Plant essences seem to have been the marketing buzzwords of the last decade and while it probably wasn't that hard once to find products that are almost entirely synthetic, it is now. Let me tell you, Aveda is suffering a big financial hit from my doing this protocol.

So, there. Now you know. Not that you were wondering, although maybe you did wonder why I can't seem to get stuff done sometimes. Or why I start a sentence and can't remember the end of it. Or why I look perfectly fine but claim not to have enough energy to get up and take a walk. It's the FMS, people. And it's mine, all mine!

Oh, dammit!

I had this whole new post written and then things went wonky on the server and it's gone. GONE! There's a possibility I will get around to rewriting it later this afternoon. There is an equal (or perhaps greater) possibility that I won't. Thus, I leave you dying of curiosity. What golden nuggets have you missed out on?