Foot Notes*

Archive for November, 2009

Heart of a lion....

I might not have gone to the  run last Saturday from Lincoln Elementary because the description of the run sounded more challenging than I’m ready for.  But it was a beautiful morning and since Joanne was the run sponsor I knew there’d be someone there to run with.  (And lets face it, there was the chance of a cake afterwards!).  So I headed on out.

Joanne, Tammy and I wound up walking and talking about what this blog is about and how it could benefit the club.

A re-branding was suggested, and I think it’s a good idea. 

We tossed around several ideas and decided it might be interesting to throw it open to everyone in the club to:

“Name that blog.”

For now, a temporary change has been made.  Comments with feedback or other suggestions are welcome.

Let’s see if we can find a consensus.

Weekend runs

I saw “Taylorstown” listed for  Saturday and immediately checked Sunday for an alternative.  Then I thought about how pleasant it was walking the hills last Saturday and I thought maybe people might be interested in walking part of the route.  Looks to me like we could take the route backwards and walk to the first waterstop and turn around — for a total of about four miles.  If we feel ambitious, we could walk up and run down. 

Anybody interested?

Otherwise, Tuscarora Creek Park works well on Sunday.

Directions:

Taylorstown on Saturday:

  http://loudounroadrunners.org/maps/Taylorstown.pdf

Tuscarora Creek Park on Sunday:

http://loudounroadrunners.org/maps/Tuscarora.pdf

(Note:  Battlefield Parkway is open now to Route 7,  so that simplifies things considerably if you are coming in from the east).

In the meantime — have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

A Christmas Pillow tradition begins!

When my own children were born, I made a needlepoint “birth announcement”  for each of them and a small needlepoint ornament with their name and the year for their first Christmas.  They were small little things and it wasn’t a big deal to make them. 

When my first grandson was born in February of 2007, I made him a cross-stitch birth announcement and then along in the fall, I got to looking for a pattern for a Christmas tree ornament I could make for him.  I couldn’t find any that I liked, so I wound up expanding the scope of the project and making him a Christmas pillow. 

I found a pattern for a “Christmasy” rocking horse, and I added his name and the year, and then cut some velvet for the back, sewed them together and put a pillow form inside.  VOILA!  A Christmas pillow.  (What the heck…  start a tradition!) 

Now, I admit that I was pretty excited about the arrival of my first grandchild, but I thought I was setting the bar for any future grandchildren low enough that it would still be doable.  Last thing I want is for a grandchild of mine to come to me with quivering lip and ask ”How come you didn’t make ME a Christmas pillow, grandma?”  :::::::sniff:::::::

I was excited again last summer when my daughter announced that my second grandchild was on the way. 

I wasn’t prepared (nor were she and her husband, of course) for the discovery that my second grandchild was in fact going to be my second and THIRD grandchildren.  EEEEEK.

I solved the birth announcement problem by finding a really wonderful cross stitch pattern for a “twins” birth announcement — Two Peas in a Pod.  Cute, cute, cute.  I was a little late getting it finished, but I did get it finished.  

Summer rolled into fall and I realized that I had some work ahead of me.  I probably could have taken the easy route and made one Christmas pillow with both names on it, but I figured that was the coward’s way out, so I vowed to suck it up and make two of them.

I’ve finished one and can see the light at the end of the tunnel for the second one….Just in time for the arrival next March of my fourth grandchild (from my son and his wife, this time). 

I’m getting really tired of the rocking horse pattern.  But I started it, and I can’t get out now.  I’ve got some time.  I won’t have to face it again until next fall.  I’ll have a break while I do a birth announcement.

I don’t know if my grandchildren will cherish these things I am putting so much time into making for them, or if they will wind up tossing them in the Good Will bag at some point.  I can’t worry about that.  I can only try to give them something of myself to take with them as they make their journeys through life.

Who knew I’d wind up with four grandchildren in three years?

Who knew I’d ever be able to run for even 3 miles?

And who knows what’s to come?

I guess there are two lessons from this little tale:

1. Don’t start something you aren’t prepared to finish.
2. Just keep doing the best you can.

We have a “wart-sponsored” run on Saturday this week from Lincoln Elementary, so it would probably be nice to have a reasonable wart contingent for that.   Who knows, Joanne might even decorate us up a cake (with the LRR logo?) to enjoy when we finish! 

Hey..  it could happen.

 http://loudounroadrunners.org/maps/Lincoln.pdf

We can always walk the hills for that one, and then show up again on Sunday to run from Greenberry’s on the trail.

What does this mean -- EXACTLY?!

My car doesn’t want me to run out of gas, and let me say right off the bat that I appreciate that.  I really do.

I’ve got a 2006 Acura TL and it’s got a fancy-dancy Trip Computer on the dash that tells me my average miles per gallon, and gives me an estimate of how much further I can drive before I run out of gas.  When I first got the car in February, I thought this was pretty cool.  The first time the warning light came on and the Trip Computer told me I only had 28 miles to go before I ran out of gas, my heart started beating faster and I high-tailed it to a gas station — only to discover that I still had four gallons left in the tank.

Four gallons! Pfffffffffffffft!

Last summer I spent a good hour kvetching to the service manager at the Acura dealer that something was wrong with the darned thing.  The User’s Manual says the car has a 17 gallon tank.  If I fill up and can only put 13 gallons in, that means there were 4 gallons left, and that’s almost a quarter of a tank.  Why does the gauge read just above EMPTY?  Maybe the gauge isn’t accurate?  Or the gauge will read way below EMPTY when it’s actually empty? 

The service manager did a little song and dance that pretty much came down to “Your car doesn’t want you to run out of gas and when the warning light comes on, you should fill up with gas.”

 I just want to know what information I can depend on —  How much gas is in the tank …  right NOW.   Don’t try to scare me — just give me accurate information and let me make the judgment call about when to get serious about finding a gas station. 

I decided to start documenting the issue. 

Every time I filled up, I noted how many miles I had driven on that tank, and what the Trip Computer said as far as MPG and Range at that point. 

I soon learned that the MPG was darned accurate based on what it took to fill up the tank, and I therefore decided that the Range was a worthless number.

So this weekend we’re driving up in the mountains around Uniontown, PA and the gauge is getting down there, but my own calculation based on the MPG and the mileage says that I’m fine to get back to town.

But we’re also driving in some serious mountains!  Although I figure I’m getting pretty darned good mileage on the downside of the mountain, I also figure it’s got to be pretty hard lugging that car UP the mountain and that number could be in the single digits for all I know.

The warning light comes on.    The GPS says it’s 32 miles back to the bed and breakfast, but the Trip Computer says I’ve only got 28 miles left.  I’m going back and forth between knowing that the Range is a worthless number, and NOT knowing what kind of awful mileage I’m getting going UP.  Not to mention not having a clue how far away the nearest gas station is. 

There were about 10 miles of not-much-fun before we came out of the mountains and found a friendly gas station when we turned back onto the main road.

And what did I discover when I filled up the tank?  I still had 4 gallons left!

I appreciate the fact that the car doesn’t want me to run out of gas, but I don’t like that it does it by scaring the stuffing out of me 30 miles from town on a twisty-windy road in the mountains!

I tell you.. one of these days, I’m going to pooh-pooh that warning light and just keep driving and I’m going to run out of gas.  I know it’s going to happen –  It’s only a matter of time. And when it does happen, I don’t think my car is going to have any sympathy for me whatsoever. 

And now for the slick transition to the club run info for the week.  Ready?  Here it comes:

I don’t know about the other warts, but I’m sure I don’t have enough gas for the Old Waterford Road hills on Sunday, so I’m going to opt for the Saturday run from Market Station this week and just do the W & OD trail out and back.   

So far..  the weather is looking good for it, too!

So I’m eating my lunch Sunday and listening to the re-broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion and Garrison Keillor starts the news from Lake Wobegon.  Nice timing on my part.

 He gets to talking about winter coming on and it getting cold, and then he starts ripping me off!  He says his dad wouldn’t let them touch the thermostat.  He says when they would complain that they were cold, his dad would just reply “Put on a sweater!”

 I start to wonder whether there was a much more sinister explanation to this than just “at least someone is reading my wart blog!”

 Could it be?

 Maybe we had the same dad?!  Naaaaa.  If my dad had been leading a double life, Garrison Keillor would be telling some different stories about his childhood in Lake Wobegon. 

Surely by now he would have told about getting high on the smell of mimeograph ink while he assembled specifications in the basement in exchange for a meager allowance. 

I know I’m bringing back fond memories to those club members old enough to remember getting freshly minted mimeographed handouts at school.  For the youngsters in the club – I’m sorry you missed that experience.  It was a good time.

 My dad was an architect – he designed buildings.  He drew all the plans himself on a large drafting table, with only the use of a mechanical pencil and some drafting tools.  And for each building he designed he wrote a set of specifications which told the contractors everything about how the building was to be built, right down to what kind of paint to use and the quality of the concrete to be poured for the foundation.  Specifications were pretty substantial documents (usually over 100 pages, as I recall) and he needed to produce maybe 30 copies of each set.

 How do you do that in a time without word processors, printers or copiers? 

 You pay a woman to type a master set (might even have been on a manual typewriter!) on a mimeograph stencil and then you make your kids run off the copies in the basement and assemble them.  Running off the copies and assembling them was a very labor-intensive process, and my dad sure took advantage of the cheap labor available to him.

If you really must know more about mimeograph machines….

  My dad wasn’t a big dog like Frank Lloyd Wright, but he worked very hard at what he did there are many very nicely designed buildings, like  The Pharmacy Building at the University of Wyoming, scattered around the state with his name on a plaque just inside the door.

 It occurs to me that by golly…  my dad was a WART!

Speaking of that very biggest of big dogs, Frank Lloyd Wright, I’m going on a little road trip this weekend to visit two nearby houses that he designed — Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob so I won’t be around for either weekend run.

Seems to me like the Saturday run from the high school:

http://loudounroadrunners.org/maps/Thomas_Mill.pdf

lends itself best for warts.