Hannah is gone. Good bye, sweet girl. You will always be in my heart.
Words cannot do my feelings justice.
 |
| Hannah through the years August 5, 1994 - March 15, 2011 |
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
First marathon
Done
Completed
Successful
Friday
DH and I took the day off and drove down to Jacksonville for 26.2 with Donna: The National Marathon to Finish Breast Cancer.
Saturday
On Saturday, we went to the race expo and checked in. The expo was very good. Check in was quick, the race shirt is really nice and the volunteers were cheerful and helpful. DH and I also did a little bit of reconnaissance -- confirmed where the bus from the hotel area to the race start was, confirmed that the beach was hard packed as advertised and so on. My parents and my in-laws were both coming into Jacksonville for the race so we gathered some course info for them as well.
On Saturday evening, we went Mellow Mushroom for a pre race meal. Pizza, as usual!
Race Day
On Sunday morning, I got up at 5:00, lubed up liberally in an effort to avoid chafing and then ate a bagel with peanut butter and a banana and drank a bottle of Camelbak Elixir to get some electrolytes into my system. I had a little bit of coffee from the hotel lobby and I walked across the street to get a shuttle bus to the race start. I got into line at about 5:30 and we arrived at the Mayo Clinic for the race start at about 6:00.
At about 6:30 or a little before, they herding us to the corrals. They had four corrals. The half and full marathon runners went in together according to color codes they had on our bibs. In other words, 4 hour marathoners and 2 hour half marathoners were mixed together.
The race started a few minutes late. They were obviously checking with police to make sure that the roads were clear and we started as soon as the organizers got the all clear. It 40 degrees when the race started (60 degrees when I finished).
It was also neat that the start of the race was broadcast on TV. My peeps watched the TV coverage and then went outside and saw me. (This is where it helps that the event is 26.2 with Donna and Donna is a news anchor on a local station and Mr. Donna is a weatherman at a local station. As a result, the races has excellent media coverage.)
The course started at Mayo Clinic and crossed the intracoastal waterway in the first two miles. The first (and last) three miles were on a (closed) expressway. By mile five we were on the beach.
The run out to the beach was fun and included highlighted by helicopter flyovers for TV and plenty of cars honking in support of the thousands of runners. The spectator support was amazing! The 2.5 miles run on the beach were beautiful.
The hotel that we stayed at was on the course near mile 7 and mile 19. I saw my family on the beach just after mile 7. They cheered and I waved. That was neat. Throughout the race I kept on counting down when to have Gu or when I would see my family during the race.
The run went really really well until mile 16. Then my legs started to complain a little bit. About this time I started to dislike the marathon relay teams. I mean really dislike them. The relay people looked so fresh and perky, having run about one mile since the exchange at Mile 15, and my legs were feeling somewhat less than fresh and perky. I kept on telling myself, less than 30 minutes until I see my peeps again (at mile 19). Then it was less than a mile to the next Gu. 10k to go. Back onto the expressway to the finish. With about 2 miles to go I could see the finish. There's Mayo Clinic. Right there. The finish. Up the bridge. It's all downhill from here. The finish should be just around the corner. I hope the finish is just around the corner. There it is!
I checked the race results and over 1600 marathon runners finished, along with over 4000 half marathoners plus 214 marathon relay teams (5 people per team).
I thought that the organization and crowd support were superb. The expo was great as was the runner support on the course. Water stations were well stocked, port-a-pots plentiful, Gu available, etc.
I would definitely do this event again. I would definitely recommend it to a friend.
Completed
Successful
Friday
DH and I took the day off and drove down to Jacksonville for 26.2 with Donna: The National Marathon to Finish Breast Cancer.
Saturday
On Saturday, we went to the race expo and checked in. The expo was very good. Check in was quick, the race shirt is really nice and the volunteers were cheerful and helpful. DH and I also did a little bit of reconnaissance -- confirmed where the bus from the hotel area to the race start was, confirmed that the beach was hard packed as advertised and so on. My parents and my in-laws were both coming into Jacksonville for the race so we gathered some course info for them as well.
On Saturday evening, we went Mellow Mushroom for a pre race meal. Pizza, as usual!
Race Day
On Sunday morning, I got up at 5:00, lubed up liberally in an effort to avoid chafing and then ate a bagel with peanut butter and a banana and drank a bottle of Camelbak Elixir to get some electrolytes into my system. I had a little bit of coffee from the hotel lobby and I walked across the street to get a shuttle bus to the race start. I got into line at about 5:30 and we arrived at the Mayo Clinic for the race start at about 6:00.
At about 6:30 or a little before, they herding us to the corrals. They had four corrals. The half and full marathon runners went in together according to color codes they had on our bibs. In other words, 4 hour marathoners and 2 hour half marathoners were mixed together.
The race started a few minutes late. They were obviously checking with police to make sure that the roads were clear and we started as soon as the organizers got the all clear. It 40 degrees when the race started (60 degrees when I finished).
It was also neat that the start of the race was broadcast on TV. My peeps watched the TV coverage and then went outside and saw me. (This is where it helps that the event is 26.2 with Donna and Donna is a news anchor on a local station and Mr. Donna is a weatherman at a local station. As a result, the races has excellent media coverage.)
The course started at Mayo Clinic and crossed the intracoastal waterway in the first two miles. The first (and last) three miles were on a (closed) expressway. By mile five we were on the beach.
The run out to the beach was fun and included highlighted by helicopter flyovers for TV and plenty of cars honking in support of the thousands of runners. The spectator support was amazing! The 2.5 miles run on the beach were beautiful.
 |
| On the beach just after mile 7 |
The hotel that we stayed at was on the course near mile 7 and mile 19. I saw my family on the beach just after mile 7. They cheered and I waved. That was neat. Throughout the race I kept on counting down when to have Gu or when I would see my family during the race.
 |
| Just after mile 19 |
The run went really really well until mile 16. Then my legs started to complain a little bit. About this time I started to dislike the marathon relay teams. I mean really dislike them. The relay people looked so fresh and perky, having run about one mile since the exchange at Mile 15, and my legs were feeling somewhat less than fresh and perky. I kept on telling myself, less than 30 minutes until I see my peeps again (at mile 19). Then it was less than a mile to the next Gu. 10k to go. Back onto the expressway to the finish. With about 2 miles to go I could see the finish. There's Mayo Clinic. Right there. The finish. Up the bridge. It's all downhill from here. The finish should be just around the corner. I hope the finish is just around the corner. There it is!
I checked the race results and over 1600 marathon runners finished, along with over 4000 half marathoners plus 214 marathon relay teams (5 people per team).
I thought that the organization and crowd support were superb. The expo was great as was the runner support on the course. Water stations were well stocked, port-a-pots plentiful, Gu available, etc.
I would definitely do this event again. I would definitely recommend it to a friend.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Septembers of Shiraz: A Novel by Dalia SoferMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book was excellent. I had a hard time putting it down. It is beautifully written. In some ways, this book reminds me of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri -- language and style, caught between cultures.
The story takes place in post-Revolutionary Iran and tells the story of a Jewish family -- Isaac, Farnaz, Shirin and Paviz -- living in Tehran. Told in the voice of each of these family members, this suspenseful story begins when Isaac, a gemologist with associations to the Shah, is arrested by the Revolutionary Guard. Early in the book, "Back in his cell, Isaac thinks of Rez and the thousands of revolutionaries like him -- men and women who thought they were part of something big, much bigger than their daily lives -- who thought they were changing the course of history. And here they are, having replace crowns with turbans." (101)
Isaac is an educated man with knowledge of both Persian and Western literature. When he was in prison, he thought of poems, including The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats and the Teachings of Hafiz (239) -- interestingly, Hafiz (also known as Hafez) was born in Shiraz.
(from The Lake Isle of Innisfree)
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made...
(from Teachings of Hafiz)
Can drunkenness be linked to piety
And good repute?
Where is the preacher's holy monody,
Where is the lute?
Later in the book (294), Isaac recites another section from the Teachings of Hafiz. This time he recites to his father
Be not too sure of your crown, you who thought
That virtue was easy and recompense yours;
From the monastery to the wine-tavern doors
The way is nought
from The Divan of Hafiz (337)
Not all the sum of earthly happiness
Is worth the bowed head of a moment's pain
The book also has other art and religious themes throughout. For example, the theme of the ghazal, a form of poetry. "Five couplets, at the minimum, but no more than twelve usually. The first couplet establishes a rhyme followed by a refrain, a scheme repeated by the second line of each succeeding couplet. Each couplet should stand on its own, but must also be part of the whole. At the end, the poet often invokes himself...'So what happens at the end, Baba?' and he had said, 'There is no end, Shirin-jan. That's the first thing you should learn about ghazals. There is no resolution. Imagine the speaker simply throwing his hands in the air.'" (178-179)"
Farnaz borrows a sixteenth-century miniature painting from an antique dealer. She asks the dealer about the history of the piece. "'That's the sad part of the story. In 1962 an American collector bought it, and he had the audacity to rip pages out of the book and sell them individually. He sold some to a museum in New York, others to private collectors.'
"She looks at the orphaned leaf, its counterparts spread around the globe, each adopted by one museum or another, or locked in a cabinet of a European or American collector who picks it up once in a while or looks at in his dime study..." (217)
Do the "orphaned leaf" represent Iranians spread around the world like pages of the book? Does it represent American disrespect/misunderstanding of Persian culture?
This is only the tip of the iceberg. There is a lot going on in this book (alcohol: banned after the Revolution, Isaac's father was an alcoholic -- apathy, fermented and distilled (106), Isaac's brother Javad was a bootlegger; Why didn't Farnaz send Parviz the money Isaac promised him? She gave $10,000 to Javad and nothing to her son.; fundamentalist Jews and fundamentalist Islamics; 'worship' of Western culture)
View all my reviews
Friday, December 31, 2010
2010 Reading List
I read 75 books this year. My favorites were The Lovely Bones, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, People of the Book. The Lace Reader, Shadowland, The Likeness and Sarah's Key.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This book is not really a thriller but does have some of the suspense that murder mysteries contain. The book is well written. The author manages to take a disturbing subject and make it, in the end, healing.
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks. This novel is about the working-girl heroine, Jane Rosenal. This is a coming of age book about awkward Jane that skips to various points in her life. For me, this book is best described as Catcher in the Rye meets Bridget Jones's Diary.
People of the book by Geraldine Brooks. This novel is about a book manuscript conservator Hanna Heath is hired to work on. This religious manuscript, the Sarajevo Haggadah, is 500 years old. The novel covers both Hanna's 20th century restoration and the history of the book itself as Hanna discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the codex. This novel is very well done and this Pulitzer Prize winning author does not disappoint.
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. Set in Salem, Massachusetts, The Lace Reader takes full advantage of the witch trial history of the locale. This novel grabbed my attention at the beginning and held it throughout.
The Likeness by Tana French. Detective Cassie Maddox goes undercover to solve the murder of a post-grad in this murder mystery with a unique twist. This was a hard-to-put-down book!
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. This well-paced novel alternated between Julia Jarmond's modern-day story and Sarah's 1942 situation. It is also story of family secrets. I found the novel to be moving and well-written. In some ways it reminded me of Suite Francaise.
This year I also have a few new categories.
Worst book
Have you ever seen a horror movie that was so bad that it was funny?
The list
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This book is not really a thriller but does have some of the suspense that murder mysteries contain. The book is well written. The author manages to take a disturbing subject and make it, in the end, healing.
The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Banks. This novel is about the working-girl heroine, Jane Rosenal. This is a coming of age book about awkward Jane that skips to various points in her life. For me, this book is best described as Catcher in the Rye meets Bridget Jones's Diary.
People of the book by Geraldine Brooks. This novel is about a book manuscript conservator Hanna Heath is hired to work on. This religious manuscript, the Sarajevo Haggadah, is 500 years old. The novel covers both Hanna's 20th century restoration and the history of the book itself as Hanna discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the codex. This novel is very well done and this Pulitzer Prize winning author does not disappoint.
The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry. Set in Salem, Massachusetts, The Lace Reader takes full advantage of the witch trial history of the locale. This novel grabbed my attention at the beginning and held it throughout.
"There is lace in every living thing: the bare branches of winter, the patterns of clouds, the surface of water as it ripples int he breeze.... Even a wild dog's matted fur shows a lacy pattern if you look at it closely enough."
The Likeness by Tana French. Detective Cassie Maddox goes undercover to solve the murder of a post-grad in this murder mystery with a unique twist. This was a hard-to-put-down book!
Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. This well-paced novel alternated between Julia Jarmond's modern-day story and Sarah's 1942 situation. It is also story of family secrets. I found the novel to be moving and well-written. In some ways it reminded me of Suite Francaise.
This year I also have a few new categories.
Worst book
- Amarcord: Marcella Remembers by Marcella Hazan. I have no idea why I felt compelled to finish this book. OK, I do. My mother loaned the book to me. The first section of this book was very interesting. I enjoyed reading about Marcella's journey from Egypt to Milan and reading about her time at Lake Garda during World War II. She has some very interesting stories to share, especially the one about the skeleton.
The last 2/3 of the book involved a lot of self serving name dropping and that was considerably less enjoyable. The book became a slog to read. The low point was when she devoted an entire chapter to a child-like criticism of famed food editor Judith Jones.
Have you ever seen a horror movie that was so bad that it was funny?
- Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell. The book was poorly written and the author's behavior so abhorrent that I wonder why she put it in writing. Who would want to commemorate that?! Throughout the book, I kept on thinking to myself, "She knows her mother's going to read this, right?" This book has become a family joke. Oh look! Cleaving is now available in paperback!
- The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. Simply put, I wanted to love this book and I did not. The premise of the book was good but the characters did not develop and the book lacked heart. It was a slog.
- Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah. I picked this up after reading and enjoying Magic Hour. This book was like reading a Lifetime movie. If there was a cliche to be had, it was employed and every song, food, fad of the 1970's was referenced.
The list
- Unaccustomed Earth: Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
- The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani
- Amarcord: Marcella Remembers by Marcella Hazan
- The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
- The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean
- Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella
- Names My Sisters Call Me by Megan Crane
- The Day I Ate Whatever I Wanted: And Other Small Acts of Liberation by Elizabeth Berg
- The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank
- Twilight (Twilight #1) by Stephenie Meyer
- New Moon (Twilight #2) by Stephenie Meyer
- Eclipse (Twilight, 3) by Stephenie Meyer
- Breaking Dawn (Twilight #4) by Stephenie Meyer
- Cause Celeb by Helen Fielding
- We Are All Fine Here by Mary Guterson
- Nanny Returns by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
- Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession by Julie Powell
- Look Again by Lisa Scottoline
- The Senator's Wife by Sue Miller
- East of the Sun by Julia Gregson
- Dedication by Emma McLaughlin
- Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
- Citizen Girl by Emma McLaughlin
- The Help by Kathryn Stockett
- Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweetby Jamie Ford
- Brooklyn Colm Toibin
- People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks
- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
- The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry
- The Map of True Places by Brunonia Barry
- In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
- Airhead (Airhead #1) by Meg Cabot
- Being Nikki (Airhead #2) by Meg Cabot
- The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
- Coventry by Helen Humphreys
- The Clique (The Clique #1) by Lisi Harrison
- Dark Places by Gillian Flynn
- Runaway (Airhead #3) by Meg Cabot
- Best Friends for Never (The Clique #2) by Lisi Harrison
- Jinx by Meg Cabot
- Insatiable by Meg Cabot
- My Fair Lazy: One Reality Television Addict's Attempt to Discover If Not Being A Dumb Ass Is the New Black; Or, A Culture-Up Manifesto by Jen Lancaster
- Shadowland (The Mediator #1) by Meg Cabot
- A Desirable Residence by Madeleine Wickham
- Revenge of the Wannabes (The Clique #3) by Lisi Harrison
- I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti by Giulia Melucci
- Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate #1) by Gail Carriger
- Changeless (The Parasol Protectorate #2) by Gail Carriger
- Invasion of the Boy Snatchers (The Clique #4) by Lisi Harrison
- Ninth Key (The Mediator #2) by Meg Cabot
- Me & Emma by Elizabeth Flock
- Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah
- Reunion (The Mediator #3) by Meg Cabot
- Darkest Hour (The Mediator #4) by Meg Cabot
- Haunted (The Mediator #5) by Meg Cabot
- Twilight (Mediator Series #6) by Meg Cabot
- The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1) by Stieg Larsson
- The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium #2 ) by Stieg Larsson
- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium #3) by Stieg Larsson
- Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah
- The Likeness by Tana French
- Hurting Distance by Sophie Hannah
- Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
- Once a Runner by John L. Parker Jr.
- A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
- In the Woods by Tana French
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
- House Rules by Jodi Picoult
- Saving Max by Antoinette van Heugten
- Comfort and Joy: A Novel by Kristin Hannah
- Everything Must Go by Elizabeth Flock
- Blameless (The Parasol Protectorate #3) by Gail Carriger
- High Tea by Sandra Harper
- Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhonda Janzen
- The Baker's Apprentice by Judi Hendricks
Friday, December 24, 2010
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