We're home!

plane ticket from Austin to Beijing: $800
subway ticket to Tian'anmen Square: 2 Yuan
entrance ticket to the Forbidden City: 25 Yuan

Being the only blonde in a city of 12 million: priceless

I'm so sorry to all those who were looking for China-trip updates this last week. Apparently blogspot is on the list of Websites the Chinese government finds dangerous and therefore bans. But we are home safe and sound and four hours earlier than expected thanks to a favorable tail wind and catching the earlier flight on standby.

I will post lots of pictures and stories soon! Stay tuned!

K.

Why I Love My Husband (Reason # 1,832,419)

As of today, Alex has been gone for one whole week. I've been surviving the loneliness mainly by virtue of the fact that I have been busy 10, 050 of those 10,080 minutes. And those extra 30 minutes in there I was a zombie.

As my coach so aptly quipped (as he was hollering us up a hill at run practice), I have three jobs right now: my day job, my freelance work, and my training. I don't know why, but last week I told my freelance manager that, "sure, I can take on a few extra assignments." I mean, Alex would be gone and I'd have all this free time on my hands. Why I can't just hold onto that free time is beyond me. Anywho, so I've been working. A lot. And Alex has been gone. Right. We've established that.

Here's where I get to the point. Reason #1,832, 419 why I love my husband: he takes care of everything. Everything. While I'm out working, working, or working out, he's keeping our bills paid, our house picked up, our cats fed, their litter box clean, the trash taken out, the floors vacuumed, the mail picked up, the weeds pulled, and the dishes done. Yeah, and he works, too. And occasionally works out. I'm glad to be able to say that I knew and appreciated all the things that he did before he left. But I don't think I truly appreciated it until I was left to do all those things myself on top of what I was doing before.

I am trying gamely to do it all in his stead, but at this point, it's the desperate, nose-above-water treading.

I know I've told him that I appreciate him. But I want to say it publicly. My husband rocks the casbah.

#44--success??

The day before my 29th birthday was a typical blustery March day ("In like a lion" and all that). It also happened to be the day of the Austin Kite Festival. I've always wanted to go to the AKF. Ignoring the fact that Alex and I aren't really "festival" kind of people, especially festivals in Zilker Park (the parking alone is a nightmare! Yowza!), this was what I wanted to do to celebrate my birthday. But, to complicate (or enhance) matters, I wanted to fly a homemade kite and thus check one more item off my list.

Problems:
1. I've never made a homemade kite. (solution: find kid-friendly directions on Internet)
2. I didn't have time to get the materials ready before hand. (solution: send Alex out the morning of while I'm at practice)
3. There aren't enough hours in the day to go to practice, come home, get clean, take a nap (a must if I'm to have energy for anything else that day), make a kite, test said kite, go down to the kite festival, find parking (see above gripe), and actually get the thing in the air before the end of the festival at 5:30. (solution: .....nothing comes to mind.....)

I must say that the plan started off well enough. Alex got the supplies. Well, they didn't have paper big enough, so he brought home a greensheet, which launched a debate into whether we should use newspaper or a trash bag, a debate the kid-friendly instructions were absolutely no help in solving.


I got up from my nap ready to be creative! The cats were even in on the action:

As you can see, they were super helpful.

Our process shots:

Check out the killer tail...
With our newly made kite ready for testing, we headed out to the park in front of our house. By the time we got there (100 feet), the tail of the kite had wound so viciously around the kite string it took us a good 10 minutes to get things sorted out.

Then, it was time to fly! To my utter surprise, Alex claimed he had never flown a kite before. How is it that kites have never come up in 12 years together?? I tried to patiently explain the kite flying etiquette that so many of us internalized at 7 years old: one person is the "flyer," the other is the "thrower." The Thrower holds the kite in the air, ready to throw it up into the wind. The Flyer stands with his or her back to the wind, ready to nurse the kite higher and higher by either running or working the string up, down, back, and forth.

I'm fairly sure all Alex heard was the "running" part.






As you can see, the kite didn't really ever make it too far off the ground. It was a trooper, though. It only sustained minor damage from being dragged along the rocky turf at high speeds.

My attempts at the "string coaxing" technique were not much more successful.




So does this count as a successful completion of #44? I think the spirit of the task was to be creative and have fun. We had a lot of fun building the kite, which was quite creative if you ask me. It wasn't as much fun flying the kite, but that's 'cause I'm too much of a perfectionist and if it doesn't work right it might as well not work at all.

We kept the kite--Alex swears using a plastic garbage back will make a difference. We might return to this task again in the future, but for now, I'd say that all in all, it was a fun afternoon and definitely worth crossing off the list.

PS - for those of you wondering, we never did make it down to the kite festival. Oh well--there's always next year!

China, here I (we) come!

We bought my ticket! I am officially China bound. I'll be leaving Austin on Thursday the 27th early in the morning and be getting into Beijing Friday night (gotta love the 14 hours I'll lose because of the time difference--on the other hand, on the way back, we'll leave at 4 p.m. on Wednesday and get into Chicago at 4:45 Wednesday...what my brother aptly quipped would probably be the "longest 45 minutes of my life").

The "super excited" hasn't quite hit yet b/c we haven't gotten my visa worked out yet, but I can still feel the excitement creeping slowly in. We'll be staying in a hotel in the middle of the shopping district, 2 km from Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Sweet! The best part is that Alex's company will be paying for said hotel. Double sweet! And his food, which we will probably just share. Triple super sweet! The hotel website also said there's a park nearby where you can rent bikes--that seems like the way to go to see the city!

So yeah, it's gonna be awesome. Yay!

#87

For the first time ever, I voted in a primary! Usually I've just waited to see who the two presidential nominees are and then made my decision between them. This time I actually care who the nominee is, and I feel like my vote will actually count. The race between Obama and Clinton (I've heard) will come down to Texas and Ohio, and they're close in both states. So I actually found an early voting site and went to cast my vote. I got the sticker and everything.

Just to be clear that this somehow didn't still count as a "presidential election," I also cast votes for Nelda Wells Spears (she seems to have been doing a pretty good job--she sent Alex new license plates last week) and Lloyd Doggett, as well as some guy named Gene Kelly (I know, I know, it's corny to vote for someone just because they share a name with you, and it's kind of destructive to the democratic process, but I don't care).

I feel quite citizen-ary!

The Damn Loop

For those of you familiar with cycling routes in and around Austin, The Dam Loop is one that should be familiar. I had the pleasure of riding it for the first time this morning.

Let me just say that 85% of the ride is gorgeous and quite manageable--rolling hills, scenic vistas, and mansion upon mansion upon mansion! I got to ride across the Lake Travis dam for the first time (hence the name of the ride) as well as "The" bridge on 360. We went from Jack & Adam's (our local triathlon shop) down Mopac to 360, up to Bee Caves, out Bee Caves to 71, turned right to hit 620, (*note: up to this point I'm just fine and dandy), up 620 (tougher hill here just after the dam, but it's all good) to 2222. At this point, there is a monster of a hill...but we would have gone down it (note the operative phrase "would have"). Rather than subject our team to the thrilling/terrifying prospect of going 50 mph down a huge hill on a fairly busy road, we took a detour through River Place (also known as "hell" or "gives new meaning to 'the Hill Country'" or "what the f@*! did I just get myself into"). If you'd like a mental picture, imagine this terrain, but with roads. You think I jest, but River Place is like our own personal little corner of Vietnam. But with, you know, American-style houses and less of a rainy season.

I'm proud to say I made it up the three hills. Hills my car would have had a hard time making it up in anything other than 1st or 2nd gear. I think at one point a 85-year-old resident of River-nam may have passed me going up hill...walking...but still I made it without stopping and without falling over, a defiance of both the laws of physics and common sense. I don't remember the next 5-10 miles after that very clearly, other than my coach coming to my aid with a caramel Gu (sounds kinda nasty but it was like sweet mana at the time--note to self: protein bars do NOT equal energy bars/Gu! Go to the store!).

After finally making it back to home base, 50 miles, 2 water bottles, 1 protein bar, 1 gu pack, and one ba-gillion hills later, we had to go run 2-3 miles. Danggit.

Gotta love multi-sport.

To Go or Not To Go?

Alex picked me up for lunch today with a gleam in his eye and an extra bounce in his car-dancing moves (thank you, 50-cent, for giving the man something to move to--the world would be a less entertaining place without Alex's groove!). It appears that Alex's bosses have finally agreed to give him what he was been after as long as I've known him--a trip to China! He'll spend the next three weeks setting up interviews and picking up essential phrases ("too expensive!" "bathroom?" "Do you have any triple-chocolate ice cream?") and then it's off to Shanghai, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Beijing for two weeks of fantabulous adventures (mixed in with a little work to keep the bosses happy).

What does this have to do with me, aside from me needing a little extra love and attention while the hubster is gone for two weeks? We're actually considering . . . (wait for it) . . . me going along!

With all that's happened financially in the last six months, a spur-of-the-moment trip to China hardly seems like the responsible, or even sane, thing to do. We've already ear-marked the extra freelance money and our yet-to-arrive rebate check for paying down medical bills. The smart thing would be for us to celebrate this amazing opportunity for him to finally go to China and make sure that we've worked out the time difference so that he can recount all his adventures to me while I listen whilst massaging my sore calves and quads. Sore because I'm training. For that little race in California. That I shouldn't be missing practices for. In fact, him going alone would be like them PAYING us while he's away b/c I wouldn't spend any money without him apart from what it takes for the gas to get to and from work.

And yet still, here we are, actually figuring out the logistics of the 30-hour flights, the 3-4 day stay (is it still worth it if total travel time is roughly equivalent to total time spent at the destination?), the hotels, the sightseeing goals. I know it's not the responsible thing to do. I can hear my dad's financially sound chastisements already. And he's right. We have other responsibilities right now. Life isn't all about what's "fun." We aren't playing our hand the safest way right now. We're not really hedging our bets. (Okay, enough poker metaphors.)

When it comes down to it, and I think about 5, 10, 25, 50 years from now, or even 2 years from now when we'll (hopefully) be knee deep in diapers and tears (from the baby and us...the tears, that is, not the diapers) and a little extra money in the bank or our pockets would come in MIGHTY nice, I know deep down that we won't be sitting around thinking that we would have traded the trip for an extra $1,000. Because really, you'll never have enough money, and you'll always have enough money.

If you're still not convinced, maybe your all-American deep-rooted respect for the sagacity of Mark Twain will move you to agree with me:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do. So throw off the bowliness. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

It's not a done deal yet, but it's looking good enough for us to get visas (the travel documents, not the plastic-rectangles-of-terror).

Stay tuned...