Subproject

Thingadailies continues!

I didn't quite make it to the hardware store to buy mortar mix today. I'd like to have a real thing to blame this on, but the real reason is that I was too lazy. So... yeah.

Anyhow, I was thinking about the throw-away comment I made yesterday about using the tiny initials stepping stone in a fairy pathway, and I realized that's almost exactly what I need -- not for fairies, but for my garden gnomes and the Yeti-holding-gnomes statue that I may someday move outside when I really need the space in my office.

So today I made another step in that pathway.

(And this is all totally not because it's so much easier to mix a very small amount of concrete!)

 Anyhow, I also went for a run this morning. Since the 10k is next week, my oh-so-scientific plan as suggested by Jeff (who doesn't run competitively, now that I think about it) was to have the big run last weekend and then taper. I ran the big run last Sunday, and then I ended up not running at all for the rest of the week, but I planned on running a nice leisurely 4 miles today.

But then I was running with the big dog and we were finally out of town and on the county roads and I thought what the heck, let's go to the emus and so we did, and then on the way back after we finished mile five the soundtrack switched to "Deliverance" by Rationale and so I had to speed up to match the tempo (except during the parts without a drum beat) and then I had to sprint at the very end of my run because... sprinting at the end! It's the most fun part!

Needless to say, my legs are a little sore.

• Total distance: 6.39 miles
• Avg pace (min/mi): 12:26
• Fastest mile: mile 2
• Second fastest mile: mile 6 (Usually the pace of my run slopes steadily downward)
• Fastest instantaneous time: Somewhere around 10 min/mi for a little bit during the freaking 6th mile after an hour of running. (You used to be able to get the exact info from MapMyRun but I think they dumbed down the free version during the last upgrade. Oh well. Can't really complain about the free app.)
• Calories: 828
• Number of emus seen: 1 (in a back pasture)
• Number of guys on bicycles that asked me if I'd seen their dropped phone during the cool down walk because "I was following you" (presumably when I was still heading out of town and then he turned around before I did? I'm still not sure how this was supposed to work and yeah, saying that to a woman running by herself isn't creepy at all -- except it wasn't really that bad because when he stopped me to ask 1) it was in town, 2) there were three firefighters standing a few feet away, 3) the big dog was with me, 4) pepper spray, and 5) there's a lot of traffic on the road): 1

Bonus picture -- I'm occasionally really bad about maintenance, but these people have permanently parked their Audi in the alley in such a way that it keeps their fence from falling down. (That happens to be the only residence I've ever called animal control on because their big dog got out of their yard, ran down the alley, and attacked my leashed little dog on more than one occasion. Their dog hasn't attacked mine since then, but I also don't walk near that corner any more.)

Recap

Another day of Thingadailies (or as I like to call it Thingadaily-unless-I-get-home-too-laties).

Here is what they look like so far:

My favorite:

I think even if the dye fades it will still look pretty nice.

The official mold (minus one piece because I didn't mix enough concrete):

Doesn't look quite as much like I buried body parts in it -- now it merely looks like I bashed someone's head against it...

Then there are these two:

The crumbles on the lower left are the one I mixed with entirely too much water and thought was never going to harden. It finally did, but disintegrated when I put any weight on it. Lesson learned. (Haha, just kidding, I'm sure I'll do it again.)

I do like the little initials piece, but it would have to be a prototype for a stepping stone for fairies or something. (Which would actually be kind of cool, now that I think about it.) I think the mosaic tiles might actually stay in it.

This one is okay, but a little boring, and I think the glass is going to fall out. It's pretty sturdy, though:

I like this one, but I think the dye around the leaves would have worked better than this:

For some reason this one reminds me of archeology. I sort of like it. Also, the little dog was tired of me concentrating on things that were not her:

And finally, the new one I did for today. That's black dye surrounding the leaf.

Here are the things I've learned so far:

• I really can't follow directions. (This is not new information.)
• When in doubt, keep mixing instead of adding more water. Really. Just put the water down and walk away.
• The best way to level the surface is to pick up the container and let it thunk to the ground a bunch of times.
• I think the sixty pound bag of concrete mix may not be mixed very well which could be contributing to my problems since I'm only making small batches at one time.

I read something that said that mortar mix could be used for this and that it creates a smoother surface. It also comes in smaller bags. I'll have to take another trip to the hardware store.

Lazy

I promise I'll get back to boring you with Thingadailies posts soon, but in the meantime here is a conversation from this morning after I finally got out of bed and fed everyone:


Big Dog: I'd like to go outside now and randomly bark at things and disturb the neighborhood.

Me: Let's take a nap instead.

Big Dog:...

Me:...

Big Dog: Okay.

And then we proceeded to nap until lunchtime.

Nekkid

First, an anecdote --

One of my co-workers (E) recently moved to a different state, and before he left I went out to lunch with him and his wife (F). They talked about the new house and mentioned the next door neighbor (A) (a grown & married man) who had what what was described as a "man-crush" on the house's former owner (an ex-Green Beret and all-around amazing guy apparently). In fact, A got along so well with the former owner that there was path worn into the grass between their houses. Every time E & F had been to see the house A had shown up, fat little Dachshund in tow.

(At that point I was making siren sounds and telling them to abort the mission, but they'd already closed on the house.)

Fast forward to today. Now that they've had a week to settle in, I sent E mail to see how things were going.

Me: How many times has A come by?
E: None. But F saw him nekkid when he was getting into their hot tub.
Me: You made me snort hot tea.
E: To be fair, our furniture just arrived two days ago so we haven't been in the house that long.
Me: I hear bamboo grows really quickly.

I've been living in my house for nearly 15 years and I've barely even seen any of my neighbors wearing shorts. If I'd just moved into that house I'd be out there digging a moat, setting up a trellis for kudzu to grow on, and there would be black paint on all the windows.

Now back to Thingadailies --

Today's stepping stone is part of an artichoke leaf with some green dye sprinkled over the rest of it. I'm hoping that will make the leaf impression pop. We'll see...

Whimsy

Thingadailies, day 6:

Today I made a stepping stone smaller than my foot. One might call that asinine if the point is to create a path one can walk on, but I'm going to go with whimsical.

Mixing concrete is hard work. There's a reason people rent those big mixers. Very small amounts are fine but anything of, say, shoe box size or greater is enough to make my stirring hand hurt. Other (totally valid!) excuses:

• I found a cat tooth on the cat bed over the weekend, and after spending a bit of time chasing cats around and trying to get a good look in their mouths (ha!), I decided that Ripley was the most likely donor. So I had to bring him in today to get anesthetized for x-rays to make sure nothing too terrible was going on in his mouth (they extracted one more tooth and cleaned up everything) which meant that he had to go without breakfast. I dare you to be productive in the morning when one hungry and lonely cat is wailing inside the closed bathroom, another cat is complaining because there is a closed door, and the dogs are underfoot because deep in their little pea brains they get that something strange is going on but they don't know what, so they just pace constantly.
• I had to drive back in the afternoon to pick up the not-quite-sober Ripley. He's a happy drunk. He spent the rest of the day rubbing himself all over the other cats, the dogs, and a few inanimate objects that he stumbled into. (The remaining cats did not like this behavior and occasionally reacted poorly.) Right now Ripley's sleeping in my lap, his head resting on one arm.
• Then I had to drive back again a couple hours later with the dogs for agility. And their flu shots. It was windy. The little dog was pretending she couldn't hear me. If she didn't regularly fly across the yard and around the side of the house to bark at dogs walking on the other side of the street I might have believed her.

All of this is to explain why I didn't get started on the project for this evening until almost 9 PM and then I didn't  have the energy to do much.

So I made a stone with my initials. I have a feeling the tiles are going to have to be glued down later, but at least they'll have divots to sink into.

You Can Do It!

Thingadailies, day 5:

I mentioned I was going to use the mold after I figured out how to mix concrete correctly, didn't I?

Well... I'm not sure I've got it figured out yet, but I decided to try it out tonight anyhow.

I also decided to put the dry dye on top of the concrete and try to work it in since I haven't been able to tell that I've mixed in any of the dye in previous attempts. I used half a packet of red.

That's why even though it looks like it, I really didn't slaughter something and bury it under the wet concrete. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

By far the best thing about this concrete mold is the inspirational material included in the instruction sheet.

This part was so good they had to put it in there twice:

And while I'm not waiting for him, I can build up my business and creat(e) my happy family!

In case you were wondering if you made the right choice -- of course!

And clearly whoever wrote this intended it for people like me. Note the instructions. Step one - mix the concrete -- nothing more, nothing less. In fact, these instructions read like someone was tasked with writing them and that person looked at their boss and said "What idiot can't figure out how to use this?" And then their boss told them to do it anyway. So they did, mumbling about stupid people the entire time.

My boss said to me a couple of weeks ago "Can you write something up -- without sarcasm --". I think he meant to continue with the rest of the sentence, but we both started laughing at that point so he had to start over. Person in China who wrote these instructions -- I feel for you!

Guide To The Garden

Day four of Thingadailies!

English is not my boss' native language. He's lived in the US for a long time, though, and for the most part he has no problem with it*, but every once in a while I throw in some colloquialism just to confuse him because it makes me happy. A while back I had to explain to him -- in an office with cubicles and no idea of how many people were paying attention -- the difference between "weed" and "weeds". But hey, this is California, so who really cares, right?

Anyhow, on my way to the back of yard to make today's stepping stone (and get drained of all blood by the the mosquito horde), I stopped to pick some leaves to use as imprints. Shockingly, they were all weeds. (Not weed.) I was going to find an example of a plant I actually wanted to grow there, but then I decided it made more sense to have an accurate representation, so I stuck with the weeds.

That's the box my new running shoes came in. When I finished my run last weekend my feet were killing me and I thought about it and realized I'd been running in those shoes for about a year. So I bought new shoes. I wore them on my run today and they were fine so I think I'll be wearing them for the 10k in two weeks.

Helper number one:

Helper number two (not enthused about picture time):

Stats for today's run:

• Total distance: 7.46 miles (My goal was 7.2 miles so I would know that I'm capable of doing a mile beyond 10k. I overshot a bit.)
• Avg pace: 12:47 min/mile (Excellent for me, especially considering I spent close to a mile on soft dirt. However I probably won't be winning any awards in the 10k, even in my age group.)
• Distance from home when finished running: 2+ miles (Oops.)
• Duration: 1:35:26 + cool down time and a long walk home (I'm using this as an excuse to buy another album by Elijah Bossenbroek because I went through both of them.)
• Calories: 933 (And don't think I haven't already consumed them several times over.)
• Emus seen: Only one. I don't know what happened to the rest of them.
• Roadkill (aside from the opossum which the county has apparently decided to make a permanent fixture in the road): One. A skunk. The big dog thankfully wanted nothing to do with it.
• Number of dogs we didn't get in a fight with: Just the same two that tried to drag that guy across the road last time. He needs to learn to carry treats and use them judiciously.

On the outbound leg I planned to turn around at a hazy clump of trees in the distance. I thought they were hazy because the day wasn't clear. Turns out they were a lot farther away than I had assumed. That's why we were still out in the middle of nowhere when my legs decided we were done running.

After we finally made it home the big dog and I took a nap. My quads hurt. I suspect tomorrow is going to be bad...

---
* The one thing that trips him up (mostly because I start smirking) is MS Excel terminology. After years of me making fun of him, he tries really hard to pronounce "sheet" correctly. I haven't had the heart to bring up what his pronunciation of "chart" sounds like...