A Queer Mobile

Trains, Podcasts, and Mysticism

My favorite time of the week is my hour-long walk with John and our run to the New Pioneer Co-op in Coralville. We alternate between a path along the Cedar River and one in a wooded area. Today we went to the river. If we're lucky we're right at the pedestrian overpass right when a train whooshes through beneath our feet. Today we had two pass by in short order. The rush of air and the vibration astonishes me. These machines have such incredible power. Usually I experience them from a distance. Seeing them right there is another thing.

I've been listening to podcasts from NPR's Science Friday and some from What is Enlightenment? John and I listened to my old Zen teacher and to Ray Kurzweil on our way to and from the market. (Read more here) 

Running barefoot in shoes

Part of our mall run was to find a new running shoe that John saw. It's called Nike 5.0. The shoe is specially designed to simulate the experience of running barefoot while giving some protection. If you check out the Nike website you'll see the deeply incised sole made from an extremely flexible material. The upper is feather-light.

Yesterday's drizzle faded into brilliant sun today and John took 'em out for a run. He was a full minute faster on his 5K route, averaging 8 mph. He found them extremely comfortable and loved the experience. The Nike instructional material suggests using the shoes as trainers, wearing them every other run. I suspect he'll switch from his beloved New Balance shoes.

These shoes won't work for me. I have really bad biomechanics and very loose ligaments. A highly flexible shoe causes me problems because my foot pronates extremely badly - torquing my knee and hip. I wear shoes on the opposite side of the scale, the New Balance 587. This is a heavy shoe that provides very good motion control. Combined with my special insole I have pain-free workouts every time - and that wasn't the case about three years ago. 

Convincing the bank to let me spend my money

John and I hit the outlet mall in Williamsburg, IA yesterday. All went smoothly until I tripped the security software system limit that Bank of Armageddon had. The poor clerk was routed to several different people and then I took the phone. Twenty questions later I read the security dweeb the riot act. Apparently their lame pattern matching algorithm is a bit to easily tripped. I've had this happen twice in the past year - and more than that when purchasing things online. I gave up using one credit card company because of their intrusive approach to security - I found my account blocked just because I purchased something over the web.

So far all the attempts by various banks to improve security have flagged perfectly valid transactions. I'd love to know (but I suspect we'll never learn) what the actual success rate is of finding fraudulent transactions. Based on my experience their algorithms don't work at all - and serve chiefly to aggravate their legitimate customers. I rather suspect that these systems exist to salve upper management - and that there's little proof that they actually work.

Coming home

Being in California always throws me off my writing. I landed back here last Thursday and loved being able to decompress. John and I hung out here all weekend. Between produce from the farmer's market to process, my herbs to tend, and a long walk through the countryside, I started feeling my life coming together again.

A secret from my old Zen teacher: do housework for grounding! I strapped my iPod to my belt and vacuumed the whole place. Cleaning connects me to place again. I get the chance to connect with things I prize. So often I overlook the common and the everyday, even when I love the everyday.

I had the great privilege to read Patricia Ryan Madson's Improv Wisdom. She's taught drama at Stanford for many years. This book distills her insight about improvisation both in drama and in life. Organized around thirteen themes, she brings the wisdom of a practiced meditator who lives her practice daily.

One quote she offers from Proust:The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. I can walk the same path daily and discover new things. John understands this, too. We walk along the same creek each Sunday morning, or along the river into which the creek issues.  On this walk the fields were filled with yellow wildflowers that bloomed since I voyaged west. Constant emergence within the same nexus...

Genographic project update

ZDNet reports that IBM's donating laptops to the Genographic project for field operations where researchers sample the DNA of indigenous people worldwide. They also report that over 62,000 people have purchased the Genographic DNA test kits - which provided the project so far with over a million dollars to assist communities worldwide where the project operates. Last month I reported that John and I both enrolled in the project, and I posted my DNA results. It's a cool project - check it out at the project's website.

Lycopene city

The tomatoes are ripe and we're loving it. I was bored with lettuce salads so I concocted this tomato and basil salad last night. It's so simple it doesn't really deserve a recipe, but here is mine anyway...

New garden work

It's been in the nineties for the past few days. I've not been able to talk John out of working away on the garden. He decided to complete work on some beds that ring the crab apple tree. His goal (and mine) is to convert the yard to a 'no-mow' garden. Yesterday in the blazing heat he completed the work. Check out the garden photo gallery for more shots of his work.

My father at nineteen

I'm still unpacking from my trip to North Carolina - and it's a good thing because I head to California tomorrow.

When we visited him this month my father gave me this high school graduation portrait of him in 1938. He was nineteen when this picture was taken. He told me he'd been held back a year in school because of a serious illness when he was fifteen that left him with one hip permanently immobilized. The Illinois Department of Rehabilitation tested him and determined his aptitude in mathematics. They offered to pay for him to go to medical school but engineering was his real love. As he often told me, he probably never would have found his real career had he not had a life-changing illness.

John's shop is moving

John's been working for over a year to move his shop to commercial space. It's finally going to happen. He's moving into the Kouba building, now owned by the Thorland Company. Thorland's a locally-owned development company that's been working to redevelop some of the older industrial neighborhoods here in Cedar Rapids. One of their new projects is the New Bohemia Solar Project. There'll be a solar array on the top of the Kouba building, and John will be getting his power generated just above his head!

The Kouba building is a former factory and warehouse that Thorland is converting to a multi-use facility for graphics arts firms, photographers and artists, small manufacturers, and loft apartments. We're all hoping he'll be in the new space in time for the Artist's Workshop walk sponsored by the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. John's space will be featured in the walk, and he'd love to show the museum patrons his new space.

What'll happen with the existing shop space here at home? We're turning it into a library and exercise facility. As plans firm up I'll pass 'em along.

Ki's Fourteen Today!

Ki, my Tibetan Spaniel, is fourteen today! It's impossible that we've done so many things together. From my days of being lonely after my first relationship ended, to finding John but being unsure of things, to moving to Iowa (including the February 1997 trip in the back of the Explorer) and being anxious for the future, to living and loving relaxedly - Ki's been the curmudgeon behind the throne.

I can't wish him long life, because he's had that. But I hope that he can continue to be the house sourpuss even though he's a dog) for as long as he can run down the stairs in the morning and beat his sister Sophie (our five year old Australian Blue Heeler) out the door.