Anybody have a good recipe for spanikopita?

I’ve been making the half-hour walk from my office to Natick Centre to watch the marathon every year since 1998 (except 2009, when I was hiking in Utah). It’s a wonderful workday diversion during a usually beautiful time of year in New England. The blue skies, new-green leaves, flowering trees, and warming temperatures all remind me that the last thing I typically want to be during spring is inside. And the marathon is a perfect excuse to get outside for a few hours.

I love watching all of the athletes, and I like showing up early to find an unobstructed spot and to be inspired by the push-rim wheelchair, handcycle, and mobility impaired athletes who start before the main field. By the time the elite athletes come through, I’ve remembered what I need to do to photograph runners and am really into the spirit of the day. Frequently I stick around to see someone I know run through before I feel the guilt of being away finally drag me back to the office.

One of the great things about the Boston Marathon is that it’s more than a sporting event. It’s one of the main social occasions of the year. It seems to have the same atmosphere as the great one-day cycling events, like Paris-Roubaix, that I love to watch on TV. It draws so many spectators, not just neighbors coming out of their homes along the course. And the route is totally lined from at least the 10th mile (where I watch it) all the way in to Copley Square.

Often I go with my coworkers, but for some reason I was by myself this year. So I found an open spot, between a family with small children and a couple of twenty-something young women. I was prepared to mind my own business for a couple hours and just immerse myself in what was happening on the course, but the two women were talking about running and asking each other questions that I knew the answer to and generally doing their best to crack me up with their banter. Eventually they asked an important question they couldn’t answer by themselves—when would the elite women and men go through?—and we casually got into a conversation. (It probably helped that I asked them whether they were students. I meant grad students, but they seemed to think that was just the nicest thing ever. I’m really not a flirt. Honest.)

The only “awkward” moment came while I was waiting for Team Type 1 runner Marcus Grimm, whom I gave a hearty cheer when he arrived around 11:30. As I looked at the runners streaming by to see if they were wearing a TT1 singlet or had a name that I could shout out for encouragement, I saw a familiar name: my name.

Me: “Hey, I bet that woman’s last name is ‘Mather.’ That’s mine, too!”

Nice woman, probably joking: “You should totally run with her for a while.”

Me: “I could say, ‘Hey there. I saw that you had my last name written on your bare midriff. So I thought I’d just jump in here and say hi and run with you.’”

Woman: “I guess that might be awkward.”

Me: “Definitely.”

Sadly I have no pictures of anyone mentioned in this post—the lawyer, her friend getting an M.Ed., Marcus, the running Ms. Mather, or myself—but here are a bunch of photographs of the rest of the action.

• The backup power generator outside my office
• The wind
• The cat’s one-side conversation with me . . . at all
• People walking down side corridors at the office who I keep almost running into
• Music in the car or the TV in the house unless the volume is way up
• Soundtrack CDs in the car
• The turn signal in the car
• Cars approaching me when I’m riding my bike
• Half of my coworkers when they talk
• Most people at the other end of conference tables
• Much of anything when I’m eating . . . except my food
• Lisa when she’s tired or being snarky (but always in a playful way, I might add)

Things I can hear very, very well:

• My own voice
• My own breathing
• My toothbrush and hairbrush
• My facial sinuses
• My head swiveling on my spine
• The high-pitched ringing in my ears that I normally only hear in dead quiet places

If you’ve tried talking to me recently and only gotten a vacant look, don’t take it personally. If I’ve been talking even more quietly than normal or overcompensating by shouting, sorry. I’m not hearing things outside my own head very well these days. It’s the result of ear barotrauma.

It seems that it’s a bad idea to fly when congested. Evidently, it’s a very bad idea to take six flights in twelve days when massively congested. I didn’t suspect when I had sinus pain as we landed in Madrid and Barcelona that I would be walking around with invisible seashells on my ears for the next 24 hours. And I was starting to get a bit concerned when it lasted a couple days after we returned from Spain and then again the weekend that I flew to run Around the Bay. But I didn’t ever think it would still be with me ten days after flying home.

My doctor says that it might go away in another week or so. Or it might not. He’s probably going to send me to an ENT, who will probably prescribe me some steroids, which will probably wreak havoc on my blood glucose. My not-always-to-be-fully-trusted coworker says this happened to him after diving and his ears have never been quite the same since. Let’s hope medicine trumps anecdote.

So, suppose that you have barotrauma and need to go somewhere? My doctor’s advice: don’t fly. What if you had a cold, knew in advance that flying might mess up your hearing, and still needed to fly? My doctor’s advice: take a maximum-strength decongestant 30-60 minutes before flying, drink lots of water, use a saline nasal spray, and chew gum. Oh yeah, and try not to fly.

This isn’t news, of course. In fact, it’s super-duper obvious. I crafted my mostly working basal and bolus rates based on a certain level of insulin sensitivity, and that level depends on me working out at least five times a week. Change a little thing and those rates all go to hell.

Why am I telling you this? Well, in an effort to recover adequately after Around the Bay, I hadn’t run a single mile or ridden my bike at all since the race. And for one reason or another, I also hadn’t done any laps at the pool, either. That equals ten days without a workout. This has been good for my muscles, but not for my mental health—I was starting to get really antsy—or for my BG readings. Starting late last week, I started running a 24-hour temp basal of 120%, and that helped a bit, but not enough.

Then yesterday afternoon, after getting my free Ben & Jerry’s cone, I went for a semi-leisurely, vaguely hilly, 17-mile ride. Almost as soon as I hopped on the bike, I had that particular feeling of clarity, contentment, ease, and freedom that I only get when I’m riding. Immediately afterward, my BG-wrangling skills came back as if I hadn’t taken any time off at all.

This morning I swam some laps—which were plentiful but slow—and I’ve been planking all day since then.

The sun is shining. It’s a beautiful 60F outside. My friends are wonderful. I finally made something work that I’ve been struggling with at the office. I went to an informative and entertaining presentation about the MATLAB Cody game platform. I had a nice lunch with my coworkers outside. My life has purpose and direction. My BGs are where I want them. I have another date with the bike after work.

And, most importantly of all, Lisa is on her way home from Philly!!

It’s a good day.

That’s all!

Lisa is in Philly for a rare business trip, and I needed to buy a few groceries for the week. I didn’t need many things; just a few staples were all I required to get me through lunch and dinner. On this week’s bachelor menu for dinner: a couple nights of pasta and sauce, Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese (don’t judge me!), turkey tacos, and chicken caesar salad. It looked a trip to the supermarket was in order.

We usually shop together at our local Stop & Shop. It’s nearby, quick, inexpensive, and familiar. But I hate the look of their produce section. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good, locally grown veggies, but buying romaine lettuce there depresses. The rest of the store, however, has a whole lot of everything else, all up to snuff.

I’ve been holding on to a $20 Whole Foods gift card that I won at the office gym, when I “maintained, not gained” weight between Thanksgiving and New Year. It’s not a place we regularly shop, in fact we’ve only been there two or three times before. The nearest store is a couple exits down the highway, it doesn’t have most of what we buy at the grocery store, and we had the perception that it’s expensive. But I had $20 of free money to buy groceries, and I was hoping to eat lettuce that made me happy instead of sad when I look at it.

Ever since I got back from Provence, I’ve been thinking about how to incorporate fresher ingredients into our cooking. I like farmer’s markets, and weekly market days, and places like the Mercat de la Boqueria and the Mercat de Santa Caterina that we saw in Barcelona last month. (Even the market that Céline, Doug, Scully, and I visited after picking up our race kit last Saturday was worth the trip.) I’ve been telling myself that if we had anywhere like the places shown below, I’d shop there whenever I could.

Today was the day of decision. Would I make the time to seek out the good stuff? $20 said, “yes.”

Here’s my take on Whole Foods. (I’ll leave aside the whole Stuff White People Like aspects.) If the US were a nation that really cared about food, the produce and cheese sections of our supermarkets would look like those in Whole Foods stores, while the rest of the store would be more like Stop & Shop. It would have high quality, (somewhat) higher cost, more sustainably grown produce in the same store with lots of varieties of cheese, meat, and seafood, along with all of those staples.

Will I keep shopping at Whole Foods? I don’t know, that partly depends on Lisa; it does involve an extra 30-40 minutes of grocery shopping per week and a bit of extra planning to shop at two different stores in different towns.

Will we buy much if we do shop there? I doubt it. For $14.41 today I bought one head of organic romaine lettuce ($2.49), two cups of Greek yoghurt ($1.49 each), and 7 oz. of pre-packaged deli pastrami ($8.99). The same yoghurt cost $1.25 at Stop & Shop, and at $20/pound I expect to hear Gordon Ramsay in my mind calling it “the most amazing pastrami” when I eat it. Basically, I bought a whole lot more of everything at our regular supermarket for less than $30.

But look at this lettuce!

You can see it below in salad form, along with the three cheeses I bought in Canada. (You might also notice the last dose of antibiotics that my doctor prescribed for the bacterial infection in my chest that’s causing my bronchitis.)

That’s worth at least two more trips to Whole Foods to finish spending the $5.59 balance on my gift card, right?

1. Do the most important thing first in the morning, preferably without interruption, for 60 to 90 minutes, with a clear start and stop time. If possible, work in a private space during this period, or with sound-reducing earphones. Finally, resist every impulse to distraction, knowing that you have a designated stopping point. The more absorbed you can get, the more productive you’ll be. When you’re done, take at least a few minutes to renew.

2. Establish regular, scheduled times to think more long term, creatively, or strategically. If you don’t, you’ll constantly succumb to the tyranny of the urgent. Also, find a different environment in which to do this activity — preferably one that’s relaxed and conducive to open-ended thinking.

3. Take real and regular vacations. Real means that when you’re off, you’re truly disconnecting from work. Regular means several times a year if possible, even if some are only two or three days added to a weekend. The research strongly suggests that you’ll be far healthier if you take all of your vacation time, and more productive overall.

Let’s recap. Focus = Peanut Butter. Having boundaries on your time = Chocolate. Put those two great tastes together!

This Morning, I accidentally swam 2,250 yards instead of 2,000.

Here is some context. Since sometime back in January—it seems like forever now—I have been shuffling through the “Four- & Five-Star” playlist on my iPod. [1] Since then I haven’t listened to much else. (On my iPod, that is. Read further down for a bit more craziness.) This is my typical style in a nutshell. “2,215 songs, eh? That shouldn’t take too long. I’ll just play the whole thing straight through before moving on to the next project.”

So here I am, a couple months later, finally closing in on the end, with fewer than 100 songs left to go. And I’ve loved every minute of it.

“What’s this all about?” you might ask.

It’s all about appreciating and being mindful of what I have. Sometimes old things get lost amid the new, and I am certainly one of those people who is always on the lookout for something new. It seemed like a good time to reacquaint myself with some of my favorite songs.

I didn’t get much opportunity to listen to music for many years when I was young, and what I did hear was grabbed when my father wasn’t around: on the school bus; while watching TV shows like Johnny Cash’s variety hour, “Hee Haw”, and “Solid Gold” with relatives at holiday time; from my grandparents’ car 8-track player where I heard amazing adult-contemporary songs by John Denver, Elton John, Billy Joel, Barry Manilow, etc.; and when driving around with my mother. I remember Prince’s “Delirious” and Alabama’s “Elvira” making huge early impressions. Such is the kind of life I’ve led.

As a result, I have very, very eclectic musical tastes. My life has basically been a nonstop journey of hearing a new (to me) kind of music, falling in love with it, finding more of it, getting really deep into a few of that genre’s artists, and then bumping into a new sound or singer.

But I’m not fickle. I still love all of those other songs. I just forget about them without a reminder.

(This is also why I embarked on the “Listen to all of the CDs” project at Christmas-time. To make things interesting, I started at Zydeco and am working my way back to ABBA. I’ve been stuck on U2 for the better part of a month. We have a lot of U2, and Lisa decided to buy some of their early albums . . . you know, just to help me out.)

“What exactly do I like?” you might ask. You know, the usual:

• Sad female singers
• Angry male rappers and rockers
• Contemporary Québecois neo-trad and pop, bhangra, Asian underground, electronica from Newcastle, cumbia, Persian folk songs, indie rock, alt country, dub remixes of Sufi folk classics, New Wave, industrial, punk, old-timey Appalachia, shape-note singing
• Anything sung by Emmylou Harris or Tracy Chapman, composed by Arvo Pärt or Bach, or touched by Daniel Lanois or Bruce Springsteen
• Singles of recent vintage, selections from albums that were released during the black-hole of my college years, things I loved in high school, recordings from before I was born, and songs that were written centuries ago
• Any song that incorporates an organ or hurdy-gurdy
• Pop, country, rock-and-roll, hip-hop, folk, gospel, liturgical, jazz, blues, Latin, classical, R&B, soul, so-called “alternative” and “world” music

So . . . just about anything except contemporary Christian. [2] And Celine Dion; she definitely gets the gas face.

What music do you think I should bump into next?

1 — Even though most of the songs in my iTunes collection are unrated, over the years I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort to “vote up” the songs I really like so that I hear them more often. A “four-star” song is one that I really like listening to, while five stars are reserved only for tracks/concerts/music podcast episodes that I will never, ever skip once they start playing. (It’s dangerous really, especially when there are several five-star songs in there that are 10 minutes long, some that are 30+ minutes, and even a few hour-long club mixes.) [back . . .]

2 — I don’t know what it is about praise/Jesus music that turns me off. After all, when Emmylou sings about waiting to meet her savior, I’m totally down with that. Mahalia Jackson singing about “moving on up a little higher?” No problem. I fall apart when Odetta tells how “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho” and when Sweet Honey in the Rock are “Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.” I love Hildegaard von Bingen compositions, Catholic masses, and Alan Lomax’s recordings of Evangelical congregations. Patty Griffin’s recent “Downtown Church?” Fantastic. MC Yogi raps, “Jai Ganesha,” and I say “And also with you.”

So what’s wrong with the stuff that’s played on Contemporary Christian channels? Perhaps it’s because—based on what I’ve heard from recent iTunes free downloads—it has spirit but no soul. My Jesus songs need an edge, I guess. As with any genre, if the music tells me that it’s all alright now or that everything will be taken care of in the end—and really believes it—I don’t want it. When the Cox Family asked, “Will there be any stars in my crown?” in their 5-star-rated song of the same name, they hit the nail on the head. Or perhaps I just like it when artists sing about god but not to it.

After all, everybody has to have at least one genre they dislike, right? Otherwise, they would have no taste whatsoever. [back . . .]