jesse, mia, and jay did the puyallup (pronounced: pew-AL-up) fair. specifially, the puyallup fair rollercoaster. here’s a video:

we also saw some mutton bustin’. it was funner than i thought it would be. in case you are in the dark about what mutton bustin’ is, here’s an explanatory photo:

i was playing with google search suggestions (on firefox2) and wound up at the chipotle fan site. i was and wasn’t surprised that there was a fansite for the mcdonald’s taqueria. also, i’m going to spare you my internet-is-a-timesuck rant.

anyway, i noticed the nutrition information calculator so i decided to give it a ride. one 13″ vegan burrito (rice, beans, lettuce, corn salsa) with guacamole and grilled veggies = 1075 calories. holy fuck. that’s the VEGAN version! sin queso! con queso = 1200 calories! con queso y pollo = 1400 calories! dios mio! this isn’t thanksgiving dinner, dude. it’s fucking lunch. that shit should be illegal.

i have only had one chipotle burrito in my life (maybe four years ago) and it was mediocre at best. i mean, i ate the whole thing, because i am a bottomless pit american. i know that most people say that they save half their burrito for later, but i’m calling bullshit. it’s never as good later and they know it.

the tiny cottage where i spent a few days last week is about a block from the narragansett bay, which i remember from my youth as being incredibly polluted and sort of foul, though i never cared enough not to swim. i’m happy to report that it seems cleaner every year.

after each day’s 10-17 mile run, i’d go for a swim to help my legs recover (this really helps and was much nicer than the freezing cold baths i take after my long runs in seattle). over the course of two days, i saw giant conch shells, a starfish, and the biggest school of fish i had ever seen. i stood in waist-deep water with the sun on my back for 5-10 minutes waiting for the continuous stream of fish to peter out so that my swimming wouldn’t break them apart. about 50m out, a big fish jumped out of the water, grappling with a smaller one. it was a magic moment where i felt like i was of an ecosystem, in more than just an abstract way.

when the school of fish thinned, i went for a short swim and then came back onto shore to dry off in the sun. it was then that i heard trickling water running down the street and into the bay. i went to check it out when i was assaulted by the smell of chlorine. yes, someone was closing their pool for the season and letting all the incredibly toxic chlorine dump into the bay. i felt like that indian guy on that 70s please-don’t-litter psa. only i’m not indian. though neither was he. the indian was sicilian, the half-greek is half-italian.

bummer.

i was on vacation in new england (rhode island and mass.), which consisted of: long porch-swing reading sessions, putting in about 75 miles of running, daily morning yoga, a little surfing in newport (board rentals were $25/hour — ick), and seeing lots of family toward the end of the week (mom’s 60th bday; cousin’s wedding on martha’s vineyard).

something i realized about new england is that it i’m pretty sure it turned into what the people who left old england were trying to escape: excessive judgment. i’d go out running and people would slow down their cars to stare at me, like i was some kinda two-headed calf or like maybe they hadn’t seen a 125lb heavily tattooed distance runner before? it was kinda lame. i always feel like if you’re gonna stare at me for that long, you better be saying hi or trying to fight, because otherwise i just get confused about what the hell you’re doing.

other than the slack-jawed small-town yokels, the trip was great. i feel relaxed and recentered. sitting alone for five days does me a lot of good.

and now i’m back running in my new neighborhood and you can tell that the runners are in a slight panic about the upcoming weather. seattle runners are not unlike squirrels, running extra miles to store them up for winter so that they feel like they don’t have to run in the rainy dark.

when you haven’t posted in a while, there’s a lot of stuff built up and you don’t really know where to start so you feel like you have to wait for an event or something big so that the small things don’t feel bad that one small thing got chosen over another. small things understand their place next to big things. sometimes there are lots of big things that hit all at once like clash of the titans and you gotta just bullet-point ‘em.

big things, bullet-pointed:
- we have arrived in the new place, which is quiet. the quiet is scaring mia, poor little lamb.
- my brother and his wife arrived in time to help us move this past weekend.
- my first fifty-mile week in a while arrived two weeks ago and then we moved and i gave all the fitness back.
- the end of my 33rd year arrived; i have arrived at 33% done-with-living.
- the book arrived!

in case you’re wondering: yes! the cover is a shiny shiny silver-on-silver. you know, like the future. also, yes! it has metallic print on the inside, too. insanity.

these pictures make my thumb look fat and creepy, respectively.