City Rain, City Streets

I'm listening to Ryan Adams' album Love is Hell. He's singing about City Rain and City Streets.

It's rained entirely too much this Fall and Winter in Alabama. The temperature climbs up to the seventies and the water gets squeezed out of the this tropical atmosphere like from a sponge. It drips and and fogs and settles in for days and days.

I don't spite the occasional shower, especially in spring and summer. But this pattern has me thinking mother nature needs a therapist, and its making me want to see my own more often than usual.

The rain here is nothing like New York City rain. New York rain can be brutal, its true. Literally flooding the streets up to mid calf and God help you if you have on fashionable footwear. A cheap umbrella can be found easily enough, but be careful not to put out the eyes of your fellow walkers on the street. But the rain puts a glossy lacquer on everything. As the evening falls the lights start to shine and reflect off of shiny black asphalt and the pools of water that stay behind, sparkling and shining like jewels. The rain washes away some of the less desirable scents of the street and renews everything for another busy day of hustle and bustle.

Here the rain turns everything a muddy grey smelling of dirt and old dogs. There's no quick storefront, coffee shop or restaurant to dart into out of the hardest of rain. Here you either stay in or go out and get drenched.

In New York if you do get caught in a down pour with no umbrella and miles to go before you sleep, there's something romantic and wonderful about the way that where ever you're going half of the people there will also look like chic little drowned rats as well and you're all impossibly cool anyway. That's New York City Rain in your hair, pockets, shoes. You can't get that anywhere else.

2:42:34

2:42:34
That's how long it took me to run 13.1 miles for the first time in my life.

Amazing.

I'm still processing the experience. From the time the alarm went off at 4 AM yesterday until 2:30 in the morning when I hit the pillow after a night of celebrating, it hasn't really felt like my life.

I don't do things like this, do I?

We started steady and strong with lots of help from the cooler temperatures that we've trained in. Everything they say about nerves and excitement making you run faster is true. This took its toll on me around Mile 7 and 8. Mile 10 is marked right before the biggest hill of the race. By then I was making deals with my self to continue. By Mile 12 I was making deals with God.

The feeling of crossing the finish line was so unlike anything I've ever experienced. It was like I outran my old self somewhere and was wandering around in some place I'd never seen or been to before.

The aching in my calves was also something I'd never experienced. Like waking in the night with double charlie-horses in the back of my legs. No amount of stretching, squirming or bananas seemed to help. Beer did though. And sitting down.

After resting and consuming the most delicious free barbeque sandwich and two or three beers in the sun I was ready to go home and try to sleep off and recuperate in time for a post-race celebration and my running buddy Emily's house. It was difficult to sleep, kind of like I was sleeping in someone else's bed, in someone else's house.

That night the party was small and we moved the celebration to a couple of bars not exactly known as the classiest of joints. It was a perfect way to relax and release after this big day.

When I awoke at noon-thirty today, I still feel like I'm in someone else's life. Maybe I did outrun that other person yesterday. I'm ok with that.

Punkin' Head

25 Days 4 hours 48 minutes 10 seconds

As of this moment that's how long until Fall officially starts. In my mind September is really the beginning of Fall. I'm fooling myself, especially because this is Alabama, and it may not even feel like Fall on Christmas Day. But two weeks ago I had my first craving for watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and that's my cue for shifting into Fall mode.

Luckily, I booked a fall wedding cupcake order and they want to try the pumpkin with maple cream cheese icing. I'm preparing a tasting for them today and so the smell of fall baking is in the air at my house.

I made this recipe last Fall and it was pretty popular. I struggled to get the full maple flavor in the icing last year but today I used the full amount called for and just mixed the butter and cream cheese with it for a LOT longer that I had before. The result was a smooth fluffy very maple flavored base to add the powdered sugar to. I still feel like maple is far too subtle a flavor so I boosted it with a smidge of vanilla. Yum.

The couple I'm doing a tasting for also wanted to try a vanilla with almond butter cream and I couldn't resist doing the icing in some Fall colors - copper, willow green and Ivory. Here's hoping the love them all!

NYC BOOK REVIEW: The Island at the Center of the World

I love Audible.

Since I've started Megalicious Cupcakes, officially, I've started getting several orders a week. I find that listening to music while I bake is fun, but sometimes I need a little more human interaction. I kept hearing the offer for a free audiobook on my Moth podcast and finally downloaded the Audible app to my iphone.

IT IS AMAZING! I just love it. My first book was a The Island at the Center of the World.

Its a history of the first Dutch settlers who came to live in and colonize Manhattan. I learned so much! I have known of the early Dutch influence but I didn't really understand that Manhattan began as a business enterprise. The colony existed to make money for the Dutch West India Company through the collection of pelts and other riches that the new world contained.

I also didn't know about the character of the Dutch during the mid 1600s. I believe that the character of New York, even of the US itself comes from these early freedom loving, self ruling, capitalistic settlers. People of all nations, religions and social classes functioned together as part of this colony. Not with out conflict, of course. But it seemed that most could put aside their differences and get along in a sort of "to each his own as long as it doesn't impede my happiness and well being" kind of attitude.

The reader is LJ Ganser who gives the characters such life, and takes us easily back and forth from the first person narrative of the author, who discovered these histories along with the rest of the world, after the ancient Dutch documents we recovered and translated after many years of storage in the New York State Library, to the number of historical characters such as Descartes and Vermeer, Peter Stuyvesant and perhaps the most captivating and little-known, Adriaen van der Donck.

I highly recommend this 14 hours of listening to anyone interested in New York or early American History.

Really? Really!

Has it really been three months since I've blogged?

So sad. That must be why I'm full of pent up rage and bitchiness. That or something....

Today I paid the price for taking a Monday off to deal with personal business. As all working people with responsibility know, taking a Monday off is a fatal error. Tuesday is maybe ok. Wednesday, you start to feel some pressure building as end-of-week deadlines approach. By Wed afternoon you feel the strain of the Thursday morning panic attack. Your schedule is chock-full of meetings all day Thursday and Friday and you've run out of time to do the desk tasks that must be done this week.

Your options are: A) stay really late at work so that you can't wake up in time or with the energy for the morning run. You know, the "healthy" thing you're supposed to be doing to "relieve stress." This also requires skipping the home obligations, like getting your Junior League Rummage Sale items together for drop off tomorrow, which you will have to do on lunch and skip the meal or scarf it down like a mad woman in the car. (This means it has to be fast food which will counteract the run, if you get it in tomorrow morning.)

Or, B) you can go home, eat leftovers, get the rummage sale items together, log in to work at home, stay up all night and finish as much desk work as possible and try to wake up in time to run in the morning.

I'll go with B. We'll see if I get logged in. We'll see if that media alert, those press releases, those event plans, etc, get done. We'll see.

So Ready!

Its time again for another trip to the the big apple!

Wednesday morning at 6 AM I'll board a US Airways flight from Montgomery to Charlotte to Laguardia with Travis and my niece Amber. This is a return to the holiday NYC vacation and a graduation gift for Amber, who finished high school this summer.

I am stoked for many reasons. The top two are: 1) CHRISTMAS IN NYC! 2) sharing New York with someone who has never seen it before. I swear this could be my job. Easy.

So, what will we do? Everything possible in 5 days and 4 nights. I expect exhaustion, muscle soreness, tender feet and frostbite (figuratively) on noses. Otherwise we didn't try hard enough.

As usual, we are packing something into every single second, and that's still not enough time to do so many things that we really want to. You can check out everything on my tripit agenda.

I've been looking forward to this so long that I've got all the packing done, all the house cleaning done, and provided no catastrophe's tomorrow at work, I'm prepared to be out of the office a few days too. This left me with a luxurious weekend of baking, light housework and hanging with Miss Kitty.

The fruits of my weekend?

Take a look:

Peter Pan Birthday Cupcakes on Saturday morning! Vanilla cupcake with almond buttercream sprinkled with fairy dust (edible gold glitter and stars)

Pumpkin Cheesecake muffins for Sunday breakfast

Rosemary bread - first bread I've ever made!

A very yummy weekend!

Goodbye Summer, Hello Fall

Times are a-changin' again and boy am I ever glad. This summer, and specifically August and September, have really kicked my butt. I took on too much, was blessed with some great opportunities and now welcome this time of transition.

This year I was accepted into the Emerge Montgomery Torchbearers Leadership Class II. Its a young professionals leadership class that lasts several months and involves a number of class days where local and state leaders speak to us. We take part in several interactive learning opportunities like simulated society (SimSoc) and do a final project as part of a small group. We completed our project on Sept 11, and we present on it at the final retreat this week. I've learned a lot and I'm really grateful for the experience.

In July, I was contacted by a local magazine called RSVP and offered a chance to be profiled in the bi-monthly "List" of young professionals that are the current "to know" group. I saw this as a great opportunity to launch Megalicious Cupcakes. So, Travis developed a logo for me and my AWESOME brother created a web site and now I am up and running! I'm still working on all of my paperwork for the business license but I have filed as an LLC. The magazine brought me a lot of business and I've been making cupcakes every few days since the article hit.

The season at ASF started a bit early this year in late September with a world premiere by Pearl Cleage featuring Jasmine Guy. The income goal made up a modest portion of our overall income so it was pretty important that we do well. Missing a month and a half of prep time for a show really sucked and has left me pretty well scrambling to catch up.

I also trained for my first 5K this summer. I ran it on Oct 2, with a time of 40:49 and a 13" pace. Not bad, they tell me, for a first time race. I didn't stop running and that was my goal. I call it success. I've continued to run and plan to begin training for an 8K in November. I like this new habit and hope I can make it permanent.


My niece also just got accepted into college at Auburn University Montgomery (my alma mater) and is thinking about graphic design as a major. I'm thrilled, and I think she's going to be great at it. Like most artists, she'll probably find the non-art classes a challenge but I know she can do it.

And speaking of her recent academic achievements, Travis and I are taking her to NYC as her high school graduation present. We'll be going Dec. 8 -12. This has also got me excited for the change of season and the advent, not of Christmas, but of Christmas in NYC!!!