This year has been a strange one for me. I would say I have been "busy" but I don't know if I have been any busier than I was last year, or the year before that. There is always something on the To Do list; there is always something to fill the time. (See this post from 2013 where I was having similar "issues").

However, for some reason, this year, I have felt more of a change in my mindset, or my motivation. Or maybe I have just shifted my priorities. I am not really sure what the catalyst was or where the mood started to shift, but this year, I feel like I have been slacking in a few of my normal, pleasurable departments.

I used to talk a lot about running on this space. In 2012, I think I ran almost 40 races, including 12 half marathons and 2 marathons and my first ultra. In 2013, I traveled to Boston, Washington DC and BC for races and I ran my first 50 miler. In 2014, I ran 10 races over 50k. This year, I started off great. I wanted to run my first 100 mile race. I was training in January and I felt strong. I was running up hills with gusto. Then I fell one day and sprained my ankle pretty badly and my training went downhill and my fitness started to decline. Of course, I still had races on the calendar, because a lot of the races you have to sign up for really early.

The first race was Jed Smith, which is a loop course. I ran it about 45 minutes slower than I had the year before. My ego took a dive. The next one was the Gorges 100k in Portland in March. I had not trained enough as my ankle was just beginning to feel better, and this one was not as fast as I would have liked either. Next up was Lake Sonoma 50M, where I did not do as well as I wanted but I actually did better than I thought I would. The weekend after that I had a road race, which hurt me more than all of the other races combined (I was sore for days!).

I had a few week gap, where I ran intermittently, and then came the big one, Quicksilver 100k, where I did much better than I thought I would and was actually very happy with my time. The "training" by way of racing actually worked this time. But I had signed up for another race the next weekend and this one was my nemesis. It's called the Silverstate 50M and it's near Reno and it's got a couple of huge climbs and it's at about 7000 - 8000 ft. Last year I ran it while injured and it was horrible. I got the worst time I have ever gotten and the last climb was torture. This year I actually felt pretty good for the first 40 miles, but then for the last 10 I felt nauseated and tired. I crossed the finish line and had to go and sit by myself in the porta-potty just in case I was going to lose my lunch.

In the weeks after that, I had no energy. BUT, what I haven't said is this. There is another component to the story. In February, I started house shopping. Every week I scoured the internet. Every weekend I went to open houses. Every couple of weeks, I put in offers that got turned down. Finally, in April, my offer got accepted and thus started the downhill slide into home ownership. My escrow was 21 days and it closed on May 19th, three days after Silverstate. So I was physically and mentally tired.

The trifecta of this story is that work also ramped up at this point in a major way. My duties and responsibilities were doubling and tripling. I am not complaining, but I am just saying that when I got home after work, the last thing I wanted to do was run. I wanted to sleep. I did not sleep. I pulled weeds and moved furniture. I made many trips to Home Depot and Target. I paid bills and sorted files and went through all my old clothes. But I barely ran.

Fast forward to now. Today my average miles per week are about 30, if I am lucky. I am snacking more than I would like. My pants are starting to get a bit snug. The only thing saving me is my daily commute to work. But who am I kidding; the commute is not saving me, it's only prolonging the inevitable. So I need to buck up and get back on the horse and stop making excuses.

But I don't want to. I would rather bake a cake (and eat half of it in one sitting while watching Top Chef and making excuses).

How do you get out of a slump? 

Until yesterday, the media narrative for the Labour party since the general election has been one of unparalleled disaster.  This only increased with the election of the very left-wing Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, a man whose main political work was as a serial rebel and protest march speaker.  Wholly unelectable, rejoiced the largely right-wing media in mock-sepulchral tones.  And he didn't do the things that politicians should do, like pander to the media march - this is a leader who committed the cardinal sin of failing to turn up to an Andrew Marr interview.  Honestly, where were his priorities?

Corbyn hasn't been much of a hit in the Commons, the place where the Westminster village gathers, and has rather annoyed regular Westminster watchers by taking the sting out of Prime Minister's Questions.   He doesn't even seem very interested in Westminster occasions, as if somehow they don't really impact upon his own supporters and voters in the constituencies.

Then, of course, there came the disaster of the Syrian air strikes debate - or more accurately ISIS air strikes debate (or Daesh, or IS, or whatever acronym we choose in the fond belief that they're really very interested in what we call them).  Corbyn, a man of principle even if he does look eternally miserable on television, remained opposed to strikes and wanted his parliamentary party to join him.  An undeniably inexperienced leader, he failed to properly bring his colleagues on side by largely ignoring them, and his media management remains atrocious. He gave a poor if honest speech in the debate, was eclipsed by his own shadow Foreign Secretary but helped by David Cameron's ludicrous mis-step in having spoken about terrorism's fellow travellers.

Yet while the largely hostile media revelled in Mr. Benn's fine speech (most OTT love letter was probably that of Labour refusenik Dan Hodges in the Telegraph) the voters in Oldham West were preparing to deliver a more significant verdict - that of Labour's heartland voters.

Oldham is an early test of Mr. Corbyn's electoral potency.  This may be a man who won a huge grassroots majority in his election as Labour leader, but the depreciation of his image and apparently hopeless attributes as leader have been consistently trumpeted by a hostile media.  Even yesterday, there were serious hopes that Labour would be cuckolded by UKIP in Oldham - take this piece by the Spectator's Sebastian Payne (soon to move to the FT).  Payne even visited Oldham, escaping the Westminster bubble for a day, and his finely tuned village antenna revealed these truths.  That "Corbyn's leadership appears to be dragging the party towards electoral oblivion", that there were signs on the ground that "all is not well for Labour", that UKIP's John Bickley could be the party's second MP and believes "he has struck gold with Jeremy Corbyn".  On it went.  Despite visiting Labour headquarters in Oldham young Mr. Payne still reported that UKIP could win the seat, Corbyn was a disaster on the doorstep, every time John McDonnell spoke he turned more voters towards UKIP.

But who can blame the Spectator's correspondent?  He was hardly alone in his assessment or in his Westminster assumptions that Corbyn was simply not proving up to the task, and a single visit north was not going to alter that.

Then the voters had their say.  It wasn't a big turnout, but at around 40% it was not disastrously small either.  Labour won, and won handily with a 10,000 majority.  And Labour's share of the vote actually increased.  So Jeremy Corbyn, the man who won the Labour leadership with the largest popular vote ever granted a party leader, can actually win parliamentary elections too it seems.  It's almost as if he might actually be in tune with the thinking of supporters of a left-wing party.

The vote on air strikes, too, was instructive.  While there were some headline Labour figures opposing their leader's stance, and much of the media narratvie has been about a wretchedly divided party, only 8 of Labour's 53 new MPs supported air strikes.  The vast majority agreed with Corbyn.

Labour is undoubtedly a party in turmoil.  But their new leader's key attribute is that he reaches well beyond the confines of an insular Westminster village, and the civil war on his parliamentary benches may well be more of an indication of how out of touch the more traditional, or mainstream, MPs are than any suggestion of Corbyn's own isolation.  A Corbyn led party has won a by-election that the common narrative said would be very close or potentially a disastrous loss.  He has won it well.  He keeps the loyalty of his newly elected MPs - and the majority of his shadow cabinet, and the majority of his other MPS - in a highly divisive vote.  When we next read about Jeremy Corbyn in the press, if the narrative doesn't change as a result of Oldham we should at least be highly sceptical of any stories projecting him as an inevitably election losing catastrophe.

And the Tories should sit up and take notice.  While their party gets deeper into revelations of bullying leading to suicide in their retrograde youth movement, they cannot take any comfort from the complacently driven canard that the next general election is theirs for the taking.

November was one of those months where you feel kind of relaxed and you think you have plenty of time until Christmas and then all of a sudden, you get a slap in the face because it's already Thanksgiving and the advent calendars are about to come out. This November I even scheduled a couple of "free" days in order to get some of my December errands done early, but they quickly became "non-free days" or at the very least "not as productive as I wanted them to be" days.

Running: This month I did have a couple of long weekend runs (20 + 20 + 18 miles respectively). That coupled with a race gave me a grand total for the month of 126 miles. Aside from a run or two on the weekends, I have not been doing a lot of weekly workouts. However, I did rack up 20 miles of hiking, 18 miles of cycling and 3 strength training sessions. My goal for December is to do at least 2 strength training sessions per week.

Reading: I only read 4 books in November, which on one hand is a bit surprising since I did travel for work. However, on the other hand, when traveling on the plane I watched movies instead of reading (The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game). Also, one of the books I read was 849 pages long and it took me a while to finish! The four books were:

A Spool of Blue Thread (3 stars)
Into Thin Air (4 stars)
11/22/63 (4 stars)
A Tale For The Time Being (3 stars)

Travel: November was (mostly) a month of  doing things around my local area. I spent a couple of weekends going over to Marin to run on the Dipsea trail, I had my Dad visit and we worked on some things around the house, I had people over for dinner, and I met up with friends for hikes. In addition, I hosted 17 people for Thanksgiving at my house, which went over pretty well in my opinion!

I did travel for work to New York, and I spent a fun time with old friends in Brooklyn and Queens before heading over to Manhattan for two days in the office there. My favorite thing to do in the city is to eat and I did plenty of that! I had great Haitian meat pies in Brooklyn and Russian food in Queens, and then in Manhattan went to two great restaurants: Deux Amis and NoMad.

I am looking forward to January when it will be a bit more relaxed and I can finally do that project in the yard that I have been meaning to do for the last 6 months (wow, has it really been 6 months already?). Until then, there will be a barrage of Christmas parties (I have 3 in the next week alone!) and a bit of shopping and cookie making and eating and visiting and hosting. And eating.

How did November go for you? What is your favorite Christmas cookie (to make or to eat)? How many Holiday parties will you be attending this year? 

It was very common back in the day for houses to not have closets. Don't quote me on this, but my understanding is that it had something to do with getting taxed for each "room", and closets were counted as rooms. Therefore, many older houses are closet-less. 

My house was built in 1924. I  have friends with similarly aged homes which have teeny tiny closets, which I have heard came from the fact that homes were taxed per square foot (and why waste it on closet space). Luckily, my closets are not too tiny and I even have a bonus hole in my hallway. However, there is not a lot of shelving in any of them.

The other day my Dad calls me up and says that he would like to come down and fix something in my house. Fortunately, I do have a self imposed Honey Do list. However, most of the things on it are pretty easy things I can do myself (not that I always want to, but I CAN). Luckily, I can think quickly on my feet, and when he requested a project AND a drawing, I quickly got to work. Here is what I came up with. 

Bedroom Closet Plan

Hall Closet Plan

Aren't my drawing skills fabulous? NOT. For the bedroom closet, I wanted a few shelves to put shoes or clothes on, as well as a rod to hang things. For the hall closet, I wanted some shelves and also a space for the broom/mop and a space to hang people's coats when they came to visit. 

So Dad came down and got to work. Here are the before and after shots. 

Bedroom Closet: The day I moved in

Bedroom Closet : Before

Bedroom Closet : After

Don't judge me. I have a lot of shoes. 

Hall Closet : Before

Hall Closet : After

I still need to paint the shelves in the bedroom closet and to figure out how I want to organize everything, which will involve a bit of shifting and time to see if things are working the way I want them to. However, overall I am quite pleased with the way everything turned out! 

Do you have enough closet space? If you could have a closet makeover, what would you change/add? 

The western world is full of the distractions that our prosperity and liberal values allow.  So much so, that for the most part we forget that we are at war.  Then along comes a tragedy like the Paris attacks yesterday night, and for a few days – sometimes even weeks – we remember again about our war.

It is a war like no others before it.  It doesn’t often come onto our soil, but it pervades our governments’ and security forces’ actions almost in total. Our military forces are nearly exclusively engaged in military action in the middle east; our security services dedicate the majority of their attention to threats from that same middle east. 

But this isn’t just a one-sided military war.  It is a culture war too.  It is a war of liberalism versus fundamentalism, and the hinterland of this cultural dimension is at the heart of fears about the refugee crisis dominating Europe.

There is no clear resolution.  Well, there is no clear resolution that commands political support.  On our own domestic front – thrown into stark relief once again by the killing of over 120 innocent Parisians doing nothing more warlike than enjoying the leisure offered by a liberal society – it is an obvious misnomer to equate the killers with a single religion.  Their creed is a more nihilistic brand of fundamentalism, and that exists across all religions.  These particular fundamentalists are more militarised because their immediate counterparts in the middle east are militarised, but their core opposition to the values of liberalism are not much different from the opposition of any fundamentalist to the values of an individualist, free-thinking society.

So how did liberalism get here?  How has a western society, drawing its guiding principles from an ideology which elevates tolerance and individual freedom get to a point where it is in a terrible, almost underground war on its own soil against those who want to dismantle it?

Perhaps the problem originated with the inability of western governments to divorce themselves from an interventionism that has also been part of liberalism.  Liberalism shouldn’t be interventionist – or expansionist – but the foreign policies of liberal governments have never quite subscribed to that view.  Inevitably perhaps, since governments are the least able to protect themselves against a corruption of power which demands your aggressive defence against known and unknown enemies.

Thus, in the name of defending liberal values, western governments have found themselves at war. And they are finding what true liberals could have told them all along – war is fundamentally destructive of liberal values, both internally and externally.

Externally, in the ways we have seen.  The enemies the war has created do come after you, and if they themselves are weak then they come after your weakest element too.  IS are a brutal, murderous group governed by an abominable fundamentalist mentality, but compared to the military complexes of the liberal nations they are weak.  They win on the ground because our governments have started to hesitate in their use of their own military power.  Hesitated too late, alas.  So IS attacks in a way that their weakness finds most effective.  By taking aim at the ‘soft underbelly’ of western society. 

Internally, the threat to liberalism exists because each time an attack takes place, more credibility is given to the idea that governments and their forces should increase their own domestic power.

So has liberalism failed?  How do we escape this desperate cycle?  There will not be wanting voices to call for greater action in Syria; more bombings of sometimes military and sometimes civilian targets.  More boots on the ground.  More action in Iraq too perhaps.  Maybe Afghanistan.  But consider this.  The only real path for military success is to engage in a full, total and continuous war until we have utterly decimated and destroyed all the forces arraigned against us; and then to maintain a full military presence to suppress any resurgence of that fundamentalism which militates against us for as long as such feelings might exist.

Read that last bit again and see if it has any likelihood to it whatsoever.  Of course it doesn’t.  Not even war-based empires like Rome succeeded in such a path for any length of time.  But it is the only way of operating if you want to go down the path of military success.

Alternatively, we could try and rescue liberalism and the societies which embrace it by beginning the slow, painful retreat from interventionism.  It won’t be easy.  The seeds of terrorist opposition that have already been sown are still growing and being harvested, and will be a long time before that soil can finally dry up.  There is still a long slog ahead for governments and security services as they seek to protect their societies without reducing them to illiberal states.  But if we really want to escape from the cycle of mindless, fundamentalist, random attacks on the innocent of our societies, then we have understand where it has come from.  And it came from the failure of liberal governments to fully embrace an ideology that should never have allowed them to send half-hearted military forces into areas they barely understood.

Don't freak out; this post is NOT about what you think it is.

I decided that I would post from time to time about the joys of being a homeowner. I am sure that many of you have similar stories and I would like to know how things are in your neck of the woods. Are they the same as mine? For instance, do YOU have a nosy/creepy/annoying neighbor? A loud xyz near your house? An animal that poops in your flower bed or eats your homegrown veggies? What woes do you have in your neighborhood?

My first woe is this: Alarm Systems.

When I first moved in, the "curtain twitcher" (my nosy friendly neighbor across the way) came over to introduce herself (at 8:30 p.m. and mind  you, I normally go to bed around 8:30) and to talk about the neighborhood and the goings on and the other people on our block etc. Apparently the guy behind me "might" be a drug dealer, the people at the end never leave their house and the people across the street rented to someone because they moved to Paris for work (but that is the only non-owner occupied home on the block). I learned all of this (and more!) in about 26 minutes, as the clock was slowly ticking toward 9:00.

The other thing she told me, which was interesting but not great, is that since we live on a street that is very easily accessible from the freeway (great for commuting!) sometimes thieves will get off the freeway, kick in your door, steal your TV and get right back on the freeway in a matter of minutes. Now, I am not super attached to my TV, but I am pretty attached to my life, so I decided to get an alarm system.

First of all, getting an alarm system is a pain in the butt. It's worse than getting cable. First, you sign your life away by paying up front for the install/equipment and the first month. Next, some creepy guy comes to your house and tries to suggestive sell you on $9,000 worth of equipment, which by the way, will ONLY cost you an additional $900 in install/equipment fees and another $50 per month on top of the original $40 per month you already agreed to pay. Of course, in his spiel, your area is VERY dangerous and it's IMPERATIVE that ALL windows, doors, peepholes, cracks and crevices be set up with an alarm and preferably a camera and a direct line to the CIA.

So I get the standard, the one that I ALREADY paid for and I kick the creepy guy out. Now, one of the things you also have to get, which creepy guy pretty much brushes over the details of, is a permit with the city or county. This is like a registration with the local police. However, creepy guy did mention that they would take care of it for me. I thought this was great until I got a bill in the mail from them, asking me to reimburse them for taking care of it for me.

Fast forward to three months later when I am riding my bike to work and my phone rings. I ignore it because who the heck is calling me from a 1-800 number at five in the morning; I figure it must be an east coast telemarketer. Turns out it was the alarm company, calling me because the alarm went off for no reason. The police were dispatched and they did not find any signs of a break-in. I was happy to hear that, and I thought that was the end of that. Until I received a bill last week in the mail for $84 for a "false alarm". I thought, "No problem. I have a permit. I will call them and tell them there has been a mistake".

Not so fast, little girl. I looked it up and here are the details.

General False Alarm: With permit = $84, Without permit = $154
Robbery False Alarm: With permit = $156, Without permit = $226
Genuine: With permit = Free(!), Without permit = $70

So, the only way to save money is if your alarm is genuine, aka you get robbed by a burglar. Otherwise, instead of getting robbed by a burglar, you get robbed by the city instead.

Do you have a home security system? What are the rules in your area? If you don't have an alarm, what frustrates you about one of the rules of YOUR neighborhood? 

Another October is in the books! Finally, a month with a good mix of friends, family, work, running and getting things knocked off my To Do List (which is no mean feat). I had a couple of weekends at home, which, although they weren't "quiet", did give me a chance to get some things done that I have been wanting to do for a long time (like planting that darn orange tree in the back yard)!

Running: Finally I picked up my mileage a bit, mostly because I ran the Dick Collins 50M early in the month, but also because I am trying to get back out there little by little. Running mileage was 126 miles, which I have to say I am pretty darn happy with! I also put 36 miles on the bike, hiked 14 miles and did 6 HIIT/strength/core workouts. I mentioned in the race recap that I thought the strength workouts were helping my running and I plan to keep doing them at least a couple of times each week to see if it works out better for training. Something has to give; I am still having back pain and that plus my lack of motivation have led to a lot less running that normal. However, if I can find a substitute for one or two days of running per week and it works out, this may be the solution.

Reading: I am not super excited about any of the books I read in October. I ended up reading 5 books total and they were all just "okay". They were:

Heroes Are My Weakness (2 stars)
Life After Life (3 stars)
What Alice Forgot (3 stars)
The Dinner (3 stars)
Dietland (3 stars)

Travel: I didn't stray too far away from home in October, but I did have a nice trip home to see my parents, where we went on a couple of nice hikes, spent some time with my grandma and ate the last of the fresh tomatoes. I also went to my cousin's wedding which was at a nice vineyard about an hour and a half from my house. The setting was beautiful and it was great to see family that I hadn't seen in a while and to get a bit gussied up and to dance my booty off (I did not count that as one of the strength workouts, but it WAS a workout)!

November is shaping up to be another fun (filled!) month, with a couple of visits from friends and family, some big house projects, some running events, hosting Thanksgiving at my house and a trip for work to NYC!

How was October for you? Did you go trick-or-treating or did you hand out candy? Do you know of any good strength workouts I should try?