come here: turning 30! i refuse to do the hide-from-my-birthday thing. i was pretty traumatized by the thought of turning 30 about a year and a half ago, when it first occurred to me that it really was inevitable. but i’ve had time to make peace with it now. i woke up the day after my birthday and thought: i guess i’m a grownup now.

go away: awkward office birthday parties. seriously. if no one likes them why do we persist?

come here: spring! my birthday weekend marked the first nice days of spring in chicago. nearly 60 degrees and sunny for both saturday (ultimate frisbee) and sunday (long run with my marathon group). the neat thing about running outside through the cold nasty months of feb/march/april is that i get to see spring arrive on a minute level. saturday was the day that the dead expanses of lawn picked up an emerald hue. on sunday the buds on the dogwood trees took on a fuzzy appearance and the weeping willows in the park were bright orange. on monday the forsythia bushes had a yellow haze about them as the buds were on the verge of opening into flowers. last night i slept with my window open.

come here: 1950’s wedding dress i built for a friend’s play. as long as it remains a hobby, not a profession, i love building period costumes. it’s like sculpture but with fabric instead of clay or stone or a more traditional medium. there’s an unfinished picture here; hopefully a photo of the finished dress on the actor if the designer sends it to me.

come here: shamrock shuffle. mom was in town visiting and so while i ran the 8k race she did the 5k walk. here we are nearly freezing our butts off in grant park following the race. the race comes with a coupon for a free beer at the post-race party, but it was 10am, drizzling and 45 degrees. a michelob ultra, regardless of being free, was not first on my list to do after gutting out five miles at an 8’22” pace in the rain. we skipped the party and headed to intelligentsia for hot coffee.
race stats:

distance: 8k
time: 41’33” (two minutes off last year’s time)
overall: 4992 of 22575 – top 22%
women: 1374 of 12178 – top 11%
division (women 25-29): 519 of 4431 – top 12%

go away: stockholm marathon. because i dropped out of it. with the horrendous winter we’ve had i’m kind of undertrained, and while i could definitely go and tough out a five hour marathon and get to see the city and all that would be cool, it was going to be an ABSURDLY expensive way to half-ass a marathon with the exchange rate in the toilet. and when i looked at my spring, i realized that i have: aikido kyu test april 19, tech for the last show of the season may 9-24, then i’m going to berlin to visit wabes for a week in the beginning of june, and STP is opening our new play june 15. something had to give or it was all going to get half-assed and i don’t like not doing thing well. so, my sights are set on the chicago marathon, october 12. and in the realm of more immediate athletic goals, passing my fifth kyu exam in aikido (april 19).

come here: birthday movie retrospective. i celebrated my birthday with a movie party in which we showed a film from each of the major decades of my life. the 80’s selection: Princess Bride (Goonies was the runner up choice). 90’s film: So I Married an Axe Murderer (runner up: Benny and June). 00′ film: Chicago (runner up: Shaun of the Dead). the keys to the movie party (anne and i are starting to perfect this art after doing several) is 1) to start showing movies before anyone arrives – otherwise it’s impossible to herd people out of the kitchen and into a dark living room where they’re not supposed to talk, and 2) to select films that everyone has seen before so one can wander in and out of the movie room, watch your favorite scene, then head back to the kitchen for a drink or to hang out and not feel like you’re missing something crucial. when summer comes around we mean to move the party out into the back yard and project the movies onto the fence, like our own mini movies in grant park.