Drinking adequate amounts of water on long runs is an absolute must for me. My girlfriend can go for runs of over fifteen miles without drinking a drop. I don't know how she does it. If I take a long run in the morning without drinking adequate water, then late that night around 1:00am I will awake with a dull headache. The headache won't go away until late the next day, at the earliest. This happens if I don't drink adequate amounts of water during the run. I can drink some water and I'll still get a dull headache. Also, it doesn't help much if I drink copious amounts of water after the run. It seems I need to drink while on the run. If I don't drink while on the run, I can lose over five pounds just while on the road!

Since I routinely run over fifteen miles each Saturday, I've been spending lots of time (and a few dollars) trying to find the best way to carry water. One friend says he likes to just stop somewhere while running and buy some water. I guess I could do this: one of my favorite routes takes me on a trail to Silver Spring, and there are some places along the way where I could stop for water. But once I start running, I hate to stop. It's so hard to start up again! That's why I prefer to carry water.

The problem is that it's just hard to carry enough water. One website says you need 20 to 33 ounces of water per hour when running--a range that is, in my experience, roughly accurate. I sometimes run twenty miles on Saturday morning. At my poky pace this takes well over three hours, which means I need about 60 to 100 ounces of water. This is 4 to 6 1/2-pounds of water! It's a lot to carry.

I've learned a lot in the past few months about carrying water on the run, so I'm recording my thoughts here. It might help me in the future, and it might help you as I certainly couldn't find enough information on the Internet about all the water carrying options for runners.

Hand held water bottles

My first attempt at carrying water while running was quite simple: I just grabbed an old Aquafina bottle or, later, one of these Camelbak hard plastic bottles:

One of these bottles holds sixteen ounces of water. That's enough to tide you over on a hot day if you're taking a six mile run around the environs of the National Mall, but it's no good if you're going to be out for ten miles. There are a couple of nice things about these Camelbak bottles. They're made out of a very hard plastic. Even when the weather is hot, the water tastes fresh and pure. The other nice thing is the bite valve. You simply bite down on the blue top a bit and then suck, and water comes out. Inside the bottle there is a straw that reaches the bottom of the bottle, so you need not (indeed, must not) invert the bottle in order to get water out. Also, because the plastic is so hard, you can't squeeze the bottle. Instead, it's all driven by sucking action. If you don't like the inside straw, you can remove it and use it like a more ordinary water bottle.

The main disadvantage of an Aquafina bottle or a Camelbak water bottle is that you have to hold on to it. This gets rather tiresome. So my next purchase was a Fuel Belt water bottle with a little hand strap. (I can't find it around my house and I can't even find one online, so I'm not sure they're sold anymore. However, there are some similar ones on the Fuel Belt website.)

You thread the little hand strap on and then you don't need to really keep a strong grip on the bottle. Unlike the Camelbak bottle, this is made of soft plastic. That makes it squeezable. Because there is no straw inside the bottle, you have to invert it and squeeze or suck a bit in order to get the water out. Also, unlike the Camelbak, there is no bite valve. I always open and close the little top by pulling at it with my teeth. Honestly though you could probably just leave the valve open between sips; I doubt any water would slosh out of there.

The Fuel Belt bottle has two disadvantages. First, it's just so small. It only holds about seven ounces. You could tag team them and put one in each hand, though. The second disadvantage is that the soft plastic will transfer some of the plasticky taste to the water, especially if the water inside has been there for awhile or if it's a really hot day. The hand strap solution works well for really short runs though, although honestly when I take runs this short I just forgo the water altogether.

But as I was training for the National Marathon last winter, I knew that as my runs got longer the hand-held water bottle solutions would not cut it anymore. So I started looking into water carriers that sported more capacity.

Water backpacks

Camelbak 50-oz

There are lots of things out there that will help you carry water on your back. The first one I bought was the Camelbak Fairfax 50-ounce capacity backpack.

I bought this from Sunny Sports, an Internet shop in New York City. I recommend them--they have good prices and they ship fast.

Camelbak bags have an interesting design: the water goes into a flexible, inflatable plastic pouch. A long flexible straw with a bite valve brings the water to your mouth. The Fairfax is a relatively small bag which goes down to the middle of my back. It's got a little bit of capacity to carry some other things: I put my house keys in there, along with a RoadID, a SmarTrip fare card for the Washington Metro, and a debit card in case I need to buy something or if I need emergency cash. One could fit energy gels in there, but there's no way to reach them while you are running.

The Fairfax works fairly well. The 50-ounce capacity is good for runs that are up to about two hours long. It has a little sternum strap that helps to take some of the weight off your shoulders. Even with that strap, though, I would say the biggest disadvantage to Camelbak backpacks is their weight. It really takes a bite out of your shoulders, especially on really long runs. Another issue with the Camelbak is that it tends to shift around on your back--it bounces and moves around, especially when it's full. My memory of this is worse from the wintertime, when I wear a light jacket (all I need is a light jacket, even if the temperature is 20 degrees or so, which is a typical Washington winter.) The Camelbak bouncing around back there makes some noise, and it rubs against the fabric of my jacket, which makes more noise. I don't usually listen to music when I run so I notice this sound and sometimes it irritates me a bit. (I like the quiet so much that I put a rubber band around my keys so they don't jingle.) I think this was worse in the wintertime, though. In the summer I just wear a technical t-shirt, and the Camelbak doesn't make so much noise when it rubs against that.

I'd say I just sort of get used to the little bit of bouncing after a mile or two and I just forget about it. Sometimes I will adjust the sternum strap a bit while I am running to shift the weight around. However, I would say that 50 ounces is the maximum that I would carry on my back. There are 70-ounce backpacks out there and I wouldn't recommend one of those. I think the bouncing would get to be too much with one of those, and the weight would be too much for my shoulders too. After a long run, my shoulders get to be sore even with this 50-ounce model.

The other disadvantage of the Camelbak is that it tends to make the water taste plasticky. I think this is just a consequence of the kind of flexible plastic that is needed for this sort of gizmo, so I doubt there is any way to fix this other than to drink a sports drink instead as that would mask the plastic taste. The plastic taste is not intolerable or even bad, but it is noticeable. The other solution is to keep your drink cold, as cold drinks tend to absorb the plastic taste less. I find that after an hour on the road, though, anything that was refrigerated will be warm. I haven't tried freezing any of my water though.

Camelbak 100 ounce

I said that I wouldn't recommend anything larger than 50-oz for a water backpack when running. I speak from experience. I once tried running with a 100 ounce Camelbak "bladder" (or, as the company more appetizingly calls them, a "reservoir.") This photo compares the 50-ounce model with the 100-ounce one.

I bought the bladder all by itself. I looked all over the Internet, but it seems there are few companies that make backpacks designed both for running and for such a large water reservoir. I think I did see one from GoLite. However I ultimately decided to just use my existing backpack which I purchased some time ago in preparation for a trip to Yosemite National Park:

This is a very well-designed bag. It already has a pouch in the back which is designed to hold a bladder up to 100 ounces in size. There is a little slit in the top of the bag with a beautiful blue water drop stitched onto it; you can thread your Camelbak hose through it. The hose then threads through little elastic holders on the strap, keeping it at the ready without flopping around too much. The bag also has a frame in the back, which lets the bag stand on its own. The frame keeps things in the bag from poking into your back, and it keeps your back from getting too sweaty too. I absolutely love this backpack and I hope it goes on many more adventures with me.

Unfortunately the bag won't go on any more runs with me. I thought the pack might work well because it has the straps around the waist and the sternum. I thought this would allow me to take the weight of the water and shift it onto my hips and my chest, just as any hiker does when she is using a well-designed bag.

The pack was an absolute disaster for running though. First, the weight of having 100 ounces of water on your back is substantial. Then, factor in that the full bladder will bounce and shift around a great deal, even when inside the bag. (The water is very heavy so I doubt this could be fixed by, say, fixing the water to the bag in some way or by stuffing the bag with Styrofoam peanuts or paper or something.) Also, the sternum and waist straps just do not work well when running. I could never find a good way to situate them.

I was dumb enough to try this setup for the first time when my girlfriend and I went for a long run together. I was absolutely miserable, though the brutal heat and foggy, stream-valley humidity did not help. After just a few miles I dumped a ton of water, which did help somewhat--but of course the whole point is having lots of water carrying capacity. Then I learned: don't try something new on a long run, especially if you're going with someone and you don't want to mess up her run!

All that said, I would recommend this setup for hiking. The waist strap works really well at walking speeds--it takes nearly all of the weight off your shoulders, which would otherwise start to ache, and puts it onto your hips, which can take lots of weight. The whole thing is just too bouncy for running. That's why I now say that a 50-ounce water backpack is the largest one I can recommend. I think 70-ounces would probably be too big and 100 ounces is a disaster for running.

Of course I tried the 100-ounce capacity model because I need lots of water for long runs! I have found a solution which works well for this, which I will write about below.

Camelbak Flow Meter

One good thing did come out of my experiment with the 100-ounce Camelbak: it came with a gizmo called a Camelbak Flow Meter. One disadvantage of the Camelbak is that while running you can't tell how much water you have left. The Flow Meter is a little LCD screen and a water-measuring gizmo that hooks into your Camelbak drinking hose.

Interestingly the LCD screen has no direct connection to the little propeller-sort of thing that is in the hose to actually measure the flow. I'm guessing the propeller has some sort of magnet on it that the LCD case senses, but I'm just guessing. Because the LCD screen doesn't have any wires or anything connecting it to the hose, you can easily snap the Flow Meter off the hose. That's quite helpful if, for instance, you're trying to get the Camelbak hose through an opening on your bag but it won't fit with the LCD screen on.

The Flow Meter will tell you how much water you have drank so far and how much is remaining in your reservoir. You can also have it tell you if you are drinking enough water to measure up to a goal you have set, or how many minutes you have until you hit empty, but I have never tried these fancy modes.

I recommend the Flow Meter; it's a great way to keep tabs on how much water is in your Camelbak. Right now it's installed in my 100-ounce bladder, which I won't use for running anymore. I might use that one for hiking though. I might get another Flow Meter and install it in my 50-ounce bladder. To install it, you have to cut the hose open and insert a little fitting. When you drink water, it causes a little gizmo to spin, which measures how much you drank. The screen will update, ounce by ounce, as you drink.

Camelbak fanny pack

After taking a long run with the Camelbak 50-ounce Fairfax, I didn't like the way it wears my shoulders out after a long run. I needed something with larger capacity than a handheld bottle, but something that went around my waist. I had heard of Fuel Belt, but I was hesitant to buy one mainly because I didn't want to futz around with all those little bottles. Also, the Fuel Belt looked really geeky.

So I decided to try a Camelbak fanny pack instead, with the now obviously odd belief that this somehow looked better than Fuel Belt.

It holds 45 ounces of water. I did not run one block in this thing. After taking just few halting steps it was immediately obvious that this thing was way too bouncy to run in. It's a huge bouncing bubble just above your butt. No good, no good. I ran around a small block, went right back home, and took this thing off and replaced it with the Camelbak 50-ounce backpack.

The fanny pack is so bouncy that I'm not even sure I'd recommend it for hiking. Maybe it would be okay for walking, though I guess it could make you look like a really pathetic tourist.

Fuel Belt

Well, it looked nutty, but after trying the Camelbak fanny pack I knew that the next thing I had to try was the Fuel Belt.

Fuel Belt carriers come in multiple waist sizes. Be sure you get the one that fits you, as they are a little adjustable by Velcro but this won't make up for getting the wrong size. Just measure your waist; knowing that you wear 30" jeans might not help you much because I've found that most apparel makers deploy vanity sizing--even in their mens' lines.

Fuel Belt makes different models that have different carrying capacity. All have bottles that carry about seven ounces of fluid (more on that later) but the number of bottles varies. It seems to me that the four-bottle model is the most common. I wanted a six-bottle model, but I could not find it anywhere in my local area. Instead I ordered one on the Internet.

Each bottle carries about seven ounces of fluid when filled to the very brim. There is a bit of false advertising here because Fuel Belt says its bottles hold eight ounces each. What's more, there are little lines etched into the side of the bottle, and the eight-ounce line is well below the top of the bottle. This suggests that the bottle holds well over eight ounces. In reality, the bottle has no more than six ounces of fluid when it's filled to the eight-ounce line, and certainly not much more than seven ounces when it is filled to the brim.

I first noticed this issue when I was filling my Fuel Belt water bottles with Powerade from a 20-ounce bottle. I had never before taken sports drink on a run--instead I just filled the bottles from the faucet, so I wouldn't have known exactly how much water I was putting into the bottles. Well, I figured that each Fuel Belt bottle holds eight ounces, so I should only be able to fill two and a half Fuel Belt bottles with each Powerade bottle. Instead, the single Powerade bottle completely filled three Fuel Belt bottles--with liquid in the Powerade bottle to spare. I figured this was either an overfilled Powerade bottle or undersized Fuel Belt bottles, or some combination. Some time with a measuring cup revealed that the Fuel Belt bottles are indeed undersized.

This false advertising in capacity is the Fuel Belt's biggest flaw. Otherwise, it is well-designed, with runners in mind. The design places the weight of the fluids where it belongs: on the hips, where it can easily be borne. The small bottles are essential to the design: unlike any Camelbak solution, the small bottles distribute the weight around your waist. That way the entire assemblage doesn't bounce around too much. I have noticed that the belt tends to bounce a bit more during the first couple hundred feet of a run. After that it sort of settles into place--either that, or I just don't notice it bouncing anymore.

My six-bottle Fuel Belt also has a little pouch. It's useful for carrying packs of GU Gel, or perhaps house keys. It holds about four packs of gel. The pouch is removable, and lately I have taken it off because I use sports drink rather than gels.

One reason I hesitated to get the Fuel Belt is that I didn't want to futz around with all those little bottles. It can indeed be a bit tricky to get the bottle back into the belt when I am cruising along at 9 minutes a mile, a speed that this slow runner considers to be a good clip. However I've had enough practice, so I have never dropped a bottle. The trickiest thing is moving bottles around on the belt--I like to have the bottles that I am currently drinking from on the front of the belt and the empties on the side or back. This requires doing some switcheroo while running.

I think it is best to put empty bottles in the back just as soon as you can. On two recent runs I have carried around a full or nearly full Fuel Belt on the entire run because I was also carrying a Camelbak. The rear bottles bit into my back so much that they actually took out small chunks of skin. More precisely, it seems the bottles caused the elastic of my shorts to dig in to my skin more. I didn't notice this while running but I sure did feel the burn in the shower afterward. This healed in a couple of days, so it wasn't a big deal, but I realized this hadn't happened on previous runs because I would always shift empty bottles to the back of the belt just as soon as I had drained them, thus taking weight off the back of the belt.

Overall the Fuel Belt is my favorite water carrier, despite the undersized bottles.

What to drink

Previously I was rather skeptical of sports drink--what's wrong with water? I also did not want to transport sports drink. I live in the city and am proud to rely mostly on my feet and on public transportation to get around, so I have no interest in (essentially) hauling water from grocery stores. I think our civilization is taking a gigantic step backward when I see people hauling retail quantities of water in vehicles. I mean, isn't this why the Romans invented plumbing two thousand years ago?

But the summer heat and arriving home after running with dripping wet shorts caused me to rethink things a bit. Also, I have long noticed that it helps to have something that gives me an energy boost while running. Originally I tried prunes--they work pretty well; they're just sticky. Then I tried GU Gel, which also works pretty well. The main problem with GU is that it sits in your stomach right after you slurp it down. It just takes a minute or two for it to move out of your stomach. There's a bit of an oddly uncomfortable feeling while that's happening and it slows me down a bit. So I figured that instead of occasional calorie shots it might help to have sports drink that can give me continuous small calorie doses.

I still didn't want to haul flavored water from the grocery store. So I learned that Gatorade is sold in powdered form. This reminded me of the Kool-Aid packets from my childhood. However, none of the local grocery stores have the powdered Gatorade, and I was a bit surprised that the City Sports store did not have it either. So I ordered some from Powder Mix Direct. Then they told me there is a nationwide shortage of Gatorade powder and that my order would take an extra week or two to ship. It has now arrived:

One packet makes a gallon of Gatorade. I have yet to actually mix any of this stuff. I actually have had a hard time finding a suitable pitcher to mix it in, but a combination of one 2-quart pitcher, some old 2-quart Juicy Juice containers, and maybe some gallon milk jugs will solve this problem. Before I actually mix any of this, I'm working on depleting a store of Powerade bottles I stashed in my closet. I had hauled a cartful of it from Safeway. (Articles on the Internet say that Powerade is a bit sweeter than Gatorade and has a little less in the way of electrolytes; I don't much care which brand I drink so I bought the Powerade because it was a bit cheaper.)

After several short runs in the eight- to ten-mile range, one fourteen-mile run, and one twenty-mile run, I can say that the Powerade does seem to work pretty well for quenching thirst and for keeping my energy level a bit higher, all without taking in GU Gel. Another good thing about the Powerade is that the flavor masks any sort of plasticky smell that can come from a water bottle. I do have two complaints about sports drink though. First, it bathes my teeth in acid. My teeth get very sensitive if they're exposed to lots of acid (I eat a lot of fruit so I am familiar with this feeling) and downing a lot of sports drink definitely can cause this. Second, sports drink can leave your hands and mouth a bit sticky from the sugar, and it can leave a bit of an aftertaste in your mouth. In some ways the purity of plain water can't be beat.

The combination solution

When I run twenty miles in the hot summer heat, neither the 6-bottle Fuel Belt nor the 50-ounce Camelbak carries enough liquid to meet my needs for the whole run. I could of course stop along the way to refill a Camelbak or a Fuel Belt, but I hate stopping. So my solution is to carry both.

I probably look like a total nutcase wearing both of these things, but they get me through a twenty-mile run with fluid to spare. This is the biggest capacity Fuel Belt there is, and this is the largest Camelbak I can carry without experiencing too much swaying.

Since I started carrying so much more liquid on my runs, I feel a lot better late in the run and afterward. I don't get lightheaded and I don't get headaches afterward either. So consider taking fluid on your runs; it might help you.

posted at: 13:02 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

One pleasure of mine that might surprise people is my love for Ask Metafilter, a website where you can ask questions of a generally helpful audience. I always drift toward the "human relations" questions, even though I very seldom have any answers for them.

I like the questions because they are a glimpse of the struggles that others deal with daily. An example tonight that touched me is how important is it to "be in love" in order to have a happy relationship?

Someone recently called me "neurotic," a colloquialism for "overanxious." She's absolutely right, of course--something I reflected upon with fascination. I am neurotic. I wonder a lot about different things, some trivial, some not. I like Ask Metafilter because it shows that other people worry about these sorts of things, too. It makes me feel a little more normal, a little less strange, to see that other people fret about these questions and that there often aren't any perfect answers.

I never understood why one of my previous lovers habitually read advice columns and Post Secret, and I likely never will. But maybe, just maybe, it's because deep down she was as neurotic as I am and that advice columns did for her what Ask Metafilter does for me.

posted at: 23:48 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

I'm a little stunned that some people seem to believe that it is okay to lie in personal relationships in order to gain tactical advantage. Here, the story is that a woman met two men online and really likes one of them, but wants to keep the other as a backup.

Some suggested that one can tell the backup man that "I'll be busy with a project for a few weeks" while pursuing matters with the top pick man. Somehow this was seen as "less harsh" than just informing the backup man of his status.

Less harsh, maybe. A manipulative lie, absolutely. I wonder when these people decide to stop lying about material matters in their relationships?

Dating is tricky. I've had people suggest that someone should have lied to me under some circumstances, or that I should have lied in other circumstances. I've had people tell me the truth in difficult situations, which I have always appreciated. I've told the truth in other situations--not brutally, and sometimes not even the whole truth. I have said "we're not a good fit" (the truth, but not the whole truth) or "I go out with other people" (the whole truth) or "I'm going to cancel our outing; I've met someone and she is really neat" (the whole truth.) No one has ever told me "oh, I wish you had spared my feelings by lying to me." It's almost certain I've been lied to, and I'm not grateful for that--I can handle the truth.

I'm no Pollyanna who thinks that it is never, ever okay to lie, but lying to gain tactical advantage in personal relationships is never okay under any circumstance. It's actually quite low and disgusting. I shudder to think that proponents of such slimy behavior are brazen enough to suggest that it's a actually a good idea. I'm not naive; I know there are liars out there, but I would think they have enough moral sense to take a shower and feel shameful after their reprehensible adventures.

posted at: 12:10 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

I wanted to like this book. Really, I did.

I am so weary of articles in the popular press that paint a picture of dysfunction in black romantic relationships and, increasingly, in male-female romantic relationships generally. Most of the tired articles make the same mistake: they generalize from a few anecdotes to broad conclusions. For instance, a reporter interviews Stephanie, a well-educated black woman who is not satisfied with her love life. The reporter then generalizes and says that well-educated black women cannot have satisfying relationships, for the same reasons that Stephanie can't find satisfaction. The problem is that Stephanie's issues alone do not tell us enough to draw conclusions about the entire population of black women. Stepahanie's issues might be interesting and worth reading in their own right, but it's folly to think that she can speak for all black women.

I have been looking for something that discusses relationships without falling into this tired trap. I thought The Conversation by Hill Harper might fill the bill. I got a lot of hope from his introduction. In his very first sentence the author declares that "I am in no way representing myself as an expert in relationships, but rather as a man on a journey." I perked up a bit. After all, the author has a law degree from Harvard and a degree from the Kennedy School of Government; he is now an actor. There is nothing to suggest that he is qualified to tell us anything about relationships generally, either from a sociological or a psychological perspective. But he is eminently qualified to speak to his experience. The book seemed to hold promise, especially if he stuck to describing his experience and his conversations with others without attempting to use his experience as a basis for broad conclusions.

So far the book has been quite interesting and touching when the author sticks to his personal experience. It was quite eye-opening for me when he stated that he has not viewed his lovers as friends. I found it astonishing that anyone could claim to be in a relationship with someone without considering her to be a friend. I've considered my long-term partners to be amongst my very best friends, and I think no romance is worth having if my lover is not also a close friend. Indeed, the main reason for my growing dissatisfaction with my last relationship was the distressing breakdown of all intimate communication between my girlfriend and me. I felt that we did not talk and that we were not friends. Apparently Mr. Harper has frequently been involved with women that he does not even consider himself to be friends with! This experience is foreign and shocking to me.

Unfortunately, the author does not just stick to his own personal experiences in this book. Instead, the book starts reading like another tired, stereotype-ridden Washington Post or New York Times article very early on. Chapter 4 is presumptuously titled "What Brothers Want." Of course, Mr. Harper did not perform any sort of rigorous analysis to determine what brothers want. Instead, he deploys one stereotype after another: "Men are better able to compartmentalize than women," or "men want to be with someone they can provide for, someone they can protect." The only evidence he provides to back these assertions are his conversations with a few self-selected people--and even this evidence is scant in his text. Amusingly, the author says "I don't want you to take my word for everything--so I enlisted the opinions of a few of the regulars at my job, barbershop, church, and university to get their thoughts about what men want." It never occurs to him that the men at his barbershop and university cannot tell him what MEN want. They can tell him what THEY want, specifically. For instance, "Jared" tells us that "Women need to know when to be quiet!" So I'm supposed to think that this is what MEN want just because that's what "Jared" wants?

I'm such a stickler for evidence because I don't want to read a pile of stereotypes and preconceived notions. I can get that in the Washington Post. I would like insight. Insight can come from personal analysis. If Mr. Harper would stick to his personal story, maybe I would find personal truths of my own in it. Alternatively, insight could come from rigorous analysis with carefully drawn conclusions--Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond is a sterling example of this. Insight could even come from simply recounting the personal experiences of many individuals, without making the tired mistake of assuming that these experiences can be extrapolated to cover huge, diverse populations. This book on Christian-Jewish intermarriage is a great example of that: it tells stories, but it does not purport to say that "couple x experienced this, so it must be true for all couples."

As it stands now, it looks like The Conversation will offer little insight and will instead be filled with the same old stereotypical crap. I can't decide whether I should continue reading the book so I can extract the nuggets of personal wisdom that are buried beneath the thinly-supported assertions that he uses to support his dubious assertions about what "brothers [or sisters] want" or what "the language of men" is or (oh no, not this tired old thing yet again) "crossing the color line."

My quest for truly interesting reading on the topic of black romance continues.

posted at: 21:19 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

My quilt top is finally done!

There are 224 blocks total, set in a 14 x 16 rectangle. Each block is 6 inches square, making the whole thing about 84 x 96 inches.

There is this amazing pattern of light and dark that leads to the kaleidescope-like rings. It looks even more beautiful than I ever thought it would. It is much more than the sum of its parts--and, since there are 2,688 pieces of fabric here, there are a lot of parts.

I started working on this in earnest a little more than a year ago. Now I need to figure out how I'm going to quilt it. Likely I will do this by hand, because machine quilting is both capital- and knowledge-intensive. I already have a quilting hoop. But if I do it by hand, it will likely take me another year to get it done. However, quilting seems to me to be much simpler than piecing and, who knows, it might even take less time than I anticipate. We'll see.

posted at: 15:56 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

The Conversation by Hill Harper is a book about black romantic relationships. The author recounts a story about an older black couple at a party. He says the couple fell "senselessly" in love while in college and married in short order, despite the entreaties of the groom's friends, who told him that he was much too young to get married.

The thought of falling "senselessly" in love puts stars in my eyes. It's the most amazing feeling in the world. Lately though I am starting to wonder if people just don't fall "senselessly" in love when they're thirty years old. Sometimes all the ingredients are there for real senseless falling: amazing conversation, compatible goals, shared interests, off-the-charts physical attraction, flirtatious glances...

But when you're thirty years old, that's not all. There are always the ghosts of past lovers in the room, and the pain of past hurts. There's a bit of caution, some reserve, to guard against future hurts. There are always ostensible reasons not to fall senselessly in love: shortly after a breakup, it's "oh well, I'm not ready for anything serious right now." Several months later it becomes "I feel like I'm just getting on my feet again and reestablishing my life." A year or two later it's "oh, my life is so wonderful now. I don't really need to add someone else to make me happy. I don't want to give up what I have."

As you can tell, at some time or another I've told myself all these things. Part of me thinks they are all perfectly valid and reasonable. Some other part of me, though, wonders if I'm just afraid of falling senselessly in love; scared to toss caution aside and to jump in with both feet; craving love and lust while terrified of the prospect of heartbreak.

Of course this isn't something that only happens when you're thirty. I knew women in college with whom I could have fallen senselessly in love, but even then there were ghosts in the room that got in the way. But maybe it's worse when you're thirty years old. Maybe falling senselessly in love is silly. Maybe I'm being corny when I romanticize it. But part of me wants it. There are lots of ghosts and lessons that accompany the experience of having been in various relationships over the past decade. Yet part of me hopes that I can still fall senselessly in love. Maybe I just need to let go.

posted at: 10:16 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

Recently in a conversation I noted that I refuse to watch CBS 60 Minutes. I declined to discuss why, but said that I might dig up an old email that discussed the topic.

My refusal to watch corporate news programs extends far beyond CBS. I was sadly reminded of the reason for my refusal after I recently saw Brian Williams anchoring the NBC newscast from the site of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. The entire news cast was one promotional Olympic "story" after another.

The east-coast liberals with whom I typically associate often grimace when I say I respect Lou Dobbs. I respected him because his news program did not descend into corporate promotional garbage. Did I agree with him? For the most part, absolutely not. But he reported on what he thought was important. He brought issues to light that others ignored. He was, in some respects, a fine journalist and I respected him for his convictions. I cannot respect a "news" organization that breathlessly hypes the Super Bowl or the Olympics and I will not consume any of its products.

On that note, here is the email, reprinted in its entirety. I wrote it on Sunday, March 4, 2007 and sent it to "publiceye@cbs.com".

I received no response.

---

Dear CBS,

While watching Frontline's four-part series about the news media, I learned of your "Public Eye" website. It seemed an opportune moment to offer you my profound disappointment with your organization's coverage of the Super Bowl.

During the week before the Super Bowl, I took the unusual step of watching your evening newscast with Katie Couric. I noticed that Couric was in Florida, the site of the Super Bowl. The program had a story about Super Bowl security. Knowing that CBS was airing the Super Bowl later that week, I raised my eyebrows at the apparent promotion of the CBS sports event. But Couric's story could be considered newsworthy, so I dismissed it as permissible.

As I watched Couric's program, I saw the promotional announcements for other CBS News programs to air that week, such as the morning program. All were quite heavy on Super Bowl coverage. Again, I figured the Super Bowl is somewhat newsworthy, and besides, perhaps it was an appropriate feature for a "lighter" news program such as a morning program. I shrugged.

On Sunday morning, I turned to CBS for Sunday Morning, long one of my favorite programs. Surprise, more Super Bowl coverage. It started to seem a bit excessive. I realized that perhaps some of this coverage was, unfortunately, to be expected at a time when news organizations are expected to help the bottom line. Besides, I said, "Sunday Morning" that day also had some more substantive stories. Plus, I said, the next program after this is Face the Nation. It's a Washington news program, with Schieffer interviewing newsmakers. That will be a break from the Super Bowl.

At least, that what I was silly enough to believe. I was actually naive enough to be flabbergasted when Schieffer appeared before a Super Bowl banner. An entire Face the Nation on the Super Bowl. There was a war raging, an unusual showdown between the Congress and the President, and a presidential race brewing. It wasn't a slow news week in Washington.

It is hard for me to express the profound anger and disappointment that I felt after seeing Schieffer sitting in a cheap director's chair in front of a hastily improvised Super Bowl banner. It showed me just how captive to profit and promotion your "news" organization has become. Certainly I am aware that such cross-promotion is nothing new; nor is it unique to your network. I can recall seeing Tom Brokaw and Brian Williams reporting from the Olympic Games, for example. But seeing the descent of an ordinarily "hard news" program such as Face the Nation into crass promotion of a sporting event was more than I could stand.

Surely you read the lines I am about to write all the time, but that does not make them any less true for me: your organization has lost so much credibility with me that I cannot consume any of your products again in the near future. I can stomach controversies over forged documents or (to cite an example from another organization) reporters telling tall tales. These are examples of news gathering gone awry. The key words in that previous sentence, however, are "news gathering." Inevitably, journalists and editors will make mistakes. These are forgivable. However, your organization's Super Bowl "coverage" was not news gathering. It was not journalism. It was bald, crass promotion of a Viacom profit center.

Seeing Schieffer at the Super Bowl forced me to realize that a corporate drive for profits has so penetrated many news organizations, including yours, that it has completely destroyed any sense of journalistic responsibility. I realize that this slide into profit-driven mediocrity likely is not the fault of the people of CBS News and that responsibility for this sad situation likely belongs at the feet of Viacom's managers and shareholders. No matter where the fault lies, my refusal to consume any more of your products (and, for that matter, the products of most of your competitors as well) is not an act of protest. It is a rational decision made in response to an obvious decline in quality that recently became sadly apparent. However, this letter is a small act of protest. I am naive enough to hope that this letter will make a small difference in your organization. But I am not so naive as to actually expect any results. I know the hardworking journalists of your organization cannot possibly enjoy being pushed into such mediocrity, but I will not join you as you hit bottom.

Omari Norman

posted at: 18:53 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

Highways are ribbons of civilization, and cars are cocoons of comfort.

A few days ago I was looking at photos of the Bonneville Salt Flats, an extraordinarily desolate place in Utah. Nothing grows in the salt flats, and the place is so flat and bare that you can see the curvature of the Earth. Imagine being in the middle of this place all alone--it would be a scary experience.

Experiencing the salt flats from a highway is an entirely different experience. The highway strips a lot of the isolation from the location and adds a lot of safety--you know you're never too far from help. Riding in a car puts you in a cocoon of comfort: there's heat, air conditioning, cushy seats, music coming from your stereo, perhaps even a wireless telephone signal. Compare the above photo with this one, taken by Wikipedia user Deloreanman14:

The experience of a place, entirely transformed by two asphalt ribbons and the machines we ride inside when we cruise them.

posted at: 08:26 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

I have painted a corner of my apartment green. Ace Hardware calls the color "Tom's Favorite":

Painting was time consuming, but not really all that hard. The hardest part was picking the color.

Actually the color is quite a statement for me. I've been living with bland apartment and dorm walls for over ten years now. This bold, rich green says "I'm tired of blandness. I'm tired of sameness. I want something different! It's the perfect accent for the room.

In the photo you can also see my rug, which I like immensely, along with a beautiful wall hanging on the left. It was embroidered by hand. I'm also going to get a William H. Johnson print for the space above the huge bag sofa. I've got some other spaces to fill too, though I don't yet know what I'll get for them.

I really like the bag sofa, along with the nook of pillows and textiles underneath the window. One of the pillows is from a seller on Etsy, pillowtalk123, who makes simply incredible works of art.

I'm happy my home is coming together so nicely! It's a nice cozy space for socializing and for relaxing alone.

posted at: 16:39 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

After a few days of intensive work, including stitching and pressing, my quilt is finally coming together! There are 224 blocks total, each 6 inches square. This is quite a project and, if I had any idea how long it was going to take, I probably would never have started it in the first place!

The photo above shows all the blocks. The blocks of each row are joined, but the rows themselves still need to be stitched together, which I am working on now.

Keeping track of all 224 blocks is quite a task. Contrary to appearances, the order in which the blocks appear is not random, so I devised a labeling system to give each block a coordinate. The following photo shows the wrong side of the quilt top. You can click on it for a bigger view.

As you can see there are three bits of information on each little tag. The first number is just something used to inject some entropy into the arrangement of the quilt blocks. The second gives a coordinate pair so the block winds up in the right location. The third letter, a "M" or a "D", ensures that the pattern of lights and darks is maintained.

The "M" and "D" letters are crucial because the key to this pattern is the interplay of light, medium, and dark colors. At first glance this quilt just looks like an enormous pile of scraps--indeed, as I was stitching pieces together I began to despair because I was afraid that all it would ever be was an enormous pile of scraps. What I love about this pattern, though, is the way it plays tricks on your eyes. If you look at it long enough you will see kaleidescope-like ring patterns emerging. It reminds me of those "Magic Eye" patterns that used to appear in the comics section of Sunday newspapers. I could never see the Magic Eye patterns, but I can see the interesting patterns that emerge with this quilt. It fascinates me that you can get these sort of optical patterns just by carefully weaving together some triangles of differing brightness.

One might think that quilting is all about sewing, but actually I spend tons of time pressing and cutting as well. Pressing is immensely important--it's what makes the finished product look like a cohesive work rather than like a bunch of haphazardly assembled pieces. For instance, the corner light triangles of each block are attached last. Before pressing it looks like this:

Only after you press the block does it look like this:

Currently I'm stitching all those rows together, which is a little more tricky than it might at first appear. Then the top will be done! I'm still trying to figure out how to quilt this thing, though.

posted at: 16:20 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

Recently while walking near Farragut Square in downtown DC, I saw this sign in the window of the ground-floor retail space in an office building. I found it amusing--a barcode?--so I snapped a photo:

But since I have the gee-whiz new phone, the Motorola Droid, I didn't stop there. I also loaded my barcode reader app to scan the barcode. I figured the barcode would be just gibberish, but it turns out it's a UPC for a Norman Howard CD, Burn Baby Burn.

posted at: 21:56 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

Yesterday I had folks over for dinner, and some remarked that my cat, Flathead, seems skinny. Later I weighed him and he's around six and a half pounds, which is about half what he once weighed. I imagined my ex-girlfriend, who once had a significant stake in Flathead, seeing him and exclaiming "you're starving my cat!" He looks fine to me though.

He weighs so little because I mix a significant quantity of Metamucil into his food--a little more than 2 tablespoons per 12.5 ounces of cat food. The Metamucil bulks up his stool--perhaps the opposite of the effect you might expect, but that's exactly what it does. Without it, his stool gets exremely loose--runny, in fact. It's pretty nasty.

For ease of preparation, I mix huge quantities of cat food and Metamucil at once--six 12.5-ounce cans of Wellness cat food along with a little more than 3/4 cup of Metamucil:

It's quite an aromatic experience to beat all that cat food with a KitchenAid. It drives Flathead mad.

The Metamucil--generically, psyllium husks--has the intended effect: he now makes nice, firm turds. An interesting side effect is that, apparently, it makes him feel more full, as he now eats a lot less food. Or, perhaps the Metamucil just makes the food so nasty that he can't stand to eat much of it. I don't know. In addition he has also been a much mellower cat since I started using the Metamucil--he sits around more and doesn't jump on the counters as much as he used to. Maybe he's more satisfied, or maybe he's just lethargic because he doesn't eat as much food. I don't know.

Psyllium husks is the only fiber supplement that works: there's a product with the brand name Benefiber, which humans like because it mixes well with water. It's not psyllium, and it has little effect on Flathead's stool. I also have figured out that this is the amount of fiber he needs: I have tried to cut the fiber allotment, but his stool then starts to loosen.

But since he now is maybe a bit skinny, I was getting a bit worried about him. I'm not sure I should be: most cats I see are absolutely enormous, and I'm starting to think that people think that's the norm for cats. Maybe Flathead is a bit thin, but he might be just fine compared to a healthy cat. Maybe he only seems skinny when compared to the typical obese house cat. Like I said, he looks fine to me.

Sill, though, maybe he's a bit thin. So I need a way to get him to eat more while still keeping all this extra fiber in his diet. So tonight I decided to try something different: canned pumpkin. It's a typical recommendation for a cat fiber supplement, and maybe he will find this more palatable. So I figured out the ratio of pumpkin to food to maintain the same amount of fiber: an entire can of pumpkin for each 12.5-ounce can of food. That's a lot of pumpkin, but then, his stool can get really runny.

I thought he might not eat it, but Flathead will eat a lot of strange things; for instance, he will dig sweet potato skins out of the sink, move them to the kitchen floor and (I think) eat the leftover sweet potato on them. So far tonight he seems fine with the pumpkin. Unfortunately though I'm not sure that he is eating a lot more food. So I will give this a few days at the food dish and in the litter box and see how this goes.

posted at: 21:22 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

Today I am travelling through the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, which reminds me of something I dreamed up when I was last there years ago.

Usually there are huge windows on the airport concourse, so you can look outside and see the waiting aircraft. The last time I was at DFW, though, the terminal was under construction. This transformed it into a dark, walled-in rabbit warren, with no view of the outside.

Once the airline finally began to board my flight, I entered the jetway. I couldn't see any airplanes from the airport, and the jetway was no different: it was a long, winding tunnel with one turn after another. I couldn't see what was waiting at the end.

While in the jetway I started to wonder if there was even an airplane at the end. Maybe the jetway would simply end and I would be pitched onto the tarmac. More fun, though, was the thought of a big, bubbling hot tub. I imagined some people in the tub who looked vaguely like airline crew members stripped of their blue uniforms, along with some bare-chested passengers. They were sitting in the hot tub, holding beverages with those little umbrellas in them, laughing and having a grand time.

I get to the end of the jetway and I'm a bit puzzled to see this steaming, bubbling fun fest, but I quickly lost my trepidation. "Hey, it's great in here. Jump on in!" someone told me. Conveniently there were some swim trunks on a shelf right there at the end of the jetway. I stripped, put on the trunks, and jumped into the hot tub.

posted at: 00:09 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

While I was home in Denver, my mom asked my brother whether he would like to go out to eat at a particular Denver pizza restaurant. "I'd rather eat dirt," he declared.

Dirt would be a pretty cheap meal compared to pizza, but the gritty stuff you'd ingest is more valuable than you might at first expect. One day my dad and I were riding down Peña Boulevard, the access road to Denver International Airport. The road sits in the middle of a huge right-of-way, and Dad pointed to the expanse of land between the shoulder and barbed-wire fence. See how that land looks scooped-out? he asked. Well, he said, that land used to be flat. But the city actually sold the dirt to real estate developers.

"Dirt is valuable here," he said. Builders might need the dirt to improve property--to raise land so it is out of a floodplain, for example. Hauling the necessary dirt is a huge expense, and adjoining landowners typically don't have the dirt that a builder will need for a particular project. So the folks who are building hotels, strip malls, and houses close to Peña Boulevard made a deal with the city, allowing them to scoop dirt from the right of way. The land has been reseeded and I doubt I would have noticed this if Dad hadn't pointed it out.

I had never thought of dirt as being valuable.

My brother's declaration regarding eating dirt also evoked another hilarious story, but I shall not reveal it in order to protect the innocent.

posted at: 16:35 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

MCA Denver is exhibiting the art of Matthew Buckingham. I was touched by something he wrote which appeared in a pamphlet accompanying the exhibition:

My favorite definition of science is "the search for new forms of ignorance." Each piece of new information, pleasing as it may be, also points to the gaping holes in our understanding that surround it--to an endless chain of unknowing. The architect and architectural historian, Mark Wigley, similarly defines an architect as "a person who does not know what architecture is." I think it is useful to extend this sense of intelligent unknowing to the context of art, a field that has become infinitely flexible, constantly defined and redefined by those who use it. If artists and viewers are not exactly sure what art is, we all have to evaluate what we see more closely and carefully. When bringing methods and strategies from other disciplines such as history and sociology, or photojournalism and documentary film into the art context, we have the chance to rethink the capacity and role of both art and the other disciplines. By examining ways that the past appears in the present, I hope to scrutinize how historical representations affect our definition of the present moment. I work with space, real and imaginary, to try to create physical and social contexts that encourage viewers to question received ideas--often the things that are most familiar to us. I don't think of artists as people "who create" but instead, as the artist Jimmie Durham says, as people who change things. When an artist "makes" something "...the amount of matter in the universe remains the same." The important questions are: why did the artist make those changes and what does it have to do with me?

posted at: 16:09 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

I am home in Denver for Christmas.

While in DC, occasionally there are items I want from supermarkets that are somewhat obscure. For instance, I like popcorn. I make it on the stove in a pot, just like my dad used to do (apparently my mom has now assumed the popcorn-making duties from my dad.) Popcorn is perfect with popcorn salt--just finely ground salt, which sticks to the kernels. Ordinary table salt is too coarse; instead of sticking to the popcorn, it bounces around it and sinks to the bottom of the bowl.

I could not find popcorn salt in any DC supermarket.

Another thing I needed recently was malted milk powder. "Cook's Country" magazine had an interesting recipe for homemade pancake mix--I almost never buy boxed mixes from any store, as buying them makes me feel like a failure. I will admit, however, that there are some boxed products that I cannot (yet) replicate in my kitchen. My chocolate cake is much better than anything that comes from a box, but my yellow cake can't quite match the Duncan Hines stuff.

Previously this was true for pancakes--my homemade pancakes turned out just a bit heavy and flavorless. Then I found this recipe in Cook's Country. Its secrets include cake flour (to lighten them up) and malted milk powder (to add tangy sweetness.) Yep, malted milk powder. Cook's Country helpfully had a photo of the stuff--their specimen was from Carnation, in a curvy bottle resembling dairy creamer.

I could not find malted milk powder anywhere in DC.

The solution for me was the Internet, where I have ordered both popcorn salt and malted milk powder. For both, it was so worth it: my pancakes were the best ever (better than any box!) and when eating popcorn I always keep my popcorn salt shaker at hand.

Now here I am, in Denver, and I was at Albertsons. While in the snack aisle I saw popcorn salt in a small shaker. My face lit up. "Wow! Right here on the shelf!" They also had white popcorn, which I never see in DC (this I cared less about, as I don't really like white popcorn all that much. I always pop yellow.)

So then I went over to the coffee and tea aisle. I found the chocolate milk mix. Sure enough, nearby was malted milk powder! It was Carnation, in the nice shapely bottle.

I am starting to think that DC supermarkets are just smaller than your typical new supermarket. Something's gotta go so that everything can fit. I guess a lot of people would miss something if the store decided to carry 7 kinds of Oreo cookies rather than 8...or, maybe the store would miss all the slotting fees that Nabisco pays for all those Oreos...so, out goes the malted milk mix, white popcorn, and popcorn salt.

posted at: 17:00 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

I am proud to rely mostly on my own two feet, my gluteus maximus, and chauffeured vehicles for nearly all my urban transportation needs, so for me the rare need for a car necessitates a trip to the rental car counters at National Airport or Union Station.* The Hertz line was awful today, but I marched right past it to walk up to the self check-in kiosk. Then people started to realize they could use them, so they started lining up behind me. Good thing they didn't realize that before I got there.

I am one of those rare freaks who actually likes to read the rental car contracts. They are full of fun things--for instance, You agree that You will not operate the Vehicle on unpaved roads.

One of the things from the Hertz contract sticks out in my head. It says that the "Loss Damage Waiver - is not insurance." Of course they will be happy to sell you actual insurance.

I'm a bit of a daredevil, so I don't get the insurance, even though I have no car insurance of my own. By law they have to cover me for a minimal amount. Certainly it isn't much, but I figure that for me to incur really big damages would require that I be negligent. I pay attention when I'm driving.

My credit card covers me if the car is damaged or stolen.

Unfortunately most folks do not understand all this stuff. They didn't go to law school, after all, and who really likes reading those contracts? Well, I do.

* Don't tell me about Zipcar. They suck.

posted at: 18:00 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

I'm reading this great article about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose, who perhaps really authored a lot of those famous books. Apparently the books originally had a line like this: "There were no people on the prairie. Only Indians lived there." Kind of reminds me of a bit from Seinfeld:

• George: I wonder how Susan's father's going to react to this. Alright, what- what's the worst he could do? So you burn a house down.
• Jerry: C'mon. It's not even a house. It's like, a cabin.
• George: We could build a cabin like [snaps] that.
• Jerry: Well, maybe not us, but two men could.

I have wondered if there is a term for this sort of rhetorical device. I like fancy words, like "antimetabole". Ask not what your country can do for you...

posted at: 18:00 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

The Internet is great. You can find things that are of no productive value whatsoever, but that make life better nonetheless. Remember this from Seinfeld?

posted at: 16:00 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

Call the grammar police.

"Nobody" is singular, right? So says this page, anyway; many other sources say the same thing.

So I cringe a bit when I see sentences such as "Nobody in America should be fired because they're gay." Who said that? The President of the United States. For the sentence to be consistent, shouldn't it read "Nobody in America should be fired because she is gay"?

However, the introductory sections of most dictionaries will tell you that the dictionary attempts to reflect the usage patterns of educated speakers of English. So what happens when a president who is widely renowned for being a masterful speaker uses botched grammar such as this? Perhaps it finally becomes acceptable?

Could this sentence be modified to make the subject plural, thus avoiding the touchy issue of gender-specific pronouns? "People in America shouldn't be fired because they are gay"? This raises the question of whether "people" is singular or plural! I thought it is plural...but then again, most people seem to think "nobody" is plural...

posted at: 19:00 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

Playing now on my MythTV is Modern Marvels, the wonderful documentary series on cable television.

This particular episode is titled simply Camouflauge. My favorite thing about Modern Marvels is how the program extracts over forty minutes of interesting material from seemingly minor topics such as camouflage, or carbon, or insulation. I had no idea that entire factory complexes were camouflaged during World War II, or that water filters are made of activated carbon.

Of course, putting together all these programs can't be easy. The producers do an exceptional job at taking the material and presenting it in an engaging way. There's always a history segment, during which you can learn about the way ancient cultures did (or did not!) use camouflage. Interviews are also abundant, during which the viewer learns from the experts. The program also makes great use of computer graphics to illustrate industrial processes. There are little touches that work well too, such as the frequent use of short on-screen titles to show hard-to-pronounce words or to give little snippets of supplemental information. They make the program more informative without making the narrator's script too dense.

All this is wrapped together in a well-edited package that moves along very quickly, complete with background music to add an appropriate flavor (staccato drums during segments about World War I camouflage, for instance) and perfect segues. A competing cable network has a program called How Stuff Works that is an obvious Modern Marvels knockoff, but it just isn't produced with the same panache.

Each Modern Marvels episode always concludes with a tidy couple of sentences--maybe something like "on subjects ranging from the momentous to the seemingly arcane, Modern Marvels always entertains and informs."

posted at: 18:21 | path: / | permanent link to this entry

Today I ate about 110 grams of peanut butter M&Ms. With the help of my Pantry nutrient analysis program, I saw that this is 600 calories and an entire day's worth of saturated fat! Yikes.

It's interesting to keep track of exactly what I eat, because little things like this surprise me. I learn that some foods that are not particularly good or satisfying are dietary disasters. Take the peanut butter M&Ms as an example. 110 grams is a couple of handfuls of these things. They are tasty--a nice blend of sweet and salty. But after eating them, I don't say "ooh, wow, that was wonderful." Instead I just keep devouring them.

I figure that if I am going to eat 600 unhealthy calories, I might as well make it worth my while. Give me some really good ice cream, or a brownie, or a Chocolove chocolate bar. The peanut butter M&Ms just are not worth it. Let me exchange those 600 calories.

posted at: 14:59 | path: / | permanent link to this entry