It's snowing in Pittsburgh. For this time of year, that's not too shocking, I know, but in the last week the weather shifted from winter to summer and then back to winter, which has been surprising. For example, on Tuesday, it was 72 degrees and sunny. People were outside standing, talking, walking, running, biking or filling the outdoor seating of coffee shops and restaurants--wearing goofy summer shorts. (Most knees should really be private.) In contrast, yesterday morning, I walked to class, gloved hands in coat pockets, clenched against fine-grain hail driven by a 20 something degree gentle breeze. Since the weather is back to foul, I'm spending most of the weekend indoors, which is just fine, because I have the apartment to myself.

Last semester, Leah signed up for a weekend-long "doula" training course, which inadvertently fell on this weekend. She was excited about the course and will probably write a post about it when she returns. Wait a minute, you might ask, isn't Leah working on her thesis right now? Yes, she is swamped with her thesis. In fact, Monday, is the due date for the third draft of her thesis. For the last couple of weeks, she has only walked back and forth to school or spent long carpal-tunnel-syndrome-inducing bouts at the computer. But, she has still been double and triple booking her schedule with other activities. An exception was on Thursday night, when she was eerily not busy-looking. She moved slowly, calmly and told light, funny anecdotes--it started to give me vertigo. Turns out, it was the eye-of-storm, and she switched back to busy-looking before she left Friday morning for the course.

Within two hours of Leah leaving, I pushed furniture together so I could use both computers at the same time, flipped my bike upside down in the middle of the floor to make some much procrastinated repairs, took my coat off the hook and dropped it on the floor, liberally scattered bike tools and Sanskrit homework around, and punctuated the scene with a half eaten bowl of Korean fried rice. A freshly bachelorized apartment is quite nice.

Although, now that I take a good look around, maybe it's better off that Leah will be back tomorrow night.

Posted by David | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have always been prone to getting horrible side stitches while running. The first time I realized this was when I ran track in the sixth grade, a date long enough ago that we need not pay any more attention to it. I was reminded of this particular affliction, though, when we were running regularly last semester. I had made it several weeks into the plan we were following, without a single side pain, but then when we started the 5 min. run/1 min. walk week, the stitches were back. After more than a week of this, I had been very proud of myself when I made it a whole session without getting one and to celebrate, I convinced David we should go to REI and rock climb on their 'wall.' We had a lot of fun and I wrote a post about it, which I didn't put up at the time because I wrote it the day David called me to say he was being admitted to the hospital. And at that point babbling about my first successful climb didn't seem terribly important. But I've posted it here, should you have time to kill at work, or be particularly fascinated with all our doings.

All of which, really, is to say that we've started running again. Finally. We've been going to the gym since we got back to school, but it's just too damn cold in Pittsburgh to run outside in the winter and I am opposed to running on an indoor track, when I've already discovered the wonders of running on trails. But this week, schedules and the weather matched up perfectly and we've been running twice. We were both terribly afraid that we'd have to start completely over with the running plan, but we ran for 45 minutes today (5 min run/1 min walk), so I think we're fine. And we're so excited about it we've signed up for our first 5 km run at the end of this month. Should you be in Pittsburgh and want to run with us, you can register here. Otherwise, we'll tell you all about it when we're done. With, hopefully, nary a stitch in sight.

Posted by Leah | Permalink | Comments (0)

I really love to bake. It's probably because I love to consume sweet things, and that's pretty much all I bake, but I enjoy the process, too. I haven't done much baking in the last couple of years because: 1) our kitchen is tiny!; 2) we're trying to be healthy, which generally means fewer sweet things; and 3) I've been busy; all of which means I've been missing baking for awhile. However, I shouldn't have worried about it, because when it rains it pours: I baked brownies yesterday and cookies and zucchini bread today.

Yesterday's treats were for "my" Somali kids. Three of their five birthdays fall within three months of each other and we're right in the middle of it, so I took over some brownies to celebrate. I didn't actually make them, I just assembled the package (Ghiradelli's double chocolate brownies), but I replaced the oil with applesauce (unsweetened) and the egg with 1/4 of a banana, which is the whole point of this post. Both replacements worked really well.

We've been trying to be healthy, still, not just because it's a good thing to do, but because one of the less pleasant family history pieces David learned from his newly (re)discovered family is that there's a shockingly long line of paternal deaths due to sudden, massive heart attacks, hence David's need of a stent in November. David's been doing what he can to keep it from happening to him. And one of the things he can do is eat better. So, less fat and very little cholesterol is in order, which makes baking just a tad difficult. BUT, applesauce is an amazing fat replacement and using 1/4 banana instead of an egg works wonders. I did the same thing in the chocolate chip cookies I made this morning and they're fabulous! The zucchini bread is a little less fabulous: it still tastes really good, but there's something just a bit off about the consistency. Maybe it's because I used whole wheat flour instead of white?

At any rate, hopefully, both the cookies and bread will be crowd pleasers at our friend Haein's tonight. She's making Korean food, and we volunteered to bring some desserts, hence the frenzy of baking. Not that either is the least bit Korean, but still.

Posted by Leah | Permalink | Comments (3)