Couch To 5K Update: See Ya, Week 8! Bring On Week 9!

Shortest update so far! I don't even remember what I said...but I am runningrunningrunning today and wanted to get this posted, so totally don't make fun of me, K?



The playlist I used this week can be found on last week's update post: Click here.

And here is the version of "Defying Gravity" that I TOTALLY ADORE! (You're welcome!)





©2010 Suburban Scrawl

Tin Roof! Rusted.

I had the pleasure of revisiting the 80's personally last week when I went to see the B-52s play at Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, a northern suburb of Chicago. My "date"? None other than my friend and virtual training partner for the BlogHer 5K, Michelle from Honest and Truly.


Ravinia is a Chicago-area tradition. All summer long, a wide variety of musical and dance groups perform there, from the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (every year!) to acts like (this year!) Rodrigo y Gabriela, The Four Tops, The Silk Road Ensemble with Yo Yo Ma, Counting Crows, Crosby Stills & Nash, The Beach Boys, Nelly Furtado, Vince Gill, Jethro Tull, Sheryl Crow, Sting, and so many more.

I was looking forward very much to this concert experience, not only because I consider the last B-52s concert I saw (in 1990 during their "Cosmic Thing" tour) to be one of the most-fun shows I've ever seen, but also because I had never been to Ravinia before and somehow felt like less of a Chicagoan. (Oh yeah, and because I was going with Michelle, of course!)

I wrote about the music itself over at The Music Mamas, so please click here to check that out and visit me over there. I wanted to share the Ravinia experience with you here on the Scrawl. (The pictures and video? Of course, they were taken with my loaner Olympus!)

Ravinia concerts are a different kind of experience from the norm. You can pay the "regular" concert rate to sit in the seats at the Pavilion if you'd like. It's got a traditional seating layout:

Source: www.ravinia.org

If you want something different, you can pay somewhere around half of the pavilion seating prices and sit on the lawn which surrounds the pavilion. Picnics are encouraged. I have heard fantastic stories over the years about the lengths people will go to in order to have a "classy" experience: bringing wine (and real glasses), gourmet dinners (served on real china), candleabras, tablecloths...the list goes on and on.

I was not only excited to SEE this exercise in extravagance, but I wanted to DO it. Michelle was up for it, too.

At first we had grandiose plans of using china and even making our own little table (I can't find a picture!), and bringing wine glass holders, like these.

Best laid plans...

Both of us have been so busy that the only thing we (stupidly) did was bring our food in ceramic dishes. TOO HEAVY to carry from the car! (Note to self: there's no shame in bringing plastic containers to Ravinia.) Michelle brought Mike's Hard Black Cherry Lemonade (YUM) instead of wine. We had a ton of food. She made spinach orzo salad (recipe HERE!) and brought bread and spinach dip along with homemade twix bars, and I brought fruitastic salad (recipe HERE!) and Oprah's favorite curried chicken salad sandwiches (recipe HERE!). It was a fancy meal, that's for sure!

Fruitastic Salad!

It was a great experience. There were people as far as the eye could see...


And I saw some candleabras!




By the way, Ravinia also has a dining pavilion and several places outside to purchase food, should you want to travel light.



Naturally I was tweeting a little bit before the concert began, and I saw that Nap Warden was there, too! So Michelle and I sent her a DM and met up with her. Michelle's picture of the three of us is better than mine, so head on over to her recap post to check it out and get her version of the evening.

All too quickly, our lovely summer evening under the stars came to an end, and we headed for home. I had a dangerous start: while driving 45-50 mph, I needed to turn on my windshield wipers because it was so humid, and my windshield wiper popped off and scared the crud out of me when the metal scraped against my windshield as it finished the cycle. I'm glad it wasn't raining, because I would've had to spend the night pulled over.

Anyhoo, thanks for sticking with me this far. Don't forget to visit me over at The Music Mamas to read my concert review. Here's a teaser: my footage of "Love Shack"! Forgive the shaky camera work: my arms were feeling a little weak, I guess!



I can't wait until next year's concert schedule comes out!



©2010 Suburban Scrawl

Still Too Young To Be Fearful.

As we squeezed into the crowded elevator that would take us up 103 floors to the Skydeck of the Sears "I'll never call it Willis" Tower, Kate looked at me and said, "I've had anxiety about this all week."

I had no idea. I told her that the gift shop is away from the windows, in the center of the floor, so if she wanted to hang out there, I'd take Bean over by the windows so we could look outside. Oh, and to the Ledge.

Remember how I said that you'd never, in a million years, get me to go out on that thing?

Well, here's the thing. I was chatting earlier in the day with a woman at the Planetarium, while her daughters played with Bean. She showed me the gorgeous (and mind-blowing) pictures she took of the girls as they were cozied up to the outer corner of the Ledge windows. I thought it would be really cool to get similar pictures of Bean and me (with my loaner Olympus PEN PL-1, of course!).

The elevator took all of sixty seconds to carry us to the top, and we tried to squeeze in at a window so I could show Bean the Planetarium, Aquarium, and Field Museum.


Kate was a champ and went to the windows with Bean, even holding her up so she could see better while I snapped photos. As we wove our way around to the west side of the building, the four "ledges" came into sight. Kate said, "Hey Bean, Melisa wants to get some pictures of you out there."

Without hesitation, Bean ran over to one of them, not realizing

1. there were a couple of people already waiting
or
2. that there might be something to be afraid of.

I found that second one incredible, but completely believable. Children generally don't think about things like their own mortality or how they might get hurt if they *insert an activity here*. Their ignorance is bliss, and the more I thought about Bean's lack of fear, the more I wished I could have some of it. Deep down, a little piece of me can reasonably think about the Ledge as being safe; if it weren't, wouldn't the glass have fallen 103 floors to the ground by now, carrying with it the happy tourists who just wanted an exciting picture? Most of my brain, though, can't wrap itself around that idea. The innocence of youth is an amazing thing.

I had big plans, mentally anyway, to step out onto the Ledge with Bean and take a picture of our feet as we hovered over the city. When it came down to it, I just couldn't do it.

As we waited, I listened to a couple who obviously had differing opinions about the intelligence of going out onto the Ledge. She? Was freaking out. He was using language that you hear when someone is in deep crisis. "LOOK at me. No...LOOK at me. You're going to be fine. We're just going to step out on the...LOOK AT ME!" She was shaking like a leaf at the very thought of going out there, and I don't think he was helping matters much.

It was a little unsettling.

When it was "our" turn, Kate said, "Okay Bean, get out there so Melisa can take a picture!"

Bean said, "I want to do a laying down one."

ZOMG.

"Okay, go ahead..."


We told her to sit up so I could snap another picture, and I started having heart palpitations.


I snapped it, and we waved her towards us: "Okay, okay, come here! Get off! Let's go!" I felt shaken, and Kate did too. I said, "Scott's going to kill me." She said, "I just thought, 'That's my BABY out there!'"

But, as you know, all's well that ends well. I figure I've got about twenty years to figure out what I'll tell Bean when she calls me up, screaming "WERE YOU CRAZY??? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING???"

Suggestions?


©2010 Suburban Scrawl

Bean's Chicago Tour 2010

When you're done here, scoot on over to my review blog to read about my proudest fitness accomplishment: you can enter to win a $100 Visa gift card and get the scoop on winning $1000 from BlogHer and Crystal Light Pure Fitness!


I just returned home from a jam-packed weekend in the city with Kate and Bean. You would think, being downtown with a girl of almost-six, that we wouldn't see very much. Well, you'd be wrong! It's actually faster to see certain things with a young kid, if you just relax and let them "drive". In two days, we went to Millennium Park, the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, the Field Museum, and the Sears "I'll never call it Willis" Tower. We also spent a bunch of time watching scenes from "Transformers 3" being shot right outside our hotel.

One of the things that was hilarious to me was that Bean was insistent that "Chicago" should be spelled "Shicago" or pronounced with the hard "ch" sound, because everyone is doing it wrong. Smart girl.

I have way too many stories to actually post, so I made a little movie for you (and Scott, her dad) to check out. I took 500 pictures over the weekend with my loaner Olympus PEN PL-1 (yay!); don't worry, I didn't post them all. I took some of the best pictures of my life over this weekend (thanks, Olympus!). By the way, the pictures look a little grainy on youtube: grr. They really aren't.

Oh, and that final picture? I'll be posting the back story about that one tomorrow, if Scott doesn't fly up here and kill me before then.





©2010 Suburban Scrawl