low battery

there's a special kind of disappointment from your phone vibrating and you thinking you got a text but it's just your phone telling you to charge it.

End of November

This month came and went pretty fast. I only worked 2 full weeks of work. This last week was a really good one at after school. Very few conflicts. Lots of good interactions. Lots of buy in and fun from the kids. I hope we can keep it going.

Running was pretty great. I was really happy with the 8k and this first week back has gone exceptionally well.

My hopes for December are to keep things going as they are.

Sometimes I get hung up on negative thoughts and things I can't control. And then I get frustrated with how much energy I waste on those thoughts. But I try to think about my routine and the things I do intentionally every day. And if I stick to those things and do them well then there's only so much time and energy to waste. If that makes sense or is at all interesting.

My lips are chapped. I need to drink more water.

I Love to Hate Thursdays

They're challenging with the kids. We have a lot of them and the energy just seems to be high and kinda negative. I get frustrated with the kids who won't listen and have to get stern with them. All of that is fine though. We're socializing the youth!

I challenge myself to not get frustrated though and be more creative with showing what is important.

Sending out mail today

Ran some cold hills

The fall training block ended.

The break after the block ended.

I got my butt kicked in a race.

The winter training block has begun.

I feel infinitely better at the beginning of this block than I did starting the last block. Improved fitness.

The goal is to run lots of miles and lots of hill workouts.

Today I did 21 minutes of running up and down the Reservoir Hill. They weren't fast but I tried to work on maintaining good form. I'm excited for February and March races.

things I learned from racing today

-honestly assess how your body feels before the start. Is everything ready to go or is that just what you want to believe?

- not running for a week then running 4 times is poor prep. Even if I was in great shape before that week off

-i don't run well below 40 degrees or so

- if temperatures are not ideal, I should not go out hard because of a sense that I should be able to run with certain people

-I've also gone out too hard in the heat with the same results

-learn the course and where the mile markers are. Keep track of splits.

-when conditions are not optimal, start out slower and build momentum to have a better feeling race rather than a slow death towards the middle/end

- don't let your crappy mood bother other people for too long. mope then get over it

-use a poor race as motivation to get back into training. nothing is guaranteed. you always have to put in the work

Quote of the Week

From a 9 year old last week:

"I'M FROM ST. LOUIS, I THINK I CAN HANDLE IT!"

Running Again

Got over the sickness yesterday. Still a little phlegmy but head is clear.

I ran 40 minutes yesterday and 60 minutes this morning. On Thursday I'm running, and hopefully winning, the turkey trot. I still feel sluggish but I know I can't have lost any fitness in just one week of not running.

Just two easy days of work then going to Harrisonburg for the holiday. I'll draw a lot. Maybe make some collages again. My mom has good magazines for collaging.

WORD OF THE BIRD #10

SnowSick Day

Yesterday I didn't move much because there was sleet all day and school was closed and I'm congested and sore throating having. So I guess I'm thankful that my off week of no running coincided with illness and terrible weather. Otherwise I would've faced a lot more guilt and/or discomfort.

I gotta go make the word of the bird now. Still congested but feeling better and Fridays are so much more chill at after school than Thursdays.

Hanksgiving

hanksgiving

The Sections of My Day

7:30 AM - 9 AM: wake up. Since I have nowhere to be in the morning. I usually spend an hour or so trying to sleep more and/or trying to come up with reasons to get out of bed. Not a productive part of the day. Lots of room for improvement. Up until recently I woke up to NPR and would ignore it for an hour. Check phone a whole bunch.

9AM-10AM: turn on WNRN. Brush teeth. Make coffee. Make oatmeal. Do small chores like making bed, putting dishes away, organizing. Pretty productive time.

10AM- 11AM: eat breakfast and draw or work on some small creative task. Also talk with roommates and think about running. Check phone a whole bunch. 

11AM-12:40PM: running. The best.

12:40PM-1:30PM- shower, get ready for work, eat a quick lunch. More wnrn. More talking. check phone a whole bunch.

1:30PM- 1:50 PM- drive to work. Listen to wnrn and npr, whichever is better in the moment. Don't check phone!

2PM-6PM: work. This could be further subdivided. There's prep time, check in, announcements, outside time, snack, free time, gym time, clean up. It's all generally pretty good. I like the kids and the work a lot.

6:15PM-7PM: drive home and listen to Marketplace with Kai Ryssdal. Stay in car until Marketplace is over. Check phone a whole bunch when home.

7PM-8PM: make and eat dinner and do dishes. Talk with roommates. Maybe more wnrn.

8PM---bedtime: varies a lot. Sometimes drawing. Sometimes talking. Lately it's been reading and going to bed early. Lots of phone time. I could be more consistent about going to sleep at a certain time.

But that's pretty much it! This would be any weekday from the last few months barring special occasions.

Cheese

I read some sections of this book that was all about how lots of foods lie about being authentic versions of things like parmesan cheese and kobe beef and champagne and extra virgin olive oil and coffee and tea and wine and pretty much anything that can be sold at a premium is in a market overrun by imitators. To the point that everyone is doing it so pervasively that the people who make the real item and want to protect the name can't do so because regulatory agencies don't recognize the imitation as wrong doing.

Anyway, the book is very much from a consumer perspective and it tries to offer tips on how to avoid counterfeits and it basically boils down to giving the right people a lot of money.

But to me the more interesting parts of the book are when it shows what the authentic production process looks like. Like it describes how this place in Parma, Italy is like this awesome self-sustaining community that revolves entirely around making great cheese and ham. And they get to enjoy it all the time because they live there and that's their whole deal.

But then, it seems like it's better to live like people live than to chase the specific thing they make.  Like the actual cheese product isn't as important as the process that creates it.

The book is like "oh man, it sure sucks that there's this great thing but we can't get it because the market is flooded with fakes. it is hard to be a consumer"

Why not just also make a great thing? That seems more sustaining than trying to consume all the great things that could exist. I don't know.

Join my kombucha kommune. That's all I'm saying.

how to not use all your data when

your house has no wifi
your name is andy and you're alive right now
you ran out of data last month

1. don't go on youtube ever except when you're at work which has wifi

2. Don't go on instagram explore page ever

3. Upload and download things at work where there's wifi

4. Remove YouTube, chrome, and instagram from your home screen

5. only interact with text and low quality pictures

Boom. you did it. Go to the library and get books to keep you occupied. Reread Scott Pilgrim. It's still SO GOOD.

Yesterday was a good day

Yesterday I ran the Richmond 8k
My time was 25:40 and I finished in 27th place. That's around 5:08 per 1600. It felt really good and everything came together pretty perfectly. I also reconnected with team blitz and met its current members. That was a lot of fun.

I haven't run a race that I was proud of since the Charlottesville 10 Miler in March 2017, so a little over a year and a half.  That was mostly due to injury and work commitments.  I'm happy that I got back to the level I was at in 2017 by designing my own training and mostly running alone. I think I learned that lots of long slow running can get me in good race shape and that I don't need a lot of hard workouts several times a week.

Going into the winter my goal is to do A LOT of a slow running to set up for the spring where my key races are the Colonial Half and Charlottesville 10 miler. Woo.

WORD OF THE BIRD #9

Last Night I Texted Andy Goodstein

I was googling myself to see what would show up and I found the number for another Andy Goodstein who lives in Colorado. The following is a transcript of our conversation.

Andy: Is this Andy Goodstein? This is also Andy Goodstein. Another Andy Goodstein. Who lives in Virginia.

Andy: Hi there, can I help you with something?

Andy:
I was just googling myself and your number came up and I've never spoken to another Andy Goodstein before. Don't mean to bother you. Have a good one.

Andy: Okay, thanks

A spiritual awakening if there ever was one.

Work Today. Data Collection.

Today was a super calm day so I got to be goofy and have fun and talk to the kids a lot.

-i did a beatboxing workshop with some kindergartners. I was working on my snare drum. By the end of it I trained a kid so that when i said "snare", he would say "poop" in a deep voice.

-i asked some kids to evaluate what they thought was important at after school. They mostly liked "fun" "free time" "computers" "the gym" and "word of the bird"

- i let a kid lead the transition in from the playground and he screamed at everyone. Good fun.

-a girl made me a welcome mat/pillow out of a large sheet of plastic and green paper. I think it got thrown away though while I was in the gym :(

Good stuff, man.

The Dorito Effect

I started reading the Dorito Effect today. It's about how, at the cost of production, food is becoming more bland and, in turn, more flavored by artificial means. Pretty interesting.

Unrelated: I want to download a bunch of royalty free folk music and set it over videos of nature and the outdoors.

The woods called

Very successful outing. We crossed streams. Went up and down many steep banks. Got lost and went in a big circle when we were trying to go straight.  Saw a mysterious black tube with buckles on it. Saw a shiny blue balloon. Found mysterious white fungus. Knocked over a dead tree. Just walked around on a beautiful autumn afternoon.

Woods are Calling

Since September,  my roommate Will George and I have been planning to march into the unchartered depths of the camp woods. Today the temperature is mild and damp and much of the flora has receded. We will head off into the unknown.

Just ran

102 minutes. It gets dark really early. It felt much longer than 102 minutes. My legs got tired at the end. Yesterday I ran the same time but in the middle I stopped at the UVA track and ran a 4:57 for 1600m in my tevas sandals. A sandals PR!

I feel excited and prepared for the 8k next saturday. My goal was low-26 minutes but now I feel confident that I can break 26, which is in line with other races I've done and I feel like I'm in comparable shape to the past. On Wednesday Peyton and I had 2x3200 with 3:30 rest in 10:32 and 10:21 then a 4:00 rest and a 1600 in 4:59. And I was pretty well rested but the paces in the 3200s felt comfortable. I'm most encouraged by how good everything felt rather than how hard I was able to run. So that's good. The rest of the runs this week will only be between 50 and 60 minutes and all about feeling gooooooooood.

A brief moment

To appreciate that I'm no longer in school, spent the afternoon in downtown cville and the light was incredible.

No wifi

Currently in the JMRL. A library. I meant to post at least once a day this month. Already messed that up. Ran out of data yesterday. I'm learning to severely cut back on using data. Which has had the effect of drastically reducing YouTube and chrome use. I'm still weaning myself off the instagram explore page which sucks up a ton of data. But the upside to all of this is that I'm excited about reading and going to libraries again. Particularly the reading. A much better way to be engaged than the internet.

So it occurs to me as I'm writing this that this blog could be a repository for small thoughts that happen throughout the day. Like texting myself. Instead of its old function, when I had wifi for a laptop, of trying to little pieces of writing, drawing, whatever.

Anyway, that's the plan.

What I'm checking out of the library today:

-everyone's an aliebn when ur a aliebn too

-the dorito effect

-food anatomy

-best efforts by kenny moore

Hot take

To get anywhere in this modern time world, you're gonna have to use a whole bunch of words.

- please
- thank you
- sorry
- dos cervesas

Word for your lives, dudes.