kat suletzki everyday

still on baby watch

kat suletzki — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:15:00 -0700

Baby watch continues. Alix is now more than a week overdue (and I so lost the bet that she was going to be early -- I bet good money on that!). I was talking to my brother-in-law this morning who joked that they should go dancing this evening. Perhaps a bit of schuplatteln? [grin]

My mom was suppose to fly home again today but changed her flight to next Tuesday. The baby definitely (or lets hope so!) should be screaming away by then!

Alix too

kat suletzki — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:51:00 -0700

I am in a seriously cranky mood today and I can't seem to shake it. No good reason either, so don't ask if there is.

In other news, we're still on baby-watch. Alix looks more than ready. (I'll bet she's even crankier than I am.)

macramé?

kat suletzki — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:04:00 -0700

I’m going to try my hand at macramé. Yeah, that thing that people did in the 1970s. Don’t laugh.

See, the apartment has these three hooks by the windows in the kitchen and I want to hang a flower pot off one of them but all the hanging flower things that I found – even if they are designed for hanging, still have this annoying thing that you have to be super-careful not to over-water, lest you create a mess. There are a few nice pots that I have seen, but not hangers, so, I am going to make (hopefully) a sling of sorts. My mom made a few really cool ones back in the 70s and mine will likely not be very elaborate.

I’ve done this sort of thing before, and we’ve all made friendship bracelets which are macramé too, but let’s see how this ends up. [giggle]

like a wet kat

kat suletzki — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:41:00 -0700

These are my wrinkly, wet feet after I extracted them from my running shoes. Very wet running shoes.

This evening, after a frustrating day (work was stressful covering for those out today, early to rise, created a huge mess making strawberry jam when it boiled over on the gas stove and I had to spend two hours cleaning -- ok, today kinda sucked), I decided to go for a walk. Not a usual "Kat walk/run" as I am not up for that but just to Harvard Square to poke around. It was crystal clear and beautiful out when I left at 4:30ish, though there was a chance of thunderstorms forecast.

I was nearly in the Square when I notice the wind pick up. Within moments, there is a gale at 60 mph. The clouds -- storm clouds that I haven't seen since St. Louis -- are making the sky like night. I swear the could have been a twister; it was that dark. I could see dozen of lightning bolts in the clouds just from Mass Ave.

And then it hit: a deluge of rain and hail the size of hazelnuts that coated the sidewalk and bounced on the visor of my cap. Even without the hail, the rain hurt; it was so hard. I was drenched before I could even find cover. I've never seen a lightning strike, but one hit a car about 40 feet away or so -- cracking the instant there was a flash. All the car alarms on the block went off. There were sirens and a few ambulances that whizzed by, it was generally pretty loud and in a strange sort of way, thrilling.

I didn't care that I got wet. Both the ipod and the mobile were in otterboxes, so that was fine.

Never did poke around Harvard Square.

smelly babble

kat suletzki — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 06:16:00 -0700

So this seriously falls under the random babble department, but whatever...

I was in the drug store yesterday, usual stuff like sun screen, Tylenol and deodorant. Blah, blah. I've always used Sure brand, and I noticed that they had "NEW" plastered all over a different scent or whathaveyou. I usually care about those sorts of things about, well -- not at all -- because I use what I use and I like it. Anyway, this time it struck me... the NEW part wasn't about the scent, it was because they were promoting it's "All day protection". Now, correct me if I am wrong, but shouldn't deodorant have been "all day strong" since like forever?

And now I can't get this stupid thought out of my head. Bugger.

PS the 'pig bites' sign is from the strawberry picking farm. I thought it was funny until I saw the swine: a half-ton, 5 foot tall, 8 foot long (don't know the diameter but the girth was tremendous). No wonder they have the sign. I think it would take off a child's hand!

First Day of Summer

kat suletzki — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 13:44:00 -0700

Perfect thing to do on the first day of summer? Go strawberry picking.

Happy Kats

Boston is a sport's fan kind of town.

kat suletzki — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:25:00 -0700

The Celtics are the newest king of the mountain in Boston sports. The Red Sox, the Patriots (ok, they blew the Superbowl, but still) and now the Irish. They walloped the LA Lakers in the game on Tuesday. Quite the blowout. Basketball is by far my least favorite of the big-four US sports but I watched the game, sort of like I watched the Sox games last fall -- sports as cultural phenomenon.

I still don't get why people destroy property after championships. I guess there were cases of vandalism and stuff. Like why exactly do you overturn benches and smash store window-fronts as a way of celebrating?

Simon is famous

kat suletzki — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:57:00 -0700

My sister is due with baby numero two next week. I actually think that he/she might be early, like this week, but that is just a feeling. Alix knows the gender but no one else does. I am betting on a girl, but we’ll see. Heidi flies over today, which is good so that she can take Simon off Alix’s hands for a bit.

Speaking of Simon, last weekend was the start of the 850 Munich Birthday celebration with a huge trachten parade and the like. Turns out that Simon’s picture was on the Munich page of the Bavarian Rundfunk’s site. (see screen shot). And here is another one. Little Simon is famous (for those 15 minutes before the web changes).

bad blog

kat suletzki — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 12:40:00 -0700

I haven’t updated this in forever. Six weeks. I suck.

I think that I have been having a bit of “personality crisis” with my blog (not me, the blog). I typically write the same stuff and usually it isn’t tremendously interesting. I generally avoid controversy, so I end up writing about really exciting stuff like the weather, the cats and sports. Even I find that somewhat boring. When I do interesting stuff, somehow I don’t get around the updating the blog, then the moment is gone and I am back to the old stuff.

Besides, when you fall out of the routine, somehow it is harder to get back into it.

All of that said, I’m going to go back to the same old updates for now because dead blogs suck even more than updated-but-boring blogs. [grin]

More data to drool over

kat suletzki — Fri, 02 May 2008 08:33:00 -0700

Another bad week of non-updates on my site. I could make up excuses about going to Maine and then being really swamped since I have been back (both true), but... given it takes like all of 10 minutes to update this, I really have no good excuse. [grin]

I bought myself a lovely new toy, the Garmin 405 Training Watch, in green (of course). It's a cool little GPS devise that tracks your workouts, virtually auto-downloads to your computer and then you can update the results on a web account. You can even share this links to your workouts, with maps, graphs and stats. Here is my test workout from yesterday (warning: the GarminConnect site is pretty slow).

Overall, I am extremely pleased with the thing, also with the ease of use and ease of data downloads. I may start posting my workouts here more regularly. We'll see.

84 degrees in april

kat suletzki — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:04:00 -0700

This is a very spring-like picture but it is very summer-like in reality today. According to the thermometer on my deck, it's 84. According to boston.com, it's 81. Somehow we leap-frogged spring. Tomorrow it's to be in the mid-70s before it becomes 'normal' again.

Title Nine

kat suletzki — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:55:00 -0700

Have I ever told you how much I think of the women's sportswear company Title Nine. They carry absolutely amazing clothes in the sorts of styles that I like, they have great (and well tested, well review) sports bras and seem to support good causes. Overall, spectacular and I've never had any issues / problems. Sure, sometimes they have items back-ordered, but they are a small company and I can understand not wanting to overstock too much.

To top it all off, I found out something new: they have great customer service. See, I ordered something on April 2. On April 3, I got a shipping notice. I had ordered "slow boat" shipping because I wasn't in a hurry for the things so it was sent out priority mail (not UPS or anything). Time goes by; nothing arrives. On Sunday, I send a little email -- not angry or upset or anything -- just a "Should I be concerned that this hasn't arrived yet?" email.

Not an hour later, they called to apologize (on a Sunday afternoon, no less) and told me that they would FedEx me a replacement shipment the next day. They wouldn't have even needed to FedEx it -- I was happy that they were doing something.

Replacement shipment arrived just now and they even included a $20 gift card. Yay for Title Nine!

pots in the kitchen

kat suletzki — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:42:00 -0700

I planted myself a little herb garden for the kitchen bookshelf. Left to right, we have: thyme and lemon thyme (in one pot; I think that is ok), mint, basil, rosemary and oregano. Oh, and a little pinwheel, even though there isn't exactly a breeze in the kitchen.

I know, thrilling.

Sports Fan Kind of Weekend in the Hub

kat suletzki — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 15:50:00 -0700

If you're a sports fan, I guess Boston wouldn't be a bad place to be this Patriot's Day weekend. The Red Sox are playing a set of games against Texas (I think 4 games, Friday through Monday), the Bruins played the Canadians at the Garden last night (spectacular game and they won, sending the series to a seventh game in Montreal), the Celtics play tonight at the Garden in their playoff opening series, and perhaps most importantly, there are two marathons going on: the U.S. Olympic time trial for the Beijing games was today and tomorrow is the big one: 25,000 running hit the pavement between Hopkinton and the Boston Public Library for the 108th annual Boston Marathon.

Feeling inspired, I felt like running my own marathon (yeah, right) and went for an 11 mile run/walk through the streets of Cambridge and Boston. Roughly (for those who care), I walked from Inman to Kendall, watched part of the time trial (that race wound through Boston and then was mostly a track up and down Mem Drive on the Cambridge side a few times), walked to Chucktown and through the new park by the locks, then along the North End to Fanuiel Hall, to the Boston Common, up Boylston to see the Marathon stuff, over the Mass Ave Bridge, back along Mem Drive to Whole Foods on River Street, up through Central Square and back to the apartment. I ran about 60-70% and walked the rest (like through the crowds in the city). Overall really nice in the mid-50 degree temps.

I am exhausted now and spent much of the afternoon napping in front of the TV. Slacker.

this wasn't so smart

kat suletzki — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 05:36:00 -0700

Note to these people: driving your UHaul into the traffic light at Alewife -- yes, a major intersection leading on to Route 2, where I dunno, approximately 20% of Boston drivers arrive and leave the city -- probably isn't such a smahhhht idea.

really? that's a stone?

kat suletzki — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:46:00 -0700

I promise to stop posting cemetery pictures any day now. I had just forgotten that I had this one, and it struck me as funny. Dylan is going to point out that Susan's maiden name is Stone so it isn't so funny, but when I saw this big (really big) slab of rock with the word "Stone" on it, it really did make me laugh. One of those, "no kidding" sorts of moments. Maybe you had to be there.

Unrelated: I am trying to grow my nails out for about the 20 millionth time. So far so good but they still look like crap right now. If I don't pick at the nails themselves, I pick at the cuticles and I don't know what is worse.

Tennis as Second Class Citizen

kat suletzki — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:19:00 -0700

I want my ESPN back.

Never thought I'd write that, eh? Well, this year, for the first time in forever, ESPN2 isn't showing the Pacific Life Open (Indian Wells) and the Sony Ericsson Open (Miami). It's been relegated to FoxSports Net, which locally here is called Comcast SportsNet. The coverage is abysmal. I still watch -- it is tennis after all -- but it's borderline worth it.

sleep patterns

kat suletzki — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:56:00 -0700

My sleep pattern has been really messed up lately, and not just because Sedgwick has been walking on my head and using my pillow as his own (though I mostly have broken that habit already; thankfully it wasn't very ingrained). Anyway, I've been really exhausted in the early evenings (like 6 or 7), sometimes to the point of falling asleep, which in turn makes me very awake until the early morning hours. I get up early anyway, but the whole sleep pattern is messed up. Blah to that.

This is a bit of s strange picture. It's of stone flowers on a tomb stone at Mt. Auburn. This entire stone was covered with hundreds of these flowers, each maybe 2 inches big. And no, this isn't an intentionally black + white picture; it was just gray stone.

feet to the pavement

kat suletzki — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 11:56:00 -0700

I ran into not one but two road races yesterday. Note that I said ran inTO, not ran IN. Seems a little strange that both Cambridge and Somerville would have 10Ks on the same day, but then I remembered that the Boston Marathon is in three weeks and while many/most of these people likely aren't doing that, there are definitely some who want to get some of that competitiveness in before the big one. There are some really good runners leading the packs. And there was this one six or seven year old that was in the midst of the pack. That was fairly impressive.

A Habit that must be Broken

kat suletzki — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 09:56:00 -0700

In the last few days, Sedgwick has developed this rather annoying habit of wanting to share my pillow. It's really not going to work out though, because the last thing I want is to be kicked in the head at 2 AM when he decides to stretch. It was cute on the first night, semi annoying on night two and then last night I moved him (he was just a little pissed about that! [grin]). Frist I took a picture though. I'm obviously just pretending to be asleep while holding up the point-and-shoot.

PS I look like crap at 3 AM.