Tag Archive | music

Conquering

Lately, I have had a problem getting up in the morning. I think this is because my current job has a “late” start time of 9:00am. Normally my jobs have started at 8:30am at the latest. That start time forces me to get up and do whatever I need to in the morning so that I can get to work and get things done.

In any event, this past week I have been making a serious effort to get up in the mornings to go workout. Mainly because hopefully next week I will have my 6:30am SPIN class that I will be teaching at Bucktown Athletic Club on Thursdays. Anyway, this week I was able to finally get up early on Wednesday to go to TRX. This was probably because of not really being able to sleep of late due to a variety of things that have been stressing me out. Continue reading →

Random Thoughts: The Winter Edition

Feb7

It’s been a couple of months since I shared with you the strangeness that runs through my head. And since it is the beginning of a new year, it seems like a good time to share the craziness that is happening now. Nothing too out of the ordinary, but as usual, I have thoughts about a lot of things. Such as . . . Continue reading →

Music Snob

Dec5

That would be me. Shows like American Idol are worthless to me. Sure, it can be entertaining to laugh at the bad singers who think they are good enough to get a recording contract and probably even sadder when some of them actually do get one.

Many times, I keep my snobbery to myself, but during baseball season, it rears its ugly head with plenty of snarky comments. It always happens with the national anthem.

I don’t think people realize just how hard that song is to sing. On a good day, I can count on at least three key changes in the singing of the song. I might chalk those up to creative license, but usually it is because the person who is singing it truly thinks he is staying on key and thus what was done is proper. Continue reading →

“Thank You” for Gracing me with your Presence

Nov12

It’s a Friday evening and I am headed to a bar that I frequent to meet a friend for a drink. At least that is what I am hoping will happen. She tends to flake a lot so if she doesn’t show up, I won’t be surprised. I haven’t seen her in a while, so it will be nice to finally catch up, even though that is probably going to be a conversation of her telling me how “crushing” her life is with teaching and her husband and by the time she gets around to listening to me, realizes she needs to get going. I do try to keep our friendship going, but after a while, it gets really tiring when I am the only one who seems to care about it and not take it for granted.

As it typical, Tori is already 20 minutes late. I had waited a bit to order and finally my apple martini arrives and just as it does, Tori comes bursting into the bar. I am so glad my drink has arrived as I have a feeling I am going to need it or at least have something to hold on to with my hands rather than some weird fidgeting thing that might occur when I am sort of being myself. Continue reading →

Exploring an Obsession

Nov6

A while back I had a session with my trainer where I ended up telling her the funniest story she has heard from me. As usual, my session of a fantastic workout (thanks Stephanie for that!) also led to a discussion of what had been going on the past week. Since we had last spoken, it has been “interesting” to say the least and when I said it was a crazy week, it seemed odd because it was only Tuesday.

In any event, conversation went from the oddness of cemeteries and burying dead people and my fake Jewish Boyfriend who I wasn’t really dating and he wasn’t dating me because of the whole conversation of converting when dealing with an interfaith relationship. At least we didn’t say we were dating each other. And yes, there was a reason I had the fake Jewish Boyfriend. I don’t go around making up boyfriends just for the hell of it. Especially when that time can be put to use in actually dating a real person. Continue reading →

“I Wanna see you be Brave”

Oct15

today’s song is a reminder to just be BRAVE

Another day, another song that says something. Today’s song is Brave by Sara Bareillis. It is a song inspired by a friend of hers and you can listen to her explain about it here. In any event, it is a message that can apply to anyone about anything.

Those times where you don’t say things you really want to because you are afraid of hurting someone else’s feelings. Or those times when you just want to say fuck you to the friends who take you for granted and are never there for you when you need them, but if you aren’t there for them, there is hell to pay.

Perhaps it is a situation where you just want to tell people to leave you alone because the sudden interest in your life is annoying when there has been no interest previously. Or maybe even tell someone to take their own advice when they advise you to do something that you already do, but they don’t do it themselves so it makes no sense for them to advise you.

Continue reading →

Go Away

Sep26

I am officially in taper mode for the Chicago Marathon and of course, I’m restless. This is a time when I need to be taking it easy with my intensity in the miles I still have remaining as well as the cross training that I am doing. Things that for a person like me, are much easier said than done.

I have chatted with a few people and gotten some great advice on what to do during my taper. It shouldn’t be so hard, considering that I did a taper before the Green Bay Half Marathon I ran in May. However, I didn’t really feel a need then to “chill” during taper because I had already so many half marathons. Continue reading →

Running and Music. Music and Running

Sep7

September 7th was a 20-mile run. I wasn’t even nervous about it. In fact, I was looking forward to it. A few weeks ago, I was freaking out about 17 miles. After I finished the 17 miles, 18 and 20 were just no big deal to me.

This 20-mile run in addition to getting used to being in my feet for so long was also special because I did it solo and with no music. I normally run with music, but since I discovered a few weeks ago that my music player wasn’t going to last, I thought I should do at least one really long run without music. And the 20 mile run seemed like the perfect run to do this on for a couple of reasons.

One, it was sufficiently long so that I would have more of the marathon experience. Second because I was going to be starting my run well before the sun came up and for safety reasons, it would be better to be fully aware of my surrounding until sunrise. Continue reading →

Feel Today? No Thanks

Sep4

just kidding! i’ve never started to despise a song

For a very stupid reason, I have been listening to a lot of Ingrid Michaelson lately. I had gone several months without listening to her because I was busy wearing out other artists. Some of her songs had been staples in my running playlists, but eventually I moved on to other songs that would get me moving at a good pace and keep me going when it would start to get hard.

Anyway, she is one of my favorites and I like her songs because they say a lot of things that I can’t seem to find the words to say. I am sure I need to further explore why I like her music, but for now, I’m sticking with the lyrics thing. Anyway, yesterday her song Be Ok came on and there is a line in it of “I just want to feel today, feel today, feel today. I just want to feel something today.”

Continue reading →

Things are getting less scary

Aug26

This past weekend I ran 18 miles. That was by far the longest run I have done. At least the farthest I have done on a training run. In my first attempt at the marathon, I made it just past mile 21. In any event, the 18 miles actually felt pretty good. This was kind of surprising to me considering that the week prior, I had 17 miles to run and the entire week leading up to the 17 miles, I was freaking out about how far I was going to have to run.

I chose not to do the 17 miles with my pace group for various reasons and it turned out I did alright. Although, I did have to adjust where I ran because the Air & Water Show was happening so I couldn’t run as far south as I normally would have. Anyway, that run was almost my best long run of the year except around mile 10, I started to get a weird pain in my calf near my knee. Continue reading →

In My Head

Thoughts and Observations on lots of stuff