This is not a blog

The Berlin Wall

I think of all the events in recent history, I really wish that I had been old enough to be cognizant of what was happening when the Berlin Wall was taken down.  I highly recommend looking through the photo gallery in the NY Times online called The View From the Wall; the pictures and anecdotes are incredibly moving and provide a good sense of the significance of this event.  As a side note, the largest chunk of the Berlin Wall in North America is right outside my office’s front door.

Oh dear

Thanks Lelia for sending me this from NPR’s Marketplace:

Kai Ryssdal’s final note…

The 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down is next Monday. A concert in Berlin tonight by Irish rock band U2 as part of the MTV European Music Awards is marking the occasion. Right in front of the Brandenburg Gate — 10,000 free tickets were snapped up in just three hours.

One small problem, though: MTV and local promoters put up a 6.5-foot high steel wall to keep the ticket-less out. We’re going to call it … the irony curtain.

NYC Marathon

Even though I’ve probably spoken to most of you about the NYC Marathon, I thought I thought it was worth a brief synopsis.

With a few days rest under me and the ability to walk, stand up/sit down, and go up/down stairs now like a normal person again, I am really glad that I ran that marathon.  If you’d asked me that anywhere from mile 18 to about 1 hour after the race, I probably would have told you it was a terrible idea, but time heals all wounds.

I beat my goal time of 4 hours by running in 3:53:43, which I was happy with, but my legs didn’t feel as good as I had hoped.  I don’t know if it was that I had only had two weeks of rest before the marathon since my last long run or the fact that I was too nervous to really eat breakfast beforehand, but I never really felt like things clicked that day, which is the only thing that really makes me want to do another one some day—so that I can try to achieve that feeling.

The highlights of the race would include: entering the Staten Island Ferry terminal to a sea of runners; running acorss the Verrezano Bridge and seeing NYC in the distance; running through Brooklyn and seeing the neighborhoods change so quickly—so much live music from so many different genres; running across the Queenborough Bridge where it was just the runners, no cheering fans and occassionally the runners themselves would break out in a self-celebratory cheer that rang loudly through the bridge; the relative quiet on the bridge compared with the quiet roar that grew louder and louder as we approached Manhattan, only to descend down into a crowd of people 10 deep along the side of 1st avenue; and of course being able to see my family and friends during the race in the crowds.

The only lows were the last 8 miles or so, particularly the last 5k, when I knew I was indeed going to be able to finish this race, but it was not going to be pretty and it was going to hurt a lot.  I don’t even really remember running through Central Park, it was just gritting my teeth and forcing each next step.  Oh and 1st and 5th/Central Park West have a very gentle slope up to somewhere in the East 80s that on a normal day would probably be imperceptible but at miles 17 and 23, approximately, felt incredibly painful.  And of course that I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with all my friends and family because I was running around all weekend simultaneously being a stressball and trying to relax and rest.

Thank you to all of you—I guarantee that all of you helped keep me motivated at one time or another; I thought a lot of my family and friends during both my training runs and the race to keep myself going.

And now, to rest.

Someone take the thesaurus away from this writer

Just browsing over an article in the NY Times today entitled Classical Music Takes Center Stage at the White House and came across this sentence:

She played the genial melody with mature sound and shapely phrasing and, when the roles switched, nimbly dispatched the undulant accompanimental figure.

…to describe an 8-year old cellist.  I also have a bit of a penchant for overusing adjectives, but this…is a bit much.