Gadgetry

Janet and I have been emailing back and forth about ipods recently. Actually she's been asking me about ipods for the past year. I keep telling her to get one already, and about how before I got one, I swore I didn't need or want one, but now that I have one, I don't go anywhere without it. Me and my ipod--we're attached by the hip. She's been hesitant, so finally this weekend I loaded up my ipod and brought it in for her to borrow. She's let me borrow so much of her stuff, I figured it was the very, very least I could do. I brought in the charger and a connecting-cord and it's full of great and wonderful music. If someone forced me to borrow an ipod, I would choose my ipod. Yes, I really do believe I have great taste in music, but that's another blog entry all together.

Anyhow, driving back home after rehearsal tonight I felt lost. Where was the music? Where was my constant companion? It felt like one of my best friends went off on vacation. No, I don't regret letting her borrow it at all, but there is an empty place in my life now. Isnt' it strange how the little devices and gadgets we acquire can inhabit such large places in our lives? I'm a product of the 80's. The greatest innovation back then were walkmen with cassettes. CASSETTES! The songs were always in the same order and you had to rewind or fastforward if you wanted to find a particular song. You could actually develop a special form of ESP to know how long to press the RW or FF button before you knew your song you were looking for was going to come up. You had to take the cassette out and flip it over before you could finish listening to an album. Heck, cassettes are more than twice the size of the new ipod nanos, which hold 200x the amount of data on a cassette. If you were lucky your walkman had a radio with a teeny tiny dial that you needed the delicate hands of a brain surgeon to manipulate. The headphones were the first things to go, and you wound up using tape and wiggling the wire back and forth to get sound in both ears. Remember they said we were all in danger of going completely deaf listening to our music so loud? Whatever happened to that? Everyone I know who is my age has regular hearing. And then they invented cd walkmen which were a modest upgrade from cassettes, seeing how you didn't have to flip them over, but you had to carry around those cd wallets, which were really bulky and didn't hold that many cds anyway.

But you know something? We were happy with our handful of cassettes and cd cases full of music. Maybe someday they'll have something more fantastic than the ipod, and I'll wonder how I lived without it. And just for the record--cell phones--those I can live without. There is the safety factor--as a woman I don't go anywhere without my cell phone. As someone who drives a car, I don't drive anywhere without my cell phone. But since the phone is my least favorite form of communication, and seeing how I don't call anyone, and hardly anyone calls me, I think I could live without one. Live without blahblahblah? Yes. Music? No, how is that possible?

I've STILL Got it

Woke up today to the sound of rain. Haven't heard that since last winter, and boy do we need us some rain--too bad it had to be on the day of my big cross country race (5k, actually. We didn't cross any state lines or anything) at Mills College. Oh well, I've run in rain before. When I got to Mills, there were running-people everywhere. They were running in little packs in their spiffy matching outfits, exuding good health and youthful energy. All the memories of my running days in high school came back. The race we were running was an invitational, which is when a bunch of schools come together to run against each other, and in this case, the school invited individual runners without a college affiliation to run too. They called us "unattached" and there were about five or six of us, staffers and students.

We all lined up, and when they gave us the go, off we went. I had no intention of starting off particularly strong, and settled into what was a slightly fast, but normal pace for me. I was toward the back of the pack, but I knew there were people behind me--mostly 20 year olds, mind you! I tried to keep up with people, but sometimes I passed them (hooray!) and sometimes they passed me (hooray for them!). That competitive spirit and drive still lives in me, and when I was able to zoom by someone, I did it strong. There was one big hill and though it didn't kill me, it tried. It was a nice course, but I must have been running hard, because I was really feeling it during the last half mile. That's when you have to dig and find the strength inside you to go on. One of the runners ahead of me started walking, and I thought, that looks like a nice idea, but of course I didn't, and tried to cheer her on a little as I passed by.

In the last 200 meter stretch someone was trying to pass me, and I sped up to keep up with her, and it was a footrace, and I yelled Come on! Come on!, and I let her beat me into the gate even though we were side by side. I mean, there's a part of me that's a competitor, but there is the part of me also that is learning how to motivate and inspire. I'm not saying that oh, I could have kicked her butt, but I LET her win. No. Because that's not the point for me anymore. It's not about winning. At that point I was thinking we're going to get better times if we push each other. I think what I'm coming to realize--not just in running, but life in general--is that for me it's not about competing against others anymore, but more about seeking out or just facing the challenges that are ahead of you. You actually get a lot further when you work with the people around you, and when they're inspired, you get inspired too. It's not about beating them, it's about finding ways to work together. Today, for me, signing up for the race and running it and finishing it was a great accomplishment. I'm happy and proud that I finished*. I'd do it again.

*And just between you and me, I'm secretly happy that there were still a bunch of runners behind me, and that I even beat a couple people on the Mills team. Come on, I'm old. Or rather, I'm not 20 anymore.

In My Magic Mirror...

Remember that show Romper Room where at the end of the show the lady would look in her magic mirror (which actually didn't even have any glass in it) and say, "I see Billy and Samantha and Stacy..." Me and my brother would always shut up and stop fighting and sit there, holding our breaths waiting for her to say our names, but I don't think she ever did.

Anyhow, that's how I feel right now. Or rather, I get visitors to my blog who leave me nice little comments, but the comment gizmo doesn't really have a way for me to say hi back to all you nice people.

So in my magic mirror I just want to say hi to Dad, and big brother the firefighter, and little brother (the Boy), and my dear running buddy from high school days Yuriko, and long lost MFA alum Erendira (what are you up to these days?), and Pocky Man Marcin. I'm sorry if I left anybody out. I get so few comments.

Thank you for reading. And thank you too to the anonymous people who read but don't leave comments. I like you too.

Cross Country Invitational!

I decided on a whim to enter a cross country race here at Mills. It's open to everyone. So on Monday I did a training run around the campus and over parts of the course. There's one hill with switchbacks, and some trail running, and some running up and down the street and here and there. I've been running at Mills for a couple of years now and I don't think there's anywhere on campus I haven't been, which is why I thought it would be fun to run the race. I did some mental calculating and figured that it's been about 15 years since I ran my last cross country race as a high-schooler. I was actually a decent runner back then. I expect to be at the back of the pack in this race. I don't care. At least it's good to know that 15 years later I'm still doing it. Plus, it's only 3 miles.

Paradiddly, yo

Week before last Janet introduced some paradiddle drills she had learned. The week before that, she had hinted that she was going to bring that drill in for us to work on. But first some history: the first time I ever interacted with Janet--the first time I met her, the first time she was teaching me somthing--she brought in some paradiddles, and I was like, huh? Para-what-whats? I thought she was making the whole concept up. What a ridiculous name! Paradiddles! But they're real, people. A paradiddle is basically a pattern that goes rlrr, lrll. So anyway. I practiced the whole week doing my rlrr's, lrll's, but when she brought her excercise in I was completely lost. Yeah, I knew what a paradiddle was, but a paradiddle with accents? And was rrlrlrlrrlrlrlr really a paradiddle?

Yes, yes it is.

There's double paradiddles, and triple paradiddles, and endless variations if you begin the paradiddle at some random point within the pattern and cycle it through to where you started, and even more variation if you decide which side (right or left) to place the accent on. So I practiced the paradiddles she brought in all week. I was playing those paradiddles at 176 and higher on my metronome. So last Sunday she asked if we wanted to work on drills, and I was like, oh heck yeah!, I want to work on paradiddles! It was a good drill. I think I did exceptionally well. Afterward, I asked her, Do you have any more paradiddle drills? Because I had worked so hard on these paradiddles, I was ready for more. Then she opened up her notebook, and it was a chasm of paradiddle drills. I'm telling you--pages and pages of them, written out teenie tiny on pages that were soft with wear. She said she had chosen a few of her favorites and made the drill out of them. Then she said, since you like paradiddles so much, why don't you come in next week with more drills?

At first, I studied her paradiddles and figured that they were part paradiddle, part interesting patterns. So with that freedom I composed some drills, and was stuck because I needed to finish composing some of them. And then I studied her drills and realized that they were all paradiddle and nothing more. I had already come up with three drills, and realized that some of my patterns weren't paradiddles, but strange creatures of my own imagination. Eh, I thought to myself. They're still great patterns. So this Sunday I get to present these drills to my peers. I wonder if Janet or Bean will catch on to the fact that they're not all authentic paradiddles? I came up with three patterns that are composed of two parts each. That makes six patterns. One and a half of them aren't true paradiddle. The half paradiddle is technically paradiddle, but at a stretch. I'm proud of them, though. Heck, the name of our group is Maze, which means to mix, so if I come up with part-paradiddle, part-Kathryn's-imaginary-paradiddle-drill, I'm happy.

We'll see though. That Bean is pretty sharp.