The Difference A Year Makes

2007:



2008:

Friday, Saturday, Busy Busy Busy Days

On Friday hubby-Eric and I took a little road trip out to Eastern Washington. I can't really tell you much about that, except the weather was gorgeous and I got carsick. Besides getting carsick, I really enjoyed the trip.

Bright and early Saturday morning, Eric and I went down to visit my evil twin, and together we all went to the Race For the Cure. We met a friend or two down there, and walked the viaduct along with thousands of other people. Evil twin Lisa took a picture of hubby and I while we walked:

After the walk, our group, now five in number, went back to my parents' house. We played on Lisa's Wii Fit, were fed a wonderful lunch by my mother (THANKS MOM!) and ran some errands and such. We also made sure we had... um... the latest Doctor Who.

After playing around on the Fit (which I want even more now, if that's possible), we all piled into the car and drove down to KBTC where we volunteered for the Doctor Who pledge drive.

Hubby-Eric was "talent" at the pledge drive, as he's been before, but this time he got to anchor the pledge breaks with William. Here's a pic of him once he'd been gussied up a bit by a fellow fan:

Both Lisa and I did our usual behind the scenes work. I monitored the "green room" and made sure nobody walked off with a computer or somebody's bag. Lisa helped tally the totals on the breaks. Before the drive started, we all sat down and watched "Turn Left" (the newest Doctor Who) as a big ol' group of fans.

While we goofed around between breaks, Lisa took some pictures of me, including this one which I altered slightly from the one that appears in the photostream. You can see a lot more pictures, including some fairly embarrassing ones, over in that Flickr stream, by the way.

Some idle final thoughts... Friday's trip could very well change our lives, and in some ways already has... I loved playing on the Wii Fit, especially once it told me my Wii age is 28 instead of 40-something like last time... One of our group made a Mii named "Killer" and the Wii said her Wii age was 61, Ouch... Mmmmmm, sloppy joes for lunch!... The weather for the Race for the Cure was perfect... I ate too much over the weekend and need to be really good the rest of the month to stay under my weight limit... Killer was the only one of the five of us who had trouble walking the Race for the Cure route... Elmo and Big Bird destroyed my little remaining innocence... Watching new Doctor Who in a big group was both fun and annoying... I really like the Wii Fit step aerobics, but the jogging was also great... While I am Lisa's Evil Twin, she's apparently my Evil Twin as well. I'm not sure either of us is the good twin... Once again, many thanks to the people who donated for Race For the Cure! Our little group raised a decent amount of money... Regardless of what happens, I hope to do the Puget Sound Race for the Cure again next year... If you didn't get a chance to donate on Saturday, KBTC is still accepting pledges. I recommend the TARDIS mobile phone charm, it was cool (even if it doesn't work with my phone)...

And lastly, my Evil Twin will be trying to ride her bike 150 miles for charity thie September. I'm going to try to post a reminder about it every week or two until the date. If you want to help Lisa in the MS 150 then donate here. She's trying to get $500 in donations so she can get a jersey, but needs at least $250 in donations to be allowed to ride.

Race For The Cure

Many many thanks to the folks who have donated to support Eric, Lisa, and I on the Race For The Cure, which is happening tomorrow morning! I hope to take some pictures of the race, and maybe post one or two here after.

If you still want to donate, check out our donation pages: Laura Gjovaag, Eric Gjovaag, or Lisa Dunham.

My sister is going to do the MS 150 in September (that's 150 miles on a bike). If you want to help Lisa, then donate here. She's trying to get $500 in donations so she can get a jersey, but needs at least $250 to go on the ride. She wants to thank to folks who have donated so far, including a donation in honor of Little Warrior. Thank you all!

And, lastly... hubby-Eric will be on TeeVee tomorrow night, on the Tacoma PBS station during the Doctor Who pledge drive. He's slated to be one of the main "talent" folks, begging for money in between the episodes of the shows (Enlightenment and The King's Demons). If you feel flush with cash, you can donate to support PBS as well.

Some Links

Iowa is underwater.

Rest in Peace, Tim Russert.

Your shower curtain may be killing you. There's a band name: Killer Shower Curtains. Update: More information here, including some questions about the methodology of the original study.

They've found the HMS Ontario, 500 feet down in Lake Ontario. The HMS Ontario sank in a storm in 1780.

If you have a few bucks and want to fight breast cancer, please donate to support us in the Race for the Cure: Laura Gjovaag, Eric Gjovaag, or Lisa Dunham (my suggested donation is $5 to each of us, if you have $15 to spare, or $5 to one of us (flip a 3-sided coin) if you're poor like me).

If you want to help Lisa in the MS 150 (that's 150 miles on a bike) then donate here. She's trying to get $500 in donations so she can get a jersey, but needs at least $250 to just ride.

Links and Stuff

Comic Book Urban Legends Revealed #158: Neil Gaiman, Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Frank Miller, and Alan Moore. Yea, seven items instead of the usual three.

Man, I've always wanted to read Prince Valiant from the start, and now Fantagraphics is reprinting them. Maybe I should start requesting them from the library to make sure my library system buys them.

Cheyenne is back.

Take a look at 10 Star Wars posters from Japan. There are some visual treats in there, along with a couple of "What were they thinking?"

I don't care if people are sick of steampunk, I love the steampunk Dalek.

If you didn't catch all the internet references in Weezer's Pork and Beans video, the wikipedia article for the song now lists them, along with handy links to most of them so you can check out the originals.

Here's an amusing and short story. Very short.

Belief in the moon landing: how education can rid children of stupid anti-science views.

This is almost enough to make me eat at McDonalds. Almost.

Fox "News" equals gullible. Seriously, if they can't even do basic fact-checking, they don't deserve to call themselves a news channel. Only an entertainment channel would run a story as poorly-sourced as that one.

McCain would continue Bush's illegal wiretapping of US citizens.

Hey, there's a restaurant I won't go to, if only because the owner has to be a moron for not praising the employee and letting all his customers know about the wonderful thing she'd done for charity.

Guy pretends to be a Seattle Sonic. WHY? Eh, he can't be much worse at the game than the current players.

I really should collect all the examples of LOLCats theology.

Pug for the in-laws.

And lastly, if you have a few bucks and want to fight breast cancer, please donate to support us in the Race for the Cure: Laura Gjovaag, Eric Gjovaag, or Lisa Dunham (my suggested donation is $5 to each of us, if you have $15 to spare, or $5 to one of us (flip a 3-sided coin) if you're poor like me).

Thursday

It's five and a half minutes long, it's set to The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance, and it's one of the best Doctor Who fan vids I've ever seen. YouTube warning.

Bill has problems with Wii Fit's attitude, which is an understandable issue with a snarky game like Wii Fit.

When Seafood Goes Bad.

I find this story to be heartbreakingly sad.

Speaking of sad, the backstory to "Tom Dooley".

Electoral Vote dot Com is up again for people who want a nice visual representation of the polls in a format that actually applies to the election.

I never realized that spaces are legit characters in passwords. My experience with filenames and passwords has always been frustrating depending on what system I was using that day, so I tend to be a tad conservative about my naming conventions.

Police in Seattle can't stop people from taking pictures when the police are making an arrest. Well, that's the goal of the new standards.

Photographers are NOT terrorists. If you do photography a lot, maybe you should get an official-looking badge for yourself.

The Backdoor Draft is taking a toll on our military. In short, people who enlisted for a time in the Army are being called back because no one in their right mind would sign up to go to the war profiteering scam in Iraq right now.

If you have a few bucks and want to fight breast cancer, please donate to support us in the Race for the Cure: Laura Gjovaag, Eric Gjovaag, or Lisa Dunham (my suggested donation is $5 to each of us, if you have $15 to spare, or $5 to one of us (flip a 3-sided coin) if you're poor like me. Of course, at the moment nobody has contributed to any of us, so anything at all would be appreciated).

Pug for the in-laws.

Various Updates

I can't wait for the next linkdump to report this news: Steven Moffat will succeed Russell T. Davies as Doctor Who showrunner/exec. producer in 2010. That's REALLY good news for Doctor Who fans. Moffat is behind some of the best stories of the new Doctor Who, and will no doubt carry on Davies vision of the show while adding his own style to the mythos. Good news all around!

A "Get Well Soon!" to Lois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorite authors.

Tooth news: the tooth that cracked a filling was my left mandibular second premolar, aka tooth #20. It had an amalgam silver filling, which broke because of decay underneath the filling (which apparently had been there a long time, as the dentist said the tooth was trying to heal over the decay). The dentist replaced it with a non-amalgam filling that makes it look completely natural but still feels like a filling (cold sensitivity is the main issue at the moment).

Last night, when the numbness wore off, the tooth was in sheer agony and I had to bite my tongue (literally) to avoid yelling at poor hubby-Eric for nothings. By this morning the pain was down to a low ache, only being triggered when I clench my teeth or eat/drink something cold. There's a very slight swelling on the left side of my mouth, and my jaw still aches from being held open for the filling. If have continual pain for more than two weeks or so, I need to have a root canal on the tooth. So far, I'm optimistic.

If I had the money, I would happily replace all my amalgam fillings with this other stuff (Resin). It looks so much better. I'm not usually a critic of my own mouth, but the difference is striking. I actually LIKE looking at my tooth while I brush and floss now. And there is the mercury thing. I know what the studies say, but it seems rather counter-intuitive to put a substance in your mouth that is too toxic to pour down a drain. Unfortunately, I haven't got the money (or insurance that would pay) so I'm going to have to live with a mercury-filled mouth for the moment.

More notes on this dentist. As I mentioned, I went to the ADA website and just called dentists who were in walking distance. There were a lot I could've called. I went with the first people who said they could fit me in same-day. I've already mentioned that it was an all-female office while I was there, which made me very comfortable. Another good sign was when they offered me shades for the exam, they were thick and green and I said, "Ah, Emerald City glasses!" and the dentist and her assistant both laughed and responded, "Yes, we call them our Oz glasses." Then the dental assistant set me up with headphones on an "Oldies" station, which turned out to be 1960's rock. There is something lovely and surreal about having a tooth filled to the sound of Bob Dylan singing "everybody must get stoned".

If you have a few bucks and want to fight breast cancer, please donate to support us in the Race for the Cure: Laura Gjovaag, Eric Gjovaag, or Lisa Dunham (my suggested donation is $5 to each of us, if you have $15 to spare).

Puget Sound Race for the Cure

Hubby-Eric and I have just registered for the Puget Sound Race for the Cure. If you have a few bucks and want to fight breast cancer, you can donate to support either Laura Gjovaag or Eric Gjovaag in the race (or you can even sponsor my not-quite twin sister) (my suggested donation is $5 to each of us, if you have $15 to spare).

If you are local, and want to sign up, go to Puget Sound Race for the Cure and register. We're doing the 5K walk, as usual.

Torvald will probably be present. He seems to like the walk, and he gives me a good excuse to take lots of pictures.

The walk itself is June 21st this year, and I'll probably mention it a few more times leading up to the event. Check out my posts on previous Race for the Cure walks, too.

Race For The Cure

I couldn't resist.



At the Starting line, looking back on the crowd. Dancin' Dan is the grinning guy to the right wearing a Doctor Who cap, hubby-Eric is the guy on the left wearing a Mariners cap.



This is just after the start, as we climb onto the viaduct via the offramp. The folks on the upper level in the background are runners from the previous group that started a half-hour before us.



I thought I set a fast pace for the first half of the walk only because I'm a little paranoid about being on the lower level of the viaduct. I'm told by my three co-walkers that, no, I set a fast pace the entire time. We finished the 5K walk in under an hour.



From the second milepost, looking back at the crowds. There were way more people behind us than in front of us. It was an impressive sight.



I noticed a number of valves on the viaduct, and kept commenting on what would happen if I opened one, so Lisa kindly took a picture of me pretending to open one. I'm still sort of curious about them. I made Dan laugh aloud at my goofy look.



Another look back. The lower level is still packed as people come walking up. Dan asked how many people were walking. My understanding is they let about 20,000 on the viaduct at once. It really is an amazing sight.



Lisa and I paused for a sisterly portrait on the viaduct, with the ferry in the background. This is a shot that is unlikely to be duplicated... especially if the city ever gets around to actually tearing the viaduct down.

The batteries on my regular camera packed out about the time I wanted to start taking pictures, so all the pictures here are from the camera in my phone. The odd distortions on some of the shots are from my movement as I took a picture. I'm wearing a black waist pack with Torvald the Troll in it, and I also have two Race for the Cure T-shirts slung over the strap. My T-shirt is the one with the best ever Aquaman panel on it.

After we got home, I used the Pedometer to find out how far we'd actually walked. Counting the distance from the bus Eric and I took, and the distances between registration and the starting line and such, Eric and I walked over five miles. The walk itself was 5K, which is 3.1 miles.

Puget Sound Race for the Cure

The 2007 Puget Sound Race for the Cure will happen on June 16th. Our local Doctor Who group, the Emerald City Androgums, are going to put together a team. If we can get enough members this year, we'll try to do the walk with matching t-shirts and all that jazz. Maybe we'll even get berets and carry eating utensils, who knows?

The registration doesn't open until March 5th, so I probably won't be mentioning it again until I've signed up and put up a donor page. Unlike the 3-Day, I don't need to raise a certain amount to qualify for this event, but our team will no doubt have some goal for fundraising.

If you live in the Seattle area and are interested in joining our team, drop me a comment or an e-mail.