This is Radio Isis.

Not the most productive writing day today, so how about another mix instead? Unlike the last one, this one came together rather quickly.

What, is it Monday?

The usual place, the usual bunch.

After months of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction, I have put a new mix up at Art of the Mix. If you would like a copy, let me know in the comments.

Nutritious + delicious.

The PP and I decided we need to be more thoughtful about what we eat. We have these discussions every couple of years or so: mostly we tend to have fairly healthy meals, especially when we eat in, but since we have moved, we have eaten out more, and more frequently at places that can be a bit rich, and sadly we are both getting waistlines to prove it.

The challenge, of course, since neither of us is crazy about cooking all the time, is finding ways to get nutritious meals made quickly--particularly on nights when we have had swim practice, and are ravenous and exhausted. Also, I am constantly searching for better meals to have at lunchtime, because Hot Pockets depress me.

So, half a bag of onions, a head of garlic, 1.33 pounds of ground turkey, a boatload of garam masala, numerous teaspoons of cumin seeds, a head of cabbage, 2 cans of chickpeas, half a bag of frozen peas, 1 cup of Darjeeling tea, 4 cardamom pods, a motherlode of okra, 3 cans of tunafish, 2 bay leaves, one bunch of cilantro and one of green onions, a cinnamon stick, 3 cups of rice, 6 jalapeno peppers, a fair bit of curry powder and turmeric and ground cumin and mustard seeds and sesame seeds and fennel seeds, and the juice of one lemon later, we had a damn fine Indian dinner composed of five dishes: turkey with peas, curried tuna, chickpeas cooked in tea, cabbage with fennel, okra masala + rice.

The best part? Several meals' worth of left-overs!

Be careful what you say.

Remember yesterday, when I said taht 3700 LCM was the longest practice I had done since surgery?

Ha!

Last night I stepped into the new coach's office before practice, just to tell him that I might modify the practice a little bit, because I was trying to be careful not to overdo things, but also to tell him how much I had enjoyed last night's workout.

"I don't think you need to worry about your shoulder tonight," he said, "because tonight we are doing a monster kick set."

Cool, I thought. I am used to a lot of kick.

But did I realize then that he meant (count them) 2300 meters of kick???!!!! No friends, I did not.

But that is what he meant, and that is what we did.

Here is the practice:
500 warm up (choice)
2300 kick with long fins (alternating easy/fast: 50/50, 100/50, 150/50, 200/50, 250/50, 300/50, 350/100, 400/100; the 400 was for time: I clocked 5:49)
1000 swim (2 rounds of 300 free swim @ 3:00 and then 4x50 stroke @1:10, 25 fast/25 easy)
300 cool-down
Total of 4100 LCM

Today I can hardly walk.

Friday Random 10: I understand that time is running out Edition

I am sorry to say that I finally finished the last Harry Potter book. Granted, I got a late start because I insist on ordering them from the UK to get all the "blimeys" and to avoid the problem of title mangling. And then since everyone else had already read it by the time I got my copy, and this is (after all) the last book, I felt no rush to finish. So I have been stringing it out, reading a few chapters there then just one chapter here and a few pages before bed--as if it were a normal book.

But now it is over. Or as Tim says, all over but the movies. Or as Magpie pointed out, we could all get a copy of Harry Potter and the Big Funnel or (my personal fav) Harry Potter and the Chinese Overseas Students.

Can you tell it is Friday afternoon, that the brain has shut down, perhaps an hour or so in advance of the end of the work day?

So instead, because Tim reminded me of this too (yes, I do read other blogs...), Friday Random 10 for your sexy bod:
1. "Jump (for my love)," The Pointer Sisters
2. "It's Gonna Be a Beautiful Night," Prince, Sign O' the Times
3. "Universal Love," Trüby Trio, Elevator Music
4. "Aldeia de Okarimbé," Neguinho da Beija-Flor, Brazil Classics 2: O Samba
5. "En Geng Ska Han Greta" [One day he'll cry], Garmarna, Nordic Roots: A Northside Compilation
6. "Roger the Miller," Karan Casey, Songlines
7. "James Brownian Motion," The Evolution Control Committee
8. "Mexican Radio, Wall of Voodoo
9. "Cafe de Flore," Doctor Rockit, The Unnecessary History of Doctor Rockit
10. "Bush Killa," Paris, Sleeping with the Enemy

Intervals.

We have a new coach added to our team's staff. During the regular season, he will only coach one practice a week, but for now, while other coaches are away on summer vacations, he is our everyday coach. A few of us had said to him that we would love to get some interval practices in--something that neither of our other coaches tend to do.

I do not know about you, but if I do not have intervals, I tend to be a big slacker--take too much rest, get too much time between sets. This does not make me faster. Plus, it gives me too much time to think--too much time to psych myself out, convince myself I am tired and cannot do the next set.

But not last night!

The new coach was still getting a few kinks out--like everyone's speed (and we have a pretty big range)--but it was a good practice, and I found the intervals to be about right for me. The only problem was that it was a LOT of freestyle, and my shoulder did not like that. So on a few of the swims, I modified by alternating 50 FR with 50 BR, which felt better but made it harder to make the intervals (and wore me out!) .

This was also an interesting practice for me because I realized that I had no idea of my pace in long-course meters--since all the interval work I had done in the past had been in a short-course yards pool.

Anyway, here is the damage:
1200 warm-up (4x200 free @ 4:00 and then 4x100 kick @ 3:30)
700 swim (this was a 15 minute swim, where you take about 10 seconds rest after each 100, and try to get a sense of your pace. I was swimming 100 free at anywhere from 1:42 to 1:50, but for 5 of the 7 swims, I was at 1:44)
1000 swim ( 1x400 free @ 8:00, then 50 easy @ 1:10, then 2x250 free @ 5:00, then another 50 easy @1:10. I modified the 400 and the first 250 by swimming 50FR/50BR, and this left me hardly any rest, so I did the last 250 free, which helped a lot)
600 IM swim (3x200 IM @4:30: I had to do the FL drill here, because my shoulder was screaming, but I managed to hold about 4:00 swim time through the set, descending slightly)
200 cool-down
That's 3700 LCM total.

I was pretty proud of myself for finishing that practice. It was by far the most intensity I have done since my surgery, and one of the most consistently strong practices I have had this season. Besides, that is more meterage than I have swum in a long time with no fins.

So now let's see whether I make it through practice tonight....

We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.

I do not tend to put the things I have knitted on this blog. That is because to do so requires a big photographic expedition, followed by a description of what I have made, and the descriptions never do encompass the things, because the things are not really about the things in their thingness, but about the memory of their making, somehow wrapped into all the stitches.


I can look at this scarf and say, I remember what people were talking about while I knitted this gray section, and that it started raining outside during that purple, and before I knew it, as the daylight was fading into the evening time, there was pink. When I added the second ball of yarn, I could almost not contain myself from keeping knitting, and all around me were people who were expecting to eat dinner sometime, and, it turns out, I was supposed to make that dinner. I was thinking about Jasper Johns when I looked at those little flecks of contrasting green, and watching my cat want to devour the thing back at that point where blue turned back into rose.

And how can a picture, or a picture and details about needle size and pattern, contain that?



I have decided to call it the Heraclitus scarf, because the unbearable, unavoidable pleasure of making it is the intensity of the colors and their changes. Just when you think you could never leave the multi-flaked world of that green, you are thrust into a teal blue, with the knowledge that it is about to change into a rich blue like saturated skies, and then, before you know it, pale raspberry pink. How does a person handle that much flux? Does the pleasure of this yarn come from how many things it lets you see all at the same time, or from the knowledge that if you do not surrender yourself to it every single moment that you are knitting, you will miss something gorgeous? And how is it exactly that fibers find a way to contain that richness of color that I thought was reserved for mosaic tiles and the way they combine to make an overwhelming space of light and color?


[for the curious: made with Noro Iro yarn, 2 balls, on US size 11 needles]

le Zattere

Ian Williams, over at xtcian, asked this morning, "what place do you miss terribly right now, and can you link to a picture of it?"

Here is my picture:



For those of you unfamiliar with Venice, that's a shot from the Zattere, along Dorsoduro, looking at the Giudecca at the left and out towards the shipyards off in the distance.

I was there with a group of other people interested in some of what I am interested in, and we had gone out to Dorsoduro that afternoon because it was important to us and to what we were interested in.

Witness this, from Canto LXXXIII:

San Gregorio, San Trovaso
Old Ziovan raced at seventy after his glories
and came in long last
And the family eyes stayed the same Adriatic
for three generations (San Vio)
and was, I suppose, last month the Redentore as usual

Will I ever see the Giudecca again?
or the lights
against it, Ca' Foscari, Ca' Giustinian
or the Ca', as they say, of Desdemona
or the two towers where are the cypress no more
or the boats moored off le Zattere
or the north quai of the Sensaria DAKRUON DAKRUON*

[DAKRUON in Greek (and the second time it should be in Greek letters--don't know how to do that with blogger) means "weeping."]

Ezra Pound wrote that while he was penned up in a cage at Pisa, having been arrested for treason. The poems he wrote there catalogue his losses, and his feared losses, as if they are fending off the loss of his mind or the ultimate loss. Of that same cage he wrote in the same poem:

Nor man who has passed a month in the death cells
believes in cages for beasts

The afternoon we walked around Dorsoduro, looking at San Gregorio, San Trovaso, San Vio, it was raining. In fact, as we had taken the vaporetto from San Servolo back to San Zaccharia, we had watched the storm roll in from the Lido.


While we were waiting for another vap to go over to Dorsoduro, the god of waters had opened a can of rain on our heads, and we had huddled together at the vap station, on the boat, in a walkway, waiting for it to stop. We bought umbrellas from the guys who show up with bags of them when it rains--never was 2 euros better spent (though the umbrella will soon disintegrate). Finally we gave up, and wandered together through Dorsoduro in the rain, looking for traces of the man who had lived there, had made the place into poetry.

At the end of our tour, we came to le Zattere, and the rain stopped, and that famous evening Dorsoduro light gave us an illuminated glimpse of what we came for, the Redentore as usual:


Isn't it funny how one person's nostalgia, one person's loss, can so quickly become another's?

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.

I gather the needs of Osiris.

I have been reading through dead baby jokes, and amidst many wise words and thought-provoking posts, I came across this little whimsy that, granted, dates from several months back, so I am confident that the cool kids are all done with this game already. But not me! I have just discovered it!

Goes like this: You google "[your name] needs" and see what the first ten results are. Niobe notes that "If your name is very common, you'll want to skip over those results that are just other blogs playing the same game. If your name is very unusual, you may just be out of luck."

Not me!

Here are my results, edited (like google does) to eliminate repetition:

Perhaps Isis needs individuals who are strong and comfortable in both modes, not just one, and this is Her way of making them.

Isis needs your help.

Isis needs many prayers.

Isis needs to adjust.

Isis needs a good major Pharma partner ASAP.

Isis needs to be moar metal.

Isis needs to come off the telescope for the interchange.

Isis needs theses to maintain the sessions.

Isis needs to be revamped -- and soon.

Isis needs to wear the amulet--without it she's grounded.

(and finally, because this blog goes up to 11...)

The last thing Isis needs is for more trouble to come her way.

Amen, google!

I've still had it with the motherf*$%ing snakes!

You're Ireland!

Mystical and rain-soaked, you remain mysterious to many people, and this
makes you intriguing.  You also like a good night at the pub, though many are just as
worried that you will blow up the pub as drink your beverage of choice.  You're good
with words, remarkably lucky, and know and enjoy at least fifteen ways of eating a potato.
 You really don't like snakes.


Take the Country Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid

All the new thinking is about loss.

In this it resembles all the old thinking.

What is it precisely that signals us that we are in a moment that is winding to a close? Something about the light, and the way it quietly fades in the afternoon, signalling you that finally, if you are going to keep reading, you should turn on a lamp? Or that slightly elevated spinning sound that happens before you eject a CD or a DVD? The soundtrack and credits rolling? People starting to pack up their things? Hurry up please, it's time?

And whatever that thing is, is it the thing that makes us want to hold on to some possession, forgetting that, as Crazy Aunt Purl so eloquently said today, "it's just a blanket, it's not a soul"? Do we grasp, then, at a familiar idea? Or spin a new world view to accommodate a change of heart? Or do we instead hammer away as if nothing has changed, as if this present state of things will endure always?

Even as we are aware that we are in this moment, we are already imagining its passing, desiring it, fearing it. Do we panic then because we see ourselves out there, in some unimaginable later moment, doing something we think we might do but that we cannot yet envision? Or is it because we know what we did last time, and please God let us not do that again?

What is it we want when we imagine this future us? What should we hope for? (Wait without hope, Eliot says, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.)

In these present moments, then, too often we scurry around, collecting, preserving, filing, trying to remember--staving off loss, because we imagine that this future us--wherever we are--will appreciate that, will remember us kindly, will forgive us. Or we decide that this is time we have been waiting for, to clean things out, chuck out the old xeroxes, cull our bookshelves, take a box to the used CD store, defragment all our drives (hard or otherwise). In this way, we tell ourselves, we will be unencumbered--our past will be more visible without these encrustations, and our future freer. We will have room to spread out, we say, with a slight laugh and a glance over our shoulder.

All this prevention, all this remorse--it is all a denial of desire. Or, "Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances."

What if instead I lay down the anxiety, and instead surrender? Put away the calendar, let a few things slip, cease taking pleasure at being called a model--instead just think about what each armstroke feels like, whether each hand is taking a handfull of water, whether there is rotation in the hips?

Stop planning: this is a time for relishing the feeling of today.

Run with the speed of gazelles...

You will soar as the falcon soars. . .

A while back, Americo commented, "I found your blog by accident. But I have to say, if that's you dressed up as Isis. NICE!!!"

Alas, no. That is JoAnna Cameron, in her get-up as ISIS! I guess Americo (and maybe others of you?) did not watch the Shazam and Isis Hour.

But this comment reminds me of a note that Tim sent recently, announcing the release of the entirety of The Secrets of Isis to DVD. Hot damn!

Something completely different.

Kudos to Scott, for ignoring the Foxy Asso, and going straight for the good stuff. He wrote: And now for something completely different. I stumbled across the 2nd place winner of 2006's Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest (for the worst unpublished opening sentence written in English during the year) and thought you might enjoy it. The winner was Stuart Vasepuru of Edinburgh, Scotland who won with the submission of

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"

Is being an editor as exciting as it sounds?

Well, Scott, I am glad you asked!

First I should clarify, because I think I have been playing fast and loose with clarity. Sometimes I am an editor, and that can be distinctly unexciting. I am not really the kind of editor that appears in that story, but rather the kind who takes a text but some already acceptable person and makes it more available. The project that I was bemoaning here, here, here, here, here, and here will be published next March, so they say (though they misspelled my first name, dammit).
But other times I am more like Wordy Harry (not as hard-boiled, but still wordy as hell!), and this is one of those times. So, Scott, let me reframe your question to be, "Is being a writer as exciting as it sounds?"

Here is a profile of a fantastic writing day:
4:00 a.m. Wake up, go to the bathroom, try to go back to bed, count backwards in Italian, and finally find that I am not falling asleep because there are mad thoughts churning in my brain so I might as well get up.
4:15 a.m. Turn on the computer, wipe the sleep from the eyes, and try to get adjusted to the lights. Convince the cats that I did not get up to feed them.
4:30 a.m. Read other people's blogs for a while and see if anyone other than spam generators has sent me any e-mail.
5:00 a.m. Get down to work: this requires music of course, and what is better than Bach's Art of the Fugue or the new Vivaldi choral music I bought in Venice, or maybe Beethoven's Diabelli Variations or some late string quartets. The important thing here is that the music be complicated enough to engage the mathematical part of my brain and free up the creative and analytical parts to write.
6:00 a.m. Grunt approvingly at the PP as he brings me a giant cup of coffee.
7:45 a.m. Grunt at the PP as he leaves for work.
9:30 a.m. Realize I have not had breakfast, so go into the kitchen and make some and then stuff it down my maw and hurry back to my desk.
2:30 p.m. Can I be hungry again? Scrounge some lunch.
4:30 p.m. Realize I am getting dopey, so move away from the computer and read someone else's book for a change.
5:30 p.m. Greet the PP when he gets home from work and try to come back to planet earth.

Now you will notice that that timeline says very little about writing itself. That is because that part, the actual writing part, is a mystery. There is something that can happen then (on the good days), and if I let it happen it is almost a kind of ecstasy. Athletes out there would be tempted to call it being in the zone, and I suppose in a way it is, but the only sort of: there is a sense of letting one's work-a-day self go, letting worldly concerns go, and even (ideally!) letting anxieties and insecurities go, in order to let the words come. Come on, words! And bring some thoughts with you!

In this state I might fly from working through a translation of an essay to checking up on some information, to meandering through other parts of whatever I consulted to check that information, to going off on some random tangent, to coming back to the translation, to analyzing the essay I have translated, to making a surprising connection to that random tangent from earlier, to discovering that something I had thought was not going to matter matters tremendously, to realizing that the person in one part of my chapter is not the same one as another part, to figuring out how to rectify that problem, to launching into a massive description of something I had seen a few years ago in a site-visit, and on, and on.

Writing for me is about letting my mind spread out, about letting go of whether or not I am sure that what I am trying to do is going to work and just trusting it. It is about loving what I am studying, and loving what I am saying. Gertrude Stein says that the purpose of poetry is to find a way back to the “thrill” that names hold when first learned, now that “the name of that thing of that anything is no longer anything to thrill any one except children.” I do not write poetry, but even in the world of scholarly writing, we have to find our way back to that thrill--or else who would want to read what we write? Trusting your material and trusting yourself to be thrilling--what a leap of faith!

Before I know it, my desk is stacked perilously with opened books and there are piles of other books and xeroxes all over my study. Before I know it it is 5:30 at night and I do not know where I was all day.

Sometimes when the PP comes home at 5:30, I just cannot bring myself back to the modern moment. Sometimes I look at him like I looked around the house when I was first back from Italy, and had woken up from a nap, and was utterly confused to be in my own living room. Sometimes I have to ask him to repeat what he just said because it seems like he is speaking in a foreign language, or about people I have never met, or I have no idea what he does for a living. And luckily for me, he forgives me for this, because I am not always like this and he knows how much I love to write. This is one of many reasons we call him the Patient Partner.

So to come back to the question: is being a writer as exciting as it sounds? It is, Scott, one of the most exciting things I have ever experienced.

Enjoy the Silence.

My apologies for infrequent posts of late--but they are insincere, because I fear my behavior will not change immediately.

This is only partly because I am so depressed that everyone is dropping or being kicked out of the Tour de France. (This year makes 1998 look ho-hum!)

(Side note: the PP suggested the other night that we start our own cycling team. We deliberated a bit about who might be willing to sponsor us. Thanks to the like of Predictor Lotto and Barloworld [Barloworld? Are you serious???] our thoughts went quickly to the names of French and Italian companies that use English in their names. Like "Glove Planet," a shop in Rome [and I am not making that up, though I would like to be the first American to land there], and "Boy Diffusion," a shop in Albi, France. And an advertisement on Italian TV for "BIMBO BIMBO BIMBO SHOES!" [Additional note: Bimbo in Italian = baby, which is why sometimes you see cars with stickers reading "Bimbo a borda." MAN! Did I want to buy a stack of those to bring home with me, or what??] But it was the PP who cinched it, by saying "Foxy Asso."

[photo lifted from here.]

If you have never shopped for paper towels in an Italian supermercato, then you may never have encountered the Foxy Asso, but I tell you: it rocks. And now it is our sponsor. Team Foxy Asso. Wanna join?)

But back to the reasons for infrequent posting. Mostly it is because I am writing something else, and loving it. Yes, this is what I would call "work," but damn, I love my job.

So sometime in the not too distant I'll have something to say here--and maybe here or there I'll interject something briefly, just to keep you guessing--but until then, enjoy yourselves.

Sigh.

Oh dear.

Brother Vinokourov.

A friend recently commented that she was not sure who to root for in the Tour de France, in these post-Lance years. This was after Christophe Moreau had kind of dropped back, so even her Franco-philia would not provide the answer.

I had a look at the standings and came up with this list of options:

1. Big George H., although he is not set up to win, and I don't think Levi will either, although he may do OK.
2. Vinokourov and his scraped up knees, because Astana really did put the hurt down last night, and I think he could pull it together.
3. Poor Christophe Moreau, because he is French, but he seems to be out, too.
4. Rasmussen, if he does not waste away first, because there is nothing like a.... Oh never mind.
5. The Belgian Tom Boonen, because even after his wreck yesterday he kicked butt today, AND Belgium makes great beer.
6. Alberto Contador, because even though he is Spanish he rides for Discovery.
7. Andreas Kloeden, also Astana, who is supposed to be pulling Vino, but seems to be doing well in his own right.
8. Kim Kirchen because he is from Luxembourg, for God's sake.
9. Thor Hushovd because his first name is Thor.
10. A whole bunch of Spaniards.

But then this afternoon, as the PP and I sat down to watch today's time trial, I said to him, "I think from now on I am pulling for Alexandre Vinokourov." There were good reasons for that. First, I knew that he had been hurt in an early stage, and although I had not seen the big crash (I have since, since it provides such spectacular footage), I did watch a medic in the Astana team car replacing the bandages on both his knees the other night, and that was amazing. It turns out the man is riding with 60+ stitches in his body. As someone who recently had a few stitches in her shoulder, and who was mostly sitting around afterwards as a result, I can say, that is a shitload of stitches!

Second, his team is unbelievable. Did you see Astana put the hurt on the peloton during Thursday's stage? It was a flattish stage, and apparently there were serious crosswinds, which they took serious advantage of. I think at that moment, everyone in the peloton would have been happy never to see light blue again.

Third, he has the yellowist sunglasses in all of cycling.

Then there is this photo:


It comes from Vino's own website (taken by Tim de Waele) and it gives you some idea of all his bandages. But what I noticed right away, and what secured my choice to pull for him, was that little netting he is wearing on his right arm, to protect his elbow bandage. You see, during my little love affair with the PICC line, I had to keep the whole apparatus enclosed in this little mesh sheath, so that all the piping and so forth would not get stuck on stuff or get yanked out accidentally. In other words, I felt just a little connection to this Khazakh, even though I know that there is really no comparison between my fitness level and his. (Or my leg strength. Or my speed on a bike. Or, OK I'll stop there.)
So Vinokourov is now my man. His time trial today, through the streets around Albi, was pretty amazing, too, so I think that bodes well for my choice. (And did you notice that Astana had 3 of the top 4 riders?) Besides, watching someone have such a horrible crash, keep going, ride hard with his team once he is just the tiniest bit recovered, and then pull out such a performance today at Albi? Inspirational.

Go go Vino!

Butter.

You may recall that earlier in the summer, I did a little "coaching." This consisted of about seven hour-long clinics that the coaches from my swimteam put on for kids in the city's summer league swim program. My little niche was streamlines and breaststroke pullouts. In any given clinic, the kids were split into four groups, and each group got about fifteen minutes with each coach (or in my case, "coach").

The whole experience brought me right back to my swimming youth, since it was summer-league swimming that got me hooked on the sport. Unlike a lot of Masters swimmers, I was not really a year-round age-group swimmer (except for one year, and even that was only done in service of making me faster the next summer). At the time, I was not cut out for that much swimming in my life, but I always loved it when summer came around, and for months at a time I could live at Colony Pool.

[Isis taking full advantage of training equipment, c. 1988]

The kids you see on these teams were pretty much like any group of kids. There are some of them who cannot let pass any opportunity to grab another swimmer's leg, or mess with them while they are trying to work on their streamlines. There are some who never listen and then always ask, "What are we doing?" There are others who cannot get the hang of blowing out through their nose. There are the budding Jacques Cousteaux who try on each underwater pullout to break the world record for greatest distance traveled without breathing. There are those who hang on your every word because they want to be the best streamliner evar. And there are always those who really seem to have some skills, who might have a future in the sport.

[These are probably not the two who have a future in swimming....]

But my very favorite thing about summer-league kids (and this was true back in the 1980s, too), is that for some reason, unlike their USA Swimming counterparts, they do not call butterfly "fly"--they call it "butter." "Do we get to swim butter now?" they ask. "I can't swim butter," they warn me before I have even told them what we are doing.

It's a great image, isn't it, swimming butter?

Well, true to my summer-league roots, I can now announce (picture me jumping up and down) that last night I swam some butter. Our pool is temporary back in its short-course configuration (we are hosting the summer-league championships this weekend), so practice was in 25-yard format. We had an open warm-up, so I decided that this was the time for me to try to swim a little butterfly, since I did not have an entire 50-meter lane looming before me. (And let me tell you: nothing looks shorter than a 25-yard lane when you see it for the first time after long-course season. It felt pretty good! The recovery was not a problem at all, and I think that is an indication of how much my mobility has come back. I could definitely feel my diminished strength during the pull phase of the stroke, but still.

And because he always chooses to show up for these momentous occasions, my shoulder doctor was at the pool again, this time not swimming but there with his 11-year-old daughter, who was practicing with her summer-league team for this weekend's championships.

There is nothing like a Dane.

So the PP and I just spent the morning sitting on the couch. I was mostly knitting, starting around 7:30 a.m., and finishing up about 11:50. The PP had already been sitting there for half an hour when I joined him (which means I am making progress on my jetlag--I slept until 7:30--woohoo!). Several cups of coffee, an entire sleeve, and part of another project later, I laid my needles down, exhausted. What a morning!

But the really amazing part is that the reason we were sitting on the couch was to watch the crazy people competing in the Tour de France, who for that entire time were riding their bikes. Hard. In the Alps. I.e., Michael Rasmussen has better endurance on his bike than I do knitting.

Not that that makes me feel bad or anything.

Daydreaming.

17thman posted today about his region's top ten list, and that made me wonder if the Dixie Zone had posted theirs for the SCY and SCM seasons. They had the SCY and also last year's LCM, but no SCM (too short a season?) Then I was wondering whether any of the very few times I had for this year's season might have put me into the ranking. They had! Of course, this only seems to be so because Dara Torres and Sheila Taormina were not racing in the breaststroke events. Looking at the times in those lists makes me hungry: how much time could I drop, if I can get back in shape?

It was interesting being at the meet this weekend, but not swimming. I enjoyed it--and watching my training partners race--but I was sad, too, for the obvious reasons. That energized me to have good practices on Monday night and Tuesday morning--or as good as can be expected after two weeks (of eating Italian food and drinking Italian wine...) away, after the rocky spring I had.

I am starting to scope out meets for the fall. There is one in Asheville in mid-September that I think will be my first--just to see how things are going. My coach said, "Don't expect any world record performances!" Don't worry. I am thinking I will need to enter with nonce times, a bit slower than my actual recent times, so that I do not lose every heat I swim. The goal here is to gain a little confidence back, right? Then there is a meet in Columbia in early November (date not posted yet), and one in Atlanta in mid-November, and I expect the usual mid-December meet in Atlanta. By then, one of my blog-buddies might even be racing down south--how cool is that?