Halloween!!!

I love Halloween.  I love that it's the one time a year that you get to dress up and adopt a new persona and everyone is cool with it.  I love costumes, both the super fancy expensive ones and the ones that you throw together last minute from your own closet.  I love candy.  I love trick-or-treating.  I love the history behind Halloween.  I love how the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest.  I love carving pumpkins.  I love that Halloween is the official kick off to the holiday season.  


Despite my love for Halloween, I am a lazy, uncrafty and uncreative person.  Our costumes are often thrown together last minute and borrowed.  Our house is rarely decorated.  I do, however, always get the good candy about a week in advance, then have Juan hide it from me so I can't get into it.  I could buy that cheap candy that comes in the massive economy size bags for super cheap, but that is almost always the candy that kids throw out and trade away.  So if I'm going to give away free candy, I'm going to give out the candy that people covet.  I can remember one year going trick-or-treating and this one house gave out regular sized candy bars.  And the good candy bars.  I remember thinking that they were the coolest.  Anyways...


I always want to decorate for the holidays.  I see these super cheap absolutely adorable ideas in magazines and say to myself, you could totally do that.  Then of course I want to hook Juan into the art project, who tells me that he'll be interested when we own our house.  So, we never decorate.  But this year, this year I said screw it.  Who knows when we'll be ready to buy a house, and I committed myself to building our box (which is currently a plastic grocery bag in a box) of holiday decorations.  


Orange LED lights from Target: $3 

Trick or Treat Streamer Sign from Target: $2  Pumpkin and Spider window decals from Target: $1 per package

Super cute and super cheap Halloween look for our home!  Yay!


Now, I may have upped our game with the home decorations, but we still suck at costumes.  And we're broke and costumes these days are like, $50.  And I've mentioned that I'm not crafty so making our costumes = not an option.  And since last night was our friend's annual Halloween party, we had to do some serious brainstorming to come up with a costume.  After some rummaging around in my closet, I came up with this:

The spandex pants and shorts Juan is wearing are mine.  The only thing we had to buy were the leg warmers and head bands, which I got at Target for like, $8 total.  The I <3 Bob Barker shirts, however, are recycled from years ago.  About 5 years ago we and a bunch of our friends literally slept on the sidewalk outside the CBS studio in Hollywood all night, got our tickets into the Price is Right, then went to a near by donut shop and got some breakfast and changed into our fabulous I <3 Bob Barker shirts that one in our entourage made for everyone, and then sat right behind contestant row during the show shouting out numbers and prices to people playing.  I will say this about the studio, it is TONS smaller than it looks on TV.  Like, I'm pretty sure some of my college lecture halls were twice the size of the studio we were in.  We never got called to be contestants, but we still had tons of fun and screamed ourself hoarse.  

High kick!  People gave me shit all night that I had to google 80s work out attire references, but whatever.  Our costumes may not have topped our friend Erin's naked-asian-guy-from-the-hangover costume complete with pinned on pirate-beard-muff, but we still looked awesome!

Running Post Race Day 1

I went running on Saturday for the first time after the race.  I considered it like a test run to see if I could keep it up or was as interested in it without me running toward something.  So I loaded Sappho up into the car, took my ipod with my brand new running playlist, and hit the park.  


I didn't care about times, I didn't care about how fast I went, I didn't care if I had to walk or stop, I just went to see if I liked it.  And I did.  It was nice to just be out there not worrying about whether or not I had to stop, whether or not I was going to beat my previous time, it was actually kind of nice to just be able to go.  My running playlist made it pretty awesome too.  It's got bouncy music in it that I'm really into right now and just let me sing along in my head and go.  This is the zone runners must be talking about when they feel like their troubles melt away.  I don't think my troubles melted away, I don't think I processed anything, I don't think I have new clarity on my life.  But for 30minutes or less, my mind was blank.  I wasn't obsessing about school or the mountains of homework that waited for me at home, I wasn't worried about going over the bills with my darling husband, I wasn't thinking about the grocery list I would mentally make, then forget, then have to reconstruct from scratch and put into a tangible list to take to the store, I wasn't even worried about my car being insanely filthy and full of dog hair.  For 30minutes the every day stressors of my life got left in the car while Sappho and I enjoyed a 3mile jaunt.  For 30minutes, I did nothing but sing along to tunes of Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana, Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5, Pumped Up Kicks by Foster the People and Prisoner of Society by Living End (among others) and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other.  


My homework obsession, my financial worries, my indecipherable grocery list were all hanging out waiting for me when we got back to the car.  But instead of being annoying back seat drivers desperately trying to crawl their way into my lap and take over, they politely made room for Sappho, put on their seat belts and minded their manners all the way home.   

Extended Allegra and I'm a Bad Ass

This pose, the Extended Allegra, makes me feel like a freaking bad ass.  No, it makes me feel like a mother-effing BAD ASS.  

The studio I teach at just installed it's very first skinny (smaller diameter making it so much easier to do advanced poses and holds because my tiny hands have a better grip, and brass is stickier than steel) brass pole and I took one look at it, looked at my friend Sara and declared that the Extended Allegra would be happening on that pole within the hour.  Now, I have had impossibly long legged and bendy students who have accomplished this move in the studio before.  I've always understood the concept to this pose, so I've been able to coach and walk them through it.  But the hand that's hanging on to the pole has to reach outside and around the thigh, with chest totally open and stretching downward to reach the foot around the pole (that makes sense when you look at the picture).  And that top hand, for me, on a standard pole has me gripping on with just my fingertips, so I don't really have a grip.  And my short little legs means I have to really bend and arch around the pole to reach that bottom foot.  Also making this pose on a standard pole, where I have more pole to bend around, harder (the difference between the two poles are MM but it makes a HUGE difference).  But on a skinny pole, I can bend around easier and I can keep my whole damn hand locked onto the pole, allowing me to do this:

See?  Motherfuckin bad ass.  After holding that pose for a few seconds for a camera shot, my kidney was starting to protest because that's where the pole is on my back, but anything for a good picture of this bad boy.  It's basically a basket pose parallel to the floor in mid air, with the top leg extended and pointed and only holding on with one hand and your waist.  

Thanks to my friend Sara who captured this awesome awesomeness in action, because have I mentioned how bad ass this pose is?  Because it is.  Totally bad ass.  

Movies In Review

So this first movie, Black Swan, I actually saw in theaters when it came out.  

I'm pretty sure I didn't blink the entire time though.  I know for sure I did not blink the last 30minutes of the movie.  It's so fucked up.  I mean, it's a great movie.  But it's a massive mind-fuck.  So naturally I really enjoyed it.  I really love Natalie Portman as an actress, I think she's phenomenal.  I love movies about dance (Save the Last Dance, Center Stage, love, love, LOVE), there's just something about them and I can't help myself but love them.  It might have something to do with my love for dance as a whole, but no matter how much the quality of the acting blows, I just love almost all dance movies.  I also really love that Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis did some major training so that they could do as much of the dancing themselves.  It makes me respect them as actors.  I also really love how they touch on all the major things that dancers freak out over: rashes, broken toe nails (or just toes), career ruining injuries, obsession over the Prima Ballerina.  Not to mention the cultural dynamic of the ballet world, the little girl/little princess aspect of it, this idea that these dancers are little girls (granted most professional ballerinas are young - mid 20s is old for a ballerina), I loved it all.  Dance world can be just as nasty as the newly publicized pageant world.  But most of all what I love about this movie, is this concept of "method dancing."  I don't mean the method of dancing, I mean method dancing in the same context as method acting, where the actor completely assumes the persona of their character, they become their character, to be able to portray them authentically and genuinely.  This movie touches on a concept of a dancer doing the same thing in her role in a ballet.  I can't talk more about it without being a huge spoiler, so I'll leave it at that.  But definitely watch it.  Watch it twice actually.  The first time you'll be recovering from the massive mind-fuck, the second time around you'll actually be able to enjoy it because you'll be able to blink.  Grade: A+


Bridesmaids.  

Oh man.  Juan bought this movie for me as an anniversary gift.  He also bought me peanut M&Ms (my favorite), Dumbo in HD, and the best damn card ever.  Not going to lie, I had no intention of seeing this movie.  But then people I know went and saw it, and they said it's basically the chick version of The Hangover.  I still wasn't totally sure, it seemed like a massive chick flick that was doomed to fail in my eyes.  After all, The Hangover casts a seriously big shadow to come out from behind in terms of hilarity.  But it has Kristin Wiig in it, who is pretty damn funny.  She used to do SNL stuff, she's also Maggie Mayhem in Whip It (love that movie, makes me want to do roller derby).  Oh. My. God.  I damn near peed myself a couple of times.  This movie seriously delivered.  There's one scene, dammit, I want to tell you so badly but it will spoil it.  Let's just say there was dress trying, and food poisoning, and the line "It's coming out of me like lava!" all in once scene.  And much like The Hangover with the inappropriately funny and graphic pictures during the credits, this movie also has an inappropriately funny clip at the beginning of the credits.  It had my hands flapping and me laughing so hard it was silent and squeaking out, "Oh my god!" over and over again for a good 3minutes.  Grade: A+

Blast to the Past!

It's actually quite creepy that Jil posted today about music from her past, because it's literally on my to do list to blog about music from my past today.  No joke.  I was listening to my itunes on my laptop yesterday while desperately trying to wade through the mountains of homework I have, and a bunch of old songs threw me into a state of nostalgia.  I even posted on my sister's facebook about it.  I don't know why I'm quite so surprised.  This happens often: I'll be thinking about something, and then Jil will blog about it.  But whatever.  She's a Sagittarius, I'm a Gemini, this means that we're like, astrological BFFs.  Anyways...


As previously mentioned, I was hacking through my jungle of homework and was listening to some tunes when a bunch of songs started to play in a row that just touched my little heart.  My sister and I had mixes.  Yup, mixes.  She would burn CDs called, "Aud and Kat Mix #__" (I think there are 5 total??) compiled of a bunch of different music for us to listen to in her car.  We even have a pre-dance mix that we would listen to on our way to our high school mixers.  So naturally, my sister and I have songs (oddly enough, my husband and I don't have an "our song" but I have like, 4 with Aud).  


First song that started the kick down memory lane, "Where My Girls At" by 702.  

Now we never figured out what the red rooster costumes are, but we know all the words, and we know all the moves.  This song even played at my wedding and we sprinted to the middle of the dance floor and tore it up while everyone else just stared in weirded out awe.  


Next on the itunes list, right after the 702 number came on, was "Independent Woman" by Destiny's Child.  

The first remade Charlie's Angels movie came out in 2000 (holy hell that's almost 12 years ago...) and I remember my sister and I watching it together and then going freaking bizerk whenever the song would come on.  I miss Destiny's Child, I think I still have one of their albums buried deep down in a box somewhere where CDs are stored (kids today aren't going to know what CDs are, they're going to become the new 8track.  The school that I'm interning at has a school camera that still uses floppy discs.  Kids today definitely don't know what those are).  


Next up, "I Wanna Be Bad" by Willa Ford.  

Oh. My. God.  "You make that look so good.  I've got things on my mind, I never thought I would.  I wanna be bad.  You make that feel so good.  I'm losing all my cool.  I'm about to break all the rules."  I remember feeling so rebellious for LOVING this song.  And I totally still know all the words.  I haven't heard this song in probably close to a decade, but I still know all the words.  


"Forgot About Dre" by Dr Dre and Eminem.  

I know.  It's a bit of a shift from all the pop crap up top, but we know all the words to this fucking song.  "And when the cops came to and me and Dre stood next to a burnt down house, with a can full of gas and hand full of matches and still weren't found out."  Word.  In fact, the first CD I bought that had the Parental Advisory stamp on it, was the Marshall Mathers LP and my favorite song off of that album is "I Am."  


This one, this one I'm almost embarrassed that Aud and I used to belt out at the top of our lungs while in the car.  Warning, it is explicit and graphic.  "Fantasy" by Ludacris.

You get the idea.  It's just so dirty.  And yeah, when this came on I was still able to sing along.  


And lastly, at least for today's post, "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger.  

To be perfectly honest, I think the big pull, for me at least, to this song is that there is a line in it that goes, "I wanna pierce my tongue it doesn't hurt it feels fine."  I got my tongue pierced when I was 15 (omg I've had this stud for almost a decade!!!), and I can say first hand that it did not hurt.  I don't know about it "feeling fine" but it didn't hurt.  Bled like a mother, for days, though.  


As you can see we had quite the eclectic taste in music growing up.  I haven't listened to these songs in ages, yet I still know all the words and it takes me right back to the passenger seat of my sister's car.  It makes me want to dig up the N'Sync No Strings Attached album and see just how many of those songs I can still remember.  

RACE DAY OFFICIAL TIMES!

Apparently I underestimated when they would have race times posted.  They are up now!  Here is where Juanito and I fell in the grand scheme of things (number, official time, name, city, division, division placement, gender/age, pace):

273     33:43.3    Celeste Shenk       Tucson              F30-34    24     F30   10:51.3

274     33:46.1    Kathrine Muto       Tucson              F19-24    16     F24   10:52.1

275     33:50.0    Chelsea Yager       Tucson              F30-34    25     F32   10:53.4

276     33:50.2    Sharon Soloway      Tucson              F35-39    11     F39   10:53.5

277     33:50.4    Adrian Nerini       Phoenix             M01-11     8     M09   10:53.5

278     33:50.8    Vince Wong          Oro Valley          M40-44    18     M40   10:53.6

279     33:51.4    Sirisha Jain        Tucson              F30-34    26     F33   10:53.8

280     33:51.4    Sheryl Felde        Tucson              F50-54     5     F51   10:53.8

281     33:51.4    Sue Abramson        Tucson              F45-49     5     F48   10:53.8

282     33:53.6    Isabel Gomez        Vail                F40-44    13     F41   10:54.6

283     33:54.2    Jaclyn Gerr         Tucson              F25-29    21     F28   10:54.7

284     33:54.6    Jeremy Shipley      Tucson              M25-29    20     M28   10:54.9

285     33:56.0    Howard Zhao         Tucson              M25-29    21     M29   10:55.3

286     33:57.8    Juan Ibarra         Tucson              M25-29    22     M28   10:55.9

First thought, their times are about 11-15 seconds slower than what we clocked ourselves at.  Juan says when he crossed the finish line the clock said 33:46, which is my official time, and his official time is 33:57.  

Second thought, I'm still lumped with the 19 year olds, which makes me sad.  Though when Juan and I checked the division for next year, because I will be in a new division next year, the fastest chick still came in at something ridiculous like, 19minutes or some shit like that.  

Third thought, I placed 16th in my division out of something like, 40 people.  That's good, right?

Fourth thought, first place goes to a 31year old guy who did it in 17:32 which means he paced at 5:35 minute miles.  Asshole.

Fifth stream of thoughts: Donna finished 7th in her division, Sara finished 14th in her division, Brian finished 24th in his division, and Juan finished 22 in his division.  Jen finished 60th in her division, but that's because she was pushing a stroller holding precious cargo through slippery hay and loose sandy dirt, and she walked.  All in all, we rock.  

Race Day/5year Anniversary Day

First things first, today is the hubby's and my day that marks 5years of victory in our relationship.  We rock.  Period.  


Second, today was race day.  We still rock.  Period.


So I had this song stuck in my head the entire race, so hit play and read along for full effect (affect?  whatever):

We met up with Jen and Brian, their daughter Catelyn, Donna and Sara for the big race day.  Some people, who will remain nameless, totally crapped out on us last minute.  One hiding behind homework (really, how much homework did you plan on getting done between 6 and 9am?) the other was run ragged by the demands of his job and his 2 daughters.  My shoes are filthy, my ankles need lots of stretching, and I had to change shirts before we went to breakfast because I got that sweaty.  


Pre race photos:

The terrain this year was harder than last year.  Last year it was colder, and wetter, but that meant the ground was packed down and there was no loose dirt.  The course last year also went through a different part of the farm, which I think was an easier than this year, if for nothing else because I'm pretty sure last year we had an actual path to run on and didn't have to dodge super sharp and dry hay poking up from the ground.  This year it was warmer, the ground was dryer, which meant LOTS of loose sandy dirt to trip through, and the grass and hay that was covering the path was slick and I slipped a bunch.  Also, the "path" that we had was really just the tractor tires smashing down some hay and grass and we ran in that.  Oh, and last year, the course was 3.1miles, a true 5k, this year, it was 3.35miles, not a true 5k.  


The path/tractor tire holes, was really hard to run in.  I had to keep my eyes on the ground the entire time, and I still rolled my ankles a bunch in the loose sandy dirt or from slipping on the slick hay.  And keeping my eyes down and not out in front of me, made me feel like I wasn't going anywhere; I had no concept of where I was, and when I could look up, all I saw was more path after more path.  And because the "path" that we had was made by tractor tires, it wasn't flat, it was u shaped, just like a tire imprint.  Which meant that we were running with our ankles turned slightly outward the entire time.  And passing, passing people required high knee running through dry pokey hay, or a swan leap into the other tractor tire path.  This also meant that we basically had to run single file, which meant no talking to Juan or Sara or Brian (Jen was walking with the baby) or anyone else.  And we all know that I LOVE to talk and run.  So no talking, and no music, and no Sappho = very sad Kat.  We ultimately decided to not bring Sappho because Juan was really nervous about having her in a big crowd like that, which would have been a challenge, no doubt.  But next year, she's coming.  Next year we're going dressed up in 80s work out gear (I totally forgot that they do costume contests, and you can run in your costume.  Awesome) and I am going to mangineer my portable ipod speakers to her so that we can run listening to 80s music.  Fab.  


Maybe I'm being a sissy.  Before we even hit the 1mile marker, a guy up ahead of us yelled, "move to the right!  Faster runners are coming back!"  And sure enough, a bunch of tall, gangly men were already coming back toward us to loop around and finish the last half of the race.  Clearly the terrain wasn't putting a cramp in their 5minute miles.  Bastards.  


I paced myself behind Juan, because his natural gait is a bit faster than mine, and I figured, what have I got to lose?  There were a couple times though where I was hurting so bad that I called up to him and was like, "Oh my god I'm going to die" and then he would give me some words of encouragement, usually along the lines of, "Yeah me too!" and then we pushed through it together.  Every now and then we would turn a corner on a loop (there were like, a fitty million of them) and we would hear Brian exclaim, "Another one??!  Goddamn!"


As we made our second to last loop, we passed the announcer and the table area, and I thought we were heading toward the finish, so I started to pick up my pace.  Thank god for Juan because he grabbed me and was like, "No!  We have another loop!"  Thanks baby.  


After that loop, it was up a loose sandy dirty hill, by a wash, up another loose sandy dirt hill, down a dirt path (at this point we've passed the 3mile marker and I'm yelling, "This is the longest .1mile EVER!") and then through the maze.  I don't know what happened, but as soon as we hit the maze, my body was like, "you can go faster."  And so I did.  A lot faster.  About half way through the maze, I looked behind me and thought Juan was right on my tail, but I couldn't see him, thought about slowing down, especially since I couldn't hear the announcer and had no idea how much farther I would have to go, and then my body was like, "Bitch you can go even faster!"  And so I did.  I passed everyone in front of me from the maze to the finish line.  I freaking flew.  As soon as I was out of the maze and had the last 50yards to the finish line, my body was like, "Run bitch RUN!" And I sprinted, sprinted so fast I passed everyone in front of me.  That never happens.  I heard people watching say, "Look at her go!"  And it just kicked me into high gear.  Sure I thought I was going to vomit as soon as I crossed the finish line, but I freaking flew that last bit.  


The official times haven't been posted yet.  But when I looked at the clock as I crossed it said 33and change.  At first I was really upset, because I have been running 3miles in 29minutes.  Then Juan crossed, then Sara crossed, and Sara and her fancy GPS thing on her phone told me that the track was actually 3.35miles.  After I made Juan do the math, he said that meant we held 10minute miles, which makes me happy.  That was really all I was hoping for.  


As we stretched out, Juan asked me, "So, what happened to 'I'm not in this race for time, I'm in it for family?'  You totally left me."  All I could tell him was that my body totally took over and I just became a competitive machine.  Sorry babe, I do love you lots.