Bloomsday 2016

Previous Bloomsdays: 2013, 2014, 2015. 

Through three years of running Bloomsday, I've tried to talk my parents into doing it too (walking). My dad used to run Bloomsday (20-ish years ago), but doesn't run anymore. My mom has never done running, though she does walk a lot for exercise, but the longest she'd walked was the 5k Turkey Trot I convinced them to do last Thanksgiving. Finally I told them that if I was pregnant at the time for it this year, I'd walk it with them. 

I flew in Saturday (the day before the race), we grabbed a quick lunch then checked into our hotel (just a 10-minute walk across the river from the expo center and race start). Next we headed to the expo to get our race bibs. There was a mix up with my mom's bib, which we discovered later, so we ended up having to go back the next morning (they do packet pickup only for out-of-towners the day of the race - which, even though we were already in town before that, we did qualify for). 

That meant we were up a bit early, even though we were starting in the second to last wave. We went back to the expo, got my mom's correct bib, used the real plumbing bathrooms while we were there, then headed to the start line. Though it didn't get too hot by the time we were done with the race, it was getting warmed up pretty quickly, and we were starting to ditch layers while waiting. We got right in the porta potty line by our corral, then starting moving towards the start line, officially beginning around 10:15.

I'd been doing some training walks in the 17:00 - 18:00 mile range, and my parents said they'd been doing some in the 18:00 - 19:00, so I figured we'd end up around there, maybe slowing some on Doomsday hill. Whenever I looked at my watch, it seemed like the instant pace was much slower than that (22:00 - 23:00 or so), and the average got skewed (for actual walking pace) due to a long wait in a porta potty line in mile 2, so in the end I was surprised that our actual mile splits were closer to our goal than I realized. 

Approaching Doomsday Hill

I kept trying to be encouraging and get my parents moving  faster - my competitive side definitely made me a little frustrated, although I tried to just enjoy the time. There was lots of "come on, you can keep up with the pregnant lady", and "let's try to catch up with the grandma pushing the double stroller". I'm not sure my mom entirely appreciated my motivational methods...

Despite my mom feeling some pain in her knee (though her feet, which had been giving some trouble during training, held up fine), we kept up a pretty good time overall, ending with an official time of 2:45:10 and 22:08 pace. That included a long-ish wait for a porta potty at one point (not for the pregnant lady, I might add!), so my garmin shows moving time of 2:33:51 and moving pace of 20:01. I really wanted to come in at under a 20:00 pace, so we got close to that!

Still at least able to smile long enough for a photo, in the last mile.

Mile splits:
1 - 20:09 (a bit congested at the start, so hard to move as fast as we wanted to)
2 - 28:25 (includes about 10 minutes stopped, so awesome pace while moving)
3 - 18:57
4 - 19:42
5 - 19:45 
6 - 21:33 (Doomsday Hill starts at the end of mile 5 and into mile 6 - didn't slow down much!)
7 - 20:56
7.46 - 23:04 (15:31 time for .69 per my garmin)

We were all glad to be finished, and by the next day my mom was sort of able to say she was glad she'd done it (and her knee was feeling much better, no permanent damage as she'd feared during the event, and as I'd told her during the event would be the case). For next year, though, I've given her the out of asking her if she'll watch the baby while I run the race. 

Wedding Crap: Why Even Get Married?

(See introduction and disclaimer to this series here, and other posts in the series here.)

I think this is the conclusion to the series. There's a new page with all of the posts listed here. 

What is the tradition? 

I'm really talking about two separate things here: the getting married and the having a wedding.

A marriage is a legal, religious, or cultural agreement that gives the parties certain familial rights. The wedding is the act of creating a marriage, through a - often religious - ceremony and cultural traditions. A wedding is generally a community event, perhaps seen as a blessing or support of the marriage being formed. 

What is the origin of the tradition?

In various forms and contexts, it's a tradition as old as humankind. Marriage has historically been used to form alliances between groups and countries. It built economic and business partnerships. It creates (intended) stability between partners and for any children resulting from the marriage.

The wedding as the formation of a marriage seems like any other cultural ceremonial traditions - it's a rite of passage, a spiritual recognition, a community celebration. 

Why do people still follow it?

Even though long-term non-married partnerships/cohabitation is becoming more accepted, there can still (especially in certain subcultures) be a stigma against not being married. Some may view even a committed partnership as less stable than an actual marriage (because obviously the legal paperwork will make the relationship itself work out, always!). 

There are a variety of legal benefits from being married, such as rights to be next of kin for inheritance or medical care, joint ownership of property, health insurance, and lower taxes (there is such a thing as the "marriage penalty", but the with current US tax laws, depending on your type and relative levels of income, you're very likely to come out ahead). There are ways to create legal contracts that  give you most of the same benefits, but in a marriage they're all consolidated into a nice, simple one-page contract.

Weddings are done because they're fun, and people want to celebrate this (ostensibly) huge life change with their family and friends. 

Why is that crap? 

Weddings are crap because in our middle class society, we don't do big events like that. It's most people's one  chance to show off and be part of a huge celebration like that. They see the rich throwing huge weddings and think it's a wedding thing, so it's accessible - when really it's a rich people's party thing. It's also a bit odd when it's not a huge step, not a rite of passage - because you've already long since committed to each other, formed a household, and perhaps even had children. So there's no significant change happening at the wedding. 

The other benefits, legal and perceived stability, are just that - perceived, and arbitrary. Romantic attachments, realistically, are not exactly known for being stable. Why in the world do we think lust is the best way to form the connection with the other parent of our children? Many people have the most stable relationship in their life with someone other than a romantic partner - parent, sibling, friend. Can a romantic attachment be steady through the years? Of course, many people's spouse are their closest friend. But it's far from universal - if anything, I'd say that's the exception that proves the rule.

You also don't need a legal contract to have a lifelong relationship. Many friends are friends forever - simply by choice and trust. They don't need the government involved in telling them how to treat each other or how to support each other. A commitment might be beneficial to a child; a marriage is not necessary for that commitment.

What am I doing with this tradition?

Well, we got married, of course. If I could do the wedding over again, I wouldn't. I would use the same money to fly our immediate family to Colorado and do a self-officiating ceremony. While the wedding was fun, and it was nice to see all of our loved ones in one place - it's really fucking weird to throw a party for everyone, for all of your various groups. My work friends, my college friends, and my cousins, were all acquired in my life at different times for different reasons, and just the fact that they all know me is not necessarily reason for them to socialize together. I'd rather have made it about just the two of us and our immediate family, than our entire circles.

Being legally married, versus just committing ourselves to each other, was important to me for a few reasons. It's easier than contracting for the same benefits separately. It appeases my anxious nature to have things in writing and formally agreed upon. It was also important to my family, who sees it as an important distinction in life and a statement about the relationship - I might not agree, but it makes familial relationships significantly easier to have it be "official" to them. 

All else being equal, it made sense to take advantage of the established understanding of what a "marriage" is. It says something to my family about what we are, it says something to society about what we are. Which I don't always see as a positive - does society need to know what our relationship is? Is it anyone's business? Not really. While I don't regret being married, there are definitely ways in which getting married was simply the path of least resistance. 

How did/will you handle this tradition?

I would love to have a lively debate and conversation in the comments! Please join in!

Dissenting opinions (from the post itself or other commenters) are welcome, but I reserve the right to delete any comments that personally attack me or any other commenter.

Tacoma City Turkey Trot 5k 2015

For every Thanksgiving since college, including the past five years since I've been running, I've not only been somewhere that's not home, but schedules have worked out that I've been traveling wherever that is on Thursday morning. I've always wanted to do a Turkey Trot Thanksgiving morning, but never been able to.

Finally, this year it worked out to travel to Tacoma (where we were all convening, and where my sister and aunt live) on Wednesday, leaving Thursday morning totally open. But the holiday is about being with family... so I talked my immediate family into doing a turkey trot, too! (My parents and sister - Abe's done plenty of races with me, so he went to explore to new-to-him disc golf courses instead.)

My dad used to run (and did the occasional race), but this was my mom's and sister's first race ever! They all walked; when I first talked to my mom about it I told her I'd walk with her, but since she had others to walk with her I went ahead and ran.

My parents did packet pickup for all of us Wednesday afternoon, since Abe and I got in a little later in the evening, but it sounds like it went smoothly. There were a few minor organization issues the day of: my parents had been told at packet pickup that the Fleet Feet store would be open for people to hang out in before the race, and it wasn't (at least when we went by about 45 minutes before the race start time). The people manning tables for day-of pickup seemed to be willy nilly trying to hand out bags to anyone walking by, rather than having some system to give them to people who were actually getting their bibs. The race also started about 10 minutes late, with no announcement that was audible at the back of the lineup as to why or when we would actually start. 

Things went fine once we got going, though. It was a small-ish race, just over a thousand people, so there weren't waves or corrals, but people seeded themselves decently and it was easy to get settled into a nice pace as people spread out. There were friendly volunteers at every turn directing runners and helping traffic. 

The Tacoma City Turkey Trot takes place in the North End of Tacoma, the course being a loop that starts in a small shopping area (by the host running store), and mostly goes through residential areas with pretty older homes. While cautioned to arrive at least an hour before the 9 am start to ensure close parking, we go there closer to 8:20, and quickly found a spot two blocks away; as we walked to the start we also saw more spaces even closer, including in the Safeway lots in the block behind the start. 

It was definitely chilly (right around freezing) at the start; more of a problem for running than walking (e.g., more discrepancy between number of layers needed for before and during), but we were able to go across the street a Starbucks to stay inside for a bit. We headed over the start line about 10 til 9, and then waited about 20 minutes for the race to actually start. 

I was nearer the back of the pack with my parents, but started running and didn't have to do much weaving once people spread out. Since I haven't been doing any real training since the marathon, plus have enough to worry about in trying to get pregnant without adding additional stressors like a PR-effort race (TMI: knew I was on the verge of ovulating, so didn't want to delay it if it hadn't happened yet; had I been earlier in my cycle I might have tried to see what I was currently capable of), I wasn't going all out, but just putting forth a solid, tempo, hard but not breathing that hard, kind of effort.

Mile splits: 11:26, 11:11, 10:41, 8:35

For only being a slightly hard effort, I'm pretty happy with my time, official of 34:08. Of course, as I got close to the end and saw I was just over an 11:00 average, I had to give it a final kick to bring it down. :)

Once I crossed the finish line, I ran back about a half mile on the course to see the rest of my family. My sister ended up finishing in a bit under an hour, and our parents in about 1:03. At the beginning of the race, since they started near the back and were walking, at one point they realized they were literally last - but that motivated them to walk faster! They ended up with more than 20 people finishing after them, but I also witnessed plenty of walkers cutting the course at the corner where I was watching (it was sort of easy to do accidentally, if you weren't paying attention, but obviously the volunteer there wasn't doing a great job), so they probably actually beat at least 30 or 40. 

Once I saw my parents, I ran back to the finish line, arriving just in time to hear my sister's name being announced, and then wait a few minutes for the parents. Despite the cold, my mom had fun (she routinely walks 45-ish minutes several times a week for exercise, so this was a little bit of a stretch in terms of distance/duration but not tons), and said this would be a fun Thanksgiving tradition to keep up! 

Despite the delayed start and minor disorganization, I enjoyed the race, and would definitely do it again on years when our Thanksgiving is in Tacoma. The course seems like it would be relatively PR-friendly if you were trying, some slight inclines and maybe more turns than ideal but mostly pretty flat. Parking really isn't that hard to come by, and it's near a Starbucks and a Safeway (in case you need anything last minute for Thanksgiving dinner!) After the race there were at least bananas and water bottles (wasn't paying much attention if there was more, it was basic but sufficient, I think); but there wasn't any water on the course - even though the weather was cold, with walkers being out there for over an hour I think one water stop would be nice. The shirt is cute. It's a good number of people - the course didn't feel crowded after the first couple minutes, but even nearer the end where my parents were they weren't so spread out that you couldn't see other people either. It was very friendly to all abilities, with plenty of walkers and also lots of speedy finishers.

Toastmasters Speech: Strong is the New Healthy

The fifth speech in the first Toastmasters manual is called "your body speaks", used to focus on body movements, gestures, eye contact, and such. I was afraid the topic I chose might be taking that "you body" concept a bit too literally, but it's what I was able to come up with on short notice right after tax season for my scheduled date! I don't think I did a great job with the actual body movement focus, but liked where my topic ended up and how I presented in other aspects.

Title: Strong is the New Healthy

We're finally on the other of tax season; a lot of things get put on hold for those few months each year. It’s only temporary, and it’s a lot of work and stress, but one nice thing is that it’s sort of a natural break to make a fresh start, to evaluate goals, and modify my routines to meet those goals. I met up with my mom last weekend for a girls weekend to celebrate the end of tax season, and in our talks, realized we have a goal in common, right now, that I’m trying to not just incorporate more regularly into my life, but nag her into incorporating in her: weightlifting.

I’ve talked about my running and triathlon before - I participate in and train for races because I really do enjoy it, especially the running. Though it started as more of a means to an end, just a way to do cardio exercise in a planned way, but I’ve grown to truly enjoy it, the act itself and the feeling of accomplishment in meeting goals. It’s takes up a huge amount of my time, but it’s not just exercise, it’s a hobby, my biggest hobby. Now, enjoying something like running, as I said, gets in my cardio exercise, and it doesn’t feel like “exercise”.

My mom, also, does tons of walking and aerobic dance videos, and things like that for aerobic cardio fitness. But neither of us do much strength training. I think there are a lot of obstacles to weight training, especially for women. It’s not really encouraged in the same way other sports are, especially in terms of being shown as accessible.

Not that running wasn’t kind of scary when it was unknown, but it’s a pretty visible activity, in general. Not so much weight lifting. There’s power lifting, something like that is in the olympics. In PE in high school, there was some time spent in the weight room, but it was all about maxing out on squats and bench presses, and you needed a spotter, and maybe even a weight belt. Not really something that makes it sound like I can just pick it up in my basement a few times a week. It’s also boring.

Getting past the “maxing out” and such that I don’t pay any attention do, when I have tried some programs, and it’s so slow moving - literally and figuratively. You do a set, and then you wait, for a minute, before moving on to another set. If I run for 30 minutes, I’m moving, enjoying, feeling alive for the whole 30 minutes. Even if you’re doing intervals, faster intervals with recovery in between, you’re still jogging, or at least walking on the in between.

In weight lifting, you spend half of the “workout” just sitting and waiting! But, it’s something I need to do, for a variety of reasons. It will help my running. I’ve only been doing it sporadically over the past few months, but I also set a half marathon PR by over a minute per mile, and I think that’s a big part of it.

 Even without running - for example, for my mom - it’s part of being healthy. Cardio mainly works one muscle - your heart. Which is important, sure. And it works other muscles - running does build up your legs. But whole body strength training is important for life. I may only be 30, but I already feel aches and pains and twinges from getting old. I don’t want my body to start getting weaker as I get older. My mom can’t even lift her suitcase for a 3 day trip. I don’t want to be in that position in another 30 years. I don’t want her to be in that position right now, either. I’ve used the lure of future grandchildren as motivation - she wants to be able to easily lift and carry a baby, right? 

 Both my mom and I are trying to lose weight, too - and though cardio burns more calories while you’re doing it, strength training builds muscle, which means you burn more calories all the time. It’s an investment that can really pay off, even if it’s harder to see in the moment. 

So if we know we should do it, what’s the best way? I actually listened to a Freakonomics podcast recently on a run, about what’s the best type of exercise in general, and the answer applies to the best kind of strength training, too: the best method is the one that you’ll stick with. 

For me, that means a program that progresses and makes it easy to set and reach goals. I’m currently using the “new rules of lifting for women” book, which has 7 phases, just two workouts within each phase that you repeat for a number of weeks, so you get to know the workouts, feel competent at them, and have a clear basis for comparison to show improvement. For my mom, what’s most important is having clear guidance and making it more fun - so videos are her thing. A DVD with a peppy host giving instructions and fun music in the background is what she knows will keep her going. 

Whatever method it takes, I know this is a really important aspect of being healthy to fit into our lives. As much as they talk nowadays about just fitting in “activity” into our daily lives, much of that activity is easier if we’re stronger, and that’s what will keep us in able to continue being active, in whatever other ways we enjoy. It’s not just, as they say, that “strong is the new skinny” - strong is the new healthy, and something I think everyone should consider making a priority.

Family Food Traditions

Tonight we had a pre-Thanksgiving meal with Abe's dad and his girlfriend (we have similar dinner plans with his mom for Monday), as we're spending Thanksgiving day with my family. (Our plan is alternate - each side gets one of the major holidays - Thanksgiving and Christmas - each year, and alternate who gets which. His parents are divorced, but fortunately both live in the area, actually both within a 5-mile radius of us, so it's not difficult to share between them, the way it is with my family and relatives spread throughout Washington state.)

So that means his family gets Christmas, and we were discussing some details of Christmas day while at their house tonight. Abe asked what we should bring, and I piped up that I'd bring Nanaimo bars. Though my family has a handful of cookies that we tend to have for Christmas, Nanaimo bars are an absolute MUST! I thought it'd be fun to try to bring that in to my in-laws traditions.

Along with today's NaBloPoMo prompt, this got me thinking about other holiday food traditions. Since I've been vegetarian since high school, the turkey centerpiece doesn't hold much meaning for me (I ate it previously, but it wasn't ever one of my favorite things). I also have a thing with textures, especially anything along the mushy spectrum, so I've also not been a fan of stuffing. Holiday meals, to me, mostly mean three things: rolls, mashed potatoes, and desserts. For Thanksgiving, that dessert is obviously pumpkin pie (the filling's fine, but crust combined with whipped cream is amazing!* For Christmas, it's all about the cookies. Nanaimo bars, hello dollies, spritz, meringues. 

*FYI, my FIL's girlfriend is gluten-free, and the pumpkin pie at tonight pre-Thanksgiving dinner included a premade gluten-free crust from Whole Foods - if I hadn't known it was gluten-free because everyone at the table was eating it, I never would have guessed. If you need a GF crust, I highly recommend it.

Almost more important to me for Thanksgiving is the day after, at least when we're with my mom's side of the family: we get pizza on the Friday after. One year I had a big disappointment, as I spend Thanksgiving with an ex's family, and we went up to join my side the next day. I'd told him about the traditional pizza, and we were both looking forward to it. Our dismay, my family was trying to be nice and held a second Thanksgiving-type dinner for us instead! I think that's probably the most disappointed I've ever been at a holiday meal.

What would be the biggest food disappointment for you on a holiday?

Family Traditions: Games

The biggest aspect of our wedding (besides the actual getting married part) - which I just now realized I barely alluded to in the recap post - was the games. There were two tables piled with games to choose from, and that's what the activity was during the reception. It was pretty awesome to see everyone get involved in some game or other!

Board/card games has been a staple of entertaining for me as an adult, but it goes back much further than that. As far as I can remember, my extended family has played games at get togethers. 

It started on my dad's side - pinochle was often played by the older generations, but everyone joined in other games. There are numerous other card games we like, and word games are also brought out a lot. Even when my grandma was approaching 90 and having memory issues, she could still kick all our asses at Scrabble. 

My mom's side didn't play games as much, but she had to learn that culture to join in the family. She's one that tends to get caught up in conversation and lose track of the game, but she's improved over time. She can be a bit of a sore winner, becoming ecstatic the few times she's won Clue! (We all have pretty complex note-taking systems for that one.)

My sister and I have tried to expand the game playing, and it's now tradition on our mom's side to play Boggle - particularly at Thanksgiving, though other games have had a harder time taking hold. 

Fortunately, Abe is well on board for continuing the tradition with our family. :) He also has a pinochle custom in his family, but we're working on introducing other games as well. I hope sitting around the dining room table playing Trivial Pursuit with our children will be a happy memory to come in the future as it has been in our past.

New & Old Traditions

This year began the compromise of sharing holidays between my family and Abe's. What we're aiming to do is have Thanksgiving day with one family and Christmas day with the other one year, and flip which family gets the actual day the next year. 

We spent Thanksgiving at his grandparents' house, in a little town east of Eugene. To both contribute to the meal and bring in a little of my own family, I brought Nanaimo bars. Though more of a Christmas, than Thanksgiving, treat, it's still always worth sharing. (I'll share the recipe on here soon!) They had turkey and ham, but also a tofurkey - and I wasn't the only one eating it! Although I think I'm the only actual vegetarian in the group, Abe and many of his family members are flexitarians and are fairly infrequent with their meat-eating. 

After dinner, the boy cousins were sent off to play disc golf, while I learned how to play pinochle with his mom, sister, and aunt. My dad's side of my family used to play this, though it's been a while (I don't think anyone in my generation ever learned it). I think I now mostly get the how, but not necessarily the why - i.e., what the different melds are and how they're scored. It was nice to spend an entire day with his family. Since they live in the area, when we do see them it's just for a couple hours for a meal. Even though my parents live six hours away, Abe has gotten to know them better than I have his, since when we see them it's for an entire weekend or a few days at a time.

Friday I got to participate in my own family's traditional sort-of-Black Friday shopping. None of us like crowds, nor are we typically into the big-ticket items that are on sale, so we avoid the standard places. Goodwill is always on the itinerary, and we also went to Powell's. We considered going to Old Navy because it was in the same shopping complex. We only got one foot inside the door, saw the line for check-out of about 40 or 50 people (not exaggerating - and this wasn't early in the day, it was probably 4 pm by this point), and immediately walked back out. 

While we were together, we planned out a new thing for my dad's side of the family, with whom we'll be spending Christmas day this year. With the youngest cousin now out of college and married, there aren't currently any kids that create any obligation for gifts, and the number of relatives is increasing. We decided to draw names: luckily this year there are 5 in each immediate family, so we each drew one of them to give to, and one of each of us for them to give to. 

Saturday, while my parents were still in town, we started introducing the future-future-in-laws. We had lunch with my parents and sister and his mom and sister. Sunday continued the family theme as I attended a concert that Abe and his sister were in. They're part of a group of quartets that dresses in Dickens-era costumes and does caroling performances around the area.

A Margaret By Any Other Name

NaBloPoMo prompt: If you had to switch your first name, what name would you choose and why?

There are three times in my life when I've had to consider what one's name means to one's identity.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

My parents overthought the naming process initially. They decided that we needed to have both a "kid name" and an "adult name". Thus, my legal name is Margaret, but my parents always - and only - called me Meg when I was growing up. I didn't have a problem with the name Meg, but it was obnoxious when my legal name was required - like on the class list at the start of a school year - and I had to explain that I went by a nickname (especially a nickname that's not obviously derived from the full name).

When I went to college 350 miles away (with only one person that I obliquely knew from my "previous" life), I decided to take advantage of the chance to start over in some ways, and decided to start going by Margaret. I wanted to save myself the explanation to every professor and new employer what my name was.

Even though I had never used my legal name in any real context before (I don't think I even knew for sure how to spell it until middle school), it didn't take too much to adjust to it. My parents on the other hand... they picked out Margaret to be my legal name, but after 18 years of Meg, they couldn't get used to it! They tried, they really did, but Meg was what came easily, and when visiting, it slipped out often enough in front of my roommates and friends that they started calling me Meg as well. 

My parents have gradually become better about using my real name, but slip occasionally, and now I view Meg as more of an endearing nickname - most of the people that I'm closest too either originally knew me as Meg or are around my parents enough to pick up on it, so it gives it a sense of being a term of endearment when people use it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A few years ago, I was engaged. I am not the type of girl who has been dreaming of her wedding for years. I honestly didn't truly expect to ever get married. As we planned, I did a lot of reading about wedding traditions (conventions? "traditional" is actually a bit of a misnomer for many things related to current wedding expectations), their origins, and how they play out in cultural norms.

Changing my last name wasn't something I was opposed to per se (I do like the idea of having a single family name, especially if kids are anticipated in the future), but I couldn't stand the idea that I was expected to be the one to change my name, whereas no one expected my fiance to even consider changing his. It was so annoying! Here I was, agonizing over what I wanted to do with my name, and he didn't have to think about anything. 

There's also the whole thing that even if I kept my birth last name, that name came from my father, so either way it's still derived from patriarchy. For a while, I thought about adding my mom's maiden name, if I was going through the process of name changing anyways (even though, yes, that's still my grandfather's name) (and I didn't want to drop my middle name and use my maiden name as a middle name, because it comes from my aunt)... Margaret Middle MomMaiden Myname Hisname... that would have been a mouthful.

After some thought, I asked him to add my name to his, and I would add his name to mine, so we would both have the same double-barrel last name (Myname Hisname, because it sounded better than Hisname Myname). Although I wanted him to take some time to consider it, he actually agreed to it immediately. His mom - who had been married three times and changed her name three times - had a hissy fit when she found out. I'm not sure if she thought our choice to diverge from convention was a judgment on her choice to continually conform, or if it brought out emotions of regret for conforming (let's just say our relationship didn't provide me the chance to ask her about it). 

Fortunately, for a variety of reasons, the engagement ended a couple months before the planned wedding date. Although the name issue was by no means the primary issue, I think that he actually wasn't as comfortable with the idea of adding my last name to his as he originally let on.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Now that Abe and I are in the stage of tentatively planning a future together, I'm leaning towards keeping my last name and encouraging him to keep his name, no changes or additions. Our names wouldn't sound very good combined (they're both two syllables, and have similar ending sounds), so I don't see a double-barrel or hyphenated name as an option. 

We've also - and I hate to admit this, I hate the stereotype of the girl who's planned this all out in advance of even finding the guy for this future to take place with - but we've discussed a concept for naming our future kids: first names starting with N and O (Abe is a blog pseudonym, his first name actually starts with L, so then we'd be LMNO) (yes, I'm assuming two kids, as far as biological kids, I think it's irresponsible to do more than replace yourselves), and middle initials starting with A, because both Abe and I have A as our middle initial, plus a vowel facilitates having pronounceable initials. With those for the first and middle names, it would work well for give each of them one of our last names, and then their initials would be NAW and OAT. Although I can see some concerns of having siblings with different last names, I think this is a decent, fair alternative to having a single family name for everyone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Are Abe and I overthinking our future kid-naming just as much as my parents did? 

What do you think is the solution to the patriarchal naming system in American culture?

Garlic Fries

It only took a week and a half to post about our trip to the coast (am I such an impressive blogger, or what :) ); now working backwards to recap the rest of the summer. At the beginning of August, Abe and I met up with my parents in Seattle (they live in eastern Washington) for a Mariners game. 

In looking up driving directions to Safeco Field the day before (we were going to take Amtrak, but I procrastinated buying tickets and at the last minute they were absurdly expensive), I realized that google had some interesting priorities:

Crowdsourcing the issue, I found out that the fries are, indeed, an important part of the experience. I'd been there before, but not for at least ten or twelve years, and I don't recall trying them before. My dad is a long-time Mariners fan, and we have relatives in the area, so we did go to several games over the course of my childhood. (More importantly, we would always visit the Elliot Bay Book Company before the game - they used to be walking distance from the stadium).

It turned out my friend Karey was also attending the game, so we met up briefly before the game, and I introduced her to my parents and Abe. As both a Mariners fan and a fellow vegetarian, she was able to point out the veggie foods corner by section 132 (near the home plate gate). The veg-leaning members of our group all had veggie dogs for lunch. 

We were lucky that Felix was pitching that day, and the Mariners won 2-0! I have to admit, I don't really follow them in general (I did for a while in fifth grade - when Ken Griffey Jr and Randy Johnson were around - but then they traded all the players I was familiar with and I lost interest), but knew they weren't having the best season, so that was a pleasant surprise.

My mom enjoyed having company - she goes along with my dad to see the Mariners about once a year now, but often spends the time texting her daughters, rather than following the game. Baseball is one of the few sports I actually know the basic rules to, so I had fun watching the game in addition to spending time with family. Abe explained some of the stats I was unfamiliar with; I thought the SLG is pretty interesting, the way it weights efficiency for scoring versus just hits.

And yes, I did make sure to try the garlic fries! I'd say they live up to the hype. Sooooo much garlic on them! I swear it seemed like an entire bulb chopped up on the one serving. Still not sure what the purpose of the apple slice that comes with it is though. Anyone know?