Phone calls

"Are you Hampton Sides' intern?" -question from two separate people who called Outside and were transfered to me (why me? I have no idea).

I wish.

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Hyperbole

"They diagnosed me with runner's knee. I have put on about 70 lbs; I have real muffin tops and jiggly arms, bad stretch marks and cellulitis and a one pack in my belly ;) " -e-mail from Munashe. Made me laugh, but let's hope he starts running again soon...
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Getting By

"Writers end up writing stories -- or rather stories' shadows -- and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough." -Joy Williams.
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I'll Get It

"I couldn't believe it. I almost had a heart attack." -Dr. Cooper remembers the first time Tricia agreed to foot the bill for a family dinner. Aw, she's all grown up :)

Had a great dinner with the Coopers last night at Gabriel's -- great New Mexican food!

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Kiva Cliffs

Went to Bandelier yesterday and bought this postcard. Looks almost like the real thing:

Other park designs here.

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The Write Time

"I have no work habits whatsoever...I don't sit down in the morning and try to commit an act of literature before lunch." -Billy Collins.
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SW Style

"I'm so Santa Fe." -Jean shows off her recent purchases from an afternoon on the plaza.
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National Velvet

In honor of Elizabeth Taylor.

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Eat Up

Food52's cooking manifesto:

-If you cook, your family will eat dinner together

-If you cook, you will naturally have a more sustainable household

-If you cook, you'll set a lifelong example for your children

-If you cook, you'll understand what goes into food and will eat more healthily

-If you cook, you'll make your home an important place in your life

-If you cook, you'll make others happy

-If you cook, people will remember you

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I Live in a Desert

"Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth...in the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt." -Margaret Atwood.

This little tomato plant is as close as I'm going to get this spring.

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Dedication

"The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true." -John Steinbeck.

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Land Lines

"As much as you transform the land by farming, farming transforms you. It seeps into your skin along with the dirt that abides permanently in the creases of your thickened hands, the beds of your nails ... farming takes root in you and crowds out other endeavors, makes them seem paltry. Your acres become a world...so naturally you give, and then you give some more, and then you give to the point of breaking, and then and only then it gives back, so bountifully it overfills not only your root cellar but also that parched and weedy little patch we call the soul." -Preface of Kristin Kimball's The Dirty Life -- definitely a great read if you have any interest in agriculture or local food.
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Downtown Santa Fe

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Numbers

"I don't want to sound gay, cause I'm not gay -- not that there's anything wrong with being gay -- but, how much do you weigh?" -another good line from the gym.
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St. Patty's

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Not Bothered

"I just don't think -- at the age of 82 -- that I should worry about getting thyroid cancer from Japan." -conversation between two old ladies in the locker room about the possibility of radiation from Asia reaching the U.S. All this little lady needs to worry about is getting to water aerobics on time.
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Thorny Advice

"Watch out for the goatheads!" -a homeless guy calls after me as I rode my bike home yesterday. Luckily (knock on wood), I haven't had any goathead-caused flats since moving to Santa Fe.
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Soul Food

Ate at the recently re-opened Annapurna restaurant last night. Tasty!

p.s. Annapurna is also the tenth highest mountain in the world ... one of many fun facts I've learned while working at Outside.

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Mostly Sunny

"The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it." -Patrick Young

Let's hope this one is right...

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Inside & Outside

"You must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clean away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver." -another one from Eat, Pray, Love (don't worry, I finished the book, so no more of those).
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Take Control

"People universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough. But that's not how happiness works. Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it." -another good line from Eat, Pray, Love
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Quickie

"What's your six-word love story?" -cute NYT blog. Make sure to read the comments.


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Happy

"The highest wisdom is continual cheerfulness: such a state, like the region above the moon, is always clear and serene." -essayist Michel de Montaigne
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ARRRRR

Make sure watch till the end!

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In the Meat Aisle (Seriously)

"You're pretty." -an old man (probably in his late 70s) grabs my arm and pays me a compliment while I was helping out at the co-op on Saturday. Those old guys have no shame.
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Good To Go. No?

"I just read all the article. It is good and I didn't found mistakes. I have just 2 point I wold like you correct." -e-mail from an Italian mountaineer verifying (maybe?!) information in an upcoming Outside article. No wonder fact checking takes so long.
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March

"Is it so small a thing, to have enjoy'd the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done?" -Matthew Arnold

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Good Eats

"Order the 'chokes and cheese, a burger or the Southwest chicken taco salad, and leave with a compostable to-go container and a growler full of Katy Trail Pale Ale." -Flat Branch Pub & Brewery wins best restaurant in the Best of Columbia awards (many categories written by yours truly).

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Meet and Greet

Me: "I'm new."

PQ Lady: "Hi, New!"

My introduction at the Pedal Queens meeting last night.

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Above and Beyond

"To have exploration, you have to go where the other is not going, or you have to go when the other is not going." -awesome quote by Italian mountaineer Simone Moro, who recently made the first winter ascent of G2 with two others and then got caught in an avalanche on the way down. Whole story will be in the May issue of Outside.
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MTB

"Mountain biking is tons more fun than road biking because it's never about the destination, but the journey." -my latest Inside Columbia article.
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